How Lebanon Almost Became the Flashpoint of a Nuclear War

During the height of the Cold War, when the West and Soviet Union attempted to insert their influence into any nation they could, and Lebanon would be in the crosshairs. Then, one of the biggest economies of the Middle East, Lebanon, was the region’s crown jewel, but cracks in the country’s system started to lead to conflict.

The Middle East and North Africa became ripe with Arab nationalism stemming from Abdel Nasser’s Free Officers coup against the Egyptian Monarchy, and class conflicts spilled over from the Soviet Union. Lebanon was caught in the Middle of various competitions that spilled over into the Levant. The once prosperous nation on the East Mediterranean would have its fate sealed in the 1958 civil war.

Background

Lebanon emerged as a proposed state by France after the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Before Lebanon’s republic, Mount Lebanon was a semi-autonomous state under the Ottoman Empire with French oversight after the brutal civil war of the 1860s. Half of Mount Lebanon’s population was purposely starved to death in a famine exacerbated by Djemal Pasha, one of the triumvirates who ruled the late Ottoman Empire.

France intended Mount Lebanon to be represented primarily by the Maronites, Christians with close communion with the French Catholic Church. Druze and Sunnis were the minorities, and the state became increasingly filled with Armenian Genocide survivors.

The Maronite Church would propose a greater Lebanese state as Mount Lebanon was not as economically viable as they thought. For this, the Bekaa Valley and the South were added, increasing the demographics with even more Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

Lebanon would slowly become a top economic powerhouse of the Middle East with a banking system that Western nations such as America and France saw as valuable. Seeing itself as non-Arab, the Maronite-dominated government enacted neutrality policies, whereas the rest of the Middle East, aside from Iran at the time, became in a state of war against Israel.

Sectarian War

In the mid-1950s, Camille Chamoun was Lebanon’s president at its economic height. Chamoun was a Maronite who was highly popular amongst Lebanon’s Christians and extremely pro-Western. Seen as sectarianist by the Muslims, his rule had economic prosperity, but cracks in the system would lead to an impasse during his term.

On the outside, Lebanon was an economy in a region that had not yet fully developed. On the inside, most of the wealth lay with the Maronites, who, after integrating the Bekaa Valley and the South, slowly started to become a minority.

Muslims in the country, such as Sunnis and Shiites, saw themselves as increasingly unrepresented in the government and felt the effects of income inequality. Chamoun’s isolationist stance also grew unpopular amongst the Muslims, particularly the Sunnis, who were pro-Palestinian and pro-Syrian.

Whereas the Middle East continued to train Palestinian refugees to become guerillas in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Beirut’s ruling Maronites sat out—focusing on their own country and distinct identity away from the Arabs. Unfortunately, a rise of pan-Arab nationalism continued to emerge, threatening the ruling order of Lebanon, and becoming a catalyst of civil war.

Arab Proxy War

Taking place during the Cold War, the Arab world would also have its proxy conflict, pitting various countries with different ideologies against each other. The start of the Arab Cold War came from the Free Officers movement that overthrew the Egyptian Monarchy.

The officers were led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, a highly charismatic figure who wanted to influence Arabs to unite under one banner, which was the original intention of the Great Arab Revolt before Sykes-Picot. Nasser openly expressed his disdain not only for the West but also the various monarchies that ruled the oil-dominant kingdoms of the Middle East.

Nasser’s successful revolution directly influenced Iraq’s Free Officer movement that executed the Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad, sending shockwaves to the other kings of the region. Nasser became increasingly popular within Syria, and the Sunnis, who started to see themselves as more Syrian than Lebanese, praised the Egyptian ruler and repeated calls for the system to change in Lebanon.

Though not a monarchy, the Sunnis and lower class saw the ruling Maronites as having power akin to the MENA monarchs and wanted a revolution akin to Egypt. The Sunnis wanted Lebanon to unify with Syria, as the latter formed the United Arab Republic with Egypt in early 1958.

Increasingly under pressure, Chamoun’s foreign policy brought controversy due to his relations with France and the US, which the Arabs saw as a violation of the National Pact. Protests would ignite, which resulted in several killed and dozens wounded, which only heightened the tensions against Chamoun.

Overall Cold War

Lebanon also had a growing communist influence that was pro-Soviet Union and wanted to dismantle the system, whereas the ruling Maronite government was right-wing and preferred the status quo. Despite Nasser not being a communist and more of a charismatic autocrat, the Soviet Union saw him as a helpful puppet, and the United States feared the Egyptian’s strongman charisma, backed by the Kremlin, would influence communism to spread.

The Eisenhower Doctrine saw Chamoun as protective of American interests and the documented authorized economic and military aid to Middle Eastern allies, such as Lebanon, Jordan, and Pahlavi Iran, to clamp down on communist movements. Chamoun would request foreign intervention under the Eisenhower Doctrine when the civil war ignited in mid-July 1958.

The prized US Sixth Fleet was charged with Operation Blue Bat in support of Camille Chamoun’s factions that came under pressure from the pan-Arabists and left-wing factions. Marines landed on the beaches of Beirut but did not enter the capital as negotiations between the Lebanese factions were ongoing.

Eisenhower also did not want to inflame tensions amongst the Arabs by having a Western military inside of a Middle Eastern capital. Fouad Chehab, the Chief of Staff of the Lebanese Army and future successor of Chamoun, had also warned that his forces would have been ordered to fire on the Marines if they came into Beirut as he took a more neutral yet sympathetic stance compared to Chamoun’s pro-Western policies.

The Soviet Union would have intervened if Nasser had requested military intervention as the United Arab Republic was the only vassal of Moscow at the time, and the Egyptian leader feared US Forces would have pushed towards Syria. Before the civil war heightened, Eisenhower sent the seasoned diplomat Robert Murphy to unite the numerous factions for compromise.

Overall, Chamoun would finish his term but not pursue reelection or heighten the rhetoric of partition. General Chehab would run for president as a moderate Maronite Christian, and the Arabs would not pursue unification with the UAR. Escalation that could have had global ramifications was averted.

The aftermath of the 1958 civil war led to Chamoun’s fall, but cracks remained in the system. The Arabs still heavily supported the Palestinian cause, whereas the Maronites were more neutral.

Despite reforms by Chehab and his policies that mended the ties between different ethnic groups, various events in the region would again heighten sectarianism in Lebanon. After the expulsion of the Palestinians from Jordan, Lebanon was coerced to take in the Palestinian militias by Nasser, and sectarian tensions only grew in the late sixties into the early seventies.

The Arab Cold War between the Nasserists and MENA monarchies continued, with brutal conflicts in North Africa and Yemen. The Arab Cold War ended when Shah Pahlavi was overthrown by the theocratic Shiite Mullahs, who called for a greater Islamic Revolution against the Sunni states, beginning the Iranian-Arab tensions.

In conclusion, Lebanon is a prime example of how a small nation’s conflict could have global repercussions if diplomatic efforts are not taken to mitigate conflict. The short 1958 civil war was a prelude to Lebanon’s greater civil war in the mid-70s and 80s, which the country has not recovered from to this day.