On Sept. 1, 1920, French High Commissioner Henri Gouraud signed a decree that ripped Tripoli from Faisal’s short-lived Syrian Arab Kingdom, only days after the Battle of Maysalun. More than 200 Sunni merchants from Tripoli submitted formal petitions demanding reunion with Damascus. Gouraud ignored every signature to create a Maronite-majority Greater Lebanon and deny Syria its natural Mediterranean outlet.

For more than a century, Western policymakers have defended this artificial map and repeatedly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. That colonial amputation created a lasting corridor of instability that Iranian terrorist masters and Hezbollah later turned into a highway for weapons and cash.

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The Trump administration now has a rare opportunity to correct that mistake. Wishful thinking will not rebuild Syria, nor will state-building fantasies stabilize a fracturing Lebanon. Independent assessments put the cost of reconstructing Syria at........

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