Is Lebanon Really a Failed State? How Washington Made It — and Now Offers the Cure, Unwittingly

By Elijah J. Magnier –

In political science, a failed state is defined as one that can no longer provide security, justice, or basic services to its citizens, nor maintain a monopoly over legitimate violence within its territory. When U.S. Envoy Thomas Barrack described Lebanon as a “failed state,” he was not simply diagnosing collapse but was drawing a political line. Is he accurate to define Lebanon as failed while he continues to meet its ministers, army commanders, and diplomats, urging them to take actions that would overwhelm even a fragile government—one still reeling from war, economic breakdown, and Israel’s unrelenting bombardment? What are Barrack’s real intentions behind this definition?

At first glance, Barrack’s statement seems to mirror Lebanon’s misery. The economy has imploded, the currency has lost more than 95 per cent of its value, electricity is scarce, and citizens depend on private generators and water trucks. The state’s capacity to provide education, healthcare, and welfare has been hollowed out. For Washington, that profile fits the textbook definition of a failed state. Yet Lebanon still possesses functioning ministries, a recognised army, an elected parliament, a judiciary, and a diplomatic network. It is not Somalia in the 1990s, nor Yemen in full-scale war. The label “failed” therefore oversimplifies. It erases the difference between collapse and constraint: between a state that cannot act and one that is not allowed to.