Special Analysis: In Response to 'An Irresponsible Question'

I have yet to directly address in a major article here at The Dark Wraith Forums the latest Middle East crisis involving Israel, Lebanon, and the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. As noted in comments on a previous thread here, the trajectory and end-point of the violence is obvious to me, yet something seems different this time around: even though the dynamics have not materially changed from previous confrontations, and even though all indications point to no major turning point in the ways and means by which international and inter-ethnic conflicts are resolved in the Middle East, something not yet entirely quantifiable to me is not quite the same.

Answering a request by Moody Blue for my analysis of the situation, I responded in part as follows:

Here's my problem. The current situation in the Middle East has a dynamic that is so obvious to me that I could literally close my eyes and type for 30 minutes, laying out exactly what's going to happen. The particulars of the events on the ground from moment to moment and even from day to day are largely irrelevant to the trajectory and end-point.

Yes, certain members of the G-8 are trying to broker a backroom deal; yes, the Israelis are following a well-worn path of obliterating their potential adversaries at the very level of capacity to carry out the duties, rights, and responsibilities of sovereignty or, in the case of Palestine, future sovereignty; and yes, the Israelis, for doing all of this, are going to leave in place the symbols of their generations-old nemeses in the Middle East. They never killed Yasser Arafat, even though time and time again they could have, and they will do the same with the nominal head of Hizballah, Hassan Nasrallah, or one of his most capable lieutenants. The whole conflagration will cool down in a while, and the brokers of record will move in, help clean up the mess in Lebanon, and feel like they were the agents of quasi-peace who finally got the guns to stop roaring.

Israel will then negotiate a final border solution with a fully and permanently castrated Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza, relieved as he will be of the overwhelming power that Hamas had held in shaping Palestinian policy toward Israel.

Israel will, in the meantime, establish a security buffer zone in southern Lebanon, probably something about 20 miles wide, up to just south of the Lebanese city of Tyre.

Then we'll see negotiations and playing around with the idea of replacing the Israeli troops with a United Nations peacekeeping force in the security buffer zone. That will go on for some time.

A nervous calm will eventually settle over the region, with hot rhetoric and a relative absence of gunfire. Ultimately, status quo ante will return, with the ante being weaponry poised at enemies everywhere, but relative peace and quiet... until, of course, the next round.

It's so easy to see.

Now for the problem: something in my gut is telling me that it's not going to play out this way. It's a tiny voice, and I simply cannot put my finger on exactly what's nagging the Hell out of me.

Mind you, there's always background noise, intrigue, and little sparklers of weirdness in these flare-ups in the Middle East. Small mysteries are like a persistent weed that grows on the landscape of deterministic outcomes in politics, and the current crisis has no small share of oddities.

But I honestly don't think that's what's behind my uncertainty. I don't mind uncertainty: I can always qualify my calls with some ifs, ands, ors, and buts; however, this time, I just cannot lay claim to the well-spring of my concern.

No, it's not Syria. The government in Damascus is relatively weak militarily, and its leadership is not nearly as willing as it would have been a generation ago to engage in full-blown hostilities with Israel; and that government, despite having a mutual defense agreement with Iran, is less than thrilled about having Iran come to its rescue in a show-down with Israel.

As for Iran—setting aside the fatiguing, constant barrage of anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic propaganda emanating from Tehran—the theocratic leadership has no intention of giving Israel a pretext to terminate the Persian state's nuclear program, which in my judgment is considerably closer to deployment (not 'development'—deployment) of nuclear weapons than most other analysts believe.

None of that is what's bothering me. It's something else, and I do not yet know what it is.

My sense of frustration with giving a name to my concern is becoming moot. This is probably just the same story, now cast on the stage of the 21st Century: war, destruction, appalling levels of civilian casualties, behind-the-scenes political wrangling, and lots of inflammatory rhetoric. To the mix we can this time add a maddenly incompetent U.S. Administration incapable of doing anything other than giving the thumbs up to Israel.

The peripheral nations in this latest drama, so often cited by media analysts, do not present serious threats to a wind-down of the conflict in the normal course.

Syria is not a major threat. Its current government, led by Bashar al-Assad, the son of Hafez al-Assad, is far less prone to violence than it would have been under the late Hafez: its military is not strong, and its mutual defense treaty with Iran is actually a deterrent to any interest it might have in joining the fray in Lebanon.

The Syrians are not stupid. While they are more than glad to have the buttressing strength of Iran's considerable military might behind them, they know very well that Iran is a nascent hegemon; therefore, any action Tehran would take on behalf of Damascus would come at a dear price to Syria's sovereign autonomy.

As noted above, Iran's leadership is not keen on turning Israel's attention to it, either. The only way to stop Iran's nuclear program from becoming a nuclear weapons stockpile is through destructive intervention. No, diplomacy is not going to work; and in the absence of the world's great powers being willing to adopt a policy that allows all nations to develop and stockpile weapons while assuring that their use would bring a coördinated, reciprocal nuclear attack, a pre-emptive military strike is the only way to resolve Iran's nuclear ambitions. Whether or not the ambitions should be stopped is another matter entirely; if, however, the goal is to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, the only way the goal can be achieved at this late hour is through the wholesale destruction of its nuclear fuel refining facilities. But the United States is wholly incapable of carrying out such a military strike for two reasons: first, the resources to do the job just are not there at the assured level and, more importantly, at the assured sustainability to engage what could turn out to be a months-long bombing campaign; and second, Iran has become far too economically powerful, now delivering as it does crucial fossil fuel to Turkey and other putative U.S. allies. The U.S. cannot afford to literally cripple major parts of Asia Minor, nor can it afford the wrath of China, which would in the event of military action against Iran be financing through its routine, massive purchases of U.S. Treasury instruments the destruction of one of its emerging trading allies in the Shanghai Coöperation Organization.

In the absence of the United States using military force to neutralize the Iranian nuclear weapons program, only one nation on Earth could and would do it. The leaders in Tehran know this, and they are simply not going to give Israel the pretext to deal with the problem while a grateful Western world looks on and an infuriated China is paralyzed to action by lack of leverage on the Jewish State.

With all of the above as backdrop, as it stands now, a return to that above-mentioned status quo ante within several months seems not just likely, but downright certain. Any remaining doubts I might have—doubts I still simply cannot shake—I shall address in a subsequent post.

Many are the topics concerning the Middle East now being discussed in the Blogosphere. Both long- and short-term solutions are offered, questions are asked rhetorically, shock and outrage are regularly expressed. By way of example of the quality and character of inquiries being posed, the Green Knight published, "An Irresponsible Question," which was as follows:

Given that Hezbollah is both an external threat to Israel and an internal threat to the legitimate government of Lebanon, and

given that the government of Lebanon has information on Hezbollah but not sufficient military power to deal with them, and

given that Israel has plenty of military power but not as much information on Hezbollah as they might, and

given that it's in both Lebanon's and Israel's interest to have peace on their border and Hezbollah gone or at least disarmed --

was there ever a possibility of, you know, some kind of joint operation between the two nations to deal with their mutual problem?

Or is outright war the default option in the Middle East no matter what? Is the "rational actor" theory of the nation state really just inapplicable in that part of the world?

My response, edited and augmented, was as such:

Let us make a minor change to the question set: replace "Hezbollah" with "Druse"; or replace it with "Kurdish."

Hezbollah has been but one of a handful of provisional entities operating in the Middle Eastern theatre. Generally speaking, each has its base of operation—be it a territory, a town, or an enclave—and from that base it fields what are essentially patrolling squadrons of armed militiamen.

These militias vex border areas, provinces, and/or groups of villages, where they kill people, exact extortions, and cause other problems. Some are well financed, others are not. The Christian Druse, for example, have long been rumored to be provisioned by Israel, which uses their services as a counter-balance to Islamic militias and other irregulars. Kurdish militias can be found from Syria to the border regions of Turkey and Iran, in some cases making what nearly amount to regularly scheduled, cross-border raids that inflict casualties and infuriate the rulers in the countries they target.

But these militias create and enforce a curious balance of power; as such, when one of them is removed, the power shifts. This is exactly the same process that occurs in biological systems: take out one "problematic" infecting organism, and its place is filled by one or more of the remaining infectious agents, which then sometimes grow without control.

When Israel eviscerated al Fatah in the earlier years of this Century and the last, two groups arose: a nascent, very militant wing of al Fatah, and Hamas. Both of these groups had been there, but the center of al Fatah—largely by virtue of the standing of Yasser Arafat—had held sway.

Once the political center of al Fatah had been destroyed, all manner of trouble-making groups had their moment of opportunity. Gaza Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has no power to stop Hamas, and enlisting the aid of Israel is simply out of the question. For one thing, Israel has been withholding tax revenues from the Abbas government, money crucial to building a central, powerful military that could deal with provisionals and trouble-makers.

Israel regularly commits the same mistake made on a grand, catastophic scale in 2002 by the United States. By wiping out the Baathist regime in Iraq, and by obliterating the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, we completely removed the twin bulwarks that had kept Iran in check. Absent the vice grip on Tehran, the Persian state grew in regional and even extra-regional influence like wildfire.

We had no capacity to create an instant government in either Iraq or Afghanistan, so we had no capacity to fill a vacuum before the Iranians did so on their own behalf and to their own interests.

Israel similarly has no capacity to fill a vacuum it leaves when it destroys a pestilence, so it guarantees that the most aggressive of remaining pests will rise and dominate the territorial, and then the political, landscape of a country or turf crippled by military action.

Both Israel and the United States act to ensure a short-run solution yet have nothing even close to the resources or wherewithal to project long-term, enduring stability in the absence of the militants of the hour.

As such, whether it would be in unilateral military action or in some program coördinated with a tolerable central authority, eliminating one threat simply ensures that a greater threat will arise subsequently. The current effort will have no different result.

And then the question becomes, "Who really wants a different result, anyway?"

The Dark Wraith will offer further analysis should events warrant.