Thursday, August 17, 2006

A look at lessons of the Israel-Lebanon War

Anthony Cordesman has prepared a Preliminary “Lessons” of the Israeli-Hezbollah War analysis (Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS]) 08/17/06.  He explains that he interviewed Israeli officials about the war, but did not have the same opportunity to interview correspoding officials on the other side, i.e., Hizbullah and the Lebanese government.

One of the points that jumped out at me is one that he refers to as somewhat of a sideline to his main purpose in this paper:

One key point that should be mentioned more in passing than as a lesson, although it may be a warning about conspiracy theories, is that no serving Israeli official, intelligence officer, or other military officer felt that the Hezbollah acted under the direction of Iran or Syria.  (my emphasis)

Will our mainstream media and the Big Pundits pick up on this?  Given that Bush just this past Monday gave a speech at the State Department repeatedly suggesting that Iran and Syria, especially Iran, were responsible for the actions of Hizbullah, what Cordesman reports there based on his own interviews is an important point in the debate about going to war with Iran.  He also writes:

The issue of who was using whom, however, was answered by saying all sides - the Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria - were perfectly happy to use each other. Israelis felt Nasrallah had initiated the Sheeba farms raid on his own and that Iran and Syria were forced to support him once Israel massively escalated.  Israeli officials did not endorse the theory that Iran forced the Hezbollah to act to distract attention from its nuclear efforts.   (my emphasis)

One of the most important points he makes is about how Israeli leaders dealt with how the war was perceived:

Israel saw its war as just, but made little effort to justify it to the outside world as a key element of strategy, tactics, and the practical execution of battle.

The Israeli government and IDF - like their American counterparts - have always tended to see this aspect of war more in terms of internal politics and perceptions than those of other states, cultures, and religions.  In Israel’s case, Israel also seems to have felt it could deal with Hezbollah relatively simply, intimidate or persuade Lebanon with limited leverage, and assume that its defeat of the Hezbollah would counter Arab and Islamic anger and lead to only limited problems with outside states.  (my emphasis)

This is a point that is becoming more important as time goes on.  The management of information, the role of information in warfare, is a topic that is intensely discussed in terms of both conventional and counterinsurgency warfare.  The shadow of the Vietnam War is very apparent in those discussions in America.  The officer corps seems to have largely bought into what is essentially a "stab-in-the-back" myth about the Vietnam War, in which American forces performed spendidly and victoriously (!) in the field.   But the war effort was undercut by antiwar protesters and hippies and their like-minded representatives in Congress.

This issue is often formulated in terms of "center of gravity", a term stemming from the Karl von Clausewitz' theories of warfare that are considered much like sacred writ to today's American military strategies.  Since "center of gravity" is not a term that reports and pundits toss around in relation to warfare, some of those discussions may sound less controversial than they should be.  Because "center of gravity" refers to what we could also call the essential aspect of the conflict that will make the decisive difference between victory and defeat.

Mix together that deeply flawed but widely accepted view of the Vietnam War, the influence of the "center of gravity" concept in strategic theory, and the military's ingrained inclination to keep as much of their workings secret from outsidiers as possible and especialy so during a shooting war, the "center of gravity" in the information war is often taken to mean "better PR".  Once you've convinced a bunch of generals that competent public relations operations are the key to victory and the biggest risk of defeat, you're likely to get something pretty much like we've seen the last five years.  You get senior officials saying things like the quote I use to open my Old Hickory's Weblog posts on the Iraq War, of Gen. Richard Myers, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying on 04/26/05:

I think we are winning.  Okay?  I think we're definitely winning.  I think we've been winning for some time.

You get fake stories about Pat Tillman's death and Jessica Lynch's captivity; civilian deaths chronically counted as "terrorists"; cover-ups for war crimes at Abu Ghuraib, Haditha and elsewhere; media offices blasted; journalists and photographers killed by US forces under questionable circumstances; paying Iraqi journalists for fake "good news" stories than are then flogged to the US media; and so on.

The punditocracy and the Christian Right may still worship the ground on which our infallable generals walk.  But such approaches have produced a real credibility gap among the public.  And that's a *good thing* because uncritical public and journalistic and Congressional attitudes toward the claims (and massive purchases) made by our infallible generals has had some very bad effects.  But it certainly wasn't the result the generals were expecting in this "center of gravity".

Israel does face prejudice and media bias in the political dimension of war, but - to put itbluntly - this is as irrelevant to the conduct  of war as similar perceptions of the US as a crusader and occupier. It is as irrelevant as complaints that the enemy fights in civilian areas, uses terror tactics, does not wear uniforms and engages in direct combat. Nations fight in the real world, not in ones where they can set the rules for war or perceptual standards.

Israel’s failure to understand this is just as serious and dangerous as America’s. So is Israel’s focus on domestic politics and perceptions. Modern nations must learn to fight regional, cultural, and global battles to shape the political, perceptual, ideological, and media dimensions of war within the terms that other nations and cultures can understand, or they risk losing every advantage their military victories gain.  (my emphasis)

Not only does the approach used by Israel and the US of focusing on domestic opinion at the expense of (to use a marketing term) positioning the case to the opinion of other relevant nations, or "world opinion" in shorthand, tend to create a self-reinforcing information loop for the decision-makers and encourage groupthink.  It also undercuts the political goals of our wars.

Following are some of Cordesman's other preliminary views on thelessons of the recent war.

I'm surprised at his finding the proportionality of the Israeli actions:

In general, Israel seems to have made a consistent effort to keep its military actions proportionate to the threat in legal terms if one looks beyond the narrow incident at Sheeba Farms that triggered the fighting and considers six years of Hezbollah military build up as a major threat that could target all of Israel with major Iranian and Syrian support. Weakness and division is not a defense in international law and the laws of war, and Lebanon’s failure to act as a state, implement resolution 1559, and disarm the Hezbollah deprives it of any right as a non-belligerent.

But the proportionality question does not hang on Lebanon's supposed rights as a non-belligerent in that sitution.  The question is whether Israel's attack which was ostensibly directly at Hizbullah justified attacking targets like Beirut's airport, residential areas where civilian offices of Hizbullah were located or attacks on targets in parts of the country far removed from the Hizbullah-controlled area.  He does recognize that Israel had a major perception problem in this regard.  And his conclusion for the US is sounds, as far as it goes:

The US must not repeat this mistake. It must develop clear plans and doctrine regarding proportionality and be just as ready to explain and justify them as to show how it is acting to limit civilian casualties and collateral damage.  Above all, it must not fall into the trap of trying either to avoid the laws of war or of being so bound by a strict interpretation that it cannot fight.  The last part about not "being so bound by a strict interpretation that it cannot fight" is superflous after the last five years. 

The following is also a bit puzzling:

Israeli officials differed significantly over how much they had planned and trained for conflict escalation.  Outside experts did not.  They felt that the Israeli government rushed into a major attack on the Hezbollah and Lebanon with little preparation and detailed planning, that the battle plan put far too much faith in airpower, and that the government was averse to examining another major land advance into Lebanon or broadening the conflict to put pressure on Syria.

Only access to the historical record can determine the facts.  There was, however, broad criticism that the government and IDF did  not properly prepare the active forces and reserves for a major land attack or for the possibility of a major escalation that required such an attack.  The government and IDF were criticized for never examining “Plan B”- what would happen if things went wrong or if a major escalation was required.

The puzzling part is the statement that the IDF didn't have "detailed planning" for the action.  Because we know that Israeli officials briefed US officials and reporters more than a year before the recent war began about their war plan for attacking Hizbullah and Lebanon.  Presumably, the lack of "detailed planning" means more detailed than the level of plans on which Israel was doing those briefings.

Cordesman's paper goes into some detail about the kind of weapons Hizbullah used and the way in which they were able to surprise the Israelis technologically in some ways.

He also cautions against drawing too drastic conclusions in the following way, as well:

The value and capability of such asymmetric "netcentric" warfare [as Hizbullah used], and comparatively slow moving wars of attrition, should not be exaggerated. The IDF could win any clash, and might have won decisively with different ground tactics. It also should not be ignored.  The kind of Western netcentric warfare that is so effective against conventional forces has met a major challenge and one it must recognize.

In an obvious dig at one of Rummy's more notorious sayings, he observes:

Military forces must prepare for the wars they may have to fight, not for the wars they want to fight. They must also prepare knowing that nothing about the history of warfare indicates that peacetime planners can count on predicting when a war takes place or how it will unfold.  

He refrains from any sweeping judgments on the success of Israel's air war.  But he also makes it clear that, at the very minimum, Israel planned for the air power to be much more effective than it actually was.  He also is reserved in his judgments about the question of Lebanese civilian casualties.  He seems to accept the Israeli claim that Hizbullah consistently used civilians to hide behind:

Hezbollah built its facilities in towns and populated areas, usedcivilian facilities and homes to store weapons and carry out its activities, and embedded its defenses and weapons in built-up areas. It learned to move and ship in ways that mirrored normal civilian life. We were shown extensive imagery showing how the Hezbollah deployed its rockets and mortars into towns and homes, rushing into private houses to fire rockets andrushing out.

I'm certainly not discounting this evidence.  But I'm also not convinced that this practice was a widespread as Israeli spokespeople wanted us to belive.  Or that it justifies the level of bombing and resultant death in Lebanese cities that actually occurred.

A fair amount of the paper is taken up with looking at whether the military means Israel employed were consistent with their goals.  This is a moving target to analyze, because Israel's stated goals not only varied but shifted over time.  But Cordesman recommends that Americans adopt one practice that the Israelis followed in this war:

One key lesson that the US badly needs to learn from Israel is the Israeli rush towards accountability.  Israeli experts inside and outside of government did not agree on the extent to which the government and the IDF mismanaged the war, but none claimed that it had gone smoothly or well. Most experts outside of government felt that the problems were serious enough to force a new commission or set of commissions to examine what had gone wrong and to establish the facts.

He also says on that topic:

What is interesting about the Israeli approach, however, is the assumption by so many Israeli experts that that major problems and reverses need immediate official examination and that criticism begins from the top down. Patriotism and the pressures of war call for every effort to be made to win, not for support of the political leadership and military command until the war is over.

The US, in contrast, is usually slow to criticize and then tends to focus on the President on a partisan basis. It does not have a tradition of independent commissions and total transparency (all of the relevant cabinet and command meetings in Israel are videotaped).  Worse, the US military tends to investigate and punish from the bottom up. At least since Pearl Harbor (where the searchfor scapegoats was as much a motive as the search for truth), the US has not acted on the principle that top-level and senior officers and civilian officials must be held accountable for all failures, and that the key lessons of war include a ruthless and unbiased examination of grand strategy and policymaking.  (my emphasis)

Cordesman looks at five of the Israeli goals in the war:

Destroy the “Iranian Western Command” before Iran could go nuclear.

Bascially, on this one he says that if the Israeli Air Force (IAF) claims are correct, they did take out most of Hizbullah's medium- and long-range missiles.  But what that means fgoing forward is hard to evaluate:  "One key limit of any war is that it can only deal with present threats. It cannot control the future."  And it is clear that Hizbullah remains very much a functioning, armed political force.

Restore the credibility of Israeli deterrence after the unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005, and countering the image that Israel was weak and forced to leave.

Since deterrence is a matter of perception, it's hard to see how Israel's experience in this war improved the IDF's deterrent abilities.  Of course, perception is also based on reality, and the reality is that Israel's conventional and nuclear forces are capable of defending the country from anyone trying to seize territory withink its internationally-recognized borders.  The real problem comes from what this does to deterrence against Hizbullah and the Palestinians.  Based on his interviews, Cordesman says:

The other side of the coin was the deep Israeli concern with security barriers and unilateral withdrawals. Israelis felt that defense in depth and an active IDF presence was needed in front of security barriers; that major new security efforts and barriers would be required to deal with longer-range Palestinian weapons; that even more separation of the two peoples would be needed; and that Israeli Arabs might become more of a threat. This is scarcely a sign of improved deterrence.

Force Lebanon to become and act as an accountable state, and end the status of Hezbollah as a state within a state.

Cordesman sees some hope here.  But he concludes, "This goal is uncertain."

Damage or cripple Hezbollah, with theunderstanding that it could not be destroyed as a military force and would continue to be a major political actor in Lebanon.

This is closely related to the first goal he discussed, as noted above.  In this section, he writes:

If the Hezbollah is crippled as a military force, it will be because of US and French diplomacy in creating an international peacekeeping force and helping the Lebanese Army move south with some effectiveness. It will not be because of IDF military action.

Bring the two soldiers the Hezbollah had captured back alive without major trades in prisoners held by Israel - not the thousands demanded by Nasrallah and the Hezbollah.

Here, Cordesman highlights the problems that a testosterone-driven foreign policy can create:

This is a key feature of the UN resolution and the ceasefire. However, what actually happens is yet to be seen. The Israeli emphasis on such kidnappings and casualties also communicates a dangerous sense of Israeli weakness at a military and diplomatic level. It reinforces the message since Oslo that any extremist movement can halt negotiations and peace efforts by triggering a new round of terrorist attacks.

The message seems to be that any extremist movement can lever Israel into action by a token attack. Furthermore, there has been so much discussion in Israel of the Israeli leadership and IDF’s reluctance to carry out a major land offensive in Lebanon because of the casualties it took from 1982-2000, and would face in doing so now, that the end result further highlights the image of Israeli vulnerability.

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