Prometheus 6

"US slaps sanctions on Russian groups for selling arms to Iran."

It leads with: "US relations with Russia hit another obstacle yesterday when the State Department imposed sanctions on two Russian companies - one of which has close connections with President Vladimir Putin - for selling arms to Iran. The move angered the Russian president."

We're getting closer to that Kazakstan-China pipeline every single day.

"This is not a militia, it's an infantry brigade with all the support units," Kuperwasser said.

No, it is not a militia or a brigade. Welcome to the growing world of fourth generation warfare (4GW).

We're getting closer to that Kazakstan-China pipeline every single day.

Yes, indeedy. The Chinese will not be deterred by what they perceive as our foolishness about the Middle East. 

  It seems that Israel’s miscalculation in Lebanon has the same cause as America’s miscalculations in Iraq: plain old grade A caucasian arrogance. It takes unbridled conceit to lose a fight because one simply refuses to accept that the enemy might be stronger than one wish to believe. What a juvenile mistake from those who declare themselves “superior� over everyone else!  

   

The military objective in the war against the regime of Saddam Hussein has already been achieved. The US could give two gargantuan shits if Sunnis and Shiites want to bomb one another to smithereens for centuries. Iraqi oil is back on the dollar and the Halliburton people are getting every dollar they intended to get. Don't get that Iraqi body count twisted with the objectives of war. The objective was never to liberate or democratize Iraq - and the mission has already been achieved. If the mission was not already complete, more Americans would certainly be dying every single day - but they're not. They're chillin' and survivin' and running traffic stops (DWI - Driving While Iraqi) and killing 94% of the good guys (by their own account). It's been a wrap for a few months now. The War in Iraq has been over for quite some time.

Do ya really think that Mossad and the rest of the crew have miscalculated against Hezbollah - really? I mean, seriously...does that even make the slightest bit of sense. I mean, I know it's in all the papers - but does that comport with your prior knowledge of Israeli intelligence and defense tactics? It probably does not. Quite frankly, I don't believe it fits at all. The Israelis don't do "surprises." If you think they've been surprised because that's what their advance press office (the NY TIMES and others) is distributing, I suggest going a bit deeper. Hell, it doesn't even make sense that they would invade Lebanon because 2 soldiers were kidnapped. Not a bit. I've been exploring some of this on my blog - and since I think the Times is a true rag (good for cleaning windshields and wiping my crack) I flatly reject all of their information until further investigation/confirmation. No easy answers here, but time will reveal - and the tea leaves suggest this has much more to do with China and energy and pipelines and contracts and trade agreements than it does with Muslims and Jews or Muslims and fundamentalism or Christians and democracy or democracy and modernism or modernism and America.

Do ya really think that Mossad and the rest of the crew have miscalculated against Hezbollah - really?

I think it is important to understand that Mossad and the rest of Israel's intelligence apparatus are not all knowing and all powerful despite their past successes, which have created an aura of great strength and invincibility around them. It is clear that Hezbollah has studied and learned more than a few lessons itself over the years. Members of its military wing, for example, are far less publicly visible and, by implication, identifiable, than members of Fatah's militia.

What I think is that we have entered a new phase of warfare. Military historians and experts refer to it as fourth generation warfare; 4GW for short. They contend that the German military command introduced the world to third generation warfare at the beginning of World War I and that paradigm prevailed for more than 70 years. Now that style or approach to conducting armed conflict, which we call conventional warfare, is slowly but surely being supplanted by armed guerillas who are using the techniques of asymmetric warfare.

The hijacking of four airline passenger jets and using them as guided missles on September 11, 2001 is a textbook example of this kind of warfare. Our military and intelligence experts, in fact, military and intelligence experts all over the world including the Mossad were completely taken by surprise. Al Qaeda and groups like it, that is, groups committed to waging non-conventional warfare are constantly forced to think and see outside the box in terms of their military campaigns against conventional forces.

There is ample evidence to bolster your claim that the Israelis may not do "surprises" but given the nature of 4GW there is no reason to think that the Israelis cannot be surprised. I believe, for example, that the Israelis' decision to destroy Lebanon's infrastructure is part of an operational plan that had been formulated some time ago. What the Israelis were waiting for was an act by Hezbollah or some other group that could be used as a pretext to justify such an attack. I think the Israelis have been completely surprised by the resistance Hezbollah has been able to put up and, more importantly perhaps, the degree of popular support Hezbollah has received in the Middle East.

 

Your final point was what I was referring to with respect to surprises. Of course the Israelis can be surprised in the context of a battle - but I believe the broader objective simply required provocation. I also believe that even with all of the issues you've raised, Mossad has been able to gather reliable intelligence from a number of sources - including the US and Europe - sometimes without willing cooperation.  

I also believe that even with all of the issues you've raised, Mossad has been able to gather reliable intelligence from a number of...

Reliable intelligence under the conditions of 4GW means something altogether different from, say, the Germans knowing the date and location of the Allied assault on Normandy. Capturing and torturing members of Hezbollah's political wing, as the Israelis have done, will not produce any credible information about Hezbollah's military plans or operations. In fact, capturing and torturing a member of Hezbollah's military command will only produce information about that particular commander's area of authority.

Let us not think for a moment that the lessons of how the French cracked open the cell structure of the Algerian resistance has been lost on the leaders of Hezbollah. What chiefly distinguishes 4GW military or guerilla units from their predecessors is the absolute firewall placed between their political and military wings and their ability to quickly adapt and mutate in the face of changing or changed conditions. The struggle in Lebanon will reveal, I believe, the limits of Mossad's capabilities in the face of 4GW.

The Israelis are no less susceptible than any other advanced 3GW military power to becoming lost in the fog of war. Its political and military goals are not achievable within the current geopolitical context of the Middle East. The United States is not in a position to offer any direct military assistance other than weapons, fuel and signal intelligence information. These are extremely useful resources but no possible configuration of these elements even in combination with Israel's vastly superior military capability will enable Israel to defeat or disarm Hezbollah.

How long have the British, for example, who have more experience than any other nation in counterinsurgency tactics and strategy sought to disarm the military wing of the Irish Republican Army? The Israelis' 50 plus years lament is now proving true. They are literally fighting for their existence and I don't  believe the odds are on their side. It may not come in our lifetimes but there will come a day when the United States may have to guarantee safe passage for 5 million Jews. This will be a sad day in world affairs but the end was in the beginning and only the beginnings are great. After that, everything runs downhill.

I'll take that and run with it.

Mossad, IDF disagree over damage to Hezbollah
"The heads of two Israeli intelligence agencies disagree over how much the IDF assault has damaged Hezbollah, although both say the group has been weakened.

The Mossad intelligence agency says Hezbollah will be able to continue fighting at the current level for a long time to come, Mossad head Meir Dagan said.

However, Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin disagrees, seeing Hezbollah as having been severely damaged.

The IDF believes that at least 200 Hezbollah operatives have been killed since the fighting began more than two weeks ago, a military source said Friday.

Also, the IAF scored a successful direct hit Thursday against Hezbollah's missile command center deployed in Tyre, which has been primarily responsible for targeting Haifa and its surroundings. The regional command center was located on the 12th floor of a Tyre building that the IAF destroyed.

Both intelligence chiefs agree that Hezbollah remains capable of command and control and still holds long-range missiles in its arsenal, they said at a security cabinet meeting Thursday."

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It may be, given these disparate reports, that Mossad knows and what the IDF does are no longer symmetrical and that the new paradigm imposed by 4GW is the real determinant. One Mossad member definitely believes Israel underestimated Hezbollah. It may be that the real goal is to have a protracted series of battles that draw others into the conflict.

All of the above notwithstanding, there are indications that Israel began to seriously consider the implications (and tactical challenges) posed by asymmetric warfare years ago. Anil Pustam's piece is not decisive, but it may be instructive. He writes:

"In the spring of 2002 though, the escalation of military operations, including the conduct of urban air warfare, against terrorists in the West Bank resulted in a fundamental rethinking of the future threat scenario. Urban operations are now also seen as likely. In the 2002 air actions, air power, although needed to be adapted, was found to be more useful than expected. But the urban air warfare requirement is very different from previous demands and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and helicopters rather than combat aircraft were found to be the most important assets."

As for the comparison of the Brits fighting against the IRA, I would submit that the following abstract re: Israel-Palestine is applicable in the British case.

"Over the past 15 years Israel has been involved in a bitter counter-insurgency campaign against the Palestinians. Palestinian insurgency, particularly during the current Al-Aqsa Intifada, has posed serious challenges to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Whilst being able to adapt successfully its tactics to Palestinian terror and urban guerrilla warfare in order to reduce the level of Palestinian violence, the IDF has not been able to achieve a battlefield decision or victory. This has been due to the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which ultimately necessitates the provision of a political solution by the Israeli political leadership, which has relied too often on the IDF as a panacea for its own strategic and political indecisiveness vis-à-vis the Palestinian national question."

The British, similarly, sought to deploy force rather than engage a viable political solution. There are many more commonalities. In many respects, it's also akin to the US war on native americans through the time of the Dawes Act (1888?).

I'll have to read more about 4GW.

To borrow an analogy from the realm of theoretical sub-atomic physics, i.e., the principle of uncertainty, I don't think it is possible for Mossad or any member of Mossad to declare with any degree of accuracy what damage has been sustained by Hezbollah as a result of Israeli assaults or whether that damage has any long term consequences for Hezbollah. In this light, Mossad's assessments when offered to the western media should be viewed at best as reasonably informed guesses or, worse, the usual propaganda that accompanies a war.

Keep in mind, too, that Hezbollah is more disciplined, better trained and larger than any comparable force run by the Palestinians. Also, unlke the PLO and Fatah, members of the military wing of Hezbollah don't go around high sidin' and running off at the mouth. They believe that what is quiet is what's kept.

See The Open Souce War by John Robb

I'll have to read more about 4GW.

Start with Zenpundit and follow the links outward. 

Just as the world is watching Lebanon, trying to understand the conflict there, so are experts in modern warfare theory, who see in the battle between Israel and Hezbollah a living -- and dying -- test of their ideas.

And in many important ways, they say, Hezbollah appears to understand this war better than its opponent, one of the world's most highly trained and best-equipped militaries.

"I think it's something new, in that a non-state organization has undertaken a major, sustained, broad-scale, and so far, the successful military offensive against a state," said William Lind, director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "What changes here ... is that non-state forces are able to challenge states militarily -- and win."

Some experts call it "modern warfare," some call it "unconventional conflict," others use technical terms such as "netwar" or "fourth-generation warfare."

The definitions differ, but all refer generally to conflict in which small, decentralized, non-state groups can turn the advantages of large national armies -- overwhelming firepower, high technology, a clear hierarchy of command -- into disadvantages, and in which winning political and public relations victories matters more than counting casualties and bombing sorties.

Elements of that kind of war have been part of conflict since antiquity, but most experts say they moved to the fore in the Iraq war -- and even more so in the current Lebanon conflict.

"It's both a conventional and an unconventional conflict. It has aspects of both," said Army Special Forces Lt. Col. James Gavrilis, an expert in counterinsurgency tactics. "It includes both state actors and non-state actors -- it pretty much has everything."

This.  Israel as 4GW victory machine?

The pieces of the puzzle that don't fit for me are fairly large -  and I suppose we'll find out over time wihether these pieces are supposed to fit - or not.

1) Absurd level of violence in response to capturing of soldiers.

2) Energy resource implications for US and Israel of a broader conflict that isolates Syria and Iran - as a means of neutralizing Russo-Chinese regional energy access.

3) Israeli history of ongoing monitoring of enemies.

4) Conventional wisdom.

When the NY Times and everyone under the sun is suggesting that Israel has grossly underestimated their enemy, I'm inclined to believe the opposite.  Quite simply, there are much bigger fish to fry - and an abrupt end to this conflict does not support that goal.  This fight needs to be protracted - and it needs to cover a wider territorial area than it currently does.  So, I see much of this as a contrivance to extend the battle to draw in others who are watching on the periphery.  

As far as the 4GW thing, I have to say that what would make this particularly novel would be if a non-state actor had the capacity to hit and stick vs. hit and run.  The cellular attack approach is significant - nonetheless, the inability to protect cells, civilians or much of anything means that 4GW is contingent on a number of things that should come as no surprise to the Israelis, namely a shared commitment to eradicate an enemy - and a critical mass of distributed technical prowess.  

If that's the case, the goal in fighting a group like this is not simply to kill every single fighter...it has to be to isolate and neutralize the group by circumscribing external support networks.  It could be that the Israelis have begun this effort in earnest - but it is not something that could have been done in three or four or six days.  It's a different type of fight from a "defensive" side as well.  

Thoughts?

where its 'sposed 2.

Israel's as 4GW victory machine?

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Israel's status as a 4GW victory machine, which is a contradiction in terms as I see it, is beside the point. Hezbollah and other groups clearly absorbed the lessons of Israel's alleged victories over the PLO et al. and what we are seeing today are the limits of Israel's ability to respond to such adversaries.

1) Absurd level of violence in response to capturing of soldiers.

Not in terms of the prevailing attitude of the Israeli military and its civilian overseers. I vaguely recall some line from Moshe Dayan about acting like a mad dog and people wanting to steer clear of mad dogs.

2) Energy resource implications for US and Israel of a broader conflict that isolates Syria and Iran - as a means of neutralizing Russo-Chinese regional energy access.

I'm not sure what you mean here. The U.S. and Israel do not have the capacity to prevent Iran from selling energy resources to Russia and China without permanently damaging their own access to energy resources.

3) Israeli history of ongoing monitoring of enemies.

Hezbollah's organizational structure makes it extremely difficult to monitor its military wing.

4) Conventional wisdom.

The Israelis are just human beings; no smarter or dumber than any other group of people. Israel's miscalculation about Hezbollah's military capacities and abilities is plainly evident. Israel's expansionist designs on Lebanon's territory, which the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers was only the pretext or excuse, have been derailed as a result of Hezbollah's resistence.

I was listening to Leonard Lopate's radio program (WNYC) this evening (satellite radio is great). The topic was China and the U.S.'s Middle East policy. The discussion was interesting although I wish the program had had an Asian expert on to speak. During the discussion reference was made to blogsite carrying a piece today titled China, Oil, Sudan, Scorched Earth, Genocide .

Here is the first paragraph of that piece. (If you have time, too, download the Lopate discussion about China and its energy plans. One of the guests believes that China is beginning to exemplify the sort of mercantile capitalist behavior that was once considered the exclusive province of, say, the British, Dutch, Belgians and French.)

"When George II welcomed Chinese President Hu Jintao to the White House this week, the smiles were on ostentatious display. Many people worry about China, and the Chinese have indeed been engaged in some abominable things, but not the things that American protectionists are concerned about. For instance, a few years ago China bankrolled the Sudan Arab Muslim elite's killing spree against African Christians in the south of the country. Tribes there had the misfortune to live on the oil fields that China has its eyes on. The Chinese government supplied Khartoum with lots of cash and weapons so its forces could run the occupants off their lands, slaughtering the people in the process. It was a nasty campaign, and the Chinese were in the thick of it."

The Real Esate War by Gordon Levy

"This miserable war in Lebanon, which is just getting more and more complicated for no reason at all, was born in Israel's greed for land. Not that Israel is fighting this time to conquer more land, not at all, but ending the occupation could have prevented this unnecessary war. If Israel had returned the Golan Heights and signed a peace treaty with Syria in a timely fashion, presumably this war would not have broken out...

"...But the current war could yet turn out to be only an appetizer for the coming wars, which will be far more dangerous. The saying that time is on our side is another delusion. The Arab and Muslim world has armed, in all of this time, and the danger of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles is already hovering over our heads. The only response to that is maximum neutralization of the flashpoints, before the bomb arrives. But Israel has chosen to close its eyes and build its future on a horrifyingly temporary quiet, or on more and more war operations."  

Israel is Losing World War III - Robert Burston

After years of Military Intelligence warnings of Hezbollah's missile arsenal and vaguely comforting news items about the mystery-shrouded Nautilus Katyusha-killer, we now know that we knew next to nothing.

We are losing it because our prime minister, defense minister, and army chief, who are new at their jobs and have proven it at every opportunity, made outlandish, grandiose, and boastful claims at the outset of the campaign, speaking of disarming Hezbollah, creating a new order in Lebanon, creating a reality in which the Lebanese people themselves would turn on the terrorists and diminish their influence.

Even before we ran aground in the north, the words had a perversely familiar ring. They are the sound track of debacle. They are as dated and as current as a 16 mm version of Apocalypse Now screened in IDF forts in Lebanon in the '80s.

We've gone after infrastructure, and in so doing, caused immeasurable suffering to as many as a million Lebanese, a thousand of them dead, thousands of them maimed, hundreds of thousands of them displaced.

And there are still those, and they are many, who argue for More of the Same. Much more. For a start, "Erasing villages where Hezbollah operates."

But more of them same is likely to yield only more of the same failure.

With thousands of thousands of soldiers already in Lebanon, seven brigades and counting, after 4,600 IAF bombing runs , 150 of them Sunday night alone, 80 to 90 percent of Hezbolah's 2,500 fighters are alive and shooting. They are still capable of firing 200 rockets a day into Israel.

We are losing the war, in part, because our actions have only gained sympathy for Hezbollah.

Polls are now showing that nearly 90 percent of Lebanese ? including many who had serious doubts about Hezbollah in the past, now support the organization's war with Israel.

The war has so elevated Hezbollah in the eyes of the world, that terrorism authority Prof. Robert A. Pape, writing in The New York Times, could without flinching compare the group to "the multidimensional American civil-rights movement of the 1960s."

Read More  

Hezbollah Compared to Civil Rights Groups

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Hezbollah is principally neither a political party nor an Islamist militia. It is a broad movement that evolved in reaction to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. At first it consisted of a small number of Shiites supported by Iran. But as more and more Lebanese came to resent Israel’s occupation, Hezbollah — never tight-knit — expanded into an umbrella organization that tacitly coordinated the resistance operations of a loose collection of groups with a variety of religious and secular aims.

In terms of structure and hierarchy, it is less comparable to, say, a religious cult like the Taliban than to the multidimensional American civil-rights movement of the 1960’s. What made its rise so rapid, and will make it impossible to defeat militarily, was not its international support but the fact that it evolved from a reorientation of pre-existing Lebanese social groups.