Hezbollah's Military Role and the Dilemma of Sovereignty and Deterrence in Lebanon

Abstract

Lebanon’s post–civil war political order has been shaped by an unresolved tension between formal state sovereignty and the continued presence of a non-state armed actor. Since the Taif Agreement in 1989, Hezbollah has maintained an autonomous military role while participating in Lebanon’s political system and providing extensive social services. This dual position has created a structural contradiction: Hezbollah enjoys legitimacy among its supporters as a resistance force, yet its armed autonomy limits the Lebanese state’s ability to exercise its monopoly over violence. While existing scholarship has extensively examined Hezbollah’s ideology, evolution, and regional alliances, far less attention has been paid to how these debates translate into Lebanon’s current and unfolding security and political reality. By critically engaging sovereignty-centered and deterrence-based perspectives, this project demonstrates the limitations of disarmament-centered approaches that abstract Hezbollah’s military role from the state’s limited security capacity, its social legitimacy, and the persistence of external threats.