Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Barry Rubin

Jonathan Spyer’s article, “Lebanon 2006,” appears in the new issue of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. This is the first analysis to include the findings of the Winograd Commission. Spyer points to the failure of the Israeli political leadership to define a clear set of goals in the 2006 war and then to commit to their achievement. The mediocre performance of elements of the Israeli ground forces allowed Hezbollah and its allies to depict war as a victory, despite their failure to achieve their own stated goals and the greater losses suffered by their side. Spyer reaches this conclusion:

Ultimately, the 2006 war must be understood as a single campaign within a broader Middle Eastern conflict, between pro-Western and democratic states on the one hand, and an alliance of Islamist and Arab nationalist forces on the other. The latter alignment has as one of its strategic goals the eventual demise of the State of Israel. While such a goal may appear delusional, given the true balance of forces involved, the inconclusive results of the 2006 war did much to confirm the representatives of the latter camp in their belief that they have discovered a method capable of eventually producing a strategic defeat for Israel. It is therefore expected that a further round of conflict is only a matter of time. Israel, meanwhile, must endeavor to develop a strategy capable of striking a blow in a future engagement sufficient to make any subsequent ambiguity untenable.

Read it all.