(Update: a bit more on the Merkava tank and the implications of the Hezbollah light infantry model. [2])
Perhaps it's a little early to begin the Israel/Hezbollah post mortem, but it's not too early to draw some conclusions and do a little looking back.
At the beginning of the war I assumed the Israelis could defeat Hezbollah in conventional military terms. While it's not clear that they couldn't in "theory" do so, in practice, they haven't. It’s worth looking at Israel, Hezbollah and Lebanon to try and answer the question of why?
Let's deal with the Israelis first. First of all - clearly their intelligence service fell down on the job. They had no idea what they were facing - a dug in series of hardened positions with underground networks supporting them, manned by elite troops. They thought they could use aerial interdiction of supplies, and didn't realize they were fighting a light infantry force that could fight a long time without mechanized resupply.
Second, their army has been corrupted by occupation. Martin van Crevald likes to say that if you fight the weak, you become weak. 30 years of occupation "warfare", of killing weak Palestinian militants and civilians, has made the Israeli army from a battlefield supremacy army based on the German blitzkrieg model, into a force suited for protecting bulldozers and blowing away armed rabble.
More after the jump
In part this is reflected in equipment - the Merkava, for example, has lousy cross terrain mobility. The infantry is mostly equipped with light weapons. It's also evident in morale and unit cohesion - Israeli units seem to have broken far more often than Hezbollah ones. They aren't willing or able to take significant casualties. And the style of bunker warfare Hezbollah is using is designed to force attrition warfare. You can take the bunkers out, but you will take losses. You simply can't avoid it, though you could lower it by flying gunships really low nap of the ground. But then you'd expose the IAF to the possibility of losses, and the prestige loss of losing planes seems to be something the Israelis weren't willing to risk.
And that's the heart of the Israeli problem - an army that isn't as good as its reputation, that they aren't willing to take significant losses using. It's odd, and Stratfor, for example is still shaking their heads over it. They can't bring themselves to believe it: [3]
In looking at Israeli behavior -- which has become the most interesting and perplexing aspect of this conflict -- we are struck by an oddity. The Israeli leadership seems genuinely concerned about something, and it is not clear what it is. Obviously, the government doesn't want to take casualties, but this is not a political problem. The Israeli public can deal with high casualties as long as the mission -- in this case the dismantling of Hezbollah's capabilities -- is accomplished. The normal pattern of Israeli behavior is to be increasingly aggressive rather than restrained, and the government is supported.
When a government becomes uncertain, it normally reverts to established patterns. We would have expected a major invasion weeks ago, and we did expect it. Something is holding the Israelis back and it is not simply fear of casualties. The increasing confusion and even paralysis of the Israeli government could be explained simply by division and poor leadership. But we increasingly have the feeling that there is an aspect to Israeli thinking that we do not understand, some concern that is not apparent that is holding them back from doing what they would normally do.
Hezbollah has fought well, but it is hard to believe that the Israelis can't defeat them or that Israel can't take casualties. (Interestingly enough, Iran and Hezbollah, who are aiming for an imminent cease-fire to claim victory in this conflict, have remained silent while the discussion of a coming cease-fire intensifies.) As the pressure to act mounts and Israel doesn't act, the question of what is restraining them becomes increasingly important. We can't speculate on what their concern might be, because we don't know it. However, Olmert is acting as if he doesn't want to become too aggressive, and the reasoning is unclear.
But personally, I cry Occam's razor. The simplest explanation for why the Israelis haven't fully committed their forces is they're scared of the losses. And one wonders, indeed, if they are scared of actually losing. The inability to take small towns, heck, villages, despite having complete air supremacy and artillery support, has been astounding. I suspect we're going to find out in the months to come that there were significant command and morale failures amongst front line troops.
The next part is Hezbollah. I said, day one of the invasion, that Israel could win battles against Hezbollah and reoccupy, but could never destroy Hezbollah as a military force. I was half right - I never expected the conventional arms victories of Hezbollah. At the same time it was always clear that Hezbollah was strong enough that the goal of destroying Hezbollah was nothing but a fantasy.
Still the extent to which Hezbollah had pre-prepared the battlefield with infrastructure - both defensive and supply caches and highly sophisticated tactics, has exceeded what I think anyone except Hezbollah themselves expected. Even they, I suspect, are probably somewhat surprised at how successful they've been. At a guess they expected to force Israel into an attrition battle, and to inflict heavy losses (but take heavier) but they probably figured Israel could push them back faster and further and easier than they have.
But what has become clear is that Hezbollah's army is effectively made up of elite light infantry who are also capable of operating as guerillas. Or as a military analyst friend of mine put it, "what do you call light infantry trained in insurgency warfare? Special forces."
Hezbollah took a core of men who had survived an 18 year occupation - the toughest of the tough - the survivors and veterans and used them as the cadre of their force. They appear to have received extensive conventional military training on top of that from either the Iranians or the Syrians, or both. The morale of their forces is extraordinarily high, they are keen to fight, and they are willing to take casualties. No one joined the Hezbollah military thinking that the odds against them were anything but bad. No one joined assuming that they wouldn't take heavy losses. There is an acceptance amongst them that losses, even fairly heavy losses, are to be expected. And that if those losses let you do you job, then that's acceptable.
And while Israel clearly had no clue what they were up against, Hezbollah appears to have known exactly what they were facing. They spent a lot of time thinking about supply; thinking about how to avoid the worst effects of Israeli air supremacy; about how to spoof or avoid Israeli e-lint and about how to avoid Israeli human intelligence (for example, contrary to many claims, Hezbollah appears to try and operate away from civilians so that informers can't sell out troop positions.) They know the weaknesses of Israelis arsenal as well - situating themselves, for example, on a loose gravel hill when fighting a Merkava, knowing it can't traverse the terrain.
The Lebanese factor and world opinion. One of my first thoughts, during the initial bombing campaign, was that the Israelis were trying to turn the rest of the Lebanese against Hezbollah, and perhaps to even start up the Lebanese civil war again. And indeed polls in the first few days showed a lot of non-Shia Lebanese upset with Hezbollah. But the bombing was disproportionate, and so, ummm, indiscriminate in attacking groups other than the Shia, that the Lebanese swung heavily behind Hezbollah. Israel had done what no one else had been able to do - unite Lebanon.
The disproportionate nature of the bombing campaign, combined with the daily coverage of dead children and refugees likewise hardened world opinion. The US may have stayed onside, but almost no one else did and the Arab leaders, largely coming out against Hezbollah in the first few days, quickly switched sides as picture of the dead inflamed their populations against Israel and for Hezbollah.
Perhaps more significantly, Hezbollah's ability to stand against Israel, and the fact that the other factions swung behind Hezbollah had a chilling effect on the idea of a multinational force "disarming" Hezbollah. It became pretty clear, to anyone with a brain, that if Hezbollah didn't want to be disarmed - Hezbollah wasn't going to be disarmed, unless you were willing to walk a trail of blood and tears. As one diplomat quipped pretty soon everyone was offering to handle the logistics for the force.
Facts on the Ground are simple - Hezbollah has imposed costs on Israel for the invasion that Israel is not willing to sustain. Israel has not been able to take out Hezbollah's strategic deterrent, has not been able to degrade Hezbollah's command and control, has not been able to break public support in Lebanon for Hezbollah and has not been able to break the morale or unit cohesion of Hezbollah's forces.
In fact, other than blowing up a lot of infrastructure and causing a huge refugee crisis, it's hard to see exactly what Israel has accomplished at all.
So Israel will be forced to withdraw, with various face saving BS like Lebanon taking over the border being put in place. No one in the Muslim world, or anywhere but the US (even Israel) will be fooled into thinking it is anything but an Israeli loss.
And Israel and Hezbollah and all the other armies in the region, and indeed the world, will spend a lot of time examining what exactly happened and trying to learn the lessons of this war. This is going to be one for all the military tactics and strategy books and it is going to be an historic war, as important in many ways as Israel's smashing victories of the 60's and 70's - because for the first time an Arab army is going to be seen to have defeated Israel unambiguously (the 2000 withdrawal was too unilateral.)
It should also make people start thinking more seriously about so called non state actors like Hezbollah and the Tamil Tigers and the Islamic Courts Union and their similarities and differences from States. Such organization - with the support of a population and fulfilling most of the roles of the government, yet not internationally recognized, are likely to increase in number and efficacy over time - and as we have just seen, even now, they are a force to be reckoned with.
Welcome the new Middle East. It's not your father's Middle East anymore.