Rebuilding the Levant:
Inclusive State-Building Post October 7
Issue Brief, July 2026
Nonresident Senior Fellow
Key Takeaways
October 7 as a Structural Rupture: The events of October 7, 2023, did not merely alter the regional balance of power — they exposed the underlying fragility of Levantine state institutions. The weakening of Hezbollah and the fall of the Assad regime represent a structural shift demanding a fundamental rethinking of state-building in the subregion.
Inclusive Governance is a Functional Requirement: Any state-building process that excludes minorities, displaced communities, or non-state actors will reproduce the conditions that historically generated conflict. Inclusive governance — through constitutional guarantees, transitional justice, and meaningful political participation — is a functional prerequisite for durable stability, not a normative aspiration.
Non-State Actors Must be Integrated: The power vacuums left by Hezbollah’s decline and Syria’s armed fragmentation present both risk and opportunity. Conditional structural integration — absorbing some members of the military wings into national forces and transitioning social service networks to state authority — is more sustainable than exclusion, provided it is tied to verifiable disarmament.
International Support Should be Conditional and Coordinated: Decades of donor engagement have prioritized short-term stabilization over structural reform, entrenching clientelist systems and producing donor fatigue. Future support must be tied to measurable governance benchmarks, coordinated through multi-donor mechanisms, and designed to reward incremental progress toward genuine state consolidation.
Introduction
Across the MENA, regimes face persistent challenges related to internal and/or external sources of legitimacy. These challenges vary significantly across regime types, historical trajectories, and socio-political contexts. Questions of legitimacy remain central, and often highly contested, in the Middle East. In the Levant, the roots of contested state and regime legitimacy can be traced back to the Sykes–Picot Agreement and the subsequent establishment of the mandate system, which shaped state boundaries, political authority, and patterns of governance, rather than organic socio-political processes, in ways that continue to influence state building today.1
However, the intensity, form, and political consequences of the Levant’s legitimacy crises differ considerably across cases. For example, the legitimacy deficit in Lebanon is rooted in its consociational power-sharing system and the state’s failure to centralize power.2 State-building in the Levant, encompassing Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories, was already constrained by what can be described as sectarianized politics: the use of communal identities by domestic elites and external actors to fragment national solidarity and sustain political dependency. This dynamic has produced systems marked by fragmented sovereignty, weak legitimacy, uneven representation, and chronic institutional underdevelopment.
The Levant occupies a uniquely strategic position at the intersection of the Afro-Eurasian landmass, bordering three continents and historically exposing the subregion to sustained external intervention, great-power rivalry, and significant involvement from external powers. This geopolitical exposure has produced overlapping local, national, and regional conflicts that have generated persistent structural challenges, including weak state institutions, chronic instability, economic fragility, and recurrent humanitarian crises.
A defining feature of this landscape is the prevalence of hybrid governance arrangements, wherein non-state actors — such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and various armed factions in Syria — exercise quasi-governmental functions alongside, in competition with, or in substitution for formal state institutions. These hybrid structures were not simply symptoms of state weakness. Over time, they became part of the political order itself, shaping patronage networks, service provision, local authority, and cross-border ties. This is why post-October 7 state-building cannot be reduced to restoring formal institutions; it must also address the social, political, and security functions that non-state actors have accumulated over decades.
October 7, 2023, stood for a major geopolitical rupture with significant implications for both regional and international power balances. The attack’s subsequent military and diplomatic repercussions triggered a profound shift in strategic calculations across the Levant and the wider Middle East, marking the beginning of a new geopolitical era in the Levant.
In this brief, state-building refers not only to rebuilding institutions or restoring territorial control but also to constructing legitimate, inclusive, and capable political orders. In the Levant, state-building has historically been weakened by contested legitimacy, fragmented sovereignty, limited political participation, uneven access to public resources, and the persistence of armed or sectarian actors operating alongside formal institutions. This issue brief therefore argues that a range of stakeholders, including international actors, regional powers, and national policymakers, must urgently adopt an inclusive state and institutional building approach that accounts for non-state actors, or risk further entrenching the structural fragility and state failure that have characterized the Levant for centuries. It seeks to situate the post-October 7, 2023, moment and subsequent developments within their broader historical and structural context and help identify potential opportunities for advancing inclusive, resilient, and adaptive approaches to state-building in the Levant.
Reconfiguring State Building in the Levant
Before October 7, the Levant operated within a fragile but relatively durable regional balance of power. This balance did not resolve the region’s legitimacy crises or institutional weaknesses, but it helped contain them within familiar political and security arrangements. October 7 disrupted this equilibrium by exposing the limits of those arrangements and accelerating shifts in the role of Israel, Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, and external powers.
Owing to its complex and highly politicized history, the Middle East has historically been a theatre of domestic, regional, and globalized wars. This reality has consequently produced a hybrid political landscape characterized by contested sovereignty, inefficient state institutions, diffused authority across state and non-state actors, and continuously negotiated political orders rather than a consolidated one. For example, cross-border refugee flows from Syria since the beginning of the civil war in 2011 have increasingly challenged state institutional capacity in Jordan and Lebanon, where public-service systems, already under pressure, were further strained.3
State building dynamics in the Levant are further complicated by the shifting postures of external powers. The 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy signaled a significant recalibration of American foreign policy that further complicated the role of external players in the Levant. The strategy explicitly articulates a narrower definition of core American national interests, shifting focus from broad global engagement to selective regional priorities. This involves burden-sharing with partners, and a recalibration of military and diplomatic resources.4 In regional terms, it de-emphasizes a large U.S. military footprint in the Middle East, prioritizing counterterrorism and safeguarding strategic energy chokepoints. It also frames Washington’s role in the region primarily through conditional engagement rather than security guarantees.5
President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to reduce direct U.S. military and political commitments to near-zero levels while relying on regional partners and economic leverage to manage the Middle East. This shift will be consequential for state-building efforts across the Levant and not recognizing the structural linkages between this strategic shift and regional dynamics risks reinforcing fragmented and reactive policy responses. While this strategy might reduce direct military involvement and contain overt conflict, it risks privileging short-term stability over long-term structural transformation. This could entrench fragmented sovereignty and exclusionary political settlements.
The post-2023 order in the Levant should, however, not exclusively be analyzed through U.S.-Israeli involvement. Regional actors are also shaping the regional order. For instance, Iran, through its allies, primarily non-state actors, and despite all the setbacks since October 7, maintains its posture as a revisionist power to U.S.-Israeli hegemony. Some Arab countries, in addition to Türkiye, are seeking to mitigate the risks of Israel’s growing power in the region.6 China has increasingly positioned itself as an economic partner and mediator, especially after brokering the Saudi-Iran rapprochement in March 2023. While the Russian presence in the Levant is substantial and dates to the Soviet era, its power was limited after the collapse of the Assad regime in 2024.
Critically, the diplomatic role of external powers should transcend brokering political solutions with limited domestic support and legitimacy, which might lead to an elevated risk of conflict recurrence. Scaling back sustained engagement with multilateral security mechanisms and de-prioritizing long-term stabilization initiatives may also inadvertently worsen political fragmentation across Levantine states. This would reduce incentives for inclusive governance and empower non-state actors seeking localized authority. Navigating these dynamics without an integrated regional strategy increases the likelihood that short-term conflict reduction will compromise long-term state-building process, institutional consolidation, and social inclusion.
Re-Mapping the Stakeholders in State Building in the Levant
In the Levant, two major developments are significantly shaping the future of state building post October 7, 2023. Firstly, Hezbollah’s considerable decline, achieved through Israel’s targeted elimination of its senior leadership, structural changes in their communication, erosion of its financial networks, and the depletion of their weapons stockpiles.7 The power of Hezbollah as a dominant non-state armed actor for four decades has been weakened drastically; however, to date, no alternative state security institution possesses the capacity to fill the gap created by Hezbollah’s operational decline. This, coupled with Lebanon’s ongoing economic crisis, has fundamentally altered the domestic and regional power balance.
The second major event is the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria in 2024. This follows more than a decade of civil war and international isolation. It has ushered in a period of profound uncertainty regarding the nature and direction of the Syrian government. The post-Assad era is mainly characterized by deep ambiguity regarding institutional legitimacy, territorial control and unification, and the redistribution of power among different armed factions, groups, and regional patrons.8 The current governance challenge is twofold: the absence of a coherent and effective roadmap for institutional and state-building processes, and the persistent risk of Levantine states being politicized by both regional and major powers.
The Levant stands at a critical crossroads between state consolidation and further fragmentation. If countries in the Levant and the region fail to recognize the interrelation and interdependence between domestic political and security changes and regional geopolitical restructuring during transitional periods, it might lead to more fragmentation and another failure of the state-building process.
This could lead to exclusionary post conflict settlements which risk producing stabilization without sovereignty. Another risk is that a fragmented regional order will empower non-state armed groups, and further weaken state institutions.9 Therefore, if not addressed carefully and rationally, the security vacuum created by non-state actors, particularly Hezbollah in Lebanon, will not produce institutional consolidation and efficient state building processes which necessitates clear, integrated, and systematic conflict resolution frameworks that takes into consideration cross-borders spillovers, geopolitical competition, and internal diversity.
From Fragmentation to Consolidation
Consolidating from Within
Despite deep fragility and uncertainty, there is a window of opportunity to build more effective and transparent state institutions. This relies on rational and achievable policy approaches that tackle the region’s structural interdependencies.
No proper state building process can start without the enhancement of institutional and administrative capacity. Without functionable and efficient state institutions, regional frameworks and DDR (disarmament, demobilization, reintegration), a comprehensive and durable process remains unattainable. The state building process in the Levant is primarily hindered by the existence of patronage networks within state institutions, sectarian-based political groups that created clientelist systems rather than merit-based ones.10 There is an imminent need in the Levant region to rebuild efficient and effective state institutions. This effort should encompass not just physical infrastructure or macroeconomic stabilization, which are equally important, but also the reconstruction of effective state institutions.
Consequently, investing efficiently in building state capacity is crucial. This involves training the civil service, adopting and applying anti-corruption frameworks, ensuring transparency in public financial management, and adopting a decentralized governing system — as historically some areas have been excluded and underfunded. In the specific context, three overlapping drivers of change can ensure progress: first, conditionality based international support that ties diplomatic recognition, sanctions, and donor funding to achievable and measurable governance benchmarks. Second, organized diaspora lobbies and a civil society network capable of sustaining public pressure, and third, powerful cross-sectarian economic coalitions whose interests are harmed by continued clientelism.
Adopting a region-wide framework that supports state building in the Levant will also be imperative. This recommendation addresses the absence of a coordinated and homogenous regional framework, particularly in the presence of regional powers with competing agendas, political groups that resist sovereignty, and local armed non-state actors whose activities depend on the absence of coordinated governance. Consequently, the state building process must not be imposed top-down. It requires confidence-building measures at national and regional levels, as well as the design and coordination of processes across the Levant, through a dedicated treaty-based committee, wherein member states regain full sovereignty over domestic affairs while pooling resources in defined shared governance domains such as border management, security cooperation, and economic integration, among other issues.
The weakening of Hezbollah and the fragmentation of Syria’s armed forces have created a power vacuum that presents both risks and opportunities. The risk lies in the exclusion of these non-state actors and what they represent. The opportunity lies in structural integration by absorbing military wings into unified national security forces and their social service networks to become part of state administration, which should be based under strict externally monitored conditions that prevent the establishment of parallel structures. As a result, local policymakers, regional patrons, and the international community should negotiate the transitional period in a way that acknowledges the reality of years of hybrid governance, while at the same time creating a legitimate monopoly of power.
Three critical distinctions for successful state building process with concrete mechanisms must be applied: first, integration of non-state actors into governance must be conditional to disarmament and ideological changes; second, sequencing DDR in a way that disarmament must precede demobilization, which must precede reintegration and including power-sharing arrangements that grant former non-state actors formal political representation, and conditional amnesty frameworks; third, non-state actors’ social services networks should be transitioned to state authority by agreement rather than nationalization. Historically, post-war or transitional periods in the Levant have been characterized by political commitment and resource mobilization, which are essential along with disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programmes of these non-state actors.
Ruling coalitions in Lebanon, previously Syria, and tribal-security establishments in Jordan have historically been built on selective representation and allocations of resources. Therefore, any state building process that excludes or ignores minorities and marginalized groups in the Levant from political and socio-economic benefits will reproduce the same conditions of war, conflict, and instability that have defined these countries’ history. To protect and include minorities, state-level institutions must be built on inclusive, equal, fair, and legal foundations.
In practice, this means operationalizing inclusion at the community level through three mechanisms: first, legally binding sectarian and ethnic minority quotas in civil service and state institutions and parliamentary representation. Second, transitional justice at the community level, designed to address historical grievances. Third, a constitutional drafting process that involves different actors such as civil society, women’s groups, and minorities rather than a top-down process.11 Applying these three mechanisms can minimize the risk of becoming paper reforms that have characterized Levantine communities in the past.
The state-building process must include electoral reforms, constitutional guarantees, and transitional justice mechanisms that are inclusive of all groups. These groups, whether religious, sectarian, tribal, class or gender-specific, displaced etc., must be protected, have equal access to public resources, and be eligible for meaningful political participation. This is not merely a normative imperative but a functional and rational condition for durable peace, stability, and efficient state building.
Consolidating the External Front
Due to centuries of war, conflict, and discrimination, diaspora communities of the Levant region collectively represent one of the most educated and economically successful transnational communities worldwide.12 Their presence across continents, well-established networks, and lobbying capabilities make them invaluable assets for any efficient and effective state building process. Mobilizing diaspora capital and expertise is crucial to serve state institutions and bring lessons learned and best practices. Hence, diaspora engagement should be considered as an integral resource. Civil society organizations must also play a vital role. They must be recognized and support state institutions during the transitional period as partners with experience in multilayered governance rather than being treated as service delivery contractors.
The history of international support for the region has been unsuccessful and not outcome-driven. In fact, donors are experiencing fatigue after decades of substantial financial investment aimed at stabilizing kleptocracy or coordinating short-term political arrangements.13 This approach has neglected to create incentives for structural, sustainable reforms or build efficient state institutions.
International actors including the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and others should therefore design policies and interventions that foster both national independence and address crisis dynamics in the Levant as interconnected. These dynamics include cross-border political and economic influence, social, cultural, tribal, and sectarian integration, refugee flows, non-state actors, security tensions, and smuggling networks, among others.
In line with this holistic approach, international and regional institutions and donors must adopt a more rigorous, condition-based support system. This system should link support to measurable progress in governance, reforms, transparency, integration, and inclusive political engagement, among others. This approach is a win-win for all actors as it creates a sustainable process that achieves outcomes, reduces cost, and keeps the motivation and engagement of the international and regional communities. Therefore, a more concrete operational shift should be in place to guarantee that both conditionality and transparency are in place by creating, first, multi-donor coordination mechanisms; second, transparent public reforms; and third, incremental progress rewards.
Prospective State Building Trajectories
Considering the region’s crossroads, there are three potential geopolitical scenarios for the Levant. The first entails the survival of the existing states, albeit weakened and divided. This form will lead to diminishing central authority, the resurgence of powerful non-state actors, international and regional interventions, and some type of territorial division that undermines state institutions and sovereignty. At a practical level, some indicators such as the existence of weak governance, the decline of public trust in state institutions, the expansion of militia influence, and the continued dependence of central governments on external actors for their social services and security, support this scenario.14
Second, the most radical one, involves a huge failure in the state building process, the dissolution of the current state structures, and the redrawing of borders based on the interests of regional and international powers. This would result in the emergence of new sectarian, ethnic, and religious entities. Prolonged civil wars, institutional collapse, foreign military and non-state actors’ intervention, humanitarian crises, mass displacement, and the inability of central government to monopolize power could be seen as indicators of this scenario. One of the major repercussions of this scenario would be the profound implications for regional stability.
The third trajectory, however, aligns with building inclusive, fair, transparent, and equal state institutions and a new social contract capable of restoring authority, legitimacy, and sovereignty. It envisions restructuring and redistributing internal politics, equal access to resources and building inclusive societies without altering internationally recognized borders. This would include substantial political reforms, rule of law, inclusive governance, reduced external intervention, and civic engagement and participation, as indicators of the success or failure of this scenario.
Conclusion
The post-October 7 moment marks a turning point in the Levantine region. Hezbollah’s declining power, the fall of the Assad regime, Hamas’ military defeat, and the war on Iran have reshaped regional order. While the balance of power in the Middle East in general and the Levant in particular have changed dramatically, the structural drivers of state fragility in the Levantine are deeply interrelated and entrenched. These issues will not be resolved by the ongoing geopolitical flux.
Simultaneously, the Levant faces structural challenges alongside significant latent assets that could foster more inclusive and resilient state-building. The subregion boasts substantial human capital, strategic geographic connectivity, diverse social fabrics, and deep historical and cultural resources. If these assets are combined with coherent political reforms, strengthened institutions, and inclusive economic policies, they could enable pathways toward more sustainable development and improved governance outcomes. In this sense, the Levant’s divergence from more stable regional trajectories highlights enduring structural constraints and also points to a potential window of opportunity for policy learning, institutional reform, and adaptive state-building strategies.
Despite enduring structural and long-standing challenges, a window of opportunity remains for the Levant to pursue a more progressive and inclusive state-building process. This potential is particularly evident, for example, in the political, economic, and social improvements being observed in Syria.15 These progressions, especially considering six decades of authoritarian rule and 13 years of destructive civil war involving heavy foreign intervention, demonstrate that incremental reforms and targeted development efforts can create pathways toward greater stability and state consolidation in not only Syria but the entire Levant region.