Sanction elites to stop Lebanon from becoming a failed state

Lebanon is four years into one of the worst financial crises in modern history, and in that time the country’s powerbrokers – the politicians, bankers and sectarian leaders – have been actively taking steps to speed the country’s descent into the abyss. While the elites who brought the nation to the verge of bankruptcy cannot agree on most things, they have found “political consensus in defence of a bankrupt economic system,” according to the World Bank, which has dubbed the continuing Lebanese crisis “the Deliberate Depression.” Since 2019, we have seen political henchmen from various parties stall and derail the reforms needed to implement an IMF rescue plan, the central bank establish a parallel financial system to protect the wealthy, and an informal, cash economy, fertile for illicit activity, expand rapidly. As the first significant Western policy aimed at addressing Lebanon’s “grave financial, economic, social and political crisis” the framework should have helped keep elite misconduct in check. In the last decade, a single US Treasury edict brought down two Lebanese banks for suspected money laundering links with Hezbollah.The recent sanctions against Salameh notwithstanding, however, the US did nothing to address Lebanon’s current crisis beyond threatening widespread sanctions but targeting just a handful of Hezbollah-connected individuals. By contrast, coordinated sanctions by the US and the EU would strangle the financial lifelines Lebanon’s elite depend on and, just perhaps, bring them to reason.