Arms and influence

Bluster, methinks

Armchair Generalist wonders if Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's mush-mouthed mumblings about "drastic measures" if Iran does not remove the Farsi word for nuclear from its vocabulary is just bluster, or something worse. I vote for bluster, in large part because of Olmert's own political problems.

Olmert is under pressure to resign, most immediately because of a corruption scandal, but also because of lingering anger over the failed 2006 mini-war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Back then, Israeli reservists had assembled a petition demanding Olmert's resignation, a sign of how low Olmert's national security credentials had dropped. Olmert's posture as being strong on defense took another beating earlier this year, with the publication of a report highly critical of how Olmert and top IDF commanders misconceived and mismanaged the Lebanon war. At that point, a majority of Israelis polled said that Olmert should resign.

Fortunately for Olmert, he can count on other people's stupidity to buttress his own. First, as the Generalist point out, there are Israel's friends:

SecState Condi Rice talks about extending America's nuclear deterrence "shield" over Israel as a warning to Iran (or any other adversarial nation) not to consider using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against that country. It's not necessary for two reasons. First, the Cold War is over. No one's impressed by the paper tiger of threatened nuclear immolation. Second, Israel's leadership is scary enough with its 150 nuclear devices - they really don't need our "assistance" other than the $2-3 billion we give them, despite their continued disruptive behavior.

Even better, there are the obliging enemies of Israel, such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmenidijad, who may have made fewer threatening statements in the direction of Israel, but hasn't exactly shut up completely. So, the verbal exchanges between Tel Aviv and Tehran continue.

Therefore, there's every reason to think that Olmert is more than willing to turn up the volume about Iranian threats to drown out the clamor about his deeply troubled prime ministership. It's unclear how successful this effort will be, however. Not even the White House is happy with Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz's statement that an Israeli strike on Iran was "unavoidable." Israelis are fimmediately worried about events in Gaza more than Iranian nuclear plans (whatever they really are). In other words, Olmert can't count on everyone's stupidity, all the time.

 

Time to regroup?

Hamas’ seizure of the Gaza Strip is either the biggest opportunity for progress in the Middle East, or it’s the door that Middle Easterners have slammed in the faces of any outsiders who want to have an influence on events in the region. Either way, it’s the Palestinians who need to decide.

What a tangled web
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the major challenge to compartmentalizing any question about the Middle East. Sure, the connection between Hamas fighters and Iraqi insurgents may be tenuous at best, and there may be nothing that really binds the West Bank and Gaza to the Straits of Hormuz and the Golan Heights. However, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict matters to the potentially restive populations of Middle Eastern states. Not only do these regimes worry about how events in the Occupied Territories can inflame discontent within their own borders, but they have realized how invoking the Palestinian cause can be a useful diplomatic tool, particularly with Europe and the United States. Sometimes, the statement, “I’d love to talk to you about this other issue, but we need to show some progress on the Palestinian question,” is sincere; at other times, it’s a cynical but highly effective dodge.

Unfortunately, the US government has little progress to show on this front of its Middle Eastern policy. During the first half of this decade, the Bush Administration (and, by extension, the extremely uninterested and inert Congress) had hardly anything to say to the Israelis and Palestinians, other than some words of support to the Sharon government. In the last year or so, some portions of the Bush Administration, in particular Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, have been more “actively engaged.” However, the appearance of work isn’t the same as actual progress, or real willingness to exert serious pressure on both sides. The moment of truth came during Israel’s 2006 assault on Hezbollah. While Israeli aircraft and artillery flattened communities in southern Lebanon, American leaders, Rice included, did little to constrain the violence, waiting instead for the Israeli Defense Forces to decide when to stop.

Bunkering up
Part of American unwillingness to restrain Israel was the Administration’s new policy, based on an even closer partnership with the Saudi and Israeli governments, constituting a major tilt towards Sunni factions in different Middle Eastern conflicts. Since Hezbollah was both Shi’ite and heavily supported by Iran, it would have been highly surprising if the Bush Administration, grasping at any new regional strategy that might work, had put the brakes on Israel’s assault—except, of course, if American decision-makers looked more closely at the details of what was happening. 2006 may go down in the history books as the year when, at least for the time being, the United States lost any hope of being an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, given how much latitude the White House was willing to give its Israeli ally.

It would be a grave mistake to assume that, as a neutral or biased outsider, the United States could have stopped the fissure between Hamas and Fatah from breaking wide open. The choice between these two factions is odious to many Palestinians, so the United States had little power to make either side appear as the better standard-bearer for the Palestinian cause. Fatah is pickled in corruption and cynicism; ironically, Hamas is repeating the mistakes of a younger Fatah, displaying neither interest nor skill at the more compromising political strategy needed to escape the political margins. Revolutionary confrontation feels good, but it doesn’t convince the Israelis or anyone else that Hamas should be trusted to govern even the tiniest of states.

Many Israelis had already doubted that the Palestinians were capable of elevating a generation of leaders interested in making the fabled “final settlement” that would give Palestinians statehood and Israelis security, while also being able to deliver on the Palestinians’ part of the agreement. Hamas’ coup in Gaza seems to confirm these doubts. An even more fundamental question now arises: is there any one faction or coalition capable of representing all Palestinians? If not, the Israelis will “bunker up” until that situation changes.

Likely paralysis
For those who think that the Israelis might seize on this moment to reach a settlement with Fatah about the West Bank, don’t hold your breath. Two obstacles stand in the way. First, the Israelis know that they can’t stop Palestinians from moving between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, unless Israel is willing to sever all family, business, and other tie between Palestinians living in these two regions. Second, an agreement about Jerusalem that does not include the representatives of a sizeable fraction of Palestinians is no agreement at all.

The United States might benefit for a short time from the Palestinian fissure. Many regional governments, including the Saudis, were already tired of the Palestinians’ political intransigence. US officials might make some short-term progress on other issues, without looking over their shoulders. However, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will return. If no one invokes it, there will be some new crisis—a shooting, bombing, hostage-taking, whatever—that will bring this ongoing tragedy to the forefront again.
Given the Bush Administration’s partiality to Israel, and disinterest in the Palestinian conflict, it’s hard to imagine US leaders jumping into the thick of the Hamas-Fatah conflict to help resolve it. With Iraq continuing to soak up resources and attention, it’s even harder to imagine that scenario. However, as long as the regional equation does not change, and the Israeli-Palestinian question has the power to complicate other issues, even the best outcome in Iraq will be, from a regional standpoint, only a holding action.

Hell, no, Ehud won't go

In parliamentary systems, a vote of no confidence forces the prime minister from office. The commission that pilloried Ehud Olmert and his cabinet for the failures of the 2006 war in Lebanon was a de facto vote of confidence, even though the Knesset has yet to deliver a decisive de jure vote. (The no confidence votes have already started. Now, it's just a question of which vote will topple the government.) The commission has created the clear political excuse for members of the governing coalition to defect on some convenient issue.

Not just a man, but a party
Does Olmert's refusal to resign make good political sense? So far, the focus has been on what will happen to Olmert. However, his defiance has as much to do with his party's political fortunes as his own. There are serious doubts about the future of the Kadima Party, were Olmert to rout from the prime ministership.

Kadima, as you might remember, is the creation of Ariel Sharon, who invited political opponents like Shimon Peres to join the new centrist party. New political parties often cannot survive without their founders--for example, see what happened to the Reform Party after Ross Perot lost interest in it.  Without Sharon, Kadima might have collapsed from infighting, but didn't; without Olmert as prime minister, Kadima might die from irrelevance.

While Kadima held together under Olmert, it didn’t exactly prosper. For example, the best that Israelis could hope for, with regards to the Palestinians, was a continued “wait and see” policy. The kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, an incident involving both Palestinian and Lebanese militants, led to Olmert’s decision to go to war with Hezbollah.

Wars rarely start for purely foreign policy reasons, and in the Second Lebanon War, domestic politics played a very large part. Olmert personally had no military credentials, so his ability to handle a security crisis was in question. However, it would be a mistake to overlook the Kadima Party as a factor in Olmert’s hasty decision. Had he failed to respond effectively to the kidnapping and Hezbollah shelling of Israeli settlements, not only Olmert, but his fledgling party, might have fallen from the Israeli political stage.

Olmert obviously sees the commission report from the same perspective as the Second Lebanon War, a trial of strength. By refusing to resign, he hopes to delay his political fall long enough to manufacture some new success, such as a major agreement with the Palestinians. Meanwhile, his Party wants to stay in power, even though some may seek to replace to replace Olmert as prime minister.

The IDF’s report card
With the focus on Olmert, it’s easy to overlook the commission’s criticism of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). For the second time, the IDF has bungled its strategy, at the theater and operational levels, fighting in Lebanon. Certainly, chasing Hezbollah missiles out of range of Israeli civilians was necessary. Flattening Lebanon in pursuit of an unlikely outcome, the elimination of Hezbollah, was hardly the right approach. Hezbollah did suffer serious casualties and losses of materiel. However, Hezbollah will rise again—in part because southern Lebanon is now off-limits to Israel, given the political backlash from last year’s war.

Perhaps the most important changes in Israel, therefore, will be in the IDF. Rather than put an air force officer in charge of ground operations, the Cabinet and the IDF might be having second thoughts about who’s running the armed forces. Israelis will also have to face the reality that technological advantages in areas like air power don’t necessarily translate into the results they want. Unfortunately, future campaigns are more likely to resemble the First Lebanon War than the largely conventional battles in 1967 and 1973.

The uncomfortably near future
Hezbollah’s leaders might miscalculate, provoking Israel into righteous wrath. Even if Olmert were to reach a deal with Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah over the rocket attacks on northern Israel, a few independent-minded Hezbollah fighters can render such an agreement effectively null and void. In other words, Olmert might wait long enough for Hezbollah to become a problem again.

However, the issue that started the 2006 war still hasn’t been resolved. Israelis are angry that their government hasn’t recovered the two hostages, bungling their rescue at a previously unimaginable scale. That, more than many other grand strategic priorities, is what’s making the clock tick down for Ehud Olmert.

Can't stop

IN THE NEWS
Chirol at ComingAnarchy.com kinda gets the situation in Lebanon, and kinda doesn't. Here's a quote:

Israel understands that their only option is complete victory. Anything less than the destruction of Hizballah as a terrorist group (i.e. their armed wing) will only strengthen them and weaken Israel.

Except, the way this war is being fought, Israel won't destroy Hezbollah. Not only was this war poorly planned and executed, but it's also clear that Israel is running out of time.

However, the biggest problem with Olmert's strategy--at least, the maximalist version of it, which Chirol seems to advocate--is that Israel has never believed that it could annihilate its enemies. That's a wise assumption underlying Israeli grand strategy: no matter what the level of threat, Israel's response has never depended on the complete destruction of its enemies. In spite of constant PLO attacks and repeated attempts by hostile Arab governments to crush Israel militarily, no Israeli cabinet ever made the obliteration of its enemies the definition of victory. However, Israel has clearly won most of its wars.

Chirol hits closer to the truth with this statement:

The only other option is to create a large enough buffer zone inside Lebanon to protect Israel in the future which, however, would only continue the tit for tat fighting further north.

However, Chirol undermines his own analysis by making it sound as though this "minimalist" version of the Olmert strategy is equivalent to automatic defeat:

Indeed, what American Left, U.N. and Europeans fail to understand in their knee jerk reaction is that a cease fire would be an automatic victory for Hizballah. As a 4GW movement, they need only to stay in the game to win.

That generalization about guerilla organizations is true--to a point. Insurgents make mistakes. Had Israel responded more deftly to the kidnapping of its soldiers and the rocket attacks on its civilians, Hezbollah might have faced even greater animosity from the majority of Lebanese, sick of being dragged into war by armed factions like Hezbollah. Had Israel not muddled the moral dimension of the conflict with its meat cleaver methods, Iran and Syria might be having a harder time supporting Hezbollah. Instead, the disproprtionate focus of Lebanese civilians, Israeli voters, and foreign diplomats is on Israel's methods, Israel's mistakes, Israel's real agenda in the current conflict.

Guerrillas and terrorists often lose. They can't win if they don't "stay in the game," but short-term survival does not immunize them from their own long-term mistakes. Unfortunately, the governments that revolutionaries are trying to defeat often obligingly make their own, bigger mistakes--as Israel has in the current war.

Israeli airpower on trial

IN THE NEWS
As I noted in a post last week, the Israeli Defense Forces have been increasingly reliant on airpower as an instrument of its counterinsurgency and counterterrorism strategies. For example, in 2001, Israeli helicopters were the tool of choice for assassinating Massoud Ayyad, a commander in Force 17, the section of Fatah that protected Yassir Arafat. Later that year, a helicopter attack was also responsible for killing Jamil Jaddala, a Hamas leader. The list of air strikes designed to kill the leaders of Fatah, the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade, Fatah, and Hezbollah is large. Therefore, in 2006, it's no surprise that the IDF turned to airpower again to fight its enemies.

Airstrikes have backfired before, but never as horribly as in Lebanon in the last few weeks. Israel seems to be making the same mistake that the United States did in Vietnam: "Better to send a bullet than a man." However, the bullet can only destroy. Defeating Hezbollah will require more than just property damage, a body count of guerrilla fighters, and a growing list of civilian casualties. Unfortunately, the Olmert government seems convinced that, having launched a failed strategy, their only choice is to see it to its conclusion.

[Thanks to Armchair Generalist for the link to the Haaretz article.]

Unashamed, part I

IN THE NEWS
Lately, I've been worried that many Americans has reached a tacit conclusion about their own government that's completely incorrect and unjustified. The same willingness to give the benefit of the doubt, in spite of clear warning signs that severe doubt is justified, is in operation now, just as it was in 2003. The thinking, such as it is today, runs something like this:

• Surely, the Bush Administration must acknowledge that it made horrendous mistakes in Iraq.
• Of course, anyone who recognizes mistakes of this magnitude would avoid repeating them.
• Obviously, US foreign policy in Iraq, as well as other parts of the Middle East, must now be constrained be guided less by wishful thinking (a polite term for what Thomas Ricks calls "adventurism"), and more by cautious pragmatism.

Unfortunately, this line of thinking starts with an unjustified premise—the President and his senior advisors believe the axioms and corollaries of their foreign policy in the first term to be wrong—and builds an unsustainable edifice of hope on this weak foundation. If the American electorate needs proof that the Bush Administration is unrepentant and recalcitrant, we need only look at the last couple of weeks of news coming from Lebanon.

First, it's important to understand the Bush foreign policy from the perspective of the most influential members of the Administration—Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Perle, et al.--who crafted it. This recent article in Salon does a good job of explaining their mindset, so I won't repeat their summary of the neoconservative Weltanschauung here. Suffice it to say that, in their minds, the problem wasn't the strategy itself, but inadequate opportunities to take it as far as they believed it should go—not only to Baghdad, but also to Damascus and Tehran.

Once again, we're left with less information than we should have about our own government. While that's partially the result of the Bush Administration's psychotic obsession with secrecy, it's also the fault of the press for not following up on important stories. Since Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice began her global "let's keep Israel fighting" tour, journalists have focused on the question, Why has the United States been blocking efforts to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah? However, that question is only the shadow cast by a much larger concern: Why are US officials urging Israel to expand the war to Syria?

Without understanding the mindset of influential people inside the Administration, such as Eliot Abrams, or currently outside of it, such as Richard Perle, the idea of asking Israel to attack Syria seems crazy. However, if you take the perspective of Abrams and Perle and assume that it's shared by people in the White House, the President included, the notion of attacking Syria makes perfect sense. (Of course, by "sense," I mean, "whatever seems to logically connect facts and interpretations." Unfortunately, we're talking about people whose interpretations of Middle Eastern politics have proven to be completely wrong, and who casually ignore any inconvenient facts.)

The conditions for sustaining the same strategy that got the United States mired in Iraq still exist. George W. Bush started his presidency with practically no knowledge of foreign affairs, and there's not much sign that he's learned the challenges, pitfalls, and subtleties of international relations during five years on the job. The traditional source of foreign policy advice, the National Security Council, remains a weak institution, more interested in conformity than candor. The Republican-dominated Congress provides no counterweight to Bush's foreign policy, and the Democrats seem incapable of mobilizing any effective opposition. The State Department and the CIA continue to be treated as pariahs, even though US foreign policy can't function without them. Bush's closest advisors, such as Condoleeza Rice, do not seem to be able to convince Bush that his policies in general are leading in a bad direction. The men and women with whom Bush has the closest personal connections, as well as the "wise old men" of his father's foreign policy team, are equally incapable of convincing Bush that some of his less effective subordinates, such as Donald Rumsfeld, need to be restrained or removed.

If people like Perle and Abrams were to get their wish, a broadening of Israel's war to Syria, the results would be an unmitigated disaster. Israel would be completely on its own, attacking a country that is not playing a direct part in the current clash with Hezbollah. Obviously, Syria has been Hezbollah's patron for decades, but that's a thin pretext for war with Syria.

The most that US troops in neighboring Iraq could do is watch. Already overstretched, the US military is re-deploying to concentrate on central Iraq, Baghdad in particular. However, even if the troop strength existed to assist the Israelis, the political basis for such assistance does not exist. The US public is likely to be outraged at the expansion of its own ongoing war in Iraq, which an increasing majority of Americans do not support. Diplomatically, the United States has had good reason to avoid fighting alongside the Israelis. US and Israeli troops fighting in tandem would end any hope of the United States playing the role as honest broker in Middle Eastern affairs, except if the survival of Israel were immediately at stake. Needless to say, two kidnapped soldiers and harassing rocket attacks do not amount to the imminent destruction of Israel.

However, nothing I said in the last paragraph means that the Bush Administration wouldn't commit a grievous mistake, if given the opportunity. Fortunately, that opportunity does not seem to exist, in large part because the Israelis are not interested. When Israel pre-emptively attacked Syria in 1967, Syria was part of the Arab coalition mobilizing for an attack on Israel. Attacking Syria now is far less justified, and more likely to shatter any support the Olmert government has for the current war effort. Instead, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have focused on damaging Hezbollah as much as possible before continued attacks become politically unsustainable. The IDF is also trying to "prepare the battlefield" for the next conflict with Hezbollah, by de-populating southern Lebanon. Unless the Olmert government has a sudden change of heart, that's as likely as IDF operations are likely to go.

The fact that the Israelis have resisted American pressure to attack Syria should not be cause for relief, however. The fact of the pressure itself means that the guiding principles of the Bush Administration's Middle East policy have not changed. The bloody stand-off in Iraq has not prompted soul-searching. Instead, the top officials who have the greatest influence over the President are searching for new "opportunities."

Israel's failed strategy

IN THE NEWS
ZenPundit has an excellent post about Israel's war in Lebanon. His conclusion?

The only meaningful strategic goal here for Israel was the total demilitarization of Hezbollah, an objective that coincided with the national interests of not just the U.S. but that of France, and therefore, in a languidly trailing and desultory way, the EU. The key to that objective was Syria, not Lebanon, and making the hapless and ineffectual Lebanese government instead of the "strong", generally unpopular and very "targetable" Syrian regime the focus of Israeli wrath - followed by real negotiations of things Damascus is interested in talking about - was a mistake.

He also touches on an important question. It takes a bit of digging to figure out the answer to this one, so I've been delaying saying anything about this topic until now.

It's pretty clear that Israel's reliance on air strikes is counterproductive. However, it is not a unique failure in this campaign. During the second intifada, the ongoing struggle with Hamas, and even the stand-offs with Arafat in his compound, the Israeli Defense Forces have been increasing their reliance on airpower. For anyone who remembers the Entebbe Raid or has studied Israel's regular cross-border raids into neighboring countries, it looks as though Israel has swapped a scalpel for a meat cleaver as its military instrument of choice.

As ZenPundit argues, the installation of an Air Force officer as the IDF's chief of staff provides a partial explanation for this shift in operational methods. However, it's not the whole story. It's beyond my capabilities to provide a full explanation here today, but it's important to recognize the strategy for what it is--and how different it is from, say, the hard road Israel once traveled in tracking down and eliminating the Black September terrorists responsible for the Munich massacre. That operation may have fallen short of success, but it's preferable to bombing Lebanon into rubble.

It's also important to remember, back in the early days of the Global War On Really Bad People Everywhere And Nowhere, how the White House and top officials in the Department of Defense looked to Israel for lessons on how to handle counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. Given the IDF's increasing reliance on airpower, I worry that they drew the wrong lessons.

From the bayou to Beirut

IN THE NEWS
The Bush Administration has watched as two cities, New Orleans and Beirut, have been destroyed. I spent the last post talking about a moral challenge, proportionality in warfare. I'll spend this post talking about a different moral question: Which are worse, sins of commission, or sins of omission?

Sins of commission can flatten cities. One cost of the German invasion of the Soviet Union was the devastation of Stalingrad, not to mention other Soviet population centers, and millions of Soviet citizens. The German bombardment of Passchendaele created an icon of World War I, the gradual conversion of a typical Western European town into an unrecognizable collection of craters and rubble.

Sins of omission can be just as destructive. I'll spare the reader yet another recounting of the events leading to the flooding of New Orleans. Suffice it to say that, in the most generous interpretation, a city died because of warning signs ignored, preventive measures not taken, and reactions that occurred far too slowly and incompletely. A year later, New Orleans is still suffering from the indifference of the rest of the country. The next hurricane season easily could undo the partial recovery of a city that was a unique cultural treasure, not only for the United States, but the world.

Beirut, too, has fallen prey to sins of omission. In this case, the Bush Administration's foreign policy made a bad situation worse. The primary responsibility for Lebanon's tragedy lies with Hezbollah and Israel. As I've argued earlier, Israel must defend itself, but in the case of Hezbollah, its chosen methods are neither effective nor justified. Hezbollah is about as monstrously self-absorbed a political organization as you can find in the Middle East, happy to profit from a return to the chaos of the 1980s. As culpable as the two parties are (and it's probably worth throwing a couple of other regional powers, such as Iran, into the line-up of suspects), the United States deserves some blame for how this crime occurred, and how much damage it has inflicted.

This article in Slate pins the blame on the unintended ways in which the Bush Administration's Middle East strategy has helped Iran. I don't disagree with the premise, but I don't think it provides the full explanation of what happened to Lebanon. A more complete picture would include the following elements:

• Although the Bush Administration applauds Lebanon's eviction of Syrian security and intelligence forces, there is practically no American assistance to the Lebanese government.
• Hezbollah, seeing itself as a state-within-a-state, operates without any effective opposition from the Lebanese government. The support it receives from Iran emboldens Hezbollah further.
• Since Ariel Sharon left Likud, the Israel government has focused on creating defensible borders over maintaining its control over the Occupied Territories as a bargaining chip with the Palestinians.
• Returning the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians sparks debate in Israel over how safe Israel will be, once it contracts its borders.
• Hamas' kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, followed by Hezbollah's kidnapping of two more, seems to be the realization of the risks many Israelis feared the new strategy would create.
• The kidnappings, combined with other Hezbollah attacks, poses two challenges to Ehud Olmert. At a national level, he needs to respond somehow, to prove that the strategy he inherited from Ariel Sharon was correct. At a personal level, he has to show that, even without the military background most of his predecessors as Israeli prime minister had, he can handle this sort of crisis.
• Israel assaults both Gaza and Lebanon. In both cases, the Israeli objective is clearly more than just the return of the hostages. The Israeli government either wants to hurt Hamas and Hezbollah enough to deter these groups, or cripple them to the point where they present far less of a threat. In other words, Israeli strategy is trying to change its enemies intentions, capabilities, or, preferably, both.
• In Lebanon, Israel's strategy brings widespread death and destruction. Israel is may be trying to do more than just kill Hezbollah fighters. Israel may also be trying to make people in Lebanon think twice about supporting Hezbollah. The Olmert government may also be trying to drive people out of southern Lebanon, making it harder for Hezbollah to operate in secret along Israel's northern border.

Where does the United States fit into this picture? Here's a quick summary of where the United States could have done more to prevent this crisis, and imposed some constraints on it once it started:

• The United States has mired itself in an expensive, open-ended war in Iraq, reducing American leverage elsewhere.
• The Bush Administration's unilateralist approach to Iraq has made potential allies wary of supporting American initiatives elsewhere in the Middle East.
• However, in the case of Israel, the Bush Administration has chosen not to apply its leverage at all. Instead, the Bush foreign policy has, since the second intifada, given Israel more latitude than any previous Administration has granted.
• The Bush Administration also chose to discard what few sources of leverage it might have had with Iran,
• Hezbollah's chief patron. Iran, is enjoying new confidence, having benefited from the rout of the Taliban, the fall of the Iraqi Ba'athist regime, and the United States' vulnerability in Iraq.
• Iran is accruing new sources of power and influence. Aside from advancing its nuclear capabilities, Iran is also enjoying economic overtures from India and Russia, two countries that the Bush Administration has tried to build "special relationships."
• Once the Israeli assault into Lebanon started, the Bush Administration has done nothing to rein in Israel. In fact, the United States was forced to admit that it was providing Israel with new stocks of munitions while Israeli bombs were falling on Lebanon.
• During last week's multinational efforts to get Israel and Hezbollah to agree to a cease-fire, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice appeared to be interfering with these efforts, preferring to give the Israeli government more time to complete its campaign.

The Israelis suspended bombing after killing 37 Lebanese schoolchildren in Qana—certainly not the intended outcome of airpower in "urban warfare," but certainly a predictable one. In other words, three dozen dead children succeeded in slowing down the Israeli assault, where American diplomacy had failed—or did not even try.

It's disturbing to see the world's only superpower react to the devastation of New Orleans and Lebanon with a shrug. Not only does the Bush Administration's detachment not help the Lebanese now, but it also bodes poorly for the future. Sins of commission inspire people to rebuild; sins of omission cast doubts on whether rebuilding is worth the effort.

After World War I, Belgium committed to rebuilding Passchendaele and the neighboring city of Ypres. King Albert I made invested his own name and clout into the King Albert Fund, designed to attract Ypres residents back to the city. In the process, the King made the reconstruction of Ypres a national priority. Armed with pre-war blueprints, builders re-created as many of the original buildings as possible.  Today, many of the medieval buildings in Ypres may not be constructed with the original stones, but Ypres—the buildings and the people—survived the massive artillery bombardments of World War I.

Today, there is nothing like the King Albert Fund for New Orleans. While the reconstruction project may seem daunting, it's by no means impossible. In 1919, Ypres had a population of 40,000, out of Belgium's total population of 7.5 million. In 2005, New Orleans had a population of 500,000, out of the US population of 299 million. In other words, Belgium was able to rebuild a city where 0.5% of its population lived before it was devastated. The United States is certainly capable of rebuilding a city where 0.2% of its population lived, even faced with the unique challenges of the levee system.

If there is no determined effort to rebuild New Orleans, there's even less chance that the US government will be roused to help rebuild Beirut and other Lebanese urban centers. In other words, having been guilty of a sin of omission concerning Israel and its neighbors, there's little chance that the current Administration will feel the need to re-think its approach. After responding to the immediacy of current events, the Administration is more likely to shrug, yet again, and move on. 

From Suez to Lebanon

IN THE NEWS
It's hard to make of the Israeli government's willingness to talk about an international peacekeeping force deployed on the border between Israel and Lebanon. Is this a way to stall for time, as the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) tries to complete the destruction of Hezbollah? Or is this a genuine acquiescence to international pressure?

Either way, it seems as though the pressure is a reality that Israel can no longer ignore. Does that mean that Israel's assault into Lebanon was a success, or a failure?

First, it's important to understand Israeli war aims. A recent Salon article hit the nail on the head: the offensives into Gaza and Lebanon have as much to do with Israeli domestic politics as the real threat that Hamas and Hezbollah pose. In despair since the collapse of the Oslo peace process, Israelis that once voted for peace initiatives are now impatient to see results through more violent means. Ehud Olmert, lacking the military background of some of his predecessors as prime minister, feels the skeptical gaze of the electorate on the back of his neck. Therefore, he gambled on what seemed like "decisive action," expanding the lunge into the Gaza Strip into a lunge into Lebanon.

But what sort of decisive outcome was this action supposed to achieve? Perhaps Olmert gambled on a repeat of the Egyptian strategy in the 1973 Yom Kippur War: start a conflict, draw international attention to issues that were not getting resolved (in 1973, the Israeli occupation of the Sinai Peninsula; in 2006, the freedom of action Hezbollah fighters enjoy in southern Lebanon), don't worry about a military victory, but instead get the rest of the world focused on helping Israel fix the Hezbollah problem. Viewed from this perspective, Secretary of State Rice's trip to meet with Lebanese prime minister Fuad Saniora is a good thing, since it raises the international community's investment in curbing Hezbollah.

Equally plausible is a different strategy, the same one that Israel pursued in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon: seize the opportunity to swiftly crush the guerrillas launching attacks from southern Lebanon into Israel. Tired of rockets falling on Haifa and infiltrators killing Israeli civilians, the IDF launched Operation Peace in Galilee to push the PLO out of Lebanon. However, that conflict ended badly for Israel. The cost--the even more Hobbesian conflict in Lebanon, the invigoration of Hezbollah, the tarnishing of Israel's national self-image--did not justify the only tangible benefit, the migration of the PLO leadership from Beirut to Tunis.

In fact, this conflict might easily turn out as badly for Israel as the Suez Crisis did. In 1956, Israel, France, and Britain believed themselves to be in the right, seizing control of the Suez Canal, which Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized. Surely, Israel calculated, the international community, beyond its immediate British and French allies, would see the need to keep the Suez Canal open to global shipping. Instead, the troika that seized the Canal faced international condemnation. At one of the most contentious times for the US and USSR, the superpower adversaries joined in demanding the immediate withdrawal of Israeli, British, and French forces from the Suez Canal.

Looking at the current Lebanon crisis, it seems a Suez-like outcome is more likely than the Yom Kippur-like one. The rest of the world, the United States and Great Britain in particular, do not have the political, military, or economic resources to invest in a difficult, expensive resolution of the Hezbollah problem. The most the United States can do, under the circumstances, is choose whether or not to denounce Israel. While the United States isn't the only country capable of helping, it doesn't help to have the country with the most influence over Israel in no way capable of sustaining a general diplomatic effort to resolve the Lebanon crisis.

Who knows--the Bush Administration might seize the moment to rebuild the credibility and confidence it lost in Iraq. Or, more likely, the Administration may continue to give the Israelis a free pass in Lebanon, as it has done with other issues, most significantly settlements. As in other matters, the well-understood habits of the Bush Administration seem to be the best guide to its future behavior.

Eyeless in Gaza

IN THE NEWS
In many Middle Eastern countries, conspiracy theories are practically a national sport. Sometimes, the conspiracies are even true.

Such is the case with the stand-off in Gaza. The Palestinian militants holding an Israeli soldier hostage probably wanted something more than their ostensible demands, the release of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners and an end to the Israeli assault in Gaza. In fact, they've already succeeded at achieving their overarching goal, yanking the new Hamas-led government from the brink of peace.

Events are following a predictable, awful course. Israeli troops invade the tiny region of the Gaza Strip. Palestinian militants--those who kidnapped Corporal Gilad Shalit, and others who are capitalizing on this opportunity--make hotly-worded declarations. The Israeli Air Force attacks buildings where the most militant elements of Fatah and Hamas live and work. Innocent bystanders are injured, and the attacks damage the electrical grid. The referendum that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas proposed is quickly forgotten. Just as the siege of Arafat's compound temporarily united quarreling Palestinian factions, the current confrontation forces all Palestinian parties into a united front. The crisis erases any chance that Hamas would move towards a begrudging coexistence with its Israeli neighbor.

What we're seeing is, in a nutshell, the fragility of Israeli-Palestinian politics. At any moment, a single hostage, or a single attack, returns both sides to the default position of bloody conflict. If there is any hope for Israel and the Palestinians, it requires leaders on both sides who can respond differently to familiar provocations. Even without Arafat and Sharon, who indirectly collaborate to destroy any policies with the words "peace process" stamped on them, that conflluence of joint leadership has yet to materialize.