Center for a New American Security

Jeff White, a 35-year veteran of the Defense Intelligence Agency and one of the smartest guys I know, has a disturbing new report on what the next war between Israel and Hizballah might look like. I write the report is "disturbing" because I think Jeff may be correct in his analysis, and I similarly suspect that a war in southern Lebanon might be orders of magnitude more destructive than the conflict in 2006. I encourage you to all read what Jeff has written. He asked me, meanwhile, to respond to his report in a public forum this afternoon at the Washington Institute, which I did. I will post the video of the event once it become available, but for now, see the below response. (Update: Audio of the event is now posted here.)

A few caveats:

1. I want to make clear that I do not believe another war in southern Lebanon is likely to serve the interests of the peoples of either Israel or Lebanon. I also do not believe the kind of war Jeff foresees will serve U.S. interests. I think peace, in other words, is in everyone's interests.

2. These remarks were written to be spoken. So there are no footnotes, and the tone is less formal than what I normally write. Also, Jeff asked me to provide critical comments, so much of what you'll read takes issue with things in the report. But do read the original, because I think Jeff gets much right. (Alas.)

Finally, Jeff feels confident that Israel would "win", operationally and tactically, in the event of another war with Hizballah. I, by contrast, think the scenario he envisions amounts to a nightmare for all parties in the region and do not think either Israel or Hizballah would end the war with a better peace than the one they enjoy now.

Ex Um 17 Sep 10

The Secretary of State continues in her attempts to push the ball forward on the Middle East Peace Process. I generally avoid issues relating to Israel and the Palestinians like the plague, but last winter, I edited a volume trying to imagine how one might construct an international force to midwife a Palestinian state. You can read the report here (.pdf). I particularly recommend Marc Lynch's chapter at the end for you MEPP junkies.

*Gah! I can't believe I just blindly followed the way NYT transliterated شرم الشيخ‎ into "Sharm el Sheik". I'm losing it, gang. "Sharm el-Sheikh" is correct.

Today, I read not only Jeffrey Goldberg's article on the policy options facing U.S. and Israeli leaders with respect to Iran's nuclear program but also Jon Lee Anderson's article built around an interview he conducted with that guy who wears the Members Only jacket. I greatly enjoyed both articles and recommend them to the readership, though I must confess to not understanding the business model at either the Atlantic or the New Yorker: these articles must have cost a fortune to produce in terms of travel and salaries for both writers, so how does giving them away for free on the internet make any sense at all? I subscribe to both the Atlantic and the New Yorker, and I am now feeling like a chump considering that fact that I read the first article online before it hit my mail box.

Anyway, the articles: they are good. I had some quibbles with each, though. At one point, Goldberg -- who, when reporting on Israeli and U.S. policy-makers, is pretty fantastic -- ponders the origins of Iranian anti-Semitism and ends up considering some stuff written by Shia clerics in the 16th and 17th centuries, perhaps unintentionally bolstering Hemingway's argument that writers should write what they know. I also wish Goldberg had spoken not just with the Netanyahu and Obama administrations but also with critics of the president. When an Esquire magazine writer recently asked some tough questions of Newt Gingrich on Iran, for example, it was kinda devastating:

You call Obama's Iran policy appeasement. But what's the alternative?

 

"Replace the government."

 

You're advocating war with Iran?

 

"Not necessarily. There's every reason to believe that if you simply targeted gasoline, and you maximized your support for dissidents in Iran, that within a year you'd replace the regime without a war."

 

That's it? After such an incendiary charge, your only solution is sanctions and speeches?

 

"The only thing you have to stop is gasoline," he repeats.

 

But that just seems like nuance, and only a minor difference with Obama's position.

 

"The difference between replacing a regime and appeasing a regime is pretty radical."

 

But you won't replace the regime that way. You're just tinkering with sanctions, which have never worked.

 

"I would cut off gasoline, and I would fund the dissidents," he repeats.

Oh... Anyway, I would have loved to see Goldberg ask questions of Palin or Gingrich or Romney on what U.S. policy toward Iran should be.

Anderson's article, meanwhile, has all the hallmarks of an article written by a writer who had to spin a story out of thin gruel. Anderson admits he was given very little cooperation by the Iranian regime outside of setting up the interview with Ahmembersonlyjad, but give Anderson credit for nonetheless making the article work. His article is a reminder that the Iranians are not just objects but agents in their own right: focusing on their agency and actions makes them both falible and all the more frightening in terms of what lies in store for the Middle East as a region in the years to come.

Supporters of Israel are used to seeing that country get something decidedly less than a fair shake in the halls of the United Nations in New York, and I sympathize with them. But no organization has more selflessly served Israeli interests with so little appreciation as the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). On the one hand, and as I have written, UNIFIL has often failed to prevent hostilities from erupting along the border with southern Lebanon and northern Israel on account of, primarily, weak mandates from the Security Council as well as an inability to address the drivers of conflict. On the other hand, though, does anyone in Israel care to imagine how, exactly, the IDF would have extracted itself from southern Lebanon in August of 2006 without the face-saving announcement and deployment of a beefed-up UNIFIL? And does anyone remember the 258 U.N. peacekeepers who have died in southern Lebanon, most of them hailing from countries with no national interests in the Middle East, and several of them on the receving end of Israeli artillery barrages? This week, UNIFIL asked the IDF to delay tree-trimming operations along the border, the IDF refused, and people on both sides of the border were killed as a result. After the shooting stopped, though, UNIFIL backed up the IDF's claims with respect to the Blue Line, and U.S. pundits like Jeffrey Goldberg and Max Boot acted as if this was a once-in-a-lifetime event. I have spent a lot of time hanging out with the great men and women serving in UNIFIL in southern Lebanon and have particularly enjoyed visits to the long-serving Irish and Indian battalions. These guys don't get the credit they deserve for essentially putting their lives on the line in someone else's fight. And maybe if Israeli political leaders were not so quick to dismiss UNIFIL as a "joke" (Itamar Rabinovich) and "useless" (Ehud Olmert), IDF officers might pay a little more attention to UNIFIL's advice and fewer avoidable casualities would result.

[By the way, if any Israelis out there are looking to blame someone for the death of Dov Harari, they can start in, well, Tampa. In the annals of poorly timed press releases, this and this take the cake. (h/t Mitch and Josh)]

Update: A reader's objection.

Many thanks to the IDF veteran who wrote this. I can't defend or criticize UNIFIL's actions during the 1990s, though I am sure a response from an officer during that time would include a statement to the effect that it was not the job of UNIFIL to make Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon easier -- quite the opposite: one of UNIFIL's three core missions was to confirm an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, which they finally did in 2000. Also, I would point out that UNIFIL and Hizballah (less so Amal or other armed groups) had a pretty nasty relationship until the late 1990s. UNIFIL posts and convoys were frequently assaulted by Hizballah, so it's not as if the two were in cahoots with one another, even if it seemed that way to members of the IDF and SLA. Finally, in response to another comment, I am on the record as being very criticial of Israeli operations and strategy in southern Lebanon in the 1990s and in 2006. But that doesn't mean I have taken a "side". If anything, speaking as someone who rather likes Israel and Israelis, the incompetence of Israeli operations in southern Lebanon especially pains me because it has resulted in both the weakening of Israel and the suffering of the people of Lebanon, for whom I also have a well-documented soft spot in my heart. As far as UNIFIL is concerned, meanwhile, I have plenty of criticism for them elsewhere.

I know I usually steer clear of Israeli and Palestinian stuff -- for reasons most sane human beings will understand. But this recent flotilla nonsense forces me to get two things off my chest. I write this in the spirit Max Boot describes whereby Israel's friends have an obligation to constructively criticize it when things go off the rails.

1. A few days ago, I linked via my Twitter account to George Packer's excellent take on this fiasco at sea. Packer noted, comparing the Israeli and U.S. militaries, the following divide:

At one time, Israelis understood counterinsurgency much better than Americans, which is why U.S. officers looked to their Israeli counterparts for advice in the early years of the Iraq war. At one time, the Israelis understood that self-interest demanded subtlety, restraint, and attention to perception. As others have pointed out, these qualities have been disappearing from Israeli strategy and tactics, and the current right-wing government seems determined to isolate and destroy itself with the unbending principle of self-defense.

This paragraph especially struck me, because I know how true it is. In the early years of the GWOT, I remember reading Israeli after action reports from combat actions in the Second Intifada, paying especially close attention to what tactics they felt were working and which ones the Israelis felt were ineffective. Other guys in my unit at the time described exchanges they had made to Israel and how they had always learned something from their peer units over there.

I still think the U.S. military has a lot to learn from the IDF in terms of tactics, techniques and procedures. But since I left the active duty army in 2004, I have interacted quite a bit with Israeli military officers both through formal interviews and informal discussions over beer or coffee. I still learn a lot whenever I talk to them, but I am increasingly struck by the very real differences that have emerged between them and their U.S. military peers who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. One difference concerns the atittude toward the population within which they operate. Last fall, I was in Israel for a two-week visit and conducted a few formal interviews with various Israeli officers, journalists and scholars. I met for coffee one morning with a retired Israeli general officer to discuss the fighting in southern Lebanon during the 1990s, and before too long, the two of us were engrossed in conversation about guerrilla warfare, Lebanon, the learning process that militaries go through in combat, and a host of related subjects. One hour became two, and two hours became three. The two of us must have downed three cups of coffee apiece, and my hand cramped from all the notes I was taking. At the end of the conversation, though, this retired officer took my hand, squeezed it hard, and said, "Andrew, just remember one thing: the Muslims are like shit. They stink, and there are plenty of them for all of us."

Now in 3+ years of living in the Arabic-speaking world, I have to admit I have heard some pretty horrifically anti-Semitic things said in both polite and not-so-polite conversation. But pardon me if I was a little struck by hearing this language from a retired, educated military officer rather than from, say, a taxi driver in Beirut or some 16-year old Palestinian kid who grew up in Bourj al-Barajneh. Anyway, I shook the man's hand, thanked him for his time, and went on my way shaking my head. Could I imagine a senior U.S. military officer, post-Iraq, saying something like that to a guy with a notebook at the end of a formal interview? I could not. (Though I know quite a few military officers who may have made an Iraqi friend or two while deployed but left the country with little affection for its people or culture.) Fast forward two days to another formal interview, this one at the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv. I was meeting with a colonel there, again discussing southern Lebanon, and with us was a young PAO from the IDF. The PAO, I discovered, was of Iraqi Jewish descent. I had my notebook open, and the PAO had a tape recorder as well as a notebook. Again, the conversation was going great, and I was learning a lot about the learning process the IDF went through in southern Lebanon in the 1990s. But halfway through the conversation, with two notebooks open and tape recorder running, this officer then started on an off-color riff about why the Jews had managed to win so many Nobel Prizes and the Arabs and Muslims, despite their numbers, had won so very few. I was shocked -- not because someone might say such things but because someone might say such things to a visiting researcher with an open notebook. I looked at the PAO to my right, and this Iraqi-Israeli was obviously growing uncomfortable. (I went back into my notebooks as I was writing this post and discovered, to my amusement, that I had written "this guy is an idiot" in Greek script during the interview. If you are ever in a meeting with me and I start writing something in Greek or Arabic, it's because I am writing something I do not want you to be able to read. I have notes from a meeting with a senior staff officer in Afghanistan from last summer that are, sadly, literally half written in Greek. I have a friend who does the same thing in Russian.)

This flip side to these stories would be the many conversations I have had with Israeli officers -- including some very impressive public affairs and combat arms officers -- who managed not to go off on anti-Muslim or anti-Arab riffs during their conversations with me, even after several rounds of beer or wine. I left my most recent research trip to Israel, though, openly wondering a) whether or not anti-Arab or anti-Muslim sentiment was widespread within the officer corps and whether that might have an effect on Israeli operations in the territories and b) whether or not a) was true, whether or not Israel would ever be able to effectively carry out information operations with officers so willing to say crazy stuff to a researcher with an open notebook and a tape recorder.

2. It sometimes upsets my many Arab friends when I write things like this, but I really like Israel and most Israelis. Tel Aviv reminds me a little of Beirut, and I have often thought that when peace breaks out (in the year 2300?) they would make great sister cities. A buddy and I are even planning to start a Beirut-to-Tel Aviv party shuttle for bachelor parties, which I think is a genius idea. But I have often wondered if the nature of Israel's coalition politics forces its government to make short-sighted politically expedient decisions that are not thought out from within a strategic context. Whatever you may think of the QDR or NSS, at least the U.S. government articulates a strategic vision for its security. By contrast, a journalist friend of mine was in a roundtable discussion with three ministers in the Israeli government during Operation Cast Lead. He asked these ministers what their five-to-ten year strategy was to protect their people, i.e. ensure the state. "They stared at me as if I were a unicorn."

What is so shocking about this most recent fiasco, though, is not just the lack of any coherent strategy. (If you're trying to ensure Iran does not become nuclear-armed, might you not want to ensure strong relations with the United States and other key allies -- Europe, Turkey -- in pursuit of that goal? Wouldn't you avoid anything that got in the way of that existential challenge?) What is most shocking is the tactical and operational incompetence of the Israelis. Check out the comments in this post and read the reactions -- many of them from U.S. and allied officers, who make up a large portion of this blog's readership -- chuckling at the expense of the Israelis. When did the IDF -- the elite units in the IDF, even -- become such a laughingstock?

I'll be happy when this storyline fades to the background, but I do not think the dynamic Packer describes -- the new way in which the U.S. military views its Israeli peers -- will. Your guess is as good as mine as to how that might affect U.S. strategy and operations in the region. But when even Meir Dagan starts wondering if Israeli and U.S. interests and attitudes are divergent, we have a crisis in the relationship. And I think most Israelis would concede it matters a lot more for them than it does for us.

Too soon?

After about 600 words of apologetics and a bunch of stuff tangential to the core of the issue, Max Boot finally arrives at the point of his op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal, and it is, for me, the key take-away from this fiasco at sea -- and an excellent warning to we Americans as we consider our own campaigns against violent non-state actors and the problem of terrorism:

Israeli officials are right to say the operation was justified and that the blood was on the hands of the pro-Hamas activists. Right, but irrelevant.

 

As it does too often, Israel took a narrow military operational approach to what is a broader strategic problem. Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups are conducting a skillful "information war" that is making Israel a pariah state in the international community. Israel, like the United States and other democratic nations, is at a severe disadvantage trying to combat a ruthless foe willing to sacrifice its own people to score propoganda points.

 

There are no perfect counter-tactics available, but whenever Israel does use military force it needs to be more aware of the political ramifications. That awareness appeared to be lacking during the botched 2006 war against Hezbolla -- and in the boarding of the Gaza flotilla.

Max Boot's advice to Israel could be turned around and similarly offered to U.S. and allied policy-makers as they consider everything from direct-action SOF raids into Somalia to drone strikes into Pakistan. Military operations cannot substitute for a comprehensive strategy. Just because the military is willing and able, and just because direct-action raids appear to be quick and easy, does not mean that second- and third-order effects cannot bite you hard if not properly thought through and mitigated by effective information operations and other supporting operations.

Okay. Back to working on my dissertation, so go elsewhere for your hot drone and Gaza commentary for a while.

Okay, first things first: Happy Memorial Day, everyone. Please take some time today to say a prayer for the fallen and for peace.

I woke up this morning to the news that Israel has managed to kill at least 10 people participating in some peace flotilla to Gaza. As you all know, I try to avoid commenting on matters related to Israel and the Palestinians, but this is a pretty good teaching opportunity relating to issues that concern this blog's readership.

One could, from the start, think a number of different things about those participating in the peace flotilla to Gaza. (Naive? Righteous? Courageous? Anti-Semitic?) But for the sake of argument, and putting ourselves in the shoes of an Israeli naval commander, let's assume the most malevolent of motivations for the people participating in the peace flotilla. If I am in charge of doing that for the Israeli Navy, I am going to assume these people are smart and are deliberately trying to provoke a crazy response from my sailors and soldiers that will produce ready-for-television images that both isolate Israel within the international community and further raise the ire of the Arabic-speaking and Islamic worlds. I mean, that is my base assumption for what this group is trying to do. So naturally, the last thing I would want my forces to do would be to overreact, right? It's like when your convoy gets fired on inside a crowded market: the last thing you want to do is return fire with 7.62mm, killing a bunch of civilians and giving the enemy exactly the effect he was looking for.

If something does go wrong, meanwhile, I am going to have a response ready. I am going to have my very best spokespersons on international and Israeli television. I am most certainly not going to let people like Danny Ayalon provide my government's response, right? Because a live wire like Ayalon -- who the Turks already hate, with an understandable passion -- will just say something incredibly crazy like how the people in the aid flotilla were terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda. (Even if you can prove this is somehow true, everyone you need to be speaking to right now -- the international community, the Turkish people, the Arabic-speaking world -- is just going to think you are nuts for saying it or will roll their eyes and say, "Oh, of course he's saying that.")

In reality, what happened today is the Israelis got their butts handed to them. The Israeli response to this aid flotilla was a fabulous gift to Hamas and Iran. (Try to imagine, if you will, the Israelis trying to go before the U.N. Security Council to gather support for sanctions on the Iranian regime right now. They would be more likely to leave New York with sanctions on their own regime!)

Again, I really have little interest in Israel and Palestine given the way in which people on both sides tend to fling accusations of anti-Semitism, war crimes, terrorist-sympathizing, fascism, etc. But as a student of low-intensity conflict and information operations, one really does have to marvel at the incredible own goal the Israelis have just scored. The fact that Hamas and its allies didn't even have to do a thing to earn it is what I find to be most remarkable. Not that they care what I think, but the Israelis should not be talking about the people on the aid flotilla right now. They should be examining themselves and their response and asking how they hell they fumbled this so badly.

I don't really have all that much analysis to add to the allegations that Syria has transfered Scud missiles to Hizballah. So let me just contribute two points:

1. Acquiring scuds from Syria would give Hizballah some interesting options in the event of another conflict with Israel. In the past, Hassan Nasrallah has articulated a kind of measured response to Israeli attacks: You bomb southern Lebanon, we rocket northern Israel. You bomb the southern suburbs, we rocket Haifa. You bomb Beirut proper, we rocket Tel Aviv. Hizballah's ability to do the latter, of course, depends entirely on whether or not they have the capability to do so and whether or not the IAF is able to knock out Hizballah's long-range rockets early enough in the conflict (as the IAF claims to have done in 2006). So for Hizballah to have a credible deterrent, Israel has to know they have long-range rockets.
2. The problem with this, of course, is that the next Israel-Lebanon war starts when either a) Hizballah or Israel does something stupid or b) Hizballah acquires "equilibrium-breaking" weaponry like powerful long-range rockets or anti-aircraft weaponry. Israel might decide, in the event of the latter, that it must act preemptively and that the very fact that Hizballah possesses such weapons is casus belli enough.

So everyone hold your breath. Because this is how wars start.

The debate over whether or not Lady Gaga or Israeli settlements is a bigger driver of conflict and anti-Americanism in the Middle East has heated up in spectacularly hilarious fashion since Brett Stephens wrote his original op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, and I responded by posting videos of Haifa Wehbe, noting that sex and pop culture already mix in the Arabic-language public space almost as much as they do in ours. Stephens responded to some of the criticism that's been aimed his way here and makes the perfectly uncontroversial claim that America should stand up for its principles, its liberties, and its allies. Well... yeah. (The unasked and more controversial question is whether or not confronting Israel on settlements is good or bad for both U.S. and Israeli security.)

One point I made in my post, though, was that those whose understanding of the strands and evolution of Islamist thought is that of a learned amateur should be very careful holding forth on the subject and using the writings of people like Sayyid Qutb as evidence to support their claims. Someone with a more sophisticated grasp of the literature is likely to make your life miserable, which is one reason why I keep my mouth shut on the subject. Thomas Hegghammer briefly weighed in through the comments section of my post, and as I amended the post to make clear, I follow two rules concerning the study of Islamist ideologies:

1. Thomas Hegghammer's analysis is correct.
2. When you believe that Thomas Hegghammer's analysis is incorrect, refer back to Rule #1.

Read what Thomas wrote on Foreign Policy in response to Stephens. It's not that Palestine is the only issue Islamists care about, but it is an issue they care about, and in a big way. And that has potential consequences for policy-makers as they try to reduce drivers of conflict and lower levels of anti-Americanism in the region. Pretending otherwise, or walling all issues concerning Israel and the Palestinians off from your analysis, is just silly.