Eminent and controversial military historian,Martin van Creveld, analyzes the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War in the latest issue of Infinity Journal. Some Excerpts:
….Though the decision to retaliate in force was inevitable, it also meant that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) was taken by surprise and did not have time to prepare properly. Of the entire vast order of battle, only five regular brigades were immediately available. Moreover, these brigades had spent years doing little but carrying out counter-insurgency operations in the Occupied Territories. As a result, they had almost forgotten how to fight a real enemy; he who fights the weak will end up by becoming weak. Some of the burden fell on the Israeli Navy which shelled Lebanon’s coast, imposed a blockade, and cut the country off from the world. In doing so, one of its modern ships was hit by an Iranian-built surface to sea missile, suffering damage and taking some casualties. Since this was the first time in thirty-nine years anything of the kind had happened, it was a considerable propaganda victory for Hezbollah. At the same time it proved how much the crew had underestimated the enemy, since they (perhaps acting on their superiors’ orders) had not even switched on the vessel’s electronic defenses.
….”Stark raving mad” (majnun, in Arabic) was, in fact, the way many people in Lebanon and the rest of the Arab world reacted to the Israeli attack. As the statements of several of Hezbollah’s top leaders indicated, they too were surprised by the strength of the Israeli reaction. None of the organization’s original objectives were achieved. Its fighters remain in prison; the Israeli “occupation” of Shaba Farm continues; and Jerusalem, which it set itself as its ultimate objective to liberate, remains as firmly in Israeli hands as it has been during the last forty-four years. What the war did do was to show that, in case of war, neither Syria nor Iran would necessarily come to Lebanon’s rescue. The country’s infrastructure was left in ruins. Thirty thousand dwellings were destroyed or damaged, and dozens of bridges, underpasses, and gas stations demolished. Hundred of thousands of people were forced to flee, and as many as 2,000 killed.
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This piece is heavily IDF-centric in the analysis, perhaps reflecting van Creveld’s established authority on command and logistics and his recent work on air power, but I was surprised by the lack of space devoted to Hezbollah’s operations, given the author’s deep influence on 4GW theory and the study of postmodern irregular and asymmetric warfare. That may reflect, in part, the thrust of Infinity as a publication or the need for brevity but there’s an almost Clausewitzian subtext in the conclusion.
A must-read book for those interested in strategy, the history of the Third Reich or the military history of WWII. That said, The German Generals Talk as a text must be treated very cautiously due to the author’s lack of objectivity, the disadvantage of his interview subjects at the time of their captivity and Liddell-Hart’s well documented efforts to use his interview subjects for self-promotional purposes. Nevertheless, the commentaries by major Wehrmacht generals and field marshals, especially Gerd von Rundstedt, Wilhelm Rittervon Thoma, Hasso von Maneuffel, Günther Blumentrittand Heinz Guderian, are informative and at times, provocative. Liddell-Hart’s critiques of German military campaigns are often insightful, usually colorful, frequently sycophantic, but usually to the point – though they often used as a foil for advancing Liddell-Hart’s strategic ideas.
War Before Civilization
Two of the smarter, myth-debunking books I have read in the past year or so have been older, still in print, works by academic archaeologists. Much like Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies, Lawrence Keeley overturns dogmatic archetypes about “primitive” warfare in prehistoric and pre-contact societies held by social scientists and military historians in War Before Civilization. Not only was prehistoric warfare more violent, more “total” and less restrained than modern warfare but Keeley argues that primitive “warriors” tended to best disciplined “soldiers” in wars when all other things were equal, except when the “soldiers” enlisted their own savage proxies (or adopted morally unconstrained primitive tactics). It was a sliding scale; the barbaric Vikings terrorized “civilized” European and English men-at-arms, but were in turn themselves routed and expelled by the more savage Native Americans and Inuit warriors of North America.
BlogfriendPundita turns an eye to Mexico, which is currently entering free fall despite official US policy that the cartels are not an insurgency, and has extensive comments on how the transnationally oriented, strategically inept, elite mismanaging US foreign policy no longer think in terms of a “US foreign policy”. Or perhaps, a “US”:
….I hate to be the one to break this news to Mark but there can no longer be an American policy on Mexico because there is no longer a United States of America. He doesn’t know this because he doesn’t watch much television news, but a few weeks of watching CNN will clue him that the USA is no more. In its place is a country called The Whole World (aka RIC – Republic of International Community), which for reasons known only to the rascals who run CNN excludes every world region where CNN is not in hot competition with al Jazeera.I myself speak of the “country” of the USA, which I think is what seems to be a box of cookies or a milk carton in the foreground of the above satellite photo of the RIC, only as a matter of convention.
As for FNC (Fox News Channel): currently too busy taking pot-shots at other TV news outlets for initially covering up the Weiner story and otherwise too busy trying to find a Republican who can win the White House to notice that a U.S. government is a memory.
(Memo to FNC: The other TV media were initially quiet about Weiner’s texting problem not because he’s a Leftist but because his wife is Hillary Clinton’s closest aide and they didn’t want to have to tell the American public that the person closest to the U.S. Secretary of State is an American Muslim of Indian-Pakistani heritage who was raised in Saudi Arabia, you nitwits.)So before we try to upgrade U.S. policy on the hollowed-out state of Mexico, as the Narcos book terms it, I say let’s examine how the U.S. got hollowed out.
One more point before I cede the floor to Mark: His summary doesn’t indicate whether the book addresses racism and apartheid in Mexico. I know that Mark is aware of the subject so I think he would have mentioned it, if any of the monographs dealt specifically with racism; frankly I’d be surprised if any did because the topics of Mexican racism and apartheid are taboo in both the USA and Mexico.
Later this week or the next I’ll try to rip myself away from the Afghan War long enough to return to those issues, which I touched on in an earlier post. For now, I’ll just say that I think Mexico’s type of racism is the true “virus” that Dr Bunker talks about….
Good question regarding the effects of racism in Mexico on the evolution of the cartel wars.An important point. I know why employees of USG entities do not raise it; for the same reason they will not use the “i” word – Mexican officials would go ape.
Dr. Bunker reads ZP from time to time and he’s best placed to explain why none of the authors delved into that aspect of narcocultas folk religion or Mexican elite behavior. My recollection is that most of the contributors to Narcos Over the Border were security specialists rather than social historians or sociologists. MaybeDavid Ronfeldt, who also has a specialty in Mexican affairs, can also weigh in on this important point.
Hollowing out of the US requires a post of it’s own to consider.
Noted foreign policy commentator and academic Anatol Lieven has a new book on Pakistan, and holds forth at length here on the always excellent Conversations With History.
For my part, diplomatic relations with Pakistan amount to our stage managing their elite’s LICwar against us, Afghanistan and India at what our elite perceive as a tolerable level of affront , deceitand violence. And we are doing it as expensively as possible.
“Criminal Insurgency” is becoming a preferred term of art to describe entities like the Narco-cartels of Mexico that have evolved from transnational criminal organizations into groups with paramilitary and intelligence capabilities or Colombia’s FARC which formerly was a model Marxist insurgency but devolved downward into a drug trafficking army. The term is used partly to placate doctrinaire purists among defense intellectuals who see insurgency definitively as armed political movements following Mao’s three stages or bust. After all, they have only had since the late 80’s and early 90’s, when Bill Lind and Martin van Creveld warned them this was coming, to get used to the idea.
Colonel Robert Killebrew, a smart fellow at CNAS, has an article in NDU‘sPRISM that puts the problem of criminal insurgency into a hemispheric context:
….Essentially, the United States faces external and internal challenges in reorienting to more effectively fight the cartels and their allies. Refocusing U.S. policy from a “war on drugs” to a more comprehensive fight against the cartels and gangs is essential if the United States and its allies are to prevail. Since the basis of the cartels’ survival lies in the control of regions where governmental control is nonexistent and populations may be impoverished and alienated, successful counter-cartel strategies are fundamentally counterinsurgency strategies developed by the concerned states themselves and supported by the United States. Counter-cartel strategies must first be political strategies, integrating military and police activity into a broader political approach that emphasizes the rule of law as an alternative to the rule of force. Four aspects of a Western Hemisphere counter-cartel strategy follow.
First, step up the direct attacks on the cartels. Over the past decades, U.S. law enforcement professionals have developed successful operational techniques that cartel leaders fear: partnerships with effective local police (often with U.S. training), expertise with judicially approved wiretaps and electronic surveillance, rewards programs that make criminal bosses vulnerable to betrayal, and, above all, when local laws permit, extradition to U.S. courts and prisons. The United States and its allies should increase the capability for multiagency field operations in all these dimensions, as well as the professionalization of host country military forces for operations requiring holding ground while the rule of law is reinstituted by other national agencies. DEA already operates throughout the region and has solid relationships with counterpart agencies; additionally, the agency has worked closely with U.S. combatant commands, notably U.S. Southern Command, where its powerful extraterritorial jurisdiction authority supplemented the military’s own programs to help U.S. allies in the region. DEA should continue to advise and assist host country police and counternarcotics forces, but the size of the agency must be greatly increased. With 5,500 agents spread over the hemisphere-including the United States-the agency that plays such a key role in the ongoing war with the cartels is spread too thin.
Second, the U.S. and its allies must continue to attack the cartels’ financial networks and money-laundering capabilities-a key strategy that requires more resourcing at Treasury. Cartel leaders fear U.S. indictments and extradition to American courts; extradition, exposure, and seizure of “dirty” money from criminal operations are all effective strategies that identify kingpins and threaten them with trials in U.S. courts and long terms in U.S. prisons. The United States has learned to use financial analysis and indictments as weapons against the cartels, even when they are beyond the immediate reach of U.S. law. Their use should be expanded.
Third, help our neighbors build more functional state institutions, particularly courts, and stimulate economic growth. In terms of the U.S. role and our assistance to allies, our understanding of security assistance must be broadened to include effective assistance to police and courts. For example, as part of Plan Colombia-a Colombian-developed counter-cartel strategy-the United States provided the Colombian National Police (CNP) with telecommunications-intercept equipment and, working through the Department of Justice, helped the CNP build a judicial process to support wiretap investigations. The result was a powerful tool that assisted indictments against cartel leadership and extraditions to the United States for prosecution. Likewise, assisting host nations to build strong, noncorrupt judicial systems is critical to assisting or restoring stable governments in areas threatened by cartel or other insurgent violence; courts, appellate courts, and efficient prisons are key pieces. Other U.S. agencies and contractors can provide other materiel assistance, training, partnership, and, when authorized, direct help in specified areas such as the collection of certain kinds of strategic intelligence. The U.S. Department of Defense can provide advisors and trainers on the Colombia model to supplement local military and law enforcement efforts, and occasionally direct aid in the form of helicopter transportation and naval support.61
Zenpundit is a blog dedicated to exploring the intersections of foreign policy, history, military theory, national security,strategic thinking, futurism, cognition and a number of other esoteric pursuits.
