From Political Changes to Economic Growth, from Wars to Disasters: Asia’s Defining Year 2025 (XII)

The year 2025 in Asia was shaped by impressive economic performances, historic turning points, lingering tensions between neighbors, high-stakes elections, waves of protest, the change of governments, cautious diplomatic breakthroughs among certain states, and relentless natural disasters with deep scars for peoples and countries.

THE AsiaN, founded on Asia Journalist Association’s network of journalists, is highlighting through articles written by its members the major issues that defined 2025 across Asia’s regions and countries. – Editor’s note”.

Beirut 2025: Shifting Sands… The Last Bet on Resilience

By Ghina Halik,
Journalist, Laha Magazine, Lebanon

BEIRUT: The winter of 2025 in Beirut is unlike any before it. What was once an economic crisis measured by currency fluctuation has now evolved into a full-scale existential crisis. Three core axes are now tightly intertwined: domestic structural reform gridlock, security tensions that threaten to explode at any moment, and mounting humanitarian and social pressure that is dismantling what remains of the state’s fabric.

With the formation of a new government—regardless of its nature or composition—Lebanon finds itself at a perilous crossroads. Hope is in short supply, yet the need for a deep and sober analysis at this critical moment is more urgent than ever. For Magazine N, understanding how a small nation has reached the brink of collapse is essential to understanding what may lie ahead.

Betting on Reform Against Structural Stagnation

Reforms in Lebanon are no longer merely a checklist dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF); they have become a matter of survival for what remains of the economy. The new government, born under intense international and regional pressure, came into office carrying what could only be described as a “spoonful of contradiction” in its mouth.

On paper, the government promises decisive steps: the approval of a Capital Control law to regulate money flows, the restructuring of the banking sector, and mechanisms for accountability. In reality, however, every attempt at reform collides with the “Wall of the System”—a structure cemented by sectarian quotas and entrenched privileges.

The most formidable obstacle remains the unresolved financial collapse. After years of delay, no real progress has been made with the IMF. Any serious effort to define losses or impose accountability directly threatens the interests of the old political and financial elite. Lebanese citizens remain unable to access their deposits, and the state cannot recover its credibility as long as solutions are engineered to evade responsibility.

What Lebanon is witnessing in 2025 is not reform, but the management of collapse. The political system favors a state of “controlled gridlock”: maintaining only the bare minimum of public services to prevent a total popular eruption, while deliberately blocking the radical reforms that would signal its own undoing. This gridlock ensures that corruption continues unchecked, turning every dollar of international aid or loan into yet another leak in the network of vested interests.

Hezbollah’s Shifting Equation, War Fears, and Diplomacy in the South

Separating the economic crisis from the security file in 2025 is no longer possible. Hezbollah’s weapons and the southern front remain either the “safety valve” or the “detonator fuse” of the entire Lebanese equation.

A pervasive, existential fear of a wider war defines this period. Unlike previous rounds of confrontation, the depth of the economic collapse means that Lebanon today has absolutely no capacity to absorb the shock of a major military conflict.

This fear is not merely psychological. It carries direct economic consequences: tourism has stalled, foreign direct investment has retreated, and agricultural activity in the border regions has been severely disrupted.

This high-stakes environment has intensified diplomatic efforts to prevent war. Repeated international and regional initiatives—led by actors such as the United States, France, and Qatar—aim to stabilize the border, primarily through attempts to enforce aspects of UN Resolution 1701 and to craft formulas for de-escalation. These efforts revolve around buffer zones, troop deployments, and mechanisms to prevent direct contact between opposing forces.

Yet these negotiations remain extremely delicate. They are often driven less by Lebanese domestic stability than by wider regional strategic calculations, particularly those related to Iran’s influence. International demands for Hezbollah’s disarmament are growing louder, but they clash with the domestic reality that the group’s armed presence is tightly interwoven with regional power balances.

Any viable “peace” arrangement would have to achieve an almost impossible equilibrium: securing Israel’s northern border without undermining Hezbollah’s regional role or triggering a major political upheaval inside Beirut.

The greatest danger in this axis is the failure of diplomacy. Intermittent escalation on the southern front, fueled by the absence of a long-term political settlement, suffocates any remaining hope for economic recovery. The relationship is direct and unforgiving: the higher the tension in the South—and the more negotiations falter—the slimmer the chances of success for any economic reform plan in Beirut.

Life Under the Weight of the Humanitarian and Social Crisis

Beyond the noise of political bargaining and security calculations, the daily reality of the average Lebanese citizen tells another, harsher story. Lebanon, once celebrated as the “Switzerland of the East,” has become a living example of how a middle class collapses and how daily existence is reduced to a struggle for survival.

Shocking Data (to be updated with the Data Pack): Indicators show that unemployment—especially among youth—remains catastrophically high. The migration of skills and professional talent to the Gulf states, Europe, and North America is no longer a trend but a haemorrhage. It is draining the country of precisely the human capital it needs to rebuild its future.

Humanitarian Burden: Alongside the internal economic collapse, the presence of large refugee populations—Syrians, Palestinians, and others—continues to weigh heavily on a disintegrating infrastructure. Electricity, water, and public health services are collapsing under the strain.

The humanitarian crisis is steadily transforming into social pressure, as tensions grow between host communities and displaced populations amid shrinking resources for all.

Having lost most of their savings, the average Lebanese citizen now views the new government as little more than a continuation of the same failed system—one that still cannot provide the most basic rights: uninterrupted electricity, clean water, or a dignified education and healthcare system. The struggle has shifted from political confrontation to a daily fight for diesel, medicine, and bread.

Conclusion: Paths for 2026 – Is There a Way Out?

In 2025, Lebanon stands before two principal scenarios.

The “Controlled and Painful Gridlock” Scenario: This remains the most likely outcome. The government manages to enact limited, largely cosmetic reforms sufficient to partially appease international donors, unlocking modest financial inflows that prevent total collapse without delivering real recovery. Tension in the South persists in a state of managed crisis without tipping into full-scale war, while the population continues to bear the cost through persistent inflation, deepening poverty, and accelerating emigration.

The “Chaotic Collapse or Security Explosion” Scenario: Less likely, but still possible. This would unfold through either a full implosion of the banking system or a sudden and sustained military escalation in the South, plunging Lebanon back into catastrophe—this time under far worse economic conditions than ever before.

In the end, the last remaining bet is on the resilience of civil society and sustained international pressure. The government cannot deliver genuine reform unless the entrenched web of vested interests that has penetrated the entire structure of the state is dismantled. Until that happens, Beirut will remain a land of shifting sands – draining the hopes and energy of its youth, and waiting on the edge of the abyss for its uncertain fate.