The First Page: Master Peace
THE FIRST PAGE
Master Peace:
Lebanon’s Violence and the Politics of Expertise
by Nikolas Kosmatopoulos
1 May 2025
The First Page presents the first page of books that are launched as part of the IAS Book Launch Programme. On 12 May 2025, Nikolas Kosmatopoulos will present his book Master Peace. Lebanon’s Violence and the Politics of Expertise, in which he argues that so-called experts, from violence researchers to peace professionals, have often misrepresented and exacerbated the violence they claim to be tackling.
Introduction
I am not against peace; peace is against me.
-Palestinian hip-hop song
In October 2019, Lebanon exploded. A government decision to tax the social media network WhatsApp was the spark that set ablaze a country already suffering from chronic economic injustice and social grievance. The end of the “civil war” in 1990 had ushered in an era of peace, albeit in name only. Many warlords turned politicians; the south of the country remained under Israeli occupation; the rest represented a political order presided over by a strong Syrian hand deploying a neoliberal economic agenda of postwar reconstruction led by powerful businessmen and bankers from the diaspora. Lebanon followed this neoliberal agenda to attract foreign investment and fund postwar reconstruction, while the IMF praised its economy as resilient (Abdo et al. 2020:8). While workers were subjected to precarious employment conditions, undocumented refugees and racialized migrants from the Global South provided much of the labor. In addition, the post-9/11 US-led “wars on terror” and their vision for a “new Middle East” brought regional realignments that added to domestic tensions. While the Israeli army was forced out the South in 2000 and the Syrian forces in 2005, the dominant economic logic and the (geo-)political divisions remained, spreading instability and increasing the public debt. In 2011, the war in Syria caused havoc with waves of refugees entering Lebanon. A crisis of fresh water, uncollected trash mountains, and environmental degradation was added to the explosive mix leading to the so-called “You Stink” protests in 2015. In 2019, economic inequality, political divisions, and geopolitical tensions mounted further. US-imposed sanctions on neighboring Syria further impacted Lebanon’s fragile economy. Access to…
NIKOLAS KOSMATOPOULOS is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Studies and Public Administration and the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies at the American University of Beirut. He works at the intersection of global affairs and political anthropology, international political economy and insurgencies in non-human environments, particularly the oceans, anticolonial action and thought in the Mediterranean East.
On 12 May 2025 Nikolas Kosmatopoulos will launch his book with a panel discussion at the Institute of Advanced Studies. More information.
Master Peace: Lebanon’s Violence and the Politics of Expertise is published by University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lead Image by Nadim Kobeissi via Wikicommons.
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