At first blush, what follows may not seem like a very pro-pie set of statements. Many, including me, have resoundingly criticized Israel's approach to their issues with the Palestinians, including the decision to cut off relations following the electoral victory of Hamas. After all, as Ismail Haniya pointed out, their position on Israel is not all that different from Sharon's towards Palestine before he took power. The decision to give greater weight to Hamas' misdeeds than its social services and pragmatic anti-corruption positions will likely go down in history as a mistake. Sharon did more for a Palestinian state that Rabin, and the Western press at least has always been happy to make a sharp distinction between Fatah and its Al Aqsa wing. The Soviet Union held the destruction of capitalism and worldwide imposition of Bolshevism among its goals, we signed multiple treaties with them. As Thomas Barnett frequently points out, it is engagement, not isolation, that leads to behavior changes. However, for all that is was a series of diplomatic mistakes that led us to this point, it's time to ask where we go from where we are, rather than where we ought to be.
Perhaps the historical comparison isn't perfect, but replace "Olmert" with "Churchill" and "Beersheba" with "London", and all the talk about proportional response to one side sending rockets into the other's cities is really pretty clear: firebomb their cities and kill off all the draft-age men
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This is a point which the Economist does not make in their recent Leader on the subject. Unlike the US which has the luxury of distance in defeating an adversary that doesn't follow the normal rules of war, Israel is fighting its neighbors who have effectively declared total war. Worse, it is also fighting a proxy war against the Iranians, and perhaps the Russians, both of whom are probably very interested in seeing the capabilities of the next generation of smart bombs.
It is worth saying right now that I do not lightly condemn everyone in the world's most densely populated area to death, and in fact sincerely hope it does not come to that. Hamas won the latest Palestinian election on an anti-corruption platform, with their populist and foolish stance on Israel a little crowd pleaser to warm up a rally, much like a Sarah Palin rally beginning with someone shouting "Barack HUSSEIN! Obama" to an all-white crowd of neophobes. However, any government committed to the destruction of another state must be met with force sufficient to end that threat.
The use of consistently better intelligence and smaller, smarter warheads was supposed to make war cleaner, shorter and less damaging. However, as the last 50yrs have shown, Clausewitz was right: "The military power must be destroyed, that is, reduced to such a state as not to be able to prosecute the war." Hamas has made it clear that as long as its people are able, it will send rockets into Israel. The question then, is how to change that. History teaches that direct occupation by Israel can prevent the firing of rockets, but an incursion at this point invites a repeat of 2006. Looking at the history of proxy wars, being the state not buffered by a proxy means being on the losing side, whether it's the US, USSR or Israel. Once an industrialized power has to commit its troops to fighting a vastly larger population with a dedicated core willing to see everyone around them die, it has lost. The only victory I know of in such a circumstance, and it's a shaky one at best, is the use of locals to fight on your side.
Okay, so who's Israel going to arm and send into Gaza to clean out Hamas? Well, there's a tricky question. As mentioned above, it's the Western press that regularly differentiates between Fatah and its Martyr's Brigade, not the Israelis. Collaborating with Israel is effectively a death sentence in Palestine, making an "awakening" rather unlikely, unless it's funded by Saudi Arabia. Again, do you really want a potentially hostile power building an army on your doorstep just because they're less hostile right now?
Sadly, the long-term PMCIN increasing options are limited to several very bad ones. One is to begin firebombing the Gaza Strip in response to rocket attacks, since no Gazans means no rockets. In addition to terrible humanitarian consequences, that hurts Israel's relations with the world that does not want to see first world countries engaged in mass killing. Another is to simply continue with the air strikes, as they cost Israel almost nothing, and after a while it will simply become background to other problems on the world stage. A more creative option might be to try and co-opt Russian support by offering to bomb the hell out of Iranian oil terminals in exchange for them suspending nuclear help (boosting oil prices while forcing the Iranians to ship their oil through Russia).
History provides no examples that I know of where the legit combatant state only attacked the proxies and won. So, if you really want a "proportional response" from Israel at this point that meets both Clausewitz's and Just War Theory's requirements, look to the skies over Iran and Syria. If there were ever a time for a US-led diplomatic mission to both, it would be now.
4 comments:
I hope you're wrong, but I fear you're not.
Take a look at the UK's Cold War era counter-insurgency campaign in Malaysia for an example of how an 'unbuffered' nation can win a proxy war.
As for what to do about Gaza, I'm leaning toward the position of just giving it to Egypt. Rocketing Israel would be pointless (since the popular support is based on the goal of independence from Israeli hegemony) and I'm fairly sure their ordinance can't hit Cairo from Gaza.
I say this only half in jest.
Well, yes, when you're willing to get into Colonial-era atrocities, counter-insurgency is a bit easier. Actually, that the "Dresden" approach to the problem, or perhaps the "Tokyo" approach, seeing as that firebombed city had military value.
In the next decade or so, the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is but a part, will be running Egypt and/or Syria, and be hugely influential in Jordan. Israel itself isn't producing or attracting enough Jews to keep up a majority Jewish state past 2040 or 2050. Most Israeli politicians are happy to say that, behind closed doors, today's Arab leaders want to squash Hamas, because if they get legitimacy, then the MB's power grows in their countries. The long game here has to be to co-op the moderates among that group, or there will be a serious clash of civilizations.
Atrocities is a bit much... granted the British were rather ruthless in Malaysia, but the basic premise was to protect the general population and thereby socially and politically isolate the militants. Same basic idea we've been pursuing in Iraq the last couple years - and which has been moderately successful.
As for Israel, though: in all seriously, they can't hope to survive while adhering to modern international law and norms, nor can they hope to survive without major international aid - particularly in military hardware and technology. It's a Catch 22. In many ways Israel is the modern re-incarnation of Outremer, and suffers from the same basic problem: outnumbered, surrounded, and lacking in strategic depth, it can't keep population replacement high enough to stay viable in the long term. My money is on it ultimately failing, just like the Normans did.
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