A large part of Israel's strongly positive image in the United States comes from a perception of its military prowess. It's not unusual to hear Americans talk about Israel's army, air force and intelligence services and though they were near-superhuman. The impression was largely founded on the Six Day War, and the destruction of Syria's Soviet-supplied air force in the 1982 Israel-Syria War added great weight to it.
That legendary brilliance has not yet been on display in the current Israel-Lebanon War, it seems. Anthony Cordesman has just released yet another short paper on the current war, Israel's Uncertain Military Performance and Strategic Goals in Lebanon (Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS]) 07/25/06.
He writes:
Not unlike the US, Israel has always been much better at using force than at end games. In this case, however, Israel rapidly escalated to the massive use of airpower in ways that only made sense if it felt that it could (a) do meaningful and lasting damage to Hezbollah, and (b) coerce the Lebanese government and military to take advantage of Hezbollah's weakness to fully secure the south and disarm Hezbollah.
If Israel has suceeded in wiping out a significant group of Hizbollah leaders or hitting major weapons storage facilities, "Israel is remarkably silent" about it, he notes. Cordesman is unimpressed by the Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) accomplishments as the conflict nears the two-week point:
Blowing up Hezbollah buildings breeds anger and support for the Hezbollah, but there are no high value facilities filled with critical equipment. Destroying most Hezbollah armament means using high cost precision weapons to destroy a few very low cost systems that are easily replaced. The political and propaganda value to the Hezbollah of showing it can ride out IAF [Israeli Air Force] strikes, survive, and grow offsets any losses reported to date.
It's important to recognize that Israel's military chief of staff, Dan Halutz , is an air power zealot. Pat Lang recently did a good sketch of Halutz' approach to the Israel-Lebanon war in Now I "get it." Sic Semper Tyrannis blog 07/24/06:
He has no ground forces experience at all. He remindsme a bit of Rumsfeld, the one time naval aviator and opponent of the use of sizable ground forces. Like Rumsfeld he is a proponent of "modern" warfare, gee-whiz techno- equipment and disdainful of big, heavy armored forces. He has re-organized the armed forces so that the ground forces no longer report directly to him. ...
Bottom Lines:
- Air Power and artillery will not decisively defeat Hizballah or force it to withdraw from rocket range of Israel.
- The Lebanese government and army are not what the Israelis have once again dreamt of and they should have known that. The policy that Israel is following is truly a triumph of hope over experience.
- An international force that will fight Hizballah in the south to disarm it is a pipe dream. Who will do that? The only realistic candidate would be France in terms of military capacity. This would be a major irony of history.
Bottom Line Advice for Israel: Occupy the ground or expect to suffer the effects of failure.
Lang's post is really an excellent summary of some of the problems of what he calls the "Air Power" theory. I highly recommend reading the whole post.
One professed goal of Israeli attacks has been to push the Lebanese government into suppressing Hizbollah. This has never sounded credible to me. For one thing, virtually all accounts agree that the Lebanese Army is just not capable of doing it. It also sounds like the very cynical policy of Ariel Sharon's government in attacking the Palestinian Authority's security and governmental offices in the West Bank while demanding that the PA suppress the terrorists there, while the IDF focused its attacks on the very groups that would have to do the suppressing.
Cordesman takes the claim at face value, and shakes his head in astonishment:
What [IDF attacks on Lebanese targets have] not done is lead the Lebanese government to rush towards decisive action against Hezbollah or towards useful reactions from the Lebanese Army. If anything, the IAF has hit enough Lebanese military targets to cause a larger reaction against Israel. The fact that the Lebanese government would not accept Secretary Rice's offer to aid the Lebanese Army in moving south reflects the lack of Israeli success to date.
What is not clear is why Israel thought this would work. Lebanon's confessional politics remain a powder keg, and taking on a movement with so much influence among the Shi'ites, Lebanon's largest faction, is difficult to impossible for a government that does not have massive domestic support in doing so.
He also adresses the issue of civilian casualties to date:
Again, no hard numbers or reliable data are available, but the IAF seems to have done a bad job of precision targeting. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), special spotter units on the ground, and air strikes on targets of opportunity seem to have hit far more civilians than they should. If this is a tactic of intimidation and coercion, it is a bad one. Case after case shows it breeds more anger than fear.
The IDF's precision artillery fire in response to Hezbollah rocket attacks seems to have had little impact other than to create refugees and hurt Israel's image abroad. Precision fire is relatively pointless, just as area fire is, unless there is something targeted. Blowing up Hezbollah buildings accomplished no more in the area in artillery range than the rest of Lebanon, and finding and hitting small, dispersed Hezbollah targets remained extremely difficult.
I will insert here that much of the comments by both officials and commentators professional and otherwise on the Israel-Lebanese War accept without question the claim repeated over and over again that Hizbollah stores rocket launchers and missiles in private homes and heavily populated areas. But I see that Stephen Zunes has had some of the same questions as I have about that claim, which seems to be Israel's main excuse for the civilian casualties in Lebanon. In a look at the Congressional resolutions supporting Israel's positions and claims in the current war, Congress and the Israeli Attack on Lebanon: A Critical Reading (Foreign Policy in Focus [FPIF] Policy Report) 07/22/06, he quotes the House version of the resolution, which says that the House "further condemns Hamas and Hezbollah for cyincally exploting civilian populations as shields, locating their equipment and bases of operation, including their rockets and other armaments, amidst civilian populations, including in homes and mosques".
Zunes comments:
This clause appears to be designed to blame the Lebanese, not the Israeli armed forces, for the deaths of innocent civilians. As Human Rights Watch has noted, “Deploying military forces within populated areas is a violation of international humanitarian law, but that does not release Israel from its obligations to take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians and civilian property during military operations.” While it is not unusual for outgunned guerrilla movements with popular local support to have equipment in close proximity to civilian population, none of the offices of members of Congress who supported the bill which I have contacted has been able to cite any independently documented cases in the current conflict where Hezbollah has engaged in “exploiting civilian populations as shields.” (Two offices cited Israeli government claims to this effect, but the Israeli government has previously made similar claims that were later proved false.)
But Cordesman does not think that ground operations are necessarily a lot more promising for the IDF.
As for the more open [land force] fighting in Lebanon to date, Israel may be winning tactically, but the strategic value is limited at best. So far, the image is that Hezbollah is standing up to Israel - scarcely the image Israel wants and needs - and the fighting will be meaningless unless Israel moves north in strength, or some combination of an international force and Lebanese forces actually occupy the area. Hezbollah can also afford to lose large numbers of troops with little training and equipment in such fighting, will train a new generation of fighters, and has time to refine its ambush tactics.
He is reserved in passing judgment on what has happened so far, noting that if "several thousand IDF troops are operating in the area", then "they must have scored some successes". But so far, "the IDF is not claiming detailed successes and complaining a great deal about problems with intelligence".
Several bloggers have commented on the IDF's experience with Hizbollah so far (Steve Gilliard, Wow, they can fight The News Blog 07/24/06):
Uh, folks, this ain't the PLO. They paid attention and now fight like they did. Israel bet they could undo the Hezbollah and they can't.
Why?
The one weakness of Arab armies was not their fighting ability, but the politics which dominated their armies. Remove the politics and the theorizing, and they can fight. Hezbollah promotes on merit and the best men get commands. Which means they are not the same as the Arab armies Israel blew away. They will fight to the death if they have to and the IDF can't.
Billmon (Big Muddy Whiskey Bar blog 07/24/06):
But it's clear from many other sources that things aren't going so well with Operation Midwife:
The Israeli Army - which dashed across the Sinai in two days in 1967, and surrounded an entire Egyptian army in 1973, has spent the past three days trying to secure Maroun al-Ras, a village about 500 meters inside Lebanon. ...
The number of rockets falling on northern Israel has been reduced only minimally, if at all, and Israeli civilians are still dying, despite 11 days of bombing and round-the-clock Israeli air cover over southern Lebanon.
U.S. military sources say that IDF claims to have destroyed a significant percentage of Hizbollah's missiles are significantly "overstated."
Jane's Weekly reports that Hizbollah has emulated the Viet Cong and honeycombed the border area with underground tunnels and command posts that are virtually impervious to artillery fire and the Israeli Air Force's existing stock of bombs. (It looks like those "precision" munitions the Pentagon is rushing to the front may be bunker busters.)
See Billmon's post for the specific links. He goes on to add:
Even more amazing, the Israelis are now actually endorsing the idea of inserting a "peacekeeping" force (albeit one composed of those killer beanie babies I was talking about earlier) between them and their Arab enemies - instead of grudgingly accepting one because senile old Uncle Sam insisted on it. I truly never thought I'd see the day.
In other words, it seems a whole bunch of tall castles are coming crashing to the ground, leaving Hizbollah still intact, still armed to the teeth, still defiant. ...
The problem is that a cease fire agreement that doesn't result in the complete, verifiable disarming of Hizbollah (which hardly seems likely at this point) would give a truly enormous boost to the group's status and prestige. It would amount to a virtual recognition of Hizbollah as a sovereign entity. (A prisoner swap to retrieve the two Israeli POWs would give it an even *bigger* boost.) A cease fire deal without disarmament would also leave Israel vulnerable to the group's rockets, if and when a bigger war with Iran and/or Syria breaks out. ...
The truth is that there can be no "decision on points" in this fight. The Israelis themselves have helped ensure that result. If Hizbollah survives with any military capability at all, it wins, and wins very big. As Shrub and company once said about Iraq (before it became too funny even for their propaganda purposes) there is no substitute for victory.
When Billmon is "on", he's really on. And he's been "on" about the Isreal-Lebanon War these past few days.
Larry Johnson writes (Failing to Learn the Lessons of Vietnam in Lebanon and Iraq No Quarter blog 07/25/06):
When you are fighting a force like Hezbollah, on terrain it views as its home, you cannot defeat them unless you occupy the land and maintain a force in place. That is a costly and long term proposition. Israel tried it once and withdrew. Israel will discover in the coming weeks that their current operation will leave them once again on the horns of a dilemma - stay in southern Lebanon and fight a long-term insurgency or withdraw and give Hezbollah another notch in its belt. A third alternative - an international force empowered to keep the peace - exists only as a fantasy on paper. No country or group of countries appears willing to assume the burden of a costly, long-term military occupation. ...
The war between Israel and Hezbollah cannot be won thru military force alone. It will require a political solution and negotiations. Otherwise, Israel, the Lebanese, and Hezbollah will spend most of the 21st Century bashing each others brains in and leaving a wasteland of scarred land and weeping widows.
Cordesman looks at several options for the IDF in this conflict. And none of them look too good.
Cordesman thinks the prospects of interdicting weapons resupply from Syria and Iran are mixed, because "lighter weapons are comparatively easy to infiltrate without using main roads", and Hizbollah's fighters "need only limited success to keep up harassment and ambushes".
Referencing Israel's difficult experiences in occupying Lebanon in previous years, he expresses skepticism that even if the IDF succeeds in pushing Hizbollah to the Litani river - which in itself will not be so easy to do - that it will achieve the military aim sought:
It also is not clear that the Litani relay provides the necessary strategic depth. It still allows Hezbollah to attack with longer-range rockets like the Zelzal (125-260 kilometers), Nazeat (100-140 kilometers), and a variety of shorter-range systems.
Cordesman thinks that Condi-Condi's proposal for an international force as a buffer between the IDF and Hizbollah, a "robust" force, i.e., trained and authorized to fight active battles and not just defend themselves, is a good one. Part of the proposal would have the US training Lebanese forces to geradually take over military control in the south.
He comments, though, "However, using proxies to make up for the IDF's failures is a poor precedent, and this strategy may not work". (my emphasis)
He doesn't really address the question of who the heck will be in such an international force, which would have to be prepared to fight both Hizbollah and the IDF if either side broke the ceasefire rules.
Is the US going to pu troops where they would likely have to fight a Shi'a terrorist force and/or Israel? Not gonna happen. Britain? Very unlikely. The German Bundeswehr facing off against Israeli troops? We'll see the Bush twins volunteer for the Army first.
Kevin Drum wrote in Looking for Troops 07/24/06:
The United States has previously said that it won't be able to participate in this because our troops are tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan. The UN can't help since it deals only in peacekeeping missions, not combat missions. None of the troops can come from Middle Eastern countries, of course. NATO troops are largely committed to Afghanistan, and Europe has in any case been notably reluctant to commit combat troops to either the Middle East or Africa.
What's needed here are (a) large numbers of (b) quickly deployable (c) combat troops. Offhand, I can't think of anyplace this could come from. Am I missing something?
Well, let's see. Vietnam and China have a lot of troops. So do India and Pakistan. Yeah, a Vietnamese and Indian force would offer a unique opportunity. Instead of having mainly Muslims, Jews and Christians fighting each other in the Middle East, we can add some Hindus and Buddhists to the mix! Oh, yeah,that's an idea that Dark Lord Cheney himself might have come up with.
Pat Lang, in the post linked above, recalls a previous experience with the US training the Lebanese forces:
As for the Lebanese Army, the US attempted for two years (1982-84) to re-structure and re-train the Lebanese Army to make it a "national" non-sectarian force only to learn when this army was committed to battle in 1984 against Druze and Christian forces, that it simply fell apart. The US then abandoned the effort. Nothing much has changed in Lebanon since then.
Cordesman concludes:
The Lebanese side of this [international buffer force] approach may simply expose the fact that the Lebanese government and army will only take limited and cosmetic action. The international force will probably have to do the heavy lifting, be willing to fight, and become the focus of new Hezbollah attacks and ambushes. Non-Muslims will be seen as occupiers and crusaders, and Muslims as traitors. Ambushes, bombings, and foreign volunteers will follow. Can anyone spell IED?
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