LESSONS (RE)-LEARNED?
In hindsight, Israel and the US should have just re-learned some very costly lessons
about the risks of taking on a highly-motivated, well-trained and
adequately-armed guerilla army on its own turf. They also have an
opportunity to remember some important lessons about the limitations of purely-military solutions to such conflicts. 
> As in the case of the US strategic bombing campaign in Vietnam, Nato's air war in Kosovo (1999), and, indeed, the Allied air war against the Nazis during World War II, Israel's month-long air war against Hezbollah has largely failed to accomplish its strategic objectives. In particular, Hezbollah's ability launch dozens of missiles into northern Israel went utterly unscathed, with the largest single number of missles launched on August 12, the day before the ceasefire.
>Given the elaborate ground defenses, arsenal, and trained force
that Hezbollah was able to pre-position in South Lebanon, its ground
forces also avoided the knock-out blow that Israel and Washington had
hoped for.
>By far the most effective "weapons" on the ground were not Iranian-supplied long-range missiles, cruise missles, or even Katushyas, but a combination of hard-core tactical training, heavy investments in combat engineering, and anti-tank missiles, many of which appear to have been supplied by Russia, by way of Iran and Syria.
>At the same time, the widespread bombing campaign exacted a horrific price from Lebanon's civilian population, uniting most political factions within Lebanon against Israel rather than against Hezbollah, at least temporarily.
>It has also greatly boosted political support for Hezbollah on the "Arab street" throughout the Middle East, converting the initial anti-Hezbollah reactions by the Saudis, Egypt, and other conservative regimes into official expressions of support.
>Syria, which had been under strong political pressure to continue its detachment from Lebanon, has been "reaccredited" by Israel's excesses during the conflict -- able to assume the self-righteous role of Lebanon's protector against foreign aggression. On the other hand, the Baathist regime may also now be in a stronger negotiating position with respect to the West.
>Iran's hardcore anti-reformers have so far only been strengthened by Hezbollah's performance to date in this conflict, and by Israel's costly tactics. Nor were they discouraged from pursuing their nuclear development program.
>Most important, Hezbollah's ability to define victory as "not losing" against one of the world's most powerful armies has certainly not encouraged other radical groups around the planet to lay down their arms and pursue peaceful alternatives.
>For every
Hezbollah fighter that was killed by the Israelis in the last month,
the heavy bombing campaign probably generated several new recruits -- not only in Lebanon, but also in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kashmir, and the West Bank.
- In short, as a result of this strategic setback, Condi Rice's Panglossian "birth pangs of democracy" are likely to prove more prolonged and painful than ever.
WAS THERE ANY ALTERNATIVE?
- At a tactical level, clearly Israel and the US both need to do much work to do regarding the failures of their intelligence operations
with respect to Hezbollah's arsenal and military preparations. We can
add this to the lengthy list of their other intelligence failures in
the last decade alone.
- The preference for high-altitude offensive bombing, naval shelling, and open-field tank/ heavy vehicle warfare over hard-slog ground offensives also needs to be reexamined. To the extent that this reflects a preference for arms-length "hi-tech warfare," and a reluctance to sacrifice infantry for the sake of defeating dedicated militants like Hezbollah, this may indeed rise to the level of the same "morale/ will to die" handicap that has crippled other many colonial armies, in places like Vietnam, Algeria, China, and (long ago) the US itself.
- At a strategic level, the notion that the "enemy" simply consists of a finite stock of "fanatical terrorists," motivated primarily by "Islamo-fascist" dogma, or -- as Benjamin Netanyahu put it last week -- "12th century religious doctrines," is simple-minded and unhelpful. Unless military planners come to appreciate the political implications of what they do, they may lose the war off the battlefield.
- True, it is now very late in the day, and
the long-term failure of Israel and its enemies in the region to make
any progress at the bargaining table may indeed mean that this overall
story is headed for a terrible climax.
- From this angle, however, perhaps the one good thing about this strategic disaster is that it may remind Israel and the US that, whatever the final outcome of any attempt to solve the problems of the Middle East by military means, it will not be cheap, easy, or devoid of surprises.
- (c) JSH, SubmergingMarkets, 2006
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