Blundering into a Quagmire: Does Israel's Operation Make Military Sense?, April 5, 2002

Because, as noted on Page One, the Israeli offensive in the West Bank has clearly disrupted US efforts to forge a coalition against Iraq, our scheduled Part 2 of the Dossier on options in Iraq, begun in the last issue, will be put on hold in order to analyze the Israeli operation's wisdom.

Israel's operations inside the Palestinian territories and against Yasir ‘Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah have been praised by some and denounced by others, Israeli as well as Arab and Western. The political wisdom of the operation against ‘Arafat and the Palestinian security services is certainly questionable, given the lack of a clearcut political objective, and the moral implications of the tactics used have been called into question as well. But at least in Western media commentary (though not so in the Israeli media) there seem to have been few questions asked about the military wisdom of the operation. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is a former general, with a reputation for audacity and a specialty in counterinsurgency, and the present Israel Defense Forces (IDF) General Staff are not known for recklessness or unprofessionalism. But unless there are elements of strategic planning which have not become apparent at this time (and there may well be), there appear to be serious reasons to question the military sense of the operations being carried out.

Clausewitz famously said that no country begins a war, or at least none in its right mind should do so, without a clearly defined objective in mind. And as Clausewitz also noted in his most famous dictum, political and military objectives are interlinked, are in fact part of the same exercise of power. Military action when there is no clear political objective makes it difficult to define military objectives effectively, and military objectives divorced from clear political planning may in fact backfire. An attempt to temper military action or place constraints on it for political ends, or to gradually increase military pressure in the hopes of bringing about a particular political result, tends to violate the fundamental military principles of mass and concentration of force. Beginning a military operation when one is unsure how to end it, or even how one wants it to end, is a recipe for disaster. There is even a name for it. The name is Vietnam. There are other parallels, most notably Algeria, but the Vietnam lessons may be the most pertinent, despite clear differences. This Dossier seeks to analyze the lessons as they may apply to Israel's efforts in the West Bank.

It has become a cliché of the first order to identify any conflict, especially one involving an insurgency, as a Vietnam. Afghanistan was "the Soviets' Vietnam" and people have warned of "another Vietnam" in almost every conflict which the US has entered into since 1975. But if we leave the clichés aside, there are very real reasons to examine the parallels in this case.

In fact, it may be simpler to note the differences up front. Vietnam was never perceived, by the American public, as a vital US interest; that was part of the problem with rallying domestic support for the conflict, and one of the major reasons for failure. Israelis consider their own security — the security of their persons, and of the borders they have never defined — as a fundamental necessity. Vietnam was a long way from the United States; Bethlehem and Ramallah are next door to Jerusalem.

Some commentators have suggested that a better parallel might be France's fight against Algerian independence from 1954 to 1962. Before looking further at the Vietnam parallels, it may be worth taking a moment to look at the Algerian lessons as well. France considered Algeria, not as a colony, but as a part of France itself, yet it had never granted true self-government to the Muslim majority. French and other European settlers enjoyed rights within Algeria which were shared with some, but not all, of the Muslim population. Just as Israel has sought to maintain settlements within the Palestinian territories whose Jewish settlers enjoy rights within Israel proper which are not shared with their Palestinian neighbors, so also was Algeria in the 1950s an attempt to maintain two societies side by side in a country where the majority clearly did not identify themselves as French.

The war itself also contained a number of parallels with the present intifada: the use of suicide bombings and terror attacks by the Algerian rebels, the use of torture and excessive force by the French military, and the attempt to strike at the rebellion by striking directly at the leadership, as when the French forced down an aircraft carrying several Algerian leaders (including Ahmad Ben Bella) and imprisoned them in France. Yet in the end, at great cost in blood and internal rebellion in France itself, the war was lost. The parallels are of interest, but so is the missing factor: no Charles De Gaulle has emerged in Israel.

Though some aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict do resemble Algeria more than Vietnam, the direct military lessons of Vietnam seem more pertinent. Though many do not realize it, no organization in the world has studied what went wrong in Vietnam more thoroughly than the US military. Some have been mystified by the apparent reluctance of US Secretary of State Colin Powell, a career general, to commit military forces unless both a clear objective and political will to use massive force are present. One need only read Powell's own memoirs to understand why: he remembers Vietnam.

It would be quite possible to provide a thorough analysis of the parallels, but for the purposes of the present essay, let us simply enumerate them:

Fuzzy Objectives and a Poor Match of Military Force to Political Goal. The political goal of the Vietnam war was ostensibly to preserve the independence of South Vietnam, without risking a superpower confrontation with the Soviet Union or China. The problem was defining how that political goal could be achieved using military force, given the constraints imposed by superpower politics, the unwillingness of the US government to mobilize fully (reserves and National Guard were never called up), and the increasing unpopularity of the war at home. In fact, the US fought the worst of all possible wars: it lacked both the domestic political will and the international freedom of action to win militarily, but it kept fighting a war which it could neither win nor quit. The political goal stated by the Israeli government is ending the terrorism and suicide bombings which have taken such a toll. But how does one do that militarily? One cannot depend on deterrence, because by definition a suicide bomber has already decided to give up his or her life; one must therefore either succeed through main force or through defensive measures. But main force radicalizes the moderates, drives more fighters into the desperation of sacrificing themselves, and creates a whole new generation of fighters. Defensive measures can only work if you can seal the borders. If you have borders, which is in part Israel's problem

In Vietnam, a combination of jungles, limited personnel, local support for the insurgency and the unwillingness to deploy even larger US forces made it impossible to prevent infiltration. In Israel's case, the problem of sealing the borders is in part that by Israel's own insistence, it has no real, permanent, sealable borders. Because of the settlements, the 1967 borders have long since been disregarded by Israeli governments, though anyone who crossess them feels their presence constantly. The Area A, Area B, Area C arrangements with the Palestinian Authority are already in disarray, and never provided sealable borders anyway, since they created a jigsaw puzzle on the map, not a cohesive border.

How Do You Know when You've Won? This may sound flip, but it is a critical question. How do you know you won? Or lost? This is directly related to the definition of the objective. In the 1991 Gulf War, the US defined its military and political objective as the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. It clearly succeeded. Many then and since have wished that Saddam Hussein had also been removed from power, but that was not part of the military objective, and the stated objective was clearly accomplished. What is the objective in the present Israeli campaign? Is it the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority? Israel says no. Is it the removal of ‘Arafat personally? Perhaps, but that has not been openly defined as of this writing. Is it reoccupation of the Palestinian Authority? That seems to be opposed by most Israelis and many IDF commanders. If you do not know your objective, how do you know when you have achieved it?

Do Not Foreclose Political Solutions. The US for years in Vietnam avoided or slowed down peace negotiations because it sought a military solution; in the end the Paris Peace Talks dragged on for years until Henry Kissinger took a direct role. But since there are grave doubts that a military solution is possible to certain conflicts, including the Israeli-Palestinian one (for reasons discussed below), one should not foreclose negotiations even if one's negotiating partners seem insincere. The US has recently shifted its insistence that talks cannot begin until the violence ends. There may be little hope of progress at this time, but foreclosing talks is not the answer either.

The Downside of "Search-and-Destroy" Operations. So far as can be determined, the Israeli military objectives of its invasion of the West Bank cities have been the elimination (through killing or arrest) of key organizers, the destruction of infrastructure, the capture of intelligence, and, obviously, the disruption of plans. That immediate, tactical objective will probably be achieved. But the Israelis themselves have indicated that after the operation, they plan to withdraw. The US experience in Vietnam teaches some lessons about "search and destroy" type operations which do not, otherwise, address longer-term military and political questions. You'll go back again. And again. And yet again. Even massive US operations like Cedar Falls, aimed at eliminating Viet Cong infrastructure, succeeded in their immediate objective. But days or weeks after the withdrawal, the infrastructure was rebuilt. The classic idea of military operations as holding ground has long since had to be adjusted in circumstances of insurrection and people's war, but search and destroy is a limited and not very successful substitute. The recent film We Were Soldiers, based on Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and Joseph Galloway's book We Were Soldiers Once, and Young, tells the story of the first major battle between US forces and North Vietnamese regulars, the battle of the Ia Drang Valley in 1965. The North Vietnamese took far higher casualties than the Americans (who were also severely bloodied) and withdrew, so Ia Drang was a US victory. But within weeks of the US withdrawal from the area, it again became a North Vietnamese stronghold, and US forces would fight there again.

Search and destroy does indeed remove assets from your enemy, but it does not guarantee they cannot be recovered. As a fallacious approach, it is closely linked to the next:

Confusing Body Count with Victory. Israel has killed far more Palestinians, to date, than Palestinians have killed Israelis. The total number of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong who died in Vietnam was far beyond the 58,000 dead the US suffered. And the Vietnamese had previously been fighting first the Japanese and then the French. Precisely because the US could not and did not seek to control territory permanently in the war, it came to rely on "body counts" to determine who had won a battle. The other side always lost more, and even if one discounts the counting mechanism, no one denies that they did. The difference was that it did not matter. They were prepared to accept the casualties for their clearly defined objective (getting the Americans out and replacing the South Vietnamese government), while the US objective increasingly seemed to be simply raising the body count. Leaving moral questions aside, this makes no sense militarily, since it gains nothing tangible, other than more dead enemy.

Making New Enemies. Every time Israel moves into a Palestinian town, it creates new recruits, not merely to the regular Palestinian insurgent forces, but new suicide bombers as well. Moderates become more radicalized; those who hoped for a negotiated peace see their hopes frustrated and move into the radical opposition. To pursue the Vietnamese parallel, South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem's suppression of Buddhist dissent in the years before his death in 1963 drove a potentially useful "third force" into opposition.

A case in point: Jibril Rajoub, the head of Palestinian Preventive Security for the West Bank (and the subject of the Profile in this issue) has been seen as a tough-minded, but reasonable, figure with whom the US and Israel could work, despite a certain ruthlessness. Rajoub has clashed with ‘Arafat over tactics (‘Arafat supposedly drew a pistol on him in February), and has worked closely with the CIA and Israeli security services. Many saw Rajoub as a potential ‘Arafat successor who was strong enough and tough enough to hold power but also moderate enough to be a negotiating partner. But Rajoub has now seen his headquarters building besieged and partly destroyed and the Preventive Security Service directly attacked. Scratch one potential partner.

It is easy to forget, as noted in the lead story, that one does not negotiate peace with one's friends, but with one's enemies. That potential peace partners are now enemies is the nature of conflict. And one can only choose one's enemies to a limited degree. If ‘Arafat leaves the scene, through death or exile, with whom will one negotiate? If one is seeking a purely military solution to the conflict, that raises another issue:

The Impossibility of Defeating a Genuinely Broad-Based Insurgency. Mao Zedong's famous dictum that the Guerrilla is a Fish in the Sea of the People should never be ignored; one need not be a Maoist to understand that it is very difficult to root out a popular insurgency. Here again, the Algerian model is instructive. But so is the Vietnamese. "Winning the Hearts and Minds of the People" was once the shibboleth of the US in Vietnam; precisely because it did not win enough hearts and minds (and because the failure to create a stable and non-corrupt South Vietnamese polity did little to help), the war was ultimately lost. Israel has never had much success in finding Palestinians who support its view of peace; the present conflict has radicalized those who might have been recruited. The individual guerrillas may be attacked and destroyed, but there are other fish in Mao's sea.

Forgetting that You Can Win the Battle and Lose the War: Tet and the Merkava. Most Americans who have not studied the 1968 Tet offensive would probably be startled to hear it described as an American victory, since it is generally perceived as the turning point in the road to defeat. Ironically, it was both. The US suffered initial setbacks, even seeing some Viet Cong suicide attackers enter the US Embassy grounds, and it took some time to reconquer the critical city of Hue. But in the end, when it was over, the Viet Cong had virtually been destroyed as a military force (though their place was taken by more professional North Vietnamese regulars), and all the lost ground had been retaken. But the US had been shown to be vulnerable, and it was not the end of the campaign, or what happened to the Viet Cong, that stuck in people's minds; it was the image of losing Hue and barely holding on to the US Embassy in Saigon. Israel has not yet faced a Tet, but a few weeks ago a powerful symbol did emerge, one that has been much noted by Palestinians and other Arabs, and almost ignored in the West. A small group of Palestinians attacked an Israeli Merkava tank and destroyed it. The Merkava is a first-rate, international-class Main Battle Tank; if not quite the equal of the US M-1, its armor and armament are nearly comparable. Of course, in the long run, Merkavas can kill a lot more Palestinians than Palestinians can kill Merkavas, but the power of the symbol cannot be ignored. Symbols matter. Tet was a defeat in the West because it was perceived to be a defeat.

It is possible, of course, that Israeli commanders have a far more clear vision of their military and political goals than has been made public. But there are so many disturbing parallels that Israeli planners ought to be looking closely at the lessons of Vietnam (and Algeria) as they try to define what their endgame is.

Much may depend upon their answer. The possibility that escalation (another term from the Vietnam era) could become uncontrollable remains real. With an unclear endgame in sight, and an ill-defined objective, the application of military force can be very risky. It is a time for Israelis, and their supporters including the United States, to think clearly about what (if any) military objectives are essential to Israel's security, and question all military operations which do not directly address those ends.

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