Sensible appraisal of Obama's Iran policy by Nicholas Burns

"The most confounding aspect of our public debate is that we are considering war with a dangerous adversary about whom we know very little. No senior American official has even met Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. There has been virtually no contact between the two governments in 30 years. As undersecretary of state working on Iran policy during President Bush’s second term, I and my colleagues were not permitted to talk to Iranian officials. It went against an elementary lesson I learned as a diplomat - no matter how distasteful, we must talk to governments we don’t like if we want to outsmart them and avoid war. For that very reason, an earlier and much wiser Israeli leader, Yitzhak Rabin, warned memorably, “You don’t make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.’’

......... 

"Obama’s critics would do well to recall two hard facts. First, diplomacy takes time. If Iran doesn’t capitulate within a few weeks, predictable voices will call for war instead. We have time to negotiate before Iran gets perilously close to a nuclear weapons capability. Obama should take that time to figure out if Iran is serious. That is how diplomacy works on an issue as complicated and potentially deadly as this."

Advance Copy--NYT Magazine--"Will Israel Attack Iran?"

Also see:
Pollack: Sliding toward war?
Philip Weiss: Times give platform Iran war advocacy.

Joseph Collins has been observing Afghanistan for 30 years.

Download his new primer for free.  Collins, who was a colleague on the Social Sciences faculty at West Point, is balanced, informed and lucid.

US National debt is in excess of $14 trillion. So consider that the Cost of War project finds that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will end up costing $4,000,000, 000,000 (four trillion).

Project web page offers analyses of economic, human and political costs of these wars.  Or download the executive summary, or the constituent papers.

Is a Lebanon-Israel war coming?

A variety of intellectuals and scholars comment on the possibility and logic for new Israel-Lebanon war centering on the prospect that Israel will launch a new war.  Contributors include Rashid Khalidi, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finklestein, Helena Cobban, John Meirsheimer, Mu'in Rabani, Michael Desch, 'Ashaf Kafuri,  and me.  The war would be a punitive campaign that enacts great punishment on Lebanon, but would be likely to strengthen not weaken Hezbollah, as well fomenting much anti-U.S. sentiment. There is also doubt expressed, notably by Meirsheimer, that the Obama administration would behave very much differently than the recent Bush administration in terms of preventing or ending the war.

As published in al-Akhbar.

Here is my contribution:

We can construct a very rational argument for Israel to maintain the status quo vis-à-vis Lebanon rather than attacking for the ostensible purpose of disarming Hezbollah.  Notwithstanding the tree incident in early August, the border has been very quiet since the 2006 war ended.  With the exception of contested areas of the occupied Golan Heights, notably the Shiba’ farms, the border area was also quiet from the Israeli withdrawal in 2000 until the July 2006.  Since the 1990s the Hezbollah-Israel rules-of-the-game have been well understood and both belligerents have been generally measured in their actions (as opposed to their rhetoric) and reactions.  July-August 2006 was an exception, of course.  

Roiling inter-sectarian tensions, particularly between Shi’is and Sunnis, have erupted in deadly clashes, as they did this week between Hezbollahis and Ahbashis.  Even so, Hezbollah’s resistance narrative is widely supported in the Shi’i community, even if it is derided in some other Lebanese quarters.  The November 2009 ministerial statement that launched the current government embraced the right of “resistance”, while simultaneously and incongruously committing the government to the enforcement of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.  Although naïve commentary in the U.S. focuses on the need for the Lebanese Army to disarm Hezbollah, it is obvious that resistance to Israel is popular in the ranks and in the officer corps, and the prospects for Hezbollah being disarmed by the army are zilch.  

If Israel were to attack Lebanon with the objective of weakening, if not defeating Hezbollah and destroying a significant proportion of the group’s arsenal of rockets and missiles, it runs the risk of falling short.  If so, Hezbollah’s resistance narrative would not be undermined but validated, again.  Israeli military sources have argued recently that Hezbollah has “bases” in  more than 100 villages in the South.  This suggests an Israeli campaign that would wreak even wider destruction than the 2006 war.  A landscape of smoldering ruins across southern Lebanon is more likely to inspire not dampen support for Hezbollah.

In addition, Israel would not be unscathed.  Withering rocket fire in northern Israel would cause the displacement of a million or more Israelis.  If Hezbollah makes good on the promise to retaliate-in-kind for Israeli strikes on Lebanese cities then the dangers will cascade for Israel.

This adds up to a rational case for not attacking Lebanon.  

Perhaps, but there is good reason for concern that the Israelis will not be deterred.

Israel—with very generous U.S. support—is committed to maintaining its military superiority over any combination of regional foes.  In addition, Israeli strategic culture emphasizes the need for Israel to “maintain its deterrence”.  This means that Israel’s foes will not seriously contemplate attacking Israel because their defeat is certain and Israel will inflict disproportionate military power should they try.  The punitive campaign against Gaza in December 2008-December 2009 is an example of the latter.  

Particularly in the case of Hezbollah, Israel faces a re-armed foe that flaunts its contempt for Israeli hegemony.  Given a pretext or a miscalculation, it is not far-fetched to imagine an Israeli war plan premised on a fierce and rapid ground attack and an accompanying devastating air campaign designed to overcome Lebanese resistance in a matter of weeks.  Israel would ostensibly demonstrate that it will not be deterred by Hezbollah.  

If Israel launches an air campaign on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, it is axiomatic that a pre-emptive attack on Lebanon would be on the menu because it is assumed that the first wave of Iranian retaliation would come in the form of Hezbollahi rockets. Both the Bush and the Obama administrations have firmly counseled Israel against bombing Iran, and there is little enthusiasm in the Pentagon for starting a war with Iran.  

Given Israel’s strategic culture and its fixation on “maintaining its deterrence”, an Israeli onslaught into Lebanon would also be justified as thwarting Iran’s hegemonial ambitions while reducing the threat posed to Israel by Hezbollah.  In the Bush White House, Senior National Security Council officials actively encouraged the Gaza War.  The Obama White House is far more likely to urge restraint on Israel, but this will not stop Israel from starting a new war if it elects to do so.

Prudent counsel may prevail, and the tense conditions along the Israel-Lebanon border may persist for some time to come.  Unfortunately, unwise and counter-productive decisions by Israel have become increasingly common. Plus, Israeli officials have often succumbed to the fallacy that inflicting pain on Lebanon reduces support for Hezbollah.  This usually does not work, and often has the opposite effect. 

Brzezinski on the new Haass book.

A Tale of Two Wars | Foreign Affairs

The book title refers to the U.S.-led wars against Iraq in 1990-91 and 2003. The first is described by Haass as a "war of necessity" and the second as a "war of choice". For anyone who has followed the debate over the merits of invading Iraq in 2003 the arguments will be familiar. Haass offers, and BZ endorses a realist critique of the 2003 as a war launched by conviction and fear-mongering rather than by a careful weighing of evidence and defining of objectives.

I find the comments on the Israeli-Palestinian more directly relevant to the challenges facing the Obama administration today. Haass argues that the first Bush administration made a key decision to assert U.S. leadership to reach a settlement in the core conflict. Of course, Bush failed to win re-election and rather than the peacemaking momentum being sustained by the subsequent Clinton administration "waffled" (BZ's term) until the last year in office. As for Bush II, he endorsed a vague roadmap that offered Israel license to do pretty much what they pleased and he failed to lend the weight of is office to reach a settlement, notwithstanding face-time with Mahmoud 'Abbas. George W. Bush promised a settlement by the time he left office, but instead the hapless Condoleezza Rice gained ownership of a U.S. effort that earned derision in both Palestinian and Israeli circles.

Those of you who have read my Current History essays over the years, will recognize the critique.

In his review, Brzezinski builds on Haass's critique to argue that President Obama has to lead if there is to be a settlement:

"President Barack Obama should draw an important lesson from Haass' insightful memoir. If the new president is to avoid in the Middle East not only the gross errors of his immediate predecessor but also the much too long-lasting passivity of the Clinton years, he truly has to lead. Admittedly, making matters more difficult for him is the legacy of the last 16 years, when a subtle shift took place in the U.S. approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the United States moved from being a genuine mediator seeking to nudge both sides toward peace to holding a posture of thinly veiled partiality in favor of one of the parties to the conflict. The result has been detrimental to the prospects for peace -- for without engaged and genuinely forthright U.S. mediation, the two parties to the conflict have shown themselves to be unable to reach a genuine compromise."

Added:
And there is little time left on the clock...as this BBC piece on Bethleham illustrates.

Lawrence Di Rita on Shinseki

In a nutshell, Di Rita, who was Donald Rumsfeld's flak in the Pentagon, argues that General Eric Shinseki was not snubbed by Rumseld, that he supported the Iraq war plan, that he was wrong about the number of troops needed in Iraq (his suggestion was dismissed in 2003 as “wildly off the mark”), and that he should correct the record.

"As it happens, and Shinseki would have known this, as many as 400,000 troops were in the pipeline for use during major conflict operations. But nowhere near that number was used. After major conflict operations ended, the number that remained in country settled around 150,000 to 160,000 (about half of Shinseki's guesstimate). Ultimately, commanders brought troop levels down to about 135,000 on the belief that a relatively lighter U.S. footprint would minimize the perception of occupation."

This is why Di Rita's commentary is disingenuous:

• Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and others dismissed out of hand the assertion that more troops would be needed, and were publicly dismissive of the assertion.  Rumsfeld held to his position even after early evidence suggested that the U.S. did not have enough troops to occupy Iraq. In fact, Rumsfeld cancelled some planned deployments in the early months of occupation.  It is true that Shinseki in effect saluted and kept his mouth shut, but he did so in an environment where dissent was punished.  (Nonetheless, my view is that he should have fallen on his sword; that is the duty of dissenting senior officials.)
  
• Di Rita tries to deflect the well-founded charge that the U.S. did not deploy an adequate occupation force by claiming that 400,000 were in the pipeline and noting that the long-term troop deployment settled at 150,000 or so.  Given the horrific violence and terrible losses suffered by occupation forces as well as Iraqi civilians, it is bizarre to imply that the war planners anticipated correctly the long term challenges that would confront the occupation force.  As for the "pipeline", Rumsfeld was intent to close it.
  
• The risible suggestion that Shinseki did not invite the Secretary of Defense to attend or speak at his retirement ceremony ignores the fact no senior representative of the Secretary was present at the ceremony.  Senior serving officers (old friends of mine) understood that Shinseki was being snubbed, as I surmise Shinseki understood as well.
  
• Finally, Shinseki's retirement (in June 2003) was announced more than a year in advance by the Defense Department (Di Rita was the head of Public Affairs at the time), making the Army Chief of Staff a lame duck even as he testified in February 2003 about troop needs in Iraq.  In other words, Shinseki had already been amply tutored about Rumseld's tolerance for dissent.  (Recall also that the Secretary of the Army Thomas White, who also challenged the Rumsfeld line and supported Shinseki's anticipation of troop requirements, was canned by Rumsfeld in May 2003.)
  

What were UN observers at al-Khiam reporting?

UN officer reported Israeli war crimes before deadly bombing: widow

The original CBC report was deleted or archived, but here is a capture of the report found August 13, 2014, at Militaryphotos.net.  http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?128478-UN-officer-reported-Israeli-war-crimes-before-deadly-bombing-widow:

Last Updated: Wednesday, February 6, 2008 | 10:03 PM ET 

CBC News 

A United Nations military observer sent e-mails home to Canada reporting that Israel was bombing schools and waging "a campaign of terror against the Lebanese people" shortly before he was killed by an Israeli bomb in Lebanon, said his widow.
Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener of Kingston, Ont., a member of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was one of four UN military observers who died when the Israeli Defence Forces bombed a marked United Nations post on July 25, 2006.

Cynthia Hess-von Kruedener said she believes her husband, Paeta, and three other UN observers were specifically targeted when their post was bombed by Israel.
(Submitted by Cynthia Hess-von Kruedener)

Cynthia Hess-von Kruedener said her husband's mission was to report on the hostilities in the area and she believes that is why Israeli forces attacked the Israeli United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) post, despite Israel's claims that the bombing was accidental.
"Obviously they were unhappy with what they were observing. Maybe that post was in the way as well," she said. "I know my husband was reporting war crimes. And I guess they don't want to deal with that."
Hess-von Kruedener said she is speaking out this week because a Canadian Forces board of inquiry report issued recently about the bombing has left questions unanswered.
The report, released Jan. 31, blamed the Israeli Defence Forces for the incident, but also found the Israeli military refused to provide documents other than a summary of its own internal investigation, "which lacked sufficient detail to explore certain issues to their fullest extent." The report said the UN also refused to provide documents requested for the investigation.

Israeli government spokesman Ariyeh Mekel said Wednesday from Jerusalem that Israel is examining the report, and has no response yet. Mekel also offered Israel's condolences to the families of the four dead men.
Hess-von Kruedener said she is not satisfied with the response of the Canadian government, which she alleges did not protest Israel's refusal to co-operate in the probe.
"Well you expect your government to step in and do the right thing, but that doesn't seem to be the case," she said. "So we are just … We don't know where to turn. We're just beside ourselves I guess."

PM wants to get to the bottom of things

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said shortly after the attack that he did not believe Israel deliberately targeted the UN post, but would ask Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "for his full co-operation in getting to the bottom of this."
Israel said the attack was an accident, but took responsibility for errors that reportedly led to the bombing.
In a statement issued Wednesday, Hess-von Kruedener called on the House of Commons to debate the findings of the board of inquiry report through the foreign minister, and take the issue to the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly.
She also asked the public to get involved by writing their MPs.
"I know that Paeta would also want the international community to speak up," she said. "I'm only one voice … I definitely need other people to speak out and say something needs to happen."

Haaretz on Winograd: "we were defeated"

Three words would have sufficed - Haaretz - Israel News

On the foreseeable consequences of the war, see posts here such as this one from July 2006.

Board of Inquiry - Bombing of UNTSO al-Khiam post, July 25, 2006

On July 25, 2006, four un-armed UNTSO observers died when their outpost at al-Khiam in southern Lebanon was bombed by the IDF. This Canadian armed forces page includes a statement about the incident and a link to the Board of Inquiry report, a "secret" report [removed in 2009]. The report has been redacted, and appendices are listed but not provided.  Even so, the report [from my archive] is informative about UN peacekeeping procedures, and the July 25, 2006 incident in which the four observers were killed. The board did not find any individual responsible for the bombing, but it did blame the IDF as an institution. The report notes that in other cases incidents of "close shelling" that were reported to the IDF, the shelling ceased after it was reported. In this instance, the shelling continued, even after the IDF was told, "you are killing my men." The Board received some cooperation from the United Nations, but very little from Israel, which provided only a "non-paper" with a general explanation of events.


[Added Oct. 2011 Canadian Forces News Release {no longer available, but a somewhat different archived version is now available here, August 13, 2014} and this NGO factsheet [now found here, August 13, 2014}.  The BOI report is no longer posted at the Canadian site. I did retain a copy, so you may find it here.  arn]

As a former UN observer in southern Lebanon I fully appreciate the dangers of serving there. As the Canadian report indicates, however, the deaths of Major Paeta Hess-Von Kruedener and his three colleagues were avoidable.  [The BOI report, which has been hidden by Canadian authorities, clearly lays the blame for the deaths on the IDF, which claimed there was an "operational error" despite being forcefully warned by the Chief of Observer Group Lebanon that Israeli shelling was endangering the lives of the UN observers.  The Canadian authorities justify deleting the BOI report in order to protect the operational security of the Israeli army.]

Board of Inquiry - FOB Robinson | National Defence and the Canadian Forces: "Major Paeta Hess-Von Kruedener"  [now a dead link].

Bolton on the UNSC reso. 1701 negotiations

He claims that the Qana attack by Israel led to a reappraisal by Sec. of State Rice, who then pushed hard for a resolution to end the fighting in August 2006 to Bolton's presumed chagrin.

Bolton: IDF ground push did not influence UN cease-fire - Haaretz - Israel News

"Bolton is not very proud of his final product. "Resolution 1701 wasn't as good as the first draft, and even it hasn't been fully implemented - just like previous resolutions that sought to impose order in Lebanon and reduce Syria's influence on its neighbor," he said. "Hezbollah hasn't been disarmed. The Lebanese army does not control the entire country. UNIFIL [the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon] was not expanded sufficiently."

"In his view, "Hezbollah still constitutes as big a threat to Israel as in the past, and the threat it poses to the Lebanese government has only grown since the war."

"Was this an Israeli failure? "The problem was the disconnect between the goals you set and the military operation," he said. "Hezbollah survived, and could portray itself as the victor. You should have said from the start that the goal was to exact a price for the soldiers' abduction." "

This article is also relevant.

"According to media reports over the weekend, [Yehezkel] Dror [member of Winograd Commission] gave in to pressure from his fellow members of the Winograd Committee, which is examining the performance of decision makers in the Second Lebanon War. The others pressed for less harsh language in the final report, scheduled to be released next week. He also relinquished his demand to append his own minority opinion to the document.

"In fact, Dror has already expressed his view concerning Ehud Olmert's decisions in the final stages of the war. Just days before the committee was assembled, Dror published a document entitled "A Breakout Political-Security Grand-Strategy for Israel," under the auspices of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. In that paper, Dror addressed the premier's claim that the result of the last 60 hours of fighting, when those 33 soldiers were killed, was United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the war.

""The wording of Resolution 1701 does include components which constitute an Israeli achievement," Dror writes, "but this is more the result of U.S. pressure than the results of Israeli achievements on the battlefield... Moreover, it remains doubtful whether Resolution 1701 will have long-term significance, and deducing that Israel has genuinely succeeded in improving its international standing [thanks to] the resolution requires one to strain one's imagination."

"Dror argues that the lack of success in wiping out the bulk of Hezbollah's ranks, the fact that the organization's leaders were unhurt, and the damage that Israel had sustained on the military front and in terms of economical infrastructure have weakened Israel's deterrence capabilities. "

Attacking Iran: 'And then what?'

FT.com / Home UK / UK - 'And then what?'

This front page piece in the FT is noteworthy because it features the forthright concerns of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs about all the chatter promoting an attack on Iran.

HRW: The Other Shoe

Israel's bombing campaign in the summer 2006 war.
Israel/Lebanon: Israeli Indiscriminate Attacks Killed Most Civilians (Human Rights Watch, 6-9-2007)

The Sixth War

Just published:
The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, special issue on "The Sixth War: Israel's Invasion of Lebanon"
[The journal is now defunct, but the complete issue is available at this site:
MIT-EJMES]

Anthony Shadid on Hezbollah's miscalcuation

This report has well-captured the miscalculation made by Nasrallah and company on July 12, and the extent to which Hezbollah's operation was founded on utter confidence in the militia's successful deterrence of Israel. What Hezbollah did not take into account was the extent to which its calculations were founded on rational strategist on the Israeli side. Moreover, for deterrence to succeed profoundly it must "work" across the spectrum of threats. In this instance, once Israel escalated the war to wholesale attacks on Shi'i population centers in the suburbs of Beirut, Hezbollah lacked the capacity to deter Israel's continuation of the bombing campaign.

Israel's failure, despite its domination of the escalation game, turned on its strategic miscalculation about the nature of Hezbollah's political support and its unwillingness to pay a high human toll for recapturing and occupying southern Lebanon.

The requiem for war in Lebanon is still developing. The most important debate in Lebanon is likely to be the one that takes place within Hezbollah, where Nasrallah's image as a supreme strategist and analyst has been considerably tarnished. Nasrallah has been in office for 14 years, or eight YEARS longer than the prescribed term the secretary-general. Will the party decide it is time for a change? Probably not right now, but even asking the question is a step-level change.