Every time I listen to some Lebanese news programs, political commentators or popular podcasts, I keep hearing the same explanation repeated like a broken record: that Hezbollah’s arms are what keeps Lebanon backward, paralyzed and economically bankrupt. According to this narrative, if Hezbollah simply disarmed, Lebanon would suddenly have 24-hour electricity, functioning public services, an independent judiciary, a stable currency and a prosperous economy. The country’s problems would disappear and the state would finally work. It is a convenient explanation — simple, clear and feels good emotionally. But it also avoids the uncomfortable truth that Lebanon’s collapse is not the product of one armed group alone, but of a political system that long predates Hezbollah and extends far beyond it.

To isolate Hezbollah as the root cause is to mistake a symptom for the disease.

Hezbollah’s arms did not prevent electricity reform, port reform, banking oversight or the rebuilding of public institutions. Those failures sit elsewhere — in ministries turned into sectarian kingdoms, in a central bank whose practices went unchecked for decades, in a parliament where sectarian bargaining replaces policymaking and in a ruling class that learned long ago how to survive crisis after crisis by distributing blame instead of responsibility.

Lebanon is not simply held hostage by one actor. It is trapped in a political architecture built on sectarian quotas, patronage networks and inherited wartime elites who transitioned into peacetime administrators without ever becoming accountable public servants. Power in Lebanon is not concentrated in one hand — it is fragmented into many hands that often compete publicly while cooperating privately to preserve the same system.

The deeper issue is not only coercion from above, but participation from below. The system survives not only because the political class protects it, but because generations of Lebanese have adapted to it, relied on it and in many cases benefited from it. A functioning state threatens everyone who has learned how to navigate a non-functioning one. In such an environment, the shortcut becomes culture. Not officially celebrated but quietly relied upon.

The “Wasta.” The phone call. The favor. The cousin in the ministry. The uncle in customs. The sectarian intermediary who can bypass a long queue that everyone else must endure. These are not just corruptions of the system — they are the system’s informal operating code. And once embedded deeply enough, they begin to feel less like corruption and more like survival.

The crisis was not only political. It was also cultural.

That is why the same political figures, families and wartime networks continue to reappear in different forms. Not only because they dominate through force or intimidation, but because they offer something the formal state has rarely delivered consistently: predictable access through connections. Not justice, not fairness — but access.

These leaders deliver the one service the Republic never could, the illusion that you are above the rules. They get your kid hired before the interviews even begin. They make traffic tickets disappear. They wipe your police record. They hand you a gun permit. They move your paperwork to the top of the pile while everyone else waits. They assist you in skipping the line at the airport, the ministry, the courthouse and the hospital. They make a phone call. They pull a string. And they call it protection.

So yes, they bankrupted a nation. Yes, they destroyed institutions. Yes, they silenced critics and buried accountability. Yet the lines outside their offices never got shorter.

The crisis was not only political. It was also cultural. For years, many Lebanese convinced themselves that prosperity was a birthright rather than something that had to be produced. Consumption became a substitute for wealth. Appearances became more important than sustainability. People borrowed to maintain lifestyles they could not afford, financing luxury cars, expensive apartments, lavish weddings, overseas vacations, plastic surgeries and endless nights at restaurants with money that often they did not own. Even households under financial strain often felt compelled to employ a domestic worker — commonly referred to as “Sri Lankiyeh” — because social expectations demanded it. The pressure to appear successful became stronger than the responsibility to live within one’s means.

A society obsessed with status became increasingly detached from economic reality. Banks encouraged the illusion. Politicians celebrated it. Citizens participated in it. The result was a national Ponzi scheme disguised as economic success. Few stopped to ask how a country that produced so little could consume so much. As long as the music was playing, everyone danced.

When the financial system finally collapsed, the illusion collapsed with it. More than $50 billion of depositors’ funds effectively disappeared as authorities permitted borrowers to repay dollar-denominated loans at heavily devalued exchange rates while ordinary depositors remained locked out of their savings.

A functioning state threatens everyone who has learned how to navigate a non-functioning one.

This was not merely the failure of politicians. It was the failure of a society that had grown accustomed to shortcuts, exceptions and the belief that consequences were always for someone else. The tragedy of Lebanon is that too often the rulers and the ruled became participants in the same culture — one built on patronage, status, debt and the constant search for privilege over principle.

So when people say Hezbollah is the cause of Lebanon’s dysfunction, they are describing only one layer of a much older and deeper structure. To isolate Hezbollah as the root cause is to mistake a symptom for the disease.

If Lebanon is ever to recover, the Lebanese people must stop searching for a single scapegoat and start confronting the deeper disease that has consumed the republic for decades. They must abandon the culture of exceptions and embrace the principle that no citizen, no sect, no party and no politician is above the law. Until that day arrives, Hezbollah will remain a convenient excuse, while the deeper causes of Lebanon’s collapse continue to hide in plain sight.

– Jamal I. Bittar is a university professor and opinion writer focused on Middle East politics and U.S. foreign policy. He is based in Toledo, Ohio. The views expressed are solely his own and do not represent those of any institution with which he is affiliated.