Since World War II (at least), air forces have been saying that they can win wars all by themselves — and ground-pounders have told the flyboys no way.
With Katyushas continuing to fly in big numbers, U.N. observers hit by Israeli bombs, civilian casualties mounting, and Hezbollah guerrillas inflicting serious harm along the border, that argument is flaring hot in Israel.
After all, as Stratfor notes, “rather than pursuing a more traditional IDF course of coordinating airstrikes with intense mobile operations on the ground, the Israelis have chosen a strategy that has focused on an intense air campaign.”
The argument is that at this point, the air force has done all it will be able to do and is reaching the point of diminishing returns. The cost of waiting is that international opinion is turning against an air campaign that inevitably hits unacceptable targets; that the pressure for a cease-fire will build; and that when the ground campaign is finally launched, it will be under a time pressure it need not have, which will cause greater risk-taking and casualties. It would be nice for the Israelis if the air campaign could do the job itself, as it would mean fewer Israeli casualties, but the air force is operating without a criterion of failure — it asserts that the strategy will work over time, but gives no indication when…
[IDF chief of staff Gen Dan] Halutz wants to continue the air campaign and hold the army, and the army is demanding to be cut loose. It does not want to do attritional, small-unit warfare in south Lebanon. We do not know how this argument is playing out, but there is a decision that ultimately will have to be made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
2 things:
1. Wes Clark’s vicotry in 1999 showed that an air campaign can succede, but you need to pound the opposition for fairly long time (12 weeks, in that case) before they’ll give in. You also have to threaten with ground forces in order to demonstrate that you’re serious and not just posturing.
2. Unlike the above example, Israel’s target here is not a government intimidated by a ground invasion. Hezbollah knows they’ll lose, but their whole goal here is to bleed the IDF as much as possible, something they can do better on the ground. In that kind of environment, an threat of ground invasion will not work. Indeed, the no threat of incvasion or limited strikes deter the other side unless/until you can break that resolve.
An air campaign can only succeed if the target of said campaign is dumb enough to stand still and take it. Although Hezbollah seems somewhat tied to their supply chain and faciities related to their rocket assets, once those assets are eliminated or abandoned, air power rapidly loses relevance.
I’m still not entirely clear on what specific political goal Israel expects to accomplish with its campaign, but if they want to accomplish something more significant than stirring up a hornet’s nest, they’re going to have to make very good use of their ground assets, and quickly.
But in this case, Israel’s AF can whip the Lebanese without any sizable defense being raised, whereas the same can’t be said for the IDF army.
The debate is centered around a strategy called Effects Based Operations, or EBO. EBO propenents claim that a sustained air campaign characterized by percision targeting of critical state systems (command and control, communications, logistics, etc.), with support by special operations units on the ground, can cause a cascade of systems failures that will eventually paralyze or collapse a state.
The Israelis view Hezbollah a state-within-a state and seek to apply this strategy in hope that it will render Hezbollah ineffective as a political and military movement. Complicating matters is the fact that Hezbollah’s critical systems are very much a part of Lebanon’s. Question then becomes, how long can the Lebanese state withstand the EBO directed at Hezbollah?
Sure you can win with just air power. All you have to do is be an advocate of Total War and nuke your enemy(s) into oblivion. Anything less is not going to work when one’s opponent is prepared to die while carrying out an attack against you. Tactics regarding supply chains and fixed assets have limited application against such low-tech opponents — just look at Iraq.
Hezbollah is not a state. Destroying Lebanon (again) will only empower Hezbollah and further enflame both Muslim and Arab passion against Israel. In a sense, the Lebanese State itself is irrelevent (aside from being powerless aa well as the subject of multiple competing forces).
Comparing Lebanon to Czechoslovakia is a non sequitur.
I’m kind of surprised that high-level Israeli officers, who tend to be pretty keen students, actually think this will work. I’d argue that Yugo ’99 wasn’t really *that* much of a success; lots of damage was done to the Serb national infrastructure but it’s arguable how much they actually suffered militarily given the amount of ordnance that went in there.
I think the claim that this air-power-vs-land-power debate is going on in the IDF may actually just be a cover. I can’t imagine anybody in the IDF really wants to get into close quarters with Hizbullah; that’s what Hizbullah is absolutely begging for, a chance to kill a dozen IDF reservists a day in small-unit firefights for weeks on end. Either the Israeli public gets sick of it and demands a withdrawal, and Israel “loses”; or they get infuriated and stay. Hizbullah wins either way.
As long as the IDF can take out Hizbullah’s rocket assets (which is a pretty good question) they can pretty much stop at any time and claim they’ve achieved their objective. I think the problem is that they’re having trouble locating these assets and so they’re working their way down the target list to keep the operational tempo and domestic morale high– it looks more like a real war this way.
Of course Hezbollah is not a state, but they do have some of the characteristics of a state and thus function somewhat similarly. Also, by many accounts they are quite integrated into the Lebanese state and there is an overlap of dependencey in regards to critical systems.
Thus, I do no think the comparison with Iraq is appropriate, unless you are talking about the 1991 war, in which EBO was at least somewhat successful. Hezbollah has built a relativley substantial political/military infrastructure, much of which is part of the Lebanese state, that does provide targets for an EBO campaign.
That is not to say, however, that I beleive EBO will achieve anyting for Israel. In fact, I also tend to beleive it will end up debilitating Lebanon far more than Hezbollah, as Lebanon is far more susceptible to such an attack.
The reference to Iraq was in regard to the current situation, where overwhelming U.S. fire superiority and complete domination of airspace (except for missile attacks on helicopters and other low flying aircraft) are losing the campaign. 1991 Iraq was a nation-state of predominantly fixed assets modeled after WWII and cold war strategy and tactics, and therefore it does not apply to the discussion of air campaigns against guerrilla warfare. Hangers, bunkers and silos are easy targets. Mobile rocket launchers are considerably more difficult, as the Israeli drones attacking Israeli troops demonstrates.
On the matter of states: in the Middle East, religion is nationality, Sunni and Shiite, etc. come before national boundaries. When any of these are attacked by Christians or (especially) Jews, these groups will temporarily put aside their differences (the enemy of my enemy is my friend). Thus the Israeli destruction of Lebanon can only hurt Israel.
[On a side note, the sectarian violence in Iraq is apparently these religious groups vying to be in a position of power and therefore control when the U.S. exits (there is no separation of church and state as the west knows it [or used to, at any rate] in the Muslim religion). It is apparent to pretty much everyone except George II and Company that Iraq is untenable despite the size of the oil fields.]
How do you wage an air campaign against guerrillas? You can decimate the infrastructure of a country, destroying its ability to function on an economic or even human basis, but this will not destroy the guerrillas. To the contrary, it may very well increase their base of popular support as those whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by war join the cause.
I tend to agree with Andrew, in that Hezbollah has state-like characteristics that make it hard to characterize its conduct as pure guerilla warfare. Take the recent news about their extensive bunker system, for example. My initial depressing thought was to compare their bunkers to the tunnels used by the Vietcong that proved so devastating. The upside, though, is that Hezbollah’s bunkers are concrete and therefore fixed assets. Hezbollah seems to have sacrificed some degree of mobility and potential for asymmetric warfare for greater capabilities.
I also think Noah may be underestimating the degree to which actual states (as opposed to groups with state-like characteristics) matter in the Middle East. The Pan-Arab state (or the caliphate) has a seductive appeal, but attempts at unification failed–look at Syria and Egypt in the ‘50s. Also, even if states do not dominate politics in the region, outside powers are not prevented from behaving as if they do. Since Lebanon claims sovereignty over the territory Hezbollah uses, Israel, the US, and potentially others feel justified in holding the Lebanese state accountable. I think this is at least a partial reason why the international community has been willing to bow down before US pressure and avoid intervention.
Israel’s initially approach to eliminating Hizbullah made the one strategic error — guerilla groups, no matter how sophisticated, are not structured like national war machines. You can’t halt Hizbullah operations by attacking their supply lines or firing positions because they aren’t fixed by a formal command or supplier.
I though Israel’s strategic bombing campaign was really unwise. Not only has it done little to paralyze Hizbullah operations in Southern Lebanon, it has also soured its image to the Lebanese public. It may be a messier approach, but the IDF should have dropped leaflets over the border region and moved ground troops (with air support) in a day or two later. I think initially taking over Hizbullah’s firing positions in the south would have been much more effective than their current strategy.
The IDF can drop PGMs all over Lebanon and claim to have killed militants and destroyed their hardware, but it will amount to little strategically. In the end, the only thing that matters is how many rockets Hizbullah fired at Israel in the same time period. The IDF’s strategy is bound to hurt its organizational credibility in the long run.
Consequently, I would recommend the pseudo-biography of Vo Nyugen Giap “Victory at Any Cost” by Cecil Curray and John Keegan as a good reader on guerilla warfare. It brings out some critical issues that I think the Israelis have overlooked in the last two weeks.
I essentially agree with Robot Economist regarding the ultimate effectiveness of the Israeli strategy. However, I would offer one point of contention. Hezbollah is not simply a guerrilla group; it is a political movement with a fairly substantial social and military infrastructure. These aspects can be debilitated via EBO and Hezbollah’s other capacities can be destroyed. However, EBO cannot totally destroy Hezbollah. At best it can render ineffective certain state-like aspects of the group.
EBO will never stop Hezbollah from operating as a guerrilla group, that requires a for more complex political/military strategy. What EBO can do is reduce Hezbollah
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