How Israel Can Win: Learning From Petraeus

In Obama Imitates Olmert, Michael Totten wrote:

American General David Petraeus proved counterinsurgency in Arabic countries can work. His surge of troops in Iraq is about a change of tactics more than an increase in numbers, and his tactics so far have surpassed all expectations. The “light footprint” model used during former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s tenure may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but American soldiers and Marines had no chance of defeating insurgents from behind barbed wire garrisons. Only now that the troops have left the relative safety and comfort of their bases and intimately integrated themselves into the Iraqi population are they able to isolate and track down the killers. They do so with help from the locals. They acquired that help because they slowly forged trusting relationships and alliances, and because they protect the civilians from violence.

The Israel Defense Forces did nothing of the sort in Lebanon.

There is a growing recognition of the need for that to change. The Jerusalem Center For Public Affairs has a paper available online (PDF only) entitled Winning Counterinsurgency War:The Israeli Experience. Written by Major-General Yaakov Amidror, the report draws in part on the US experience in Iraq, which is mentioned throughout the paper:

Recent military progress by U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq have begun to counter much of the previous analyses that view counterinsurgency warfare as an inevitably hopeless quagmire that will bog down any Western army which engages in such a mission. During October 2007, the new commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, an authority on counterinsurgency warfare, managed to cut monthly U.S. fatalities to a third of what they were a year earlier. Attacks in the Sunni-dominated Anbar Province fell from around 1,300 a month in October 2006 to under 100 in November 2007. There were over two hundred fatalities per month from car bomb attacks alone in the Baghdad area in early 2007, yet by November and December that number fell dramatically to around a dozen fatalities per month. These results did not constitute a decisive military victory, for U.S. commanders were the first to admit that al-Qaeda had not been defeated. But the results certainly indicated that a counterinsurgency campaign was not a hopeless undertaking. [emphasis added]

In Part II: The Conditions Necessary for Winning the War Against Terrorism, Amidror lists 6 basic conditions for conducting an asymmetrical war correctly:

An examination of many terrorist events throughout the world (but especially the Israeli experience in fighting Palestinian and Hizbullah terrorism) shows that six basic conditions can be defined which, if met, provide the foundation for defeating terrorism:

• A political decision to defeat terrorism, stated explicitly and clearly to the security forces, and the willingness to bear the political cost of an offensive.
• Acquiring control of the territory in and from which the terrorists operate.
• Relevant intelligence.
• Isolating the territory within which the counterterrorist fighting takes place.
• Multi-dimensional cooperation between intelligence and operations.
• Separating the civilian population from the terrorists.

These conditions are necessary but insufficient; they do not ensure victory over
terrorism, but without them victory is impossible.

Perhaps one of the most key points is the recognition of the 2 innovations made in this kind of warfare--and the need to address them head on, a fact that will by necessity force Israel into direct confrontation with the expectations and condemnations of the West:

An intensive study of asymmetric warfare shows two innovations: civilians are part of
the terrorist organizations’ strength and capabilities, and therefore friction with them cannot be avoided; and the media expose counterterrorist activities in a way which is liable to influence the way decision-makers respond, with little connection between the truth and what is reported. These two innovations taken together demand that a new principle be added to the IDF’s list of war principles: “image and legitimization,” whose purpose is to make commanders of all ranks relate to both in planning the fighting and its execution. This means that at every level, whoever plans and carries out an action in war has to consider how it will be presented and appear in the media. He should, by commission or omission in planning and execution, reinforce both internal (inside the State of Israel) and external (by the world in general) legitimization for Israel’s actions in the war. Military planners have to be aware of the issue of involvement of civilians: on the one hand, some of them may have to be harmed when there is no choice, and on the other, there must be untiring effort to prevent them from being injured, insofar as this is possible. All this must be done while paying the greatest possible attention to the need to explain to the Israeli public, and to the world, every action carried out, including failures.

As opposed to the Americans, it is not necessary for Israel to add “restraint” in the
use of force as a principle of war. For Israel that would be a grave error. Sometimes
the need might arise, but generally speaking, a small country like Israel can deal with terrorism and guerrilla organizations only if its response is not proportional and is carried out in such a way as to convince the other side that it too has something to lose. A proportional response will drag Israel into a war of attrition whose rules will be determined by the terrorists, and which it will lose. A country like Israel can successfully cope with terrorism and guerrilla tactics only if it retains the ability to respond disproportionately; otherwise, it will find itself fighting according to the enemy’s rules. [emphasis added]

And we all know what that is like, because that is exactly what Olmert has acquiesced to as Prime Minister.

Amidror concludes:

The discussion above has shown that one can essentially vanquish terror, even if it is
a victory that only prevents terror from successfully implementing its plans, while it
does not influence the terrorists’ intentions. Victory of this type requires constant and determined effort from the moment that it is attained, for if not, conditions will revert to their former sorry state as soon as the terror organizations deem themselves strong enough.

"Constant and determined effort." If Olmert were only to apply himself to Israel's security with as much concentrated effort as his machinations to keep himself in power--Israel's safety would be assured.

Read the report.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Israel and Terrorism.