Chutzpah, and WWCS?

the careening Middle East

The chutzpah, much less patience and skill, of loading explosives into thousands of pagers to ensure they all detonated at precisely the same moment in Lebanon yesterday, was unparalleled in the contemporary era, if not for all time. The questions of what, how, where, or when the purported perpetrators, the Israelis, did to make yesterday, followed by walkie talkies this morning, happen remain huge and intellectually fascinating.

The why, however, is more important.

As Israel and the Palestinians approach the year anniversary of the dastardly actions conducted against Israelis on 7 October, the bulk of the retaliation unsurprisingly targets those associated with Hamas and the population in Gaza. Certainly the continuing expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank in what remains, almost sixty years after the 1967 war, occupied rather than sovereign Israeli territory is a different form of pressure on Palestinians from that exerted by the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza. The military operations are brutal, aimed specifically at destroying Hamas as any potential threat to Israelis. The civilian population is collateral damage, whether it’s by hunger, physical limitation on their safety, medical challenges, or any other measure. Millions in Gaza are affected but the conflict could have been far worse if broader.

The bombings yesterday and this morning risk expanding that conflict substantially because they targeted not Hamas, per se, but Hezbollah, the long-time Iranian proxy force north of Israel in Lebanon. Hezbollah and Israel have skirmished for decades after these pro-Iranian fighters moved into Lebanon in the later years of that country’s civil war, following Teheran’s emergence as an active terrorist force to defend and promote its Shi’a agenda in an other wise largely Sunni Middle East. Hezbollah is violent, bent on destroying Israel is Iran, and permeates the territory of Lebanon in the face of a relatively powerless Lebanese regime in Beirut. But Hezbollah has not been the focus on this conflict that erupted last year. It does regularly threaten those in Israel’s north but it is a tiny country.

Israel and Iran began shadow boxing in the 1980s as the pro-Iranian guerrillas began attacking Israeli settlements; the bilateral hostilities accelerated the following decade as Iran’s mullahs increasingly denied the legitimacy of anything regarding the Jewish state’s existence. As anxieties grew about Teheran’s apparent desire to develop nuclear weapons, Israelis became ever more aware of their vulnerability to this regime’s two pronged threat of a possible nuclear weapon from not that far away and the constant threat of Hezbollah harassment from the north.

The Israeli politician constant through the past four decades remains the current controversial Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. I obviously have no idea what conversations occurred behind closed doors between other governments and Netanyahu but fears widely existed that Bibi’s persistent threats to attack Iran aggressive could ignite a worse regional war. Bibi, ever assertive and self-confident, has dismissed Republican or Democratic cautions from Washington regarding his penchants to advocate for military first use en lieu of any broader international efforts to use diplomacy or some other form of incentives to diminish Teheran’s threats. Indeed, the JCPOA, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, signed in 2015 aimed to assuage Israeli anxiety while locking Teheran into a position where it would not aggressively pursue a nuclear path. The Israeli leader, along with the Saudis and others, continued bemoaning the agreement as enabling Iranian deception rather than slowing down its programs. Washington’s withdrawal from the accord three years later under the Trump administration must have pleased Jerusalem a great deal.

The current conflict underway since last November has largely excluded Iran or Hezbollah, although the Israelis did kill several senior Hezbollah figures earlier this year. In retaliation, Iran sent missiles against Israel in a half-hearted recognition that dramatic escalation would not serve their interests. An awkward bilateral calm is how I would characterize the tensions for several months, with dramatic escalation always just one more bombing or miscalculation away.

Which takes us back to the why issue from this latest twist in this conflict. Two days ago, the hugely unpopular and controversial Israeli Prime Minister and his War Cabinet announced an expansion of the war aims as the second year of conflict approaches. Instead of merely ending the Hamas, as perpetrators of 7 October, Bibi announced Israel would target Hezbollah to assure safe return home for tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated due to threats from the north. The pager and walkie talkie bombings immediately appear an unmistakable sign that Israel is ready to act against Hezbollah here and now.

Whatever foreign policy legacy Secretary of State Antony Blinken leaves, his indefatigable efforts to push the Israelis towards a ceasefire with Hamas will be notable—and seemingly failed. President Biden, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and other western leaders have advanced a variety of proposals to end the suffering of the Palestinian civilians while ensuring Israeli security. Neither Netanyahu nor his right wing coalition upon whom his tenure rests have indicated any serious willingness to entertain Blinken’s negotiations or Biden’s threats to withdraw support. Hamas doesn’t have to do much because Netanyahu pre-empts their rejections

Netanyahu, as we have discussed since last fall, doesn’t believe he can terminate the war because his hold on political power is the buffer against legal troubles at home. Cynics long ago noted Netanyahu’s defiance on a ceasefire correlated to the harshest demands from his most conservative supporters in the name of protecting Israelis. He delivers their preference for hard actions while his coalition protects the Prime Minister as the decision-maker on the war. In an era of residual fear, enough Israelis acquiesce to him being the Prime Minister as long as he is prosecuting a war for their defense. Should he suspend or end that conflict, all bets for Israel would be off. The last general election required weeks for Netanyahu to craft a minimal coalition which ensured power. Israelis might be ready for another vote but the prospect of a new government while a war in underway is a bit more than most societies tolerate, it at all possible.

At the same time, I have to ask what would Clausewitz, the long deceased Prussian theorist, say about these expanded war aims? Karl von Clausewitz, of course, died two centuries ago, culling his masterpiece On War (Vom Kriege) from lessons of the Napoleonic conflict. But Clausewitz’s value was the almost universality of his analysis. He is best known for the pithy idea that war is a continuation of politics by other means, not irrelevant to today’s topic.

But, at least as important was Clausewitz’s observation on page 579 of the Howard and Paret translation in Book 8, Chapter 2: “No one starts a war—or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so—without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it. The former is its political purpose; the latter its operational objective.”

Does he know what and how he will do this? It is simple to say he is unleashing the IdF but Israel is a vibrant democracy where twists and turns arise because actions create consequences.

Netanyahu is still fighting to protect Israeli citizens against barbarism that unnerved them last October. As an analyst, I have long doubted one can eradicate a movement which is Hamas’s cause but the IDF is a powerful, determined instrument achieving a major transformation of Gaza and Palestinian conditions.

Expanding the war to Hezbollah seems much more expansive. Lebanon, whatever its problems, is at least nominally sovereign state, obviously one giving tacit approval to Hezbollah’s activities without formally sanctifying them. But sovereign states play a role in the international system with others intervening in their behalf.

More importantly, Hezbollah functions as an arm of Iran, a militant religious-based nation with Persian-Shi’ite aspirations in Sunni-dominated Arab portion of the world. Israel, at times, is a sideshow in the struggle between Arabs and Persians but never an entirely forgotten one. The potential for expanded conflict seems orders of magnitude more dangerous for Israelis, Lebanese, and everyone else in the region. It certainly has the potential to drag the United States, as Israel’s primary supporter, into a much wider war than we have seen in decades. Plus, the mullahs have their own problems at home.

Perhaps Netanyahu has indeed asked what Clausewitz would say, thinking through the implications of defining success, appreciating the difference between Absolute War and Real War, and recognizing the threat against those people he believes he is defending. I doubt Jews around the world will find it any safer should things go unaccording to plans but hope I am wrong.

Chutzpah and brazen actions are terrific signals but what would Clausewitz say about this action is an answer I would prefer hearing now.

I welcome your thoughts, concerns, rebuttals, and cautions. I appreciate each of them as I don’t have the answers. I do appreciate your time in reading this. I thank the subscribers more than I can express for their support in my work.

In this time of anxiety, I captured a beautiful surprise on our patio yesterday afternoon. I love this shot.

By the way, are you sure you are registered to vote this year? I believe it’s a privilege never to squander as so few people around the world have it.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Carl von Clausewitz, On War. translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Tamar Michaelis and Benjamin Brown, “Israel expands war objectives as questions swirl over defense minister’s future”, CNN.com, 17 September 2024, retrieved at https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/17/middleeast/israel-expands-war-objectives-tensions-with-hezbollah-intl/index.html