Matt Yglesias

March 14 Coalition Triumphant in Lebanon

The ruling March 14 Coalition, heirs to the Cedar Revolution, have somewhat unexpectedly carried the day in Lebanon. This is being reported as a defeat for Hezbollah, since Hezbollah was (and is) the main party in the opposition. But Hezbollah’s actual level of electoral support is unchanged. Instead, as I said the other day, the key player was Michael Aoun and his Free Patriotic Movement. Aoun, a Christian, had aligned himself with the Hezbollah-led coalition. But he ultimately wasn’t able to carry enough of the Christian vote to put the opposition in power.

Since the March 14 Coalition is pro-Western in its orientation, this counts as a win for US foreign policy. At the same time, it’s not actually clear to me how anyone’s life in the United States is actually impacted by Lebanese electoral politics and my general sense is that it’s not wise to get too invested in these kind of proxy struggles. The fundamental issue of Hezbollah’s role in Lebanese society will, one suspects, remain unresolved as Hezbollah has no intention of surrendering its weapons and it seems it will still be the case that the Lebanese government isn’t going to be willing or able to forcibly disarm it.

The Dog That Hasn’t Barked

One interesting issue in the current crisis is how come Hezbollah hasn’t acted aggressively to start up a second front in the north while the IDF is conducting major operations in Gaza. Abu Muquwama has some plausible sounding speculations about this. One could, I think, probably construct other scenarios. Part of the reason is almost certainly just status quo bias and inertia — on any given day, Hezbollah has a strong presumption against undertaking a dramatic escalation of the conflict with Israel.

But note that while one can adduce all kinds of reasons to explain Hezbollah’s actions, none of them are consistent with the (apparently popular in Israel as well as among US neocons) line of thinking which holds that both Hamas and Hezbollah are nothing more than puppets of Iran and extensions of Tehran’s relentless drive to eradicate Israel.

Say what you will about Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, but he has an impressive ability to stay on message, blaming the Jews for Georgia’s defeat at the hands of the Russian military:

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday asserted that “failed” Israeli generals had caused Georgia’s defeat in its current war with Russia.

“Israel exported failed generals in order to train the Georgian armed forces, including general Gal Hirsch, and we all know that the Georgian army was defeated by the Russian forces,” Nasrallah said in a speech to mark two years since the end of the Second Lebanon War.

I feel like the substantial size gap between enormous Russia and tiny Georgia may have played a larger role here, along with what looks to have been daft decision-making from the political leaders in Tbilisi.