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Jewish World Review Sept. 7, 2007 / 24 Elul, 5766 The imperatives of war By Caroline B. Glick
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert couldn't have looked more pathetic when he
responded this week to a rocket attack on a day care center in Sderot by
writing a letter of complaint to the United Nations. But what is he to do?
Olmert and his government colleagues are stumped. They unwilling to pay the
political price that comes with abandoning the defense of the Western Negev
to Palestinian rockets in Gaza. But they are also unwilling to pay the
military and political price of launching a wide-scale ground campaign in
Gaza.
In vain attempts to get themselves off the hot seat, they try to change the
subject to Tony Blair's visit, or Condoleezza Rice's upcoming visit or the
imaginary peace accord they might sign with Fatah terror chief Mahmoud Abbas
someday.
Then too, they beat their chests every time the IDF destroys a rocket
launcher and threaten to stop supplying electricity to Gaza and start
targeting Hamas commanders. They say all of this even though they know full
well that nothing they are doing or talking about doing will prevent the
Palestinians from attacking Israel.
This is so because nothing Israel is now doing or talking about doing will
change the Palestinians' view that attacking Israel with rockets and mortars
serves their interests. And nothing being done today or being considered for
tomorrow will diminish their capacity to assault the Negev.
The Palestinians have good reasons to continue their attacks. Those attacks
keep the Palestinians mobilized as a society against "the Zionist enemy."
They also guarantee continued Iranian, Syrian, Egyptian and Saudi military
and financial support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah.
Furthermore, the Kassam barrages advance the Palestinians' long-term
strategic goal of fomenting the collapse of Israeli society. By maintaining
their offensive they daily portray the government and the IDF as impotent in
the eyes of Israel's citizenry. Israeli society in turn, is demoralized and
its demoralization induces a sense of lost sovereignty and powerlessness
that legitimates and prolongs the paralysis of the IDF and the government.
The enemy of course uses this paralysis to enhance its offensive
capabilities and reinforce its legitimacy in the eyes of its society.
With those rationales for striking, it is obvious that the Palestinians will
continue to assault Israel with rockets and mortars for as long as they can.
And given the nature of its enemy it is similarly clear that Israel must
take away the Palestinians' ability to attack its territory.
There is only one way to achieve this goal. The IDF must take the western
Negev out of rocket range by conquering northern Gaza. It must cut off the
Palestinians' supply lines by retaking control over Gaza's border with Egypt.
And, the IDF must establish a two-kilometer wide security zone within
Gazaalong its border with
Israel to prevent terrorist infiltrations.
Unfortunately, it is hard to see either the government or the IDF General
Staff agreeing to take this necessary action. Over the past several years,
some dubious notions about the nature of 21st century warfare have taken
hold of Israel's military and political decision-making circles. These
notions have ensnared them in a conceptual trap that convolutes their
debates and obfuscates imperative choices they are duty-bound to make.
This conceptual trap is set-forth and defended in a book published this year
by the University of Haifa. Diffused Warfare: The Concept of Virtual Mass,
was authored by former Navy Commander Vice Admiral (ret.) Yedidia
Groll-Yaari and strategist Haim Assa.
Briefly, the work argues that "classical" military doctrines built around
linear battles of massed columns of conventional forces are no longer
relevant today. Yaari and Assa claim that in asymmetric conflicts against
sub-state guerilla and terror forces, control of territory is not
necessarily desirable and as a result, maneuver warfare that concentrates
forces in one place with the aim of destroying enemy forces is antiquated
and serves mainly to complicate matters.
In their view, rather than seeking to control territory, the militaries of
democratic states should reorganize around the concept of stand-off battles
predicated on precision weaponry. Those weapons, backed by network
centricity which enables near unimpeded information flow to commanders in
the rear, can create virtual mass by assaulting multiple, dispersed enemy
targets simultaneously, and so foment systemic shock. After the initial
systemic shock of enemy forces is induced, repeated precision attacks will
prevent the enemy from reorganizing to fight effectively. In light of this,
militaries today should organize around their air and special forces
components, which can move rapidly in and out of target areas.
As the IDF's pinpoint attacks in Gaza today, and in Lebanon last summer
show, the IDF and the government share Yaari and Assa's view. The problem
unfortunately, is that their view is incorrect.
First of all, it isn't true that classical warfare was based as a rule on
concentration of mass and linear battle lines. From the times of Joshua,
Gideon and Alexander the Great, military commanders have conducted
successful campaigns which defeated their enemies by fomenting systemic
shock. Throughout the ages, if there has been one rule of thumb for
battlefield success, it has been to apply your strengths against your
opponent's weaknesses — whether through frontal assaults, sieges,
psychological operations or aerial bombardments.
Moreover, whether control of territory is necessary or not is a function of
the nature of the enemy and of the society from which it operates. In World
War II, Allied forces did not need to occupy liberated France after they
overran it because the local population did not oppose them.
In 2003, the Americans successfully overthrew Saddam Hussein's regime in
Iraq through a diffused "shock and awe" campaign that did not involve
occupying and controlling the country. The Americans erred in failing to
recognize the potential for resistance among the Iraqis and Iraq's neighbors
Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Due to their misreading of the intentions and
aspirations of disgruntled Iraqis and their neighbors, the Americans did not
take control of the country or secure its borders and so allowed insurgent
forces to develop and take hold of territory from which they launched their
insurgency.
Yaari and Assa uphold the IDF's 2002 Defensive Shield campaign in Judea and
Samaria as proof that diffused warfare doctrines can replace conventional
maneuver forces doctrines. Yet Defensive Shield involved massed
concentration of IDF forces not virtual mass. The IDF used maneuver forces
to retake control over Palestinian urban centers in Judea and Samaria. That
control has been maintained ever since. If Defensive Shield and the American
experiences in Iraq tell us anything, they tell us that massed and diffused
warfare doctrines complement one another. They are not mutually exclusive.
The Second Lebanon War similarly exposed the importance of controlling
territory. The IDF's General Staff deployed its forces in various areas
which they never actually conquered or controlled. As a result, it was
impossible to build or sustain logistical supply lines to support their
efforts. Units were forced to disengage from the enemy in the midst of
battles in order to evacuate wounded and dead comrades. The need to airdrop
rations, water and ammunition to units in the field exposed them to enemy
fire.
Finally there is the issue of systemic shock. The diffused warfare doctrine
asserts that the chaos induced by the simultaneous stand-off bombing of
multiple targets can induce the paralysis of enemy forces. But this is not
necessarily true. Guerilla forces, by their very nature thrive in chaotic
environments. In their case, the most effective way of inducing systemic
shock and paralysis is often through the imposition of order. And a
precondition for imposing order is exerting control over territory.
Yaari and Assa admit that the doctrine of diffused warfare was not developed
as a result of military imperatives, but as a consequence of political
constraints. Here they acknowledge that contrary to the claims of the
political Left, military and political ends are integrally linked. The
question though is how should this linkage influence military planning and
operations? For Assa and Yaari the answer is clear.
In their words, "By the start of the 21st century the international
legitimacy of armed conflict had become a dominant consideration in the
decisions of states to go to war. The status, indeed the very existence, of
international courts for war criminals is indicative of the primacy of
this factor. Furthermore, domestic opposition to military force that risks
the lives of innocent civilians is no longer a marginal phenomenon and has
come to have a significant impact on national decision making processes.
Thus two factors — international legitimacy and the aversion to operations
that intentionally or unintentionally endanger the lives of non-combatants
— now largely determine the operability of concrete military actions."
And herein lies the root of the difficulty that IDF and the government
experiences in confronting Gaza and Israel's enemies in general today. Yaari
and Assa, and like them the IDF and the government, perceive both domestic
and international political constraints as static, absolute and
determinative. But they are none of these things. As Israel proved in
Defensive Shield, it is possible to conduct maneuver warfare and seize and
maintain control over territory in spite of political opposition.
As the US military's current surge operations in Iraq demonstrate, military
successes on the ground, properly represented by military commanders and
political leaders, can change domestic and international perceptions of the
legitimacy of prolonged military campaigns.
The relative power of forces as varied as the White House, the UN, leftist
internationally funded NGOs like Peace Now and Four Mothers to determine the
effectiveness of military campaigns is not preordained. It is a function of
the will of governments and nations and the competence of their military
forces operating on the ground.
There is no doubt that when fighting a foe that seeks to elude direct
contact with one's military forces, it is often necessary to conduct
diffused campaigns with no clear center of gravity in order to expose and
defeat its hidden forces. But there is also no question that the imperative
of suiting one's forces to meet the challenges of dynamic battlefields does
not cancel the need to field maneuver units capable of conquering and
controlling territory.
When confronting the enemy in Gaza today, no new super-modern, new-fangled
doctrines that simply distort the nature of battle through the ages can deny
the simple truth: If Israel wishes to defend its sovereignty and its
citizenry, it cannot rely on precision weapons. It must seize and maintain
control over northern Gaza and southern Gaza, and establish a security zone
inside of Gaza along the border with Israel.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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