MLGA

Dear Massad Boulos,

As you know, Lebanon elected a new President earlier this year after a two-year interregnum that saw the country sink even deeper into failed statehood.

No sign so far that it will be surfacing any time soon under the new Aoun.

Echoing the national despair, one MP cast a throwaway vote for Bernie Sanders.

A moment of confusion preceded the reading of that particular ballot; a few chuckles followed.

Now a farce put on by a group of unserious men in serious times does little to inspire confidence in this government’s ability to bring about the reforms needed to save the country. But maybe we should take this absurd act seriously.

When a business collapses under structural rot, gamed by inept and corrupt management for their own advantage, shareholders do not look to the entrenched employees for salvation.

They bring in outside leadership: a private equity firm, a Board of Trustees, interim executives specialized in turning a business around.

States are not identical to companies.

The analogy is not perfect.

But are the differences decisive in this case?

Sovereignty without operating institutions is a fiction.

True Sovereignty requires cash flow, functioning courts, working utilities — a minimum standard of governance upon which a nation can be erected.

And while this may come as surprise to some, history offers precedents from nation states emerging post WWI.

Greece, in the ashes of civil war, elected a Danish prince as king.

Belgium, newly torn from the Netherlands, imported a German prince to steady itself.

Romania and Bulgaria turned to German monarchs to bind divided peoples into single nations.

Mexico, briefly, crowned an Austrian emperor.

At the time, these non-partisan executives were chosen for their skill and network.

These were not acts of national surrender. They were a strategic choice by the nascent state’s governors aimed at ensuring survival.

Lebanon is broken — to most observers it is broken beyond repair.

The Taif Accords’ balance among Sunni, Shia, Christian, and Druze has calcified into a system of patronage and paralysis.

Distrust among the sects is reaching a dangerous point.

The exhausted public has no illusions left.

They know the system cannot be reformed from within.

The model is simple: appoint an emergency executive authority, not to rule, but to reconstruct.

Such a government would be tasked with constitutional reform, stabilization of infrastructure, disarmament of militias through a blend of incentives and pressure, and the organization of free elections under a revised constitutional framework.

And when the work is done?

Exit.

And take some raw earth for your trouble.

It only sounds absurd because it is outside the political imagination of the moment.

But absurdity is a poor argument when alternatives are scarce.

Especially when the leader of the free world is up for anything that draws the spotlight no matter how absurd.

Only Trump would think big enough to entertain such a move. Only Trump would bulldoze through the obstacles. Only Trump would see that Lebanon could be the beginning, not the end — a pilot project for Iraq, Libya, Syria, Haiti.

The Apprentice – Nations Edition.

Yes, great powers would maneuver. Local elites would resist. Armed groups would seek to spoil.

But they can be outflanked — through careful framing of the project as a National Restoration rather than recolonization, through the enlistment of neutral technocrats (trained much as the Germanic royal families were once trained for diplomacy and statecraft), through offering immunity deals and advisory roles to sectarian elites, through the deployment of international stabilization forces under strict, limited mandates, and through the announcement of a hard five-year deadline for full civilian return, public and binding.

History shows it works.

Business shows it works.

And the people of the Levant deserve better than endless war and permanent deadlock.

If a corporation can bring in neutral leadership to salvage a shattered structure, why can’t a nation?

Why not Lebanon?

Why not now?

Why not Mr. Trump?

Let’s Make Lebanon Great Again.

(MAL-uh-guh.)

Hurry, Mr. Boulos before Bernie beats you to it!