Another analyst weighs in on Lebanon.

As some of you probably already know, William S. Lind is generally considered to be America’s best mind on Fourth Generation Warfare. (indeed, he was one of the ones that developed the term) He’s written several books on the evolution of the battlefield, is a regular contributor to Marine Corp Gazette, and is rumored to be helping the Corp rewrite it’s famous Small Wars Manual. As an analyst, he’s certainly not infallible, but he’s been remarkably prescient. Ignore him at your peril.

His prognosis on the latest crisis?

Israel has just made a colossal mistake.

I think the stakes in the Israel-Hezbollah-Hamas war are significantly higher than most observers understand. If Hezbollah and Hamas win—and winning just means surviving, given that Israel’s objective is to destroy both entities—a powerful state will have suffered a new kind of defeat, again, a defeat across at least one international boundary and maybe two, depending on how one defines Gaza’s border. The balance between states and 4GW forces will be altered world-wide, and not to a trivial degree.

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Now, anyone who reads Lind regularly knows that he’s not exactly a shining beacon of optimism most of the time; he predicted that US tactics in Afghanistan meant we would eventually lose that country, and that Iraq would end up a disaster for the US. So perhaps he’s simply sticking to a theme.

He makes some interesting observations, though.

With Hezbollah’s entry into the war between Israel and Hamas, Fourth Generation war has taken another developmental step forward. For the first time, a non-state entity has gone to war with a state not by waging an insurgency against a state invader, but across an international boundary. Again we see how those who define 4GW simply as insurgency are looking at only a small part of the picture.

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So far, Hezbollah is winning. As Arab states stood silent and helpless before Israel’s assault on Hamas, another non-state entity, Hezbollah, intervened to relieve the siege of Gaza by opening a second front. Its initial move, a brilliantly conducted raid that killed eight Israeli soldiers and captured two for the loss of one Hezbollah fighter, showed once again that Hezbollah can take on state armed forces on even terms (the Chechens are the only other 4GW force to demonstrate that capability). In both respects, the contrast with Arab states will be clear on the street, pushing the Arab and larger Islamic worlds further away from the state.

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On this, I think he’s dead on, which is exactly why the governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia are all but screaming for Hezbollah to sit down and be good. Their sudden belief in peace has nothing to do with newfound humanitarianism, and everything to do with saving their own miserable hides. They realize that the monster they have labored so long to create is growing beyond their ability to control, and is only a hair's breath from turning on them with all its fury.

In response, Israel has had to hit not Hezbollah but the state of Lebanon. Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, referring to the initial Hezbollah raid, said, “I want to make clear that the event this morning is not a terror act but the act of a sovereign state that attacked Israel without reason.” This is an obvious fiction, as the state of Lebanon had nothing to do with the raid and cannot control Hezbollah. But it is a necessary fiction for Israel, because otherwise who can it respond against? Again we see the power 4GW entities obtain by hiding within states but not being a state.

What comes next? In the short run, the question may be which runs out first, Hezbollah’s supply of rockets or the world’s patience with Israel bombing the helpless state of Lebanon. If the latter continues much longer, the Lebanese government may collapse, undoing one of America’s few recent successes in the Islamic world.

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However, Lind believes the more immediate threat to the world at large is that Israel will grow tired of boxing with an enemy it can’t see or effectively target, and decide to go after more satisfying fare. (Syria and Iran) While war with Syria is dangerous, Lind sees war with Iran as nothing short of catastrophic, quite possibly collapsing the world economy and American hegemony along with it. For what it’s worth, I still think this is an extremely remote scenario. Israel and Iran are simply too far apart to effectively engage each other, given what I know about their force projection capabilities. But I suppose it’s a possibility, particularly if Israel is able to drag the US into the fray.

According to the IDF, they’ll be done in a week. Maybe two. Guess we’ll see.

Little Raven said:

According to the IDF, they’ll be done in a week. Maybe two. Guess we’ll see.

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I wonder what they see as being the endpoint

(Maybe I'm dense, but I don't really see what makes "4GW" forces different in kind from the guerillas and irregulars that've been running around for the past 200 years. As for attacking across a state border, PLO's activities in southern Lebanaon 1969-82 come to mind, as do the zillion African rebel groups that operate across state borders.)