The Lebanese War
Disengagement: April 1975 - March 1976

As the Lebanese policy unraveled between 1973 and 1975, in the wake of the failed attempt to curb the power of the Palestinians in Lebanon, the American administration seemed to take little notice and made few policy statements on the matter. First, it had begun to question Lebanon's value as a political asset beginning in 1958 and confirmed its belief in the inherent precariousness of the country in 1969 and 1973. In their memoirs, several U.S. presidents and policymakers such as Nixon, Carter, and Kissinger, referred to Lebanon simply in terms of its "chronic crisis".

Second, the U.S.'s foreign policy apparatus under Kissinger was almost entirely dedicated to the pursuit of Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy between Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. The success of the peace process was of paramount importance; most other matters became marginal[4]

Third, the Nixon administration was mired in multiple crises including popular opposition to the war in Vietnam, followed by the collapse of South Vietnam, regional crises in Angola and Ethiopia, and domestic problems related to the Watergate scandal. The executive branch was under attack, and any notion of resolute American military action to stem the collapse of Lebanon, after Vietnam and after the Nixon Doctrine, was unthinkable.

Fourth, the early 1970s saw the emergence of Detente between the superpowers. In such an atmosphere, unlike in 1958, the polarization and disintegration of Lebanon could be viewed as a domestic or, at most, a regional problem without global superpower overtones. Indeed, the collapse of Lebanon - after all, a fairly pro-Western state - and the success of the Palestinian-leftist coalition which enjoyed Soviet support in the first year of the war raised few cold war hackles in Washington .Lebanon was not perceived as being lost to the Soviet Union or to its clients; it was merely being lost to itself. Hence, the loss could be perceived as of little importance to the U.S.

The Syrian Option: 1976-1981

Kissinger began to pay attention to the deteriorating situation in Lebanon in the spring of 1976. By that time, the Palestinian-leftist alliance had gotten the upper hand, the Christians were embattled and losing ground, the Army had split along confessional lines, and the Syrians had become directly involved in the conflict through their Palestine Liberation Army battalions and Sa`iqa forces. As previously, the reason for American interest in Lebanon stemmed from sources beyond Lebanon: this time it was American concern that Syrian involvement in Lebanon could precipitate Israeli involvement which might lead to confrontation and a derailment of the Israeli-Egyptian peace process.

The Syrians, for their part, were worried by the situation. Although they had originally helped arm the Palestinians and the leftist alliance in Lebanon, now they feared their victory. A victory for the Palestinian-leftist alliance might mean the partition of Lebanon between a radical leftist state with close links to Libya and Iraq, and a rump Christian state allied with Israel. Both would constitute a threat to Syria. The radical leftist state would provoke Israel into action and drag Syria into confrontation with it, and the rump Christian state would provide a base for a projection of Israeli power on Syria's flank. What the Syrian government wanted was an end to hostilities and a reconstitution of central state authority accompanied by an expanded military and political role for Syria in the country. Syria's interest in both Lebanon and Jordan had increased in the wake of the signing of the Sinai II Accords in September 1975 and the beginning of Egypt's withdrawal from confrontation with Israel. Left alone in confrontation with Israel, Syria wished to consolidate its position through increased influence over Jordan and Lebanon.[5]

Initially, Kissinger had no positive inclinations toward the Syrian role in Lebanon. Syria, after all, was a Soviet client and had been recalcitrant in the peace process with Israel. As Syrian intervention in Lebanon increased in the early months of 1976, Kissinger and the U.S. administration privately and publicly expressed their opposition to any large-scale Syrian intervention. Between March and April 1976, however, the U.S. policy on this matter changed. >From warning against Syrian intervention, Kissinger and the State Department began to issue statements describing the Syrian role in Lebanon as 'constructive' and made it known that a larger Syrian role in Lebanese affairs would be tolerated and might, in fact, be welcomed.

The reason for this important shift is not yet fully clear and must await more substantive historical evidence, but there are two plausible interpretations: one interpretation explains the shift as a realization by Kissinger that inviting the Syrians to intervene would kill several birds with one stone.[6] First, the Syrians could deal a strong blow to the PLO who were one of the main opponents of Kissinger's peace diplomacy and who had been accorded legitimacy at the Arab summit meeting in Rabat in October 1974. Second, they could deal a strong blow to the pro-Soviet Lebanese left. Third, their movement into Lebanon would divert them from the Golan and the separate peace being prepared between Israel and Egypt and, indeed, would divert and divide a large section of the Arab world. The alternative interpretation, which sees a more passive American role, is that after Sinai II, Syria was determined to expand its influence into Lebanon, and that its entry by proxy through the PLA and Sa`iqa forces in January was to test the waters for larger intervention later in the year. In this scenario, the U.S. and Kissinger were simply reacting to Syrian policy with the main concern of trying to avert a Syrian-Israeli confrontation.

In either case, the U.S. played a crucial role in brokering an informal agreement between Syria and Israel, referred to later as the "red line" understanding on the basis of which Syrian troops entered the country in force beginning on June 1, 1976. The understanding stipulated that Israel would tolerate a Syrian entry into Lebanon on certain conditions: (a) that Syrian troops not be deployed south of a "red line" drawn west from the Litani River; (b) that the number and equipment of Syrian troops be limited; (c) that Syria deploy no air forces or anti-aircraft missiles; and (d) that Syria limit its use of naval forces.

The wider understanding between the Syrians and the Americans was that Syria would stem the Palestinian-leftist advance and restore order to the country; it would help parliament to convene in order to amend the constitutions to allow for early presidential elections; a new president would be elected to replace President Franjiyyeh; and the new president would appoint a cabinet of national unity and implement the principles of reform agreed upon previously in the Constitutional Document declared by President Franjiyyeh in February after extensive consultation with Damascus. [7] An earlier attempt by U.S. special envoy Dean Brown to gain a ceasefire and arrange for the election of a new president in spring, 1976, had led nowhere.

Indeed, throughout 1976 U.S. policy suffered from an absence of regular representation in Beirut. Ambassador Godley had left Beirut precipitously in January for medical reasons; Brown visited briefly as a special envoy; the new ambassador, Francis E. Meloy, Jr., arrived in April but was assassinated in June; Talcott Seelye was appointed ambassador on an interim basis but he also left the country when embassy staff was reduced for security reasons. This meant that Washington was receiving little high-level field input and that it had a reduced ability to influence leaders and events in the country. In addition, the embassy was located in Ras Beirut, an area under the control of the PLO, with whom the Americans were not allowed formal contact. This further reduced the ability of U.S. representatives to move about the city.

Despite the large-scale Syrian entry, things did not go completely as planned. The Palestinians put up stiff resistance, especially in Sidon in the South, and Egypt, Iraq, Libya and several other Arab states roundly denounced the Syrian intervention and reaffirmed their backing for the Palestinian-leftist alliance. Nevertheless, the die was cast. Syrian forces eventually overwhelmed Palestinian-leftist resistance, and Arab opposition was dealt with through the good offices of Saudi Arabia who, with encouragement from the U.S., arranged an October meeting between Presidents Asad and Sadat in Riyad in which Asad agreed to drop his opposition to Sadat's concessions to Israel in exchange for Sadat's dropping his opposition to Syria's role in Lebanon.[8] The agreement was formalized in an Arab summit meeting in Cairo later that month in which the Arab Deterrent Force was created to give an official Arab League mandate to Syrian forces in Lebanon, and to add to their numbers units from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, and other Arab countries.

By the end of the year, the fighting in Lebanon had died down, a new president committed to reform and reconstruction was in place, and Kissinger left office with the belief that the crisis in Lebanon had passed. Furthermore, he could be satisfied that Syria's entry into Lebanon had served his broader Middle East agenda. Syria was now deeply involved in the Lebanese "quagmire,' it faced Muslim and Arab opposition for siding with the Christians in the Lebanese war, and it faced Soviet opposition for crushing the leftist-Palestinan alliance in Lebanon .[9]Meanwhile, Arab ranks had split and Sadat enjoyed new freedom of maneuver.

The period between 1978 and 1981 lay the foundations for the gradual unravelling of U.S.-Syrian understanding over Lebanon. First, the Syrians were unable to bring real peace and stability to the country: reforms had not been instituted, the PlO remained dominant in Beirut and the South, and Syrian troops were in open confrontation with the increasingly pro-Israeli Christian militias. The capital, Beirut, remained lawless. U.S. efforts to strengthen the Lebanese state under President Sarkis and the Lebanese armed forces, to which the U.S. had committed $100 million, were not met with a cooperative response from Syria. There were even deliberate Syrian attacks on Lebanese Army positions, most notably the attack on the Fayyadiyyeh barracks in February 1978.

Second, the Syrian presence had not forestalled Israeli military intervention in Lebanon; the Israelis launched an invasion of the South in March 1978 which threatened to escalate into direct confrontation with Syria. The U.S. was forced to condemn the invasion and lend its support to UN Resolution 425 calling for an immediate Israeli withdrawal, and to the sending of a UN Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) to replace Israeli troops.

Third, after Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in 1977, Asad had joined the rejectionist Front of Steadfastness and Confrontation and moved to a position of all-out opposition to the American peace process. U.S.-Syrian relations declined sharply from the cordial days of 1975-76.

Fourth, Detente with the Soviet Union was collapsing and was dealt a final blow by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979. U.S. administrations, first under Jimmy Carter and then under Ronald , moved back into an active Cold War posture. The U.S. began to challenge the Soviets in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, Libya, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and Kampuchea. [10]This reflected directly on U.S. attitudes toward Syria and its presence in Lebanon.

The Israeli Option: 1981-1982

As U.S.-Syrian understanding on Lebanon deteriorated, Israel, under the leadership of Begin, Sharon, Shamir, and others, began contemplating an alternative plan for the country. This was based on crushing the PLO supplanting Syrian hegemony with Israeli hegemony, and setting up a government in Beirut which would be friendly to Israel and which would be the second to sign a peace treaty with Israel. The plan hinged on the growing relationship between the Israelis and the commander of the Christian Lebanese Forces militia, Bashir Gemayel. Relations between the Christian right-wing and Israel had begun in earnest in 1976 and grew steadily after that with Israel supplying arms, training, and money to the Christian militias. There are also reports that the CIA station in Athens participated in helping the Christian militias in this way.[11] In any case, the U.S. at no point opposed the growing Christian-Israeli relationship, although it ran counter to its original policy on Lebanon.[12]

The Christian-Israeli relationship was tested in fighting between Bashir Gemayel's forces and Syrian troops during the siege of Zahleh in early 1981. The fighting was especially fierce and the Western media covered it extensively, expressing sympathy with the besieged civilian population of the town. The U.S. Senate even passed a resolution condemning Syria and the PLO. In this atmosphere, Bashir called for and received Israeli support in the form of an air sortie in which Israeli jets shot down two Syrian helicopters involved in the siege. Syria responded by moving SAM-6 missile batteries into the country (in violation of the "red line" understanding) and the Begin government promptly threatened to destroy them. In the polarized regional and international environment of the time, the confrontation threatened to escalate out of control.

Regional and international considerations prompted the Americans to act in Lebanon. To defuse the crisis, President Reagan dispatched veteran diplomat Philip Habib to work out a settlement. The deal Habit secured in June was that Bashir's forces would withdraw from Zahleh, the siege of the city would be lifted, the Israelis would not attack Syrian missile batteries in the Biqa`, and Syria would not use its missiles against Israeli reconnaissance flights over Lebanon. Habib was called back to Lebanon days after concluding his first mission in order to work out another settlement, this time between Israel and the PLO. A massive Israeli air raid on PLO headquarters in Beirut in July, in which 250 people were killed and 500 wounded, led to intense cross-border clashes and also threatened to get out of hand. Habib worked out a ceasefire between the two sides; its importance stemmed not only from the fact that it held, but also that it was the first time the Israelis had negotiated, even indirectly, with the PLO.

Despite the success of both agreements, Israel continued to elaborate its plans for action in Lebanon focusing on a large-scale ground offensive to completely crush the PLO in the South, deal a blow to the Syrians, and install Bashir Gemayel as the new president of Lebanon. The timing of the attack hinged on two factors: the completion of the timetable for Israeli withdrawal from Sinai in April 1982 according to the Egyptian-Israeli Treaty and the expiration of Lebanese President Sarkis' tenure in September 1982. The U.S. was aware of Israel's intentions to strike into Lebanon but assumed the attack would be concentrated in the South and would resemble the invasion of 1978. It took no firm stand, pro or con, on the potential attack but urged that any attack be a measured response to a recognizable provocation. In Israel, the equivocal U.S. position was taken as an amber light and as a sign of American willingness to go along with the operation without publicly supporting it. After all, the U.S. had taken a similarly vague position in the prelude to the 1967 War, although, in the end, it had ended up staunchly supporting the Israeli effort. Israel surmised that the U.S. had reached a dead end in Lebanon and that it would welcome an alternative to the problematic status quo, especially one which favored an American ally and dealt a blow to a Soviet one. Secretary of State Alexander Haig had been especially keen on painting Middle Eastern politics in traditional Cold War, East-West terms.[13]

The Israeli operation that was launched on June 6, 1982 proved to be much wider in its scope than was expected. First, aside from Sharon and his collaborators, who had planned for a major campaign, most members of the Israeli government and the public were not informed of, or prepared, for the scope of the operation in Lebanon. Opposition mounted sharply as Israeli casualties mounted and it became clear that the war was not confined to reinforcing a buffer zone for Israel in southern Lebanon.

Second, the U.S. government and public also had not been adequately informed or prepared and opposed the operation when it went beyond the originally declared southern strip. The U.S. intervened diplomatically to ensure a ceasefire on June 12 between Israeli and Syrian troops and generally to dampen the ferocity of the Israeli attack in light of graphic television coverage from Western crews in Lebanon.

Third, the Syrian army managed to absorb the Israeli attack, confronting the Israelis where possible and retreating in an orderly fashion in other places. The idea was to avoid a full blow to Syrian forces in Lebanon and wait for the Israeli attack to wind down on its own. Besides massive losses to the Syrian air force, the plan succeeded.

Fourth, Israel's ally in Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, backed away from previous commitments to Israel: he refused to commit his militia to enter West Beirut as had been agreed and, after his election to the presidency, he declined to negotiate a peace treaty with them. What was especially galling to the Israelis was that after they had done all the 'dirty work' Bashir had begun to turn toward the Americans proposing to them a close alliance in isolation from the Israelis. Intended as a quick and efficient battle, the Israeli operation evolved into a long and drawn out affair.

The American administration, at this time, was in a state of flux. Haig had made many enemies within the administration, and his apparent tacit encouragement of the Israeli invasion without proper consultation and clearance from the White House and other departments proved his undoing. The U.S. was perceived as having backed the invasion, and popular opposition to the Israeli operation, both in the U.S. and abroad was strong and mounting. Particularly in a year when Reagan was suffering several domestic problems and very low approval ratings in the polls, the domestic political fallout from the Israeli operation was threatening. Haig was chosen as the sacrificial lamb; he was sacked and replaced by George Shultz. Reagan sent stern messages to Begin and tried to make sure that the invasion would not go beyond the limits it had reached by the end of the first week: Israel had occupied all of South Lebanon and had moved up to the outskirts of Beirut, but it was not in active confrontation with the Syrians and was outside most parts of the capital.

American negotiator Philip Habib, again dispatched to the area, worked out a denouement to hostilities by negotiating a Palestinian withdrawal from Beirut, a modest Israeli retreat from Beirut's city limits, and the arrival of an American and European Multi-National Force (MNF) to ensure the safe departure of the PLO. Eight hundred U.S. Marines arrived in Beirut on August 25 after a 24 year hiatus. As before, they arrived in response to pressing regional considerations. But this time their mission was more limited: they were simply to oversee the safe departure of the PLO from Beirut, and then they were to leave. This was no grand gesture designed to warn the Soviets or to threaten another Nasser, but a limited commitment of American military personnel in a non-combat role in order to facilitate the progress of political negotiations involving Israel, Syria, Lebanon, the PLO, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab countries. U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was unhappy about the use of the military as a tool of American diplomacy and was worried about the commitment of military personnel without a clear military objective. His worries were later confirmed.

Trying to make virtue out of adversity and to satisfy Arab demands for some quid pro quo in the face of the PLO's abject defeat and evacuation from Beirut, the new secretary of state devised a comprehensive peace proposal announced by President Reagan on September 1, which would balance progress on settling the Lebanese crisis with progress on settling the larger Arab-Israeli dispute over the West Bank and Gaza. Not only did Israel and Syria reject the American initiative, but by linking progress in Lebanon to progress in trading land for peace in the West Bank, the U.S. unwittingly ensured Israeli obstructionism in Lebanon. From that point on, the U.S. and Israel were working at cross purposes in Lebanon. As for Syria, it branded the initiative, which made no mention of the Golan Heights, as "another Camp David" and vowed to oppose it.

Habib continued his diplomatic activity, urging American approval for the election of Bashir Gemayel to replace Sarkis as president. Gemayel enjoyed strong Israeli backing and dominated the Christian community. He had been introduced to U.S. policy-makers in a trip arranged for him by Habib to Washington in august 1981. As a young, powerful, pro-Israeli leader, he was viewed as an alternative worth trying after the failed experiment of Sarkis' weak and pro-Syrian presidency which had made no progress in ending the Lebanese war.

Bashir's assassination on September 14 threw American and Israeli plans off course. Not only was the linchpin of Israel's political ambitions in Lebanon eliminated, but the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps that followed the assassination sharply increased popular discontent in the U.S. and Israel with Israel's presence in Lebanon. Because Habib had given guarantees to the PLO that the civilians left behind by them in Beirut would be safe, Reagan felt morally and politically 9obligated to send the marines back into Beirut. They returned on September 29.

The American Option: 1982-84

As the marines suddenly moved back into Beirut, the U.S. unwittingly inherited the entire legacy of a devastating and failed invasion in a country already ravaged by seven years of war, divided along ideological and communal lines, and occupied by numerous militias and armies. The U.S. found itself in the driver's seat without a policy for the country, without the political or military means to enforce its will, and without the political will at home to absorb even the smallest failure. Its principal ally in the immediate neighborhood, Israel, was losing interest in Lebanon and turning inward, and its erstwhile friend, Syria, had long since turned hostile and had clear messages from Moscow that U.S. troops on the eastern Mediterranean were not to be tolerated. In Beirut, the U.S. had as ally a young president, Bashir's older brother Amin, who was as surprised about being in the Presidential palace as the Americans were about being in Beirut. He led a state whose institutions had severely atrophied and whose minuscule army was deployed timidly in the small hills around the palace.

The rushed dispatch of the Marines to Beirut after the Sabra and Shatila massacres ushered in one of the more confused episodes of American foreign policy. Without a deep commitment to or understanding of Lebanon, and without sufficient influence on the internal and external players, the U.S. found itself suzerain over a country whose state and institutions it would have to rebuild from scratch, and whose territory played host to a large assortment of armed and ideologically hostile players.

With no clear way out of this commitment, the Reagan administration resigned itself to the necessary task of trying somehow to turn Lebanon into Reagan's first foreign policy success. The president pledged himself personally to the Lebanese cause and his foreign policy team put together a deceptively simple plan: the U.S. would help Lebanon negotiate an Israeli withdrawal; the Lebanese Army would be strengthened to assume security duties over the whole country; and Syria's withdrawal would be secured simultaneously with the Israelis and in light of the Lebanese Army's increased capacity to maintain order, thus allaying Syria's security concerns in Lebanon. What was missing, among other things, was a clear concerns in Lebanon. What was missing, among other demands, a workable program for evacuating foreign forces and disarming the militias, and a framework for internal reform to serve as the basis for internal cohesion.

Negotiations for an Israeli withdrawal bogged down as Israel was unhappy about not securing a peace treaty and preferred to delay the negotiations in order to delay the closing of the Lebanon chapter, which would be inevitably followed by the opening of the West Bank chapter. The Americans opposed the signing of a full peace treaty between Lebanon and the Arab world, but more importantly because it feared that rewarding Israel in Lebanon in such a fashion would render it recalcitrant in agreeing to a settlement on the West Bank.[14] The negotiations ended anticlimactically on May 17, 1983 with the signing of an agreement the Israelis were committed to overturn. Only the Americans seemed committed to it, because it represented the only visible fruit of their efforts so far, furthermore, the Israelis added in a casual side letter to the Americans that regardless of the agreement, they would not withdraw unless the Syrians and the PLO withdrew first. With the May 17 Agreement, the Americans had reached a diplomatic stalemate with Israel, Syria, and Lebanon.

To add to the U.S.'s mounting political troubles in the country, Israel in September began a unilateral withdrawal - despite American protestations -from areas it had occupied around Beirut to points further south. With neither the MNF nor the small Lebanese Army in a position to rapidly and effectively replace the Israelis, their withdrawal left a dangerous power vacuum to be filled by militias or Syrian forces. This was especially dangerous in the Shouf and Aley districts which were hotly contested by Israel's erstwhile allies: the Christian Lebanese Forces and the Druze militia. Israeli intelligence was probably well aware that leaving the areas in a highly charged atmosphere between the two militias would result in hostilities. And hostilities there were, including fierce battles between the two groups, mutual massacres, the rout of the Christian militia, and the displacement of the entire Christian population of the Shouf and Aley districts. Disillusioned by the Christian militia's reneging on its promises in the summer of 1982, and embittered by its entire experience in Lebanon, the Israeli leadership was more concerned about bringing its soldiers home than about what troubles they might leave behind. And if their departure created some problems for the Americans that would keep them busy and distract them from demanding concessions on the West Bank and elsewhere, then all the better.

Problems for American policy in the country were also emanating from elsewhere. Syria had begun to recover from the setbacks it suffered in the limited confrontation with Israel in 1982. During the brief tenure of Andropov in Moscow (November 1982 - February 1984), the Soviet government had undertaken to re-equip the Syrian air force and army. Most importantly, Syria received the advanced SAM-5 anti-aircraft system and SS-21 surface-to-surface missiles. Both systems had never before been deployed outside the Warsaw Pact area.[15] Syria was in a much better position to challenge the Israeli and American positions in Lebanon. While it had temporarily accepted the U.S. presence in Lebanon as a buffer against Israel, neither Syria nor the Soviet Union would tolerate a long-term American presence there. Meanwhile, Israel was in internal disarray and planned a withdrawal from most of Lebanon except the extreme south. The U.S. had reached a dead end with the May 17 Agreement and had no alternative plan to move forward with. Within Lebanon, President Gemayel had failed to put together a strong multi-confessional coalition and although the Army was being strengthened rapidly, the political foundations of the state were still shaky.

Successive shocks came in the fall of 1983. First, in late August, there was an uprising against the government and the army in West Beirut led by the Shi`ite Amal movement, with backing from the Druze PSP and Syria. Although the Army regained control of the situation, the uprising indicated the profound precariousness of the political and security situation in the capital.

This was soon followed by the outbreak of the Christian-Druze war in the mountains leading to Druze advances, with Syrian backing, in the Shouf and Aley districts. The army had not been deployed in those areas and only intervened belatedly toward the end of the conflict when Druze moves toward the town of Suq al-Gharb threatened the seat of the Presidency in Ba`abda. Souq al-Gharb came to be considered the government's last line of defense against its opponents and fierce battles raged around it. It was at this point that the American military presence in the country evolved from passive peace-supervisor to active participant in defense of the Gemayel government. The U.S. special envoy at the time Robert McFarlane, asked for and received an upgrading of U.S. rules of engagement to "aggressive self-defense" in order to allow U.S. naval forces to back the Lebanese Army in the defense of Souq al-Gharb with the rationale that its fall would endanger U.S. Marines in Beirut. President Reagan declared "The U.S. will not allow Syria, aided and abetted by 7,000 Soviet advisors and technicians, to destroy chances for stability in Lebanon."[16]

Again, however, the U.S. was reacting to events rather than controlling them. Reagan, in effect, authorized military engagement against certain Lebanese factions as well as their Syrian backers without having formulated a clear ideal or clear policy as to where this type of military engagement would lead and how willing the U.S. was to see such engagement through if it escalated. In any case, naval artillery joined in the defense of Souq al-Gharb, and opposition assaults on the town soon stopped.

In October, these events were followed by a knockout blow against Western forces in Lebanon: the truck-bomb attack against U.S. and French forces on October 23 in which 241 Marines and 47 French soldiers were killed. This brought the day of reckoning. A previous truck-bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy building in April had left over 30 dead and 100 wounded. For the American administration, Congress, and public it was now time to look at the bottom line. What vital interests was the U.S. defending in Lebanon? What plan was it pursuing for success? And at what price was this policy to be pursued? On all three questions, the Reagan administration came up short. There were no identifiable vital American interests in Lebanon short of a vague commitment to the country's independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity" and a belief that solving the Lebanese issue would be the key to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The administration had never started with a clear policy on Lebanon, and the policy it had put together in the fall of 1982 had come apart after the collapse of May 17 Agreement and the failure of the new Lebanese government to make solid headway in consolidating political and military power internally. Finally, as far the American public was concerned, whatever interests and policies were being pursued, they were definitely not worth the loss of 241 American 'boys' - the largest American loss since the Vietnam War. Reagan saw the writing on the wall and instructed his foreign policy team to begin preparing an American exit from Lebanon.

Disengagement: 1984-1989

In Lebanon, the shift in American policy was translated into American suggestions to Gemayel to reach some accommodation with the opposition and with Syria - the newly recognized power on the ground. Meanwhile, the U.S. moved to patch up relations with Israel, damaged in differences over Lebanon, and revived the U.S.-Israeli Strategic Accord and renewed the shipment of cluster bombs and other equipment that had been frozen since the Israeli invasion. Attempts to reach an inter-Lebanese compromise were made in the Geneva national reconciliation conference of November 1983, but reaching accommodation with the opposition and with Syria while American and other European forces remained in Beirut proved impossible.

The situation broke in February 1984, when a second attempt by Amal to take over West Beirut - again with Syrian backing - succeeded, this time in the wake of a successful appeal by Amal leader Nabih Birri for Shi`ite soldiers to desert the army. The partition of the Army and the loss of control of West Beirut indicated the final collapse of the American plan for Lebanon and put the Marines and other MNF forces in immediate danger. Within days, the Americans had 'redeployed' to ships offshore and the other MNF forces were following suit. Gemayel scrapped the moribund May 17 Agreement, dismissed his cabinet, and appointed a new cabinet including members of the opposition and leaders more sympathetic toward Syria.

Unlike in 1958, U.S. Marines left Lebanon in 1984 in defeat. But like in 1958, U.S. policymakers left with renewed appreciation of the complexities of Lebanese politics and with renewed determination to steer clear of Lebanon as a small but confoundingly troublesome country. Secretary Shultz bore the additional grudge of seeing the May 17 Agreement, in which he had invested much personal prestige, overturned.

In Lebanon, Syria was gaining increasing influence. In December of 1985 it brokered a Tripartite Agreement between Amal, the PSP, and the Lebanese Forces to institute political reform, end the war, and establish 'distinctive' relations between Lebanon and Syria. The agreement, however, collapsed when LF leader Elie Hubayqa was overthrown in mid-January by Samir Ja`ja` with the tacit support of President Gemayel. Gemayel's own attempts to reach a workable compromise between the new leadership of the Lebanese Forces and the left-wing Muslim opposition, while at the same time satisfying Syria but not provoking Israel, failed. The Lebanese government moved fitfully from crisis to crisis. Between 1984 and 1988 the U.S., under the foreign policy direction of Shultz, treated Lebanon with benign neglect offering only its good offices to help in negotiations between the Lebanese and Syrian governments on new proposals for political reform and improving bilateral relations. Provocations by Iran and its proxies in Lebanon through the kidnapping of Americans and other Westerners did not draw an important American response in Lebanon although they led to clandestine U.S.-Iranian dealings which came to a halt with the Iran-Contra scandal.

A turning point came in 1988 with the expiration of Gemayel's term of office. Attempts to agree on a new President for the country had logjammed. The Maronites could not agree on a candidate to put forward while the Syrians would only accept the election of one who was a friend of ally of Syria. The constitutional deadline came and went without electing a new president despite the last-minute high-level intervention of the U.S. in a mission led by Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East Richard Murphy. Murphy's mission was motivated partly by bilateral American concern for the continuation of constitutional life in Lebanon, and partly by concern for the avoidance of a full collapse of the Lebanese state which might provoke a regional crisis between Syria and Israel.

After talks in Beirut and Damascus, Murphy got Asad to drop his insistence on the election of former President Sulayman Franjiyyeh, in favor of Mikhail Daher, a deputy from the Akkar region who had good relations with Syria and who was thought to be acceptable to the Christian leadership. Daher's election, however, was rejected by the Lebanese Forces and the Maronite Patriarch. Literally minutes before his term expired, Gemayel appointed Army Commander Michel Aoun to head a transitional military government until a new president could be elected. It soon became clear that Aoun viewed his tenure as far more than transitional, and he set off on his own political course.

The Americans did not favor Aoun. First, they were against the accession of a military man to power in Lebanon because they feared that it would exacerbate both internal and external tensions. They feared that a military man would militarize the domestic and regional aspects of the political situation in Lebanon and re-ignite the Lebanese powderkeg. Indeed, this soon happened, as large-scale fighting broke out between the army and Lebanese opposition groups, the Syrians, and finally, the Christian Lebanese Forces.

Second, personal contacts with Aoun had not been positive. Aoun's primary Western contacts were with France and he charged that Gemayel's American policy was what had brought Lebanon to its sorry condition. Furthermore, relations between him and successive American ambassadors, Reginald Bartholomew, John Kelly, and John McCarthy had not been warm. He judged that American policy in Lebanon was to support the status quo, and he was committed to overturning this. He believed that the U.S. would help those who helped themselves and that in the end the U.S. would back a strongman once he had proven his merit. He also surmised from the Palestinian and Iranian experiments that the Americans were more likely to respond to hostility than to friendliness. In any case, Washington worked against Aoun. They sought to put together a Christian coalition made up of the Lebanese Forces, the Maronite patriarch, and Christian deputies, and orchestrated the Bkirki Declaration of 18 April, 1989, in which these groups declared their serious reservations about Aoun's course of action.

After it became clear that the U.S. would not back his policies or his candidacy to the presidency, that it favored the Lebanese Forces, and that it was staunchly opposed even to his continued tenure as prime minister, Aoun broke with decades of Christian foreign policy tradition and began openly attacking the U.S. This led to protests by his supporters in front of the U.S. Embassy and a rapid heightening of tensions. Already having a distasteful memory of involvement in Lebanon in 1982-84, the U.S. was only too willing to look for an excuse to withdraw completely from Lebanon. The ambassador and his staff left in September of 1989.

Behind the scenes, the U.S. administration was encouraging Saudi Arabia and the Arab League to help find a resolution to the worsening Lebanese crisis. The conflict had developed into one between Aoun and Syria which involved most of the local Lebanese actors on one side or the other, and also had a new regional dimension with Iraq backing Aoun. Israel chose to remain uninvolved. The Arab League met in Casablanca in May 1989 and formed a special committee to work out a solution. A preliminary report of the committee came down heavily on Syrian and was rejected by Damascus. The second and final report was more acceptable to Syrian and provided the foundations for convening the Lebanese parliament in Saudi Arabia to approve a comprehensive plan for political reform, the ending of the state of war, and improving bilateral relations with Syria.

The U.S. encouraged the Arab efforts. The terms of internal political reform had been outlined over a fairly long period beginning with the Geneva and Lausanne national reconciliation conferences in 1983 and 1984, and continuing in the Tripartite Agreement of December 1985 and the Lebanese-Syrian negotiations of 1986-87. The Americans had participated in the 1986-87 negotiations through the mediation efforts of U.S. state department envoy April Glaspie. With regard to establishing 'distinctive' relations with Syria, as mentioned in the Tripartite agreement and reaffirmed in the Taif Agreement, the U.S. in 1984 had already come to accept the difficulty of securing full Lebanese independence, and any arrangement that was workable among the regional actors and which would 'stabilize' Lebanon was acceptable to the Americans.

Despite the Taif Agreement, Aoun remained in place, opposing both the agreement and the Syrian presence. The U.S. favored a political resolution to the standoff in which Aoun would accept Taif, relinquish his position to the new president - first René Mouawwad, then Elias al-Hrawi and be included in a new national unity cabinet. Aoun proved unamenable to such suggestions and the crisis dragged on, exacerbated by the fighting in 1990 between Aoun's troops and the Lebanese Forces militia. The Americans had maintained close relations with the LF and approved of their willingness to accept Taif; furthermore, they looked to the LF as a force that could help weaken Aoun internally, either to get him to accept Taif, or to topple him and replace him in the position of leadership of the Christian community. After his battles with Syria and the LF, Aoun grew weaker but his popular following continued to grow.

The Syrian Option II: 1990-

The watershed for the Americans came with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, and the emergence of a U.S. commitment to shape a regional and international coalition in order to push Iraq back. Aoun had opposed Syrian and American policy in Lebanon, but the U.S. had not been willing to sanction a Syrian military strike against him. However, as the U.S. sought Syrian support and participation in the Gulf coalition, it had to make up its mind regarding the unresolved confrontation in Lebanon. It decided in favor of Syria and gave a tacit green light -hotly denied publicly - for a Syrian move against Aoun in October.

The Syrian intervention on October 13 quashed Aoun and his supporters and established joint Syrian and Lebanese government (that of President Hrawi) control over most Lebanese territory, except that occupied by Israel in the South. The U.S. supported the Hrawi government and welcomed efforts to reunify the army, dissolve the militias, and deploy the Army over an increasingly large portion of the country's territory. It acquiesced in the signing of the Treaty of Brotherhood, cooperation, and Coordination between Lebanon and Syria in May 1991, but sent gentle Brotherhood were to be interpreted as giving Syrian unlimited suzerainty over Lebanon. The U.S. accepted that Lebanon enter the Syrian orbit but insisted that it be at most a satellite - not an annexed part - of Syria. Moreover, the U.S. insisted that the deadline for a partial Syrian withdrawal from Beirut and other parts of Lebanon, set by the Taif Agreement for September 1992, be respected. When this deadline was ignored, however, the U.S. complained feebly and looked the other way.

After 1989, however, the regional and international situation changed rapidly. The Gulf War ended with an abject Iraqi defeat and a resounding American victory, while the Soviet Union collapsed as a unified superpower. Both events had a bearing on U.S.-Syrian relations, and hence on Lebanon. In brief, the American victory and the Soviet collapse weakened against a threatening Iraq; second, with the collapse of the Soviet Union it lost its strategic depth; third, after the cowing of Egypt in the early 1970s and the defeat of Iraq in 1991, it became the last significant militant Arab nationalist regime resisting American dominance.

Sensing the precariousness of his position, Asad showed uncharacteristic flexibility. After offering troops to fight alongside the Americans against a fellow Ba`thist regime, Asad agreed to face-to-face talks with the Israelis and agreed to join an American-dominated peace process without a central role for the Soviet Union or the UN .In Lebanon, he was also key in resolving the long-standing hostage crisis.

If the peace process moves toward settlement, then partial Israeli withdrawals from occupied territories are likely to be accompanied by Syrian withdrawals from large parts of Lebanon; full Israeli withdrawals would also probably be balanced by full Syrian withdrawals. If so, Lebanon would stand to benefit. Lebanon suffered terribly from regional conflicts, both Israeli-Arab, and inter-Arab. If the regional tensions are calmed and the Palestinians, Syrians, and Israelis reach a workable agreement among each other, then Lebanon, which served as an arena for their competition, may be granted a long-deserved respite.

Vis-a-vis the U.S., Washington seems to have accepted that Lebanon's days as a maverick state playing an independent role as 'window to the Arab world' and 'link between East and West' are over. Lebanon today is regarded as the sick man of the Middle East, and the U.S. would rather entrust the Arabs with its care: from the American perspective, the Syrians have the muscle to keep the place in order, and the Saudis and Kuwaitis have the funds to help it revive. As far as Washington is concerned, they are welcome to take up the task.