Hijacking the Hezbollah War

Yesterday's WSJ article about the importance of counterinsurgency makes me angry. The increasingly common use of Gian Gentile as intellectual cover for lesser military thinkers (in this case Casey, Conway and the JCS) is a worrisome trend. While Gentile is generally wrong in his analysis, he does provide a respectable viewpoint. By comparison, the self-serving and JCS concerns about war with North Korea have no place in a serious conversation about COIN. Fortunately, most informed commentators can discern the difference between Gentile and knee-jerk reactionaries within the the military.

(Side Note: Did anyone else notice how secure Gentile feels about his career prospects? He might claim that the COIN community is winning, but while Nagl has left the army for greener pastures Gentile will have a shot at general's stars. Read as much or as little into that as you want.)

Far more serious than the ravings of the JCS, thought, is the body of evidence used by Gentile to backstop his claims. The cornerstone appears to be Gentile's interpretation of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war, an interpretation that the US military has failed to refute. The thesis that Israel was somehow too focused on COIN has been vigorously supported without any real basis in fact.

One character, whose work was referenced without attribution in the article, is military historian Matt Matthews. Matthews wrote the Combat Studies Institute paper that tried to analyze the lessons of the 2006 conflict. The paper was strong in many areas, but an unfortunate combination of analytical overreach by Matthews and selective excerpts has given the erroneous impression that Israeli-Hezbollah conflict was an indictment of the COIN philosophy. Matthews spent most of his paper following the Israeli transition to Effects Based Operations (EBO) and the controversial Systemic Operational Design (SOD). By comparison, Matthews spends very little time on the issue of counterinsurgency in the occupied territories. Nevertheless, in his conclusion Matthews placed almost equal weight on the flaws in EBO/SOD and counterinsurgency.

The conclusions about COIN seemed to have been based on anecdotal information about the decline in the combat capabilities of deployed Israeli forces. Part of this information is new to Matthews’ final paper, but some of it was derived from his interview with retired General Shimon Naveh, the architect of SOD:

SN: Basically I think that the IDF was totally unprepared for this kind of operation, both
conceptually, operationally and tactically – mainly conceptually and practically. The point is
that the IDF fell in love with what it was doing with the Palestinians. In fact, it became
addictive. When you fight a war against a rival who’s by all means inferior to you, you may lose a guy here or there, but you’re in total control. It’s nice. You can pretend that you fight the war and yet it’s not really a dangerous war. This kind of thing served as an instrument corrupting the IDF.

MM: Now, is this something where years of counterinsurgency operations have...

SN: Yes. This may happen to you, remember that.

MM: That’s one of the points in my...

SN: Well, you’re fighting a more serious rival than we are fighting. The rivals you’re fighting
are not Palestinians. They’re real hooligans; they’re tough guys. But still there’s a danger.
Becoming addicted to the present fight may corrupt you as an army. This is what operational
art is all about: maintaining elements that will be looking beyond...

Naveh (who has every reason to deflect blame from his SOD concept) appears to caution against excessive COIN focus, but in context his warning is aimed towards the type of institutional lethargy that infected the IDF in Palestine. Naveh acknowledges the superior nature of Iraqi insurgents, although he fails to compare US doctrine in Iraq with IDF practice in Palestine. This oversight conceals a fatally flawed security strategy in Palestine that has more in common with Vietnam than Iraq. Israel may indeed be fighting an insurgency, but they have failed to create a coherent, progressive COIN strategy.

Both Naveh and the Winograd Commission, though, do pinpoint an IDF weakness that has gotten little play in American circles. Here’s Naveh talking about IDF Chief of General Staff Dan Halutz:

SN: Halutz is a victim of subculture. He might have been a good fighter pilot, he was probably
even a good base commander in the Air Force, but he’s totally innocent of any education that
could have prepared him for the challenge that awaited him as a general. Being both arrogant
and ignorant, he never bothered, like so many generals, to really study. I think that he could
have studied if there was an educational process. Moreover, if he would have had some
skepticism, some heresy, some modesty, he could have learned things. He’s the kind of man
that, if you can’t really comprise your words into two lines, he’ll never go through it.

MM: Did you think he understood his own doctrine that he signed?

SN: He’s an idiot. In this sense he’s an idiot, as I said in the interview. He’s really a fool; he’s a
clown. He signed something that he really has never bothered to learn, and I was trying to tell
him to wait a minute. He signed something that he has never really bothered to learn and
understand. One of the bad things that happened to us was that – actually, the opposition never
bothered me. As being the mentor or the force behind all this, the opposition never bothered me
because I look at opposition as a good thing, as a source of tension that yields changes. It forces
not only the oppositioners but also us. We regard ourselves as the good guys – to change, to
transform, to produce better learning methods. What really worried me were the blind
followers, and the IDF was full of them. They were just mumbling the words without really
appreciating what lay in the base of these words – and Halutz was such a guy. He was just
using the right words but he never really bothered to understand. Understanding implies
learning, and learning is painful.

After reading this, one is reminded of USAF Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap, the biggest oppositional figure left out of the WSJ article. Halutz was not a heavy COIN advocate; he was enamored of the same precision firepower that dominated US thinking during the 1990's. While Naveh’s cutting remarks might not carry as much weight as an official review, the Winograd Commission had its own severe criticisms of Halutz:

14. The Chief of Staff (COS) is the supreme commander of the IDF, and the main source of information concerning the army, its plans, abilities and recommendations presented to the political echelon. Furthermore, the COS's personal involvement with decision making within the army and in coordination with the political echelon was dominant.

a. The army and the COS were not prepared for the event of the abduction despite recurring alerts. When the abduction happened, he responded impulsively. He did not alert the political leaders to the complexity of the situation, and did not present information, assessments and plans that were available in the IDF at various levels of planning and approval and which would have enabled a better response to the challenges.

b. Among other things, the COS did not alert the political echelon to the serious shortcomings in the preparedness and the fitness of the armed forces for an extensive ground operation, if that became necessary. In addition, he did not clarify that the military assessments and analyses of the arena was that there was a high probability that a military strike against Hezbollah would make such a move necessary.

c. The COS' responsibility is aggravated by the fact that he knew well that both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense lacked adequate knowledge and experience in these matters, and by the fact that he had led them to believe that the IDF was ready and prepared and had operational plans fitting the situation.

The Minster of Defense in question, Amir Peretz, was similarly excoriated for his conduct during the conflict:

a. The Minister of Defense did not have knowledge or experience in military, political or governmental matters. He also did not have good knowledge of the basic principles of using military force to achieve political goals.

b. Despite these serious gaps, he made his decisions during this period without systemic consultations with experienced political and professional experts, including outside the security establishment. In addition, he did not give adequate weight to reservations expressed in the meetings he attended.

c. The Minister of Defense did not act within a strategic conception of the systems he oversaw. He did not ask for the IDF's operational plans and did not examine them; he did not check the preparedness and fitness of IDF; and did not examine the fit between the goals set and the modes of action presented and authorized for achieving them. His influence on the decisions made was mainly pointillist and operational. He did not put on the table - and did not demand presentation - of serious strategic options for discussion with the Prime Minister and the IDF.

d. The Minister of Defense did not develop an independent assessment of the implications of the complexity of the front for Israel's proper response, the goals of the campaign, and the relations between military and diplomatic moves within it. His lack of experience and knowledge prevented him from challenging in a competent way both the IDF, of which he was in charge, and the Prime Minister.

e. In all these ways, the Minister of Defense failed in fulfilling his functions. Therefore, his serving as Minister of Defense during the war impaired Israel's ability to respond well to its challenges.

Thus, we have the highest civilian and military leaders castigated for their poor leadership during the crisis. While the extent of Israeli COIN expertise can be debated (and is likely inferior to current US knowledge), it seems clear that the critical weakness of the IDF was the leadership. To be sure, the EBO concept, invalidated by recent combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, weakened the IDF. Although conceptual value of SOD is much harder to evaluate, it appears that an incomplete version of the doctrine was deployed with poor institutional results. Nevertheless, it was the IDF leadership that was responsible for the implementation of EBO/SOD, and the decision makers were responsible for the poor reaction to the initiation of general hostilities.

These lessons from the 2006 conflict invite one last question: why has the US army not embraced them? In retrospect, this case study should bolster LtC Paul Yingling’s claims about leadership failures, rather than Gian Gentile’s Philippics about excessive devotion to COIN. Unfortunately, the armed forces will never voluntarily accept the idea that its own leadership could jeopardize an operation. Gentile’s interpretation is allowed to flourish precisely because it poses less of a threat to the military establishment. Matt Matthews, as part of the Army Combat Studies Institute, does not possess the kind of professional independence necessary to criticize the Army on this point. This kind of professional unwillingness to confront hard truths that has allowed the COIN debate to rage on while the culture of leadership within the military remains unscathed.

EDIT: I apologize for the distorted text layout - Blogger is doing something weird