Everyone has a theory about how to fix Lebanon.

Reform the banking sector. Elect a new president. Pressure Hezbollah. Empower civil society. Hold free and fair elections. The international community floats rescue plans. Local reformists speak of building institutions. The Lebanese diaspora, desperate to hope, rallies around new faces who promise change.

But these efforts all rest on the same false premise, that Lebanon is a broken system in need of repair. The truth is harder to accept: Lebanon is not broken. It is captured. And you cannot reform a system that was designed, from the start, to resist reform.

This country is ruled by a permanent political class that has turned sectarianism into a business model and governance into a racket. It is not merely corrupt, it is extractive. Power is used not to serve the people, but to secure loyalty, amass wealth and protect impunity. And the world, for all its statements about reform and democracy, continues to deal with this class as though it were legitimate.

The evidence of capture is everywhere. Parliament does not legislate,
it deadlocks. The judiciary does not prosecute, it protects. Ministers do not resign in disgrace when disasters occur, they regroup and return. The Beirut port explosion in 2020 killed more than 200 people and devastated half the capital. To this day, not a single senior official has been held accountable. The investigation was blocked, the judges removed, and the process buried under political pressure.

This is not failure. It is a system functioning exactly as intended, for the benefit of those in charge.

Then came the financial collapse. Between 2019 and 2022, the Lebanese pound lost more than 98 percent of its value. Banks locked depositors out of their own accounts. Middle-class families were destroyed. Public services disappeared. The World Bank called it a “deliberate depression”, a collapse engineered by the elite to preserve their interests at the expense of the population. That was not hyperbole. It was a recognition of the truth: the ruling class saw the end coming, and made sure they were paid first.

The United States, France, the IMF, all know this. They know who profited. They know which laws were violated. They know that Lebanon’s central bank operated more like a Ponzi scheme than a monetary authority. And yet, diplomatic and financial negotiations continue as though Lebanon is a state with functioning institutions, rather than a carcass animated by foreign interests and local mafias.

Why? Because the fiction of the Lebanese state is more comfortable than the truth of its capture. It allows foreign powers to preserve their influence, keep the borders quiet and prevent regional spillover. Stability, even fake stability, is better than chaos. So the donors pledge more funds. The UN issues more reports. And nothing changes.

Meanwhile, the people adapt. Not by reforming the system, but by escaping it. They leave the country. They build lives abroad. Or they stay and survive through parallel structures: dollars under the mattress, informal networks, NGO clinics, private generators. In Lebanon, the state is no longer the provider of anything, it is a threat to be avoided. This is what a post-state society looks like.

Still, the world keeps asking: where is the hope? Where is the opposition? Why do not the Lebanese rise up?

They did. In 2019, the country erupted in protest, millions of people across sects, classes and regions, demanding the downfall of the political elite. But the system absorbed the pressure. It waited, divided and reasserted control. Without international backing, and with no leverage over the security services, the protests faded. Independent candidates emerged in the 2022 elections, and some even won seats. But they were quickly drowned out by a parliament designed to neuter dissent and reward obstruction.

There is no peaceful path to reform in Lebanon because the gatekeepers of reform are also its saboteurs. The electoral law is built to preserve sectarian control. The judiciary is staffed with loyalists. The army and security services are politically entangled. Media outlets are owned by political patrons. Even the central bank, once praised as a technocratic success story, turned out to be a front for massive embezzlement.

The question is not how to reform Lebanon, it is how to end the system that makes reform impossible.

That requires a fundamental shift in how the world engages with Lebanon. Stop treating the same warlords and bankers as partners in reform. Stop giving aid without accountability. Stop pretending there is a functioning state when there is only a shared lie. Apply pressure where it matters: targeted sanctions, asset freezes, international investigations. Name names. Freeze funds. Force consequences.

Nothing will change until the cost of theft becomes greater than the reward of impunity.

Lebanon’s people are not apathetic. They are exhausted. They are not silent. They are unheard. They know the truth better than anyone: there is no change coming from within. Not while the same men control every lever of power. Not while international actors prioritise “stability” over justice. Not while the myth of Lebanese resilience is used to excuse endless suffering.

This is not a call for despair. It is a call for clarity.

Stop asking how to save Lebanon. Ask instead: who took it, and when will they be made to let go?