The UN is leaving Lebanon’s border after 48 years. Europe’s replacement is about 100 soldiers in Beirut, and a quarrel over who commands them.

On 31 December, after almost half a century, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon is due to stop being a force. UNIFIL's mandate expires at the end of the year. Its 7,565 peacekeepers, from 46 countries, are then expected to start withdrawing in stages from the Blue Line between Israel and Lebanon, DW reports. Many of them are European. Italy, France, Spain and Ireland have sent soldiers to southern Lebanon for decades.

Europe has now announced what comes next. It is worth reading the small print, because the small print is the policy.

The replacement that isn't

On 12 October, EU foreign ministers agreed to set up a new "European Union Support Mission in Lebanon", EUSM Lebanon for short, with a civilian and a military pillar and an initial mandate of three years. Its job is to strengthen the Lebanese army and internal security forces, including on border security. Kaja Kallas, the EU's foreign-policy chief, said she hoped it would "be ready to work on the ground already, in a couple of months".

Here is what it will not do. It will not replace UNIFIL. It will not deploy to the south, where Israel is still fighting Hezbollah. It will initially work north of the Litani river, the very line south of which, under UN Security Council Resolution 1701, only the Lebanese state and UNIFIL were supposed to carry weapons.

And it will be small. Euronews reports that Brussels is considering around 150 personnel. Rapporteur, citing confidential plans, puts the permanent military component at about 100, mostly based in Beirut. An "advance party" is due in the Lebanese capital the week after the December summit. Some 7,500 blue helmets on the border are to be followed, in the end, by roughly a hundred European military trainers in the capital, the first of them arriving around Christmas.

The quarrel comes first

Before a single trainer has landed, the command question has been settled in the most European way possible: by agreeing to argue about it every year. France is pushing to lead the mission first, according to Rapporteur, while Italy has already picked a candidate commander. Command is expected to rotate annually. Euronews mentions a proposal to rotate it between Italy, France and Spain.

In parallel, Paris and Rome are discussing a separate Franco-Italian presence that could help the Lebanese army patrol, including south of the Litani. That idea was announced by Emmanuel Macron and Giorgia Meloni in June. Nobody can yet say whether it will sit inside the EU mission or next to it. Meanwhile, Rapporteur reports, European diplomats are still lobbying for a six-month extension of UNIFIL, which Washington is resisting while it waits for the Israeli elections.

So Europe's Lebanon policy currently consists of one mission that will not go south, one Franco-Italian plan that might, and one UN force that Europe would like to keep but cannot.

Be honest about UNIFIL

None of this means UNIFIL deserves a sentimental send-off. Israel has long called it ineffective at containing Hezbollah, as Euronews notes, and the record makes that hard to dispute. Resolution 1701 promised a south free of unauthorised weapons in 2006. Hezbollah then built an arsenal and a tunnel network in exactly that zone, under the gaze of thousands of peacekeepers. In October 2023, it opened fire on Israel, and the 2024 war followed. Today Israel occupies a self-declared security zone north of the Blue Line, and Hezbollah still refuses to disarm, DW reports. That is not the résumé of a mission that worked.

The irony is that Europe's answer repeats UNIFIL's founding mistake, only smaller. The new mission bets that a stronger Lebanese army will one day do what peacekeepers never did, and disarm Hezbollah. Yet observers quoted by DW say Hezbollah remains better equipped than the Lebanese armed forces. Lebanon's leaders, said David Wood of the International Crisis Group, have little leverage to force the group to give up its weapons, because trying could set off a deadly internal conflict. A hundred European instructors in Beirut will not change that balance.

Europe's stake is not abstract

Why should a European taxpayer care? Because Lebanon is a Mediterranean neighbour of the EU, and when it breaks, the bill arrives in Europe. More than 1.2 million people were displaced inside Lebanon during this year's fighting, according to the International Organization for Migration, cited by DW. About 329,000 were still displaced at the end of September. Hezbollah is closely tied to Iran, and DW notes it would likely open a second front against Israel if the Iran war flares again. That war is already driving Europe's energy bills.

There is also a question of clarity Europe keeps avoiding. The EU still designates only Hezbollah's armed wing as a terrorist organisation. Germany, like the United States, bans the whole organisation. Brussels' distinction between a "political" and a "military" Hezbollah has always been a diplomatic convenience. If Europe wants Lebanon's state to have a monopoly on force, it could start by refusing to pretend the militia is two separate things.

A plan, or a presence

Lebanon's prime minister, Nawaf Salam, has warned of the need to "avert the vacuum that UNIFIL's withdrawal could create". Ireland's foreign minister, Helen McEntee, spoke for many European capitals: "We have been there for decades," she said, adding: "And I would not like to see that being lost."

That is the danger: a policy built on the wish to stay present rather than on what presence is for. If Europe wants to matter in Lebanon, it should tie serious money for the Lebanese army to measurable progress on disarmament in the south. It should settle who commands before it deploys, and treat Hezbollah as what it is.

Otherwise the sun sets on UNIFIL on 31 December, and rises on a European mission whose main achievement is a rota.