" ... Despite having narrowly won the recent June 7 elections -- reportedly with the help of $750 million dollars in Saudi money -- the Sunni, Druze and Christian coalition ..was dealt what may end up being a lethal blow this past week when the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt formerly left the March 14 Secretariat....
The mini earthquake set off by Jumblatt's turn could, however, actually improve the prospects for real peace building in this perpetually unstable Mediterranean nation should the Obama administration, together with its European and Arab allies, accelerate the approach it now seems to be encouraging: an oblique form of diplomacy that deftly seeks to draw in and undermine Hezbollah's rationale and desire to use the frightening array of weapons it now has at its disposal.
This was, of course, not the preferred policy of the Bush administration and March 14 hardliners (including Jumblatt).... rather than bolstering stability and patiently encouraging the pro-US tilt of the country, the hawkish line instead helped to foster a sustained and violent series of assassinations, near civil war, economic decline and, most notably, the bloody 2006 war....
As the dust settled in mid 2008, Syria actually came out looking more like the required address for regional stability, while Hezbollah, its domestic reputation partially bruised, nevertheless could claim nearly double the number of rockets compared to 2005 and an enduring political alliance that preserved the opposition's strong hand in Parliament.
In this context, and with a new US president, the tide in Beirut and Washington finally began to turn earlier this year towards a recognition that the original promise of Lebanon's "Cedar Revolution" had gone badly off track and a new strategy was needed.
To this day however, remaining March 14 hardliners, their advocates in the former Bush administration (and some in the current Obama administration) as well as neo-conservative commentators generally still haven't come to terms with the shift,.... in Lebanon the popular and parliamentary majority now believe otherwise; the Europeans and the Americans, for the most part, now seem to believe otherwise; and even some in the Arab world, such as Saudi Arabia, appear to accept this.....
Now that these pillars have seemingly fallen, where does this leave Lebanon?
Even though the actual timing of Jumblatt's much anticipated break has momentarily thrown the composition of the next Cabinet into some doubt, the Druze leader's thinking is actually not so far off from that of Saad Hariri,.... with Saudi encouragement, led the charge for a national unity government that would numerically deny him the ability to pass or enact anything with just a simple majority vote. ....Crucially, as far as the Obama administration is concerned, there does not seem to be a push back.
In fact, key US policymakers appear to be actively moving in the opposite direction: by not harshly or publicly rebuking Jumblatt, openly suggesting that the mandate of UN troops in South Lebanon should not be changed to more aggressively go after Hezbollah, and by allowing European allies to continue to engage Hezbollah leaders.
In one recent speech, John Brennan, a top security official at the White House, went so far as to offer a reading of Hezbollah whose basic framework -- Hezbollah is not merely a terrorist organization and is open to substantial shifts -- Bush officials would have been loath to even entertain.
While all these developments would seem to signal a real, though belated, shift in the US approach to Lebanon and the key issue of how to deal with Hezbollah's independent arsenal, there remains the distinct possibility that, as in so many other areas of international relations, the US might not go far enough towards achieving a tipping point.
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