Israel-Lebanon War--A Post Mortem

The ceasefire has been implemented. David Ignatius writes:

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is getting bashed at home for failing to deliver a quick victory over Hezbollah. But he deserves credit for recognizing the need for a political settlement that enhanced the authority of the Lebanese state. He wisely resisted pressure from his generals to mount a major ground offensive north of the Litani River, understanding that this quest for a decisive military solution would only take Israel deeper into the Lebanese quagmire.

In Alloyed and Annealed, I wrote:

If Israel pursues its military solution, nobody gets what they want -- even if Hezbollah is virtually destroyed. Israel cannot get what it wants militarily.

I predicted a political solution that would strengthen the Lebanese government while discrediting Hezbollah in Lebanese politics. I wrote:

Basically, we have to make this fight end in a victory for the Lebanese government, and in a defeat for the Hezbollah. The Lebanese need to feel saved by the democrats, and betrayed by the Islamists. As Rice says, "The most important thing that this does for the process is that it shows a Lebanese government that is functioning as a Lebanese government. That is in and of itself extremely important."

Ignatius reports that this is exactly what is happening:

The surprise hero of the conflict was Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. He was a forceful advocate for the Lebanese people and for the very idea of the Lebanese state -- no small achievement in a nation still recovering from civil war. He managed to hold his government together, including the two Cabinet members from Hezbollah. And he was the architect of key elements of the final cease-fire deal: He urged one quick U.N. resolution, rather than the two the Americans and French favored; and he successfully argued for an expansion of the existing UNIFIL force to accompany the Lebanese army in the south, rather than an entirely new international force.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah is in a catch-22:

As the war dragged on, most pundits judged the group's leader Hasan Nasrallah the big winner. But that will be true, paradoxically, only if he abides by the deal Siniora made and withdraws his armed fighters from south Lebanon. ...

If Nasrallah doesn't behave more responsibly and abide by the new U.N. framework, both he and Lebanon are doomed.

This will put enormous political pressure on Nasrallah. If he succumbs to the pressure and allows the Lebanese Army to control the border area, he and Hezbollah will lose their raison d'etre as a militant organization. If he chooses to pound his chest and instigate another crisis, Hezbollah will be disarmed by Israel, Lebanon, or the international community, and will thereafter be utterly discredited politically.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese democrats are consolidating their newfound prestige:

Parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri has accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of trying to rob Lebanon of its "victory" against
Israel while failing to fight for the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

"He wants to be a partner in the confrontation against the Israeli occupation, but we would have hoped that he practiced this partnership on the occupied Golan Heights front," he said to loud applause on Thursday.

[Walid] Jumblatt hailed the deployment of government troops to south Lebanon for the first time in decades earlier Thursday.

"After 33 days of Israeli bombardments, we were targeted two days ago with another kind of bombardment ... as the master of the (presidential) palace in Damascus decided to address the Lebanese with a speech.

"There is a neighboring president who is threatening to destroy the political set-up in Lebanon because he can not digest the Lebanese people's decision to throw out his corruption and troops from Lebanon," he said.

For the Lebanese democrats, attacking Syria indirectly attacks the legitimacy of Hezbollah, and directly augments their own.

The democrats are the victors, having foiled Israel's military plans and having induced a ceasefire, and now they are cashing in on their political capital. This is a strategic victory for the Bush Doctrine.

Ignatius, however, has one complaint:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was lamentably slow in her initial diplomatic efforts, and the United States has paid a severe price in the credibility of its Mideast "democracy agenda.'' But Rice and her colleagues improved their performance as the crisis deepened, and they did well in brokering the final deal. And I sense the administration has learned a big lesson -- which is that America must continue the aggressive diplomatic role it belatedly embraced over the past month.

Surprisingly for such a smart guy, I think Ignatius misses the point. When speaking of the dilemmas facing US foreign policy during the Korean War, Kissinger wrote:

The simplest and most easily comprehensible war aim would have been a literal application of the Security Council resolutions--to push North Korean forces back to their starting point along the 38th Parallel. But if there was to be no penalty for aggression, how was future aggression to be discouraged? If potential aggressors came to understand that they would never do worse than the status quo ante, containment might turn into an endless progression of limited wars that would deplete America's strength.

It was of paramount importance that Hezbollah be punished for its aggression. We could not allow a situation to develop where Israel was forced into a premature ceasefire that did not significantly alter the strategic status quo ante. Therefore, we needed to buy Israel time to do what it could.

Jed Babbin thinks UN Resolution 1701 is an unmitigated defeat for Israel and the West (thanks to Marc Schulman at American Future for the heads-up):

From America's and Israel's actions, a clear message was sent to the state sponsors of terrorism: neither the United States nor its allies are at all serious about defeating and disarming terrorists. The scope of victories the West can achieve over terrorists is defined by the limits of what the Arab League will insist upon in the UN. All the West's military might is powerless against a highly motivated, well-funded and well-trained adversary who refuses to stand and fight on the conventional battlefield. The only reason this is true is because we are too irresolute to match the enemy's determination to win. We—and the Israelis—choose to not apply the force we have in a manner that will achieve the effect we say we desire.

In Marc's comment section, I wrote:

That’s absurd. The United States is committed to changing the political reality in the Middle East, which, in theory, is the only way to defeat a ‘mass movement’ of grass roots religious extremism. The gains of the Cedar Revolution had to be preserved, and that is what drove our policy. The worst outcome would have been a dissolution of Lebanon’s democracy and a return of the politics of the AK-47. That would have put Syria and Hezbollah right at the front of the power line, for as far into the future as one can see.

The Arab League will be called upon to support our line at the UN vis-a-vis Iran. Perhaps Babbin knows a world where diplomacy does not entail at least a modicum of quid pro quo, but it’s not the one we’re living in.

So did we win? On July 29th, I wrote:

Siniora's government would win by carrying the honor of its people -- it would be the David who drove back the Israeli Goliath -- and by delivering stability and prosperity afterwards. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq would all get what they want, too: a politically and militarily quarantined Hezbollah, and an isolated and receding Iran, all while maintaining street cred with their people by demanding an end to the violence. It would be a major victory in the war on terror.

Lebanon needs to alloy its trauma with triumph and relief, and the democratic Lebanese government needs to be annealed.

It would be a brilliant move, if we could pull it off.

So far, it must be said that we played our cards exactly right.

Now, our pieces are set for an all out diplomatic confrontation with Iran.

In The Unremarkable Strategy, I addressed the warping effect Iran was having on our current diplomacy. That was an analysis that I had not seen elsewhere, but I think it's beginning to pick up steam. This is Noah Pollak giving one cheer for the ceasefire:

Undoubtedly, the most important and highest-priority U.S. and Israeli objective in the Middle East today is thwarting Iran’s nuclear-weapons project. This basic calculus is the context in which American and Israeli Middle East strategic thinking takes place today.

If the U.S. is to strike Iran, Israel must be deterred from being provoked into the conflict and jeopardizing the abstention of other Arab states from interference in the clean execution of the mission and its aftermath. ... The way Iran would drag Israel into the war and dramatically complicate the U.S. mission would be through Hezbollah, which until recently was firmly entrenched on Israel’s northern border, fully armed and spoiling for a fight. Thus, even given Israel’s curtailed and incomplete war against Hezbollah, the U.S.’s — and arguably, Israel’s — primary objective in the conflict has been accomplished: creating a state of affairs in which Iran cannot use Hezbollah to drag Israel into the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, incite Arab opposition to the U.S., and threaten a global energy crisis.

But why stop Israel now? Wouldn’t all of the benefits to the American-Israeli strategic position be even further solidified by a more complete destruction of Hezbollah? Perhaps. But there are complications: One is the unrest the conflict is causing in Iraq. The U.S. doesn't need Muqtada al-Sadr to feel any more emboldened than he already does. Moreover, American pressure on Israel to stop the war is likely a concession to Europe and the U.N. in advance of needing (or believing to need) those alliances to be healthy in anticipation of the Iran confrontation. Also, the Cedar Revolution and the partial wresting of Syria out of Lebanon are two of the most tangible victories of the Bush administration’s Middle East democratization project. A continued Israeli assault on Lebanon that is seen by Lebanon’s ostensibly pro-Western Christians, Druze, and Sunnis as being needless American-approved destruction threatens the sympathies of the nascent Lebanese moderates. In particular, France retains some prestige in Lebanon and can be useful in preventing the reversal of U.S. accomplishments there. Pressuring Israel is a way to give the Europeans and the U.N. something they want now in return for something the U.S. wants later, which is a basic level of unity and fortitude in dealing with Iran.

Finally, one of the most surprising occurrences in the past month was the hostility expressed by the Sunni Arab world to Shia Hezbollah’s provocation. The importance of this should not be understated: Arab regimes like Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia actually publicly condemned other Arabs who were fighting against Israel. Why? Because the Sunni regimes are worried about the ascendance of a Shia alliance comprised of Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran that could manipulate the region with proxy terrorist armies (such as Hezbollah) operating under the safety of an Iranian nuclear umbrella. The Sunni states dislike Hezbollah and Iran enough to condemn the “adventuresome” attack against Israel, but detest Israel enough — and are sufficiently aware of the contours of their own domestic public opinion — to oppose a protracted Israeli reprisal. Given their fear of a nuclear Shia Middle East, the Sunni states can likely be counted on to tacitly accept a U.S. strike on Iran. Hence, pressure from them to make their acquiescence to an Iran operation contingent on U.S. endorsement of the ceasefire, in the interest of pacifying their publics.

Since that is exactly what I've been saying, I'm going to have to say that Pollak is exactly right.