My argument was not as portrayed—that force doesn’t work—rather that it has come to have more limited and conditioned utility than in the past. The prevalence of asymmetric warfare and the heavily political objectives for which force tends to be used (ultra-Clausewitzian, if you like) have been making for a greater gap between the possession of superior military capabilities and the capacity to achieve strategic objectives through the use of military power. Nor is this just for Israel: e.g., the contrast for the United States between the 1991 Persian Gulf war and the 2003 Iraq war; and Ethiopia’s failed 2006-08 military intervention in Somalia. Asher’s emphasis on how well force worked for Israel in its wars up to 1973 is more consistent with this point than challenging of it.

Deterrence arguably has been more central to Israeli strategy than it has been for any other country at least since the end of the Cold War. To be sure, it continues to have value as a standing posture and for certain objectives. Yet amidst changes in the nature of threats, the greater relevance of asymmetric warfare, the varying bases for calculations of credibility by various audiences, and other factors, deterrence requisites are harder to meet. That’s where net assessments of cases like Lebanon 2006 and Gaza 2008-09 are crucial for policy implications going forward.

The “real world” Asher refers to requires assessing both the scope and the limits of military power. It’s not force or diplomacy; both sides of that formulation are inadequate. It’s striking a balance that’s key. On that I think we agree.

Bruce Jentleson is a member of MESH.

There is no doubt that force and diplomacy both work, but they work best when they are tied together as part of an integrated strategy. Bruce, however, described an internal Israeli debate that sees force and diplomacy as wholly separate tracks. This kind of dichotomous thinking arises when the political debate becomes so detached from realities on the ground that it can no longer shape military strategy. There are domestic Israeli factors that give rise to this polarization. But it is also indicative of a deficient American diplomacy. It is the job of the United States to provide—to borrow a term from the peace-processing world—a “political horizon” that will shape effective strategies of our allies.

If I interpret Asher correctly, he doubts whether a two-state solution is within our grasp in the near future. I don’t want to put words in Asher’s mouth, however, so let me take responsibility for the assertion myself: the impediments to a two-state solution are currently too great to assume that within the next four years we can achieve a lasting agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Consequently, we should be thinking in terms of shaping the conflict—diplomatically and militarily—rather than solving it. The goal of our diplomacy should be to create the conditions that will permit the next generation of leaders to conduct a meaningful process that might result in a signing ceremony on the White House lawn.

Oslo and Camp David II illustrate the dangers of aiming too high too fast. Such efforts force the protagonists down roads that they are not capable of traversing. The cost of failure is incalculable.

U.S. diplomatic strategy must, instead, be focused on the primary impediments to a two-state solution. These are currently five in number. Listed by order of severity they are: the regional influence of Iran (and its facilitators, Syria and Qatar); Hamas; Hezbollah; Fatah disarray; and the Israeli settlement movement. As the fate of the Israeli settlers in Gaza showed, the last obstacle is the easiest of the five to overcome. Unfortunately, Washington is currently fixated on the settlements, which, it has apparently convinced itself, will significantly help it address the other four.

Surrogates of the Obama administration dismiss this criticism with an arsenal of familiar answers: the peace process will broker a Sunni-Israeli alliance against Iran; it will detach Damascus from Tehran; it will remove the pretext for Hezbollah’s weapons; and it will strengthen Abbas against Hamas. In short, the peace process is one of our most effective strategic weapons for undermining our enemies. These sound plausible, but they are based on a solipsistic understanding of the Middle East.

These arguments suffer equally from Eurocentrism and Jewcentricity. Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah are primarily concerned with the balance of power within their own societies. The Americans and the Israelis are not the most important actors on their stage. Changes in the balance of power with Israel do not have nearly as great an impact on that stage as advocates of the peace process claim. I can only reiterate what Asher wrote: “Many Westerners (and many Israelis) give themselves more credit than they deserve for the movements and machinations of local politics.”

Linkage does work, however, in the other direction. Victory of the reformists in Tehran would benefit the two-state solution greatly. Countering the Iranian regime and its malign influence, therefore, should be the target of our flagship diplomatic efforts.

To return to the original debate, as outlined by Bruce: at least some of the Israelis who are saying “diplomacy doesn’t work” are expressing the view that “the international community’s agenda for Israel is out of touch with the real threats and processes on the ground.” The international community sees the storm clouds that Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah generate, and it responds by saying, “We need another Madrid conference.”

The amount of bureaucratic man-hours that such a project will eat up, the high-level attention that it will absorb, the political capital that it will expend, the expectations that it will generate—all of these factors and more amount to a whopping opportunity cost. It is easy to ignore this cost when the alternative is depicted as “Peace Process vs. War.” The real alternative to the peace process, however, is not war but a different diplomatic process altogether.

Bruce argued (without quoting Churchill) that it’s “better to jaw-jaw than to war-war.” He’s right, of course. But that begs the question: What are we jaw-jawing about?

Michael Doran is a member of MESH.

Briefly, the Israeli argument presented by Bruce is that force has worked (see Gaza and Lebanon), while diplomacy has not (see Oslo), and that the status quo, while not perfect, is tolerable. My argument is that force indeed has worked, but the status quo is intolerable for Israel. Israel must use force not to prolong the status quo but to create the essential preconditions to undo the status quo and bring the occupation to an end. Time is not on Israel’s side either in terms of demographic trends in the occupied territories (not so in Israel proper) or in terms of Israel’s international legitimacy, which is being seriously undermined by the continued occupation. The Zionist enterprise from the very outset sought: a) to build the state of the Jewish people; and b) to have that state become a legitimate member of the family of nations. If Israel allows the status quo to continue indefinitely, it might end up forfeiting both of these historical objectives.

Israel must withdraw from the occupied territories through an agreement with the Palestinians, and possibly even without one if that can be achieved through a more coordinated form of unilateralism than the last effort in Gaza. But no agreement with the Palestinians, nor any form of stability in the wake of a unilateral act of sorts, will hold unless Israel can create an effective deterrence. Indeed, deterrence is the only alternative to occupation. The fact that it may have to be “maintained” or “serviced” every now and then does not make deterrence and compellence any less of an effective means of stabilizing Israel’s borders.

Frequently scholars and pundits alike argue that force does not work. Unfortunately, in the real world it does. The great menaces of the 20th century would never have been banished from the stage had it not been for the enormous use of force against them.

If we look through Israel’s history from 1948, through the border wars of the 1950s, culminating in the Suez war, then 1967 and 1973 and the war in Lebanon in 1982 (which, in the end, brought Arafat on his knees to Oslo), one discerns two distinct lessons. Generally, force has worked for Israel and brought the Arabs slowly but surely to come to terms with Israel. But Israel generally has not and should not rely solely on force. Israel’s power is not a club with which to bludgeon the Arabs into submission. Using it in that way would be immoral, foolhardy and unworkable. Israel’s power is an instrument to ensure a form of lasting peaceful co-existence with its neighbors, based on historical compromise (Egypt and Jordan are good examples). Indeed, the justice of the Zionist cause in the eyes of its founding fathers, most Israelis, and the international community rests on Israel’s acceptance of compromise with the Palestinians too—that is, partition or, as it is phrased today, “two states for two peoples.”

As for the specific cases of Lebanon and Gaza, I disagree with Bruce’s analysis of both. In Gaza, it is difficult to gauge how long the present lull may last. But I have no doubt that it was induced by the operation in Gaza. Hamas is a political organization of rational operators and not just terrorists. They need the support of the people of Gaza, who have had enough of war for the meantime. If there are some signs of Khalid Mash’al being somewhat less essentialist, I would argue that they stem from the war in Gaza too. The war shocked Hamas. They expected nothing even remotely similar, not in terms of the technology, the force employed or the boots on the ground. And I see no evidence to support the ascription to Hamas of some sophisticated use of the war to maneuver Israel to the right. The war was not their choice, nor their plan. At the time, they claimed Ehud Barak was playing domestic Israeli politics to save himself—i.e., they thought the war was serving Labor, not the Right. In short, the strained relations between Israel and the United States have little or nothing to do with Hamas, but rather reflect differences between Obama and Netanyahu.

In Lebanon, the deterrent effect of the 2006 war, as Bruce agrees, is more obvious. But he then goes on to mention in the “negative column” Israel’s military failures in the war as a deterrence-weakening message. In fact, three years after the war, deterrence seems to be working and the failures seem far less serious than portrayed at the time, primarily by a rather hysterical and sensationalist Israeli media, both print and electronic, that served Hezbollah a public relations victory on a silver platter. (This is not 20/20 hindsight; I wrote so in an article at the time.) The damage inflicted on Hezbollah and its infrastructure in South Beirut and South Lebanon still weighs heavily on the organization and severely limits its freedom of action not only vis-à-vis other Lebanese communities hostile to Hezbollah, but amongst the Shiites in the south too.

True, Hezbollah has more and better rockets now than before the war. In that respect, they are more powerful than they were in 2006. But deterrence is not about preventing rearmament. It is about preventing the use of the new materiel. Preventing the rearmament was UNIFIL’s job (together with the government of Lebanon) as outlined in UNSC resolution 1701. That was never implemented, and no one in Israel ever believed it would be. But that elemental flaw in 1701 only serves to reinforce the Israeli reliance on its own power, deterrence and compellence, rather than on the UN or other international forces.

As for the elections in Lebanon, Hezbollah’s poorer-than-expected showing had precious little to do with the war in 2006 or Vice President Joe Biden’s visit. The elections in Lebanon had more to do with the confessional politics and long-term demographic shifts in Lebanon than with the war of three years ago, the recent visit by Biden, or any “Obama effect.” Many Westerners (and many Israelis) give themselves more credit than they deserve for the movements and machinations of local politics in the Middle East. In Middle Eastern politics, primary credit should be given to the locals in the crafting of their own political fortunes.

Asher Susser is director of external affairs and senior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.

These weaknesses are evident not just on the politically fraught Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but recently in the case of North Korea. The much-touted UNSC Resolution 1874 calls for member states to inspect North Korean ships thought to be carrying banned weapons exports, but with the almost surreal caveat that this action be “with the consent of the flag state”—i.e., North Korea itself.

Robert J. Lieber is professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University.

The UN is no sure thing, but neither is it the complete mess Inbar suggests it is. The UN as a whole would not be involved. Instead, this would be run by the UN Security Council, which has responsibility for peace and security. And, there are now a multitude of different force arrangements, including UN deputizing of other military forces while providing civilian staff (because UN staff know a lot about transitions, a whole lot more than Americans). Would the transition be potentially violent, disruptive, and bloody? Any force would have to prepare for these possibilities. Would it be as bloody as the civil war we see between Hamas and Gaza or Israel’s shelling of Gaza and other parts of the region? I honestly don’t know. Instead of speaking as if we know categorically what the future will bring, and setting up one alternative to a doomsday scenario, we need to think in terms of probabilities and a range of possible outcomes. Does anyone really believe that the future is going to get better?

Michael Barnett is Harold Stassen Professor of International Affairs in the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Policy at the University of Minnesota.

This suggestion shows the great gulf between diagnosis and prognosis that even respected political scientists have problems bridging. The UN is a morally bankrupt institution with automatic majorities for the most ridiculous preferences of dictatorial Third World states. Moreover, for decades the UN has shown an entrenched anti-Israel bias, singling out Israel for every type of abuse. It was the UN that declared Zionism, the Jewish national movement, to be racist, and it is the UN that hosts anti-Semitic Durban-type conferences that annually adopt hundreds of anti-Israeli resolutions.

Finally, the UN is hardly an effective organization that can issue credible security assurances. The UN peacekeeping record is very flawed. In the Arab-Israeli arena, the UN forces have played a particularly dysfunctional role. Will they fight Hamas? The recommendation to place the security of Israelis in the hands of the blue helmets vastly overestimates what the UN can do, and shows disregard for the welfare of Israelis who face Palestinian hatred and terrorism.

Moreover, the belief that a UN trusteeship would bring law and order, prosperity, and political stability to the Palestinians is divorced from Middle East realities. The Palestinians are beleaguered by problems similar to those that haunt other Arab societies, such as in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Somalia. The UN is hardly the remedy for the emerging failed states in the Arab world. Neither UN administrators nor generous outside funding can save the Palestinians from their problems.

This is probably the main reason for the Israeli desire to disengage from most of Judea and Samaria, but if the choice is between the status quo and a UN-controlled PA, a huge majority of the Israelis, including most of the Israeli Left, will prefer the uncertainties of the current predicament to the certainty of a deterioration in the security situation under a UN mantle.

Efraim Inbar is professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University and director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies.

Technology is after all a means that can be applied to an end. But for the means to be applied at all, there must be a motive. Or, as Nietzsche said, there must be the will. The elections in Iran provided an opportunity for disgruntled youth to support a candidate—”moderate” and “reformer” only in terms of the established extremism of the Islamic Republic’s government—who might put a kinder and gentler face on the rigid theocracy, and might give them a bit more breathing room. Their campaigning expressed this desire, motive, will.

But the “Supreme Leader,” not satisfied with his few hand-picked candidates, and with the absolute power to veto policy or legislation he did not like, decided to fix the election in favor of the most extreme candidate, Ahmadinejad. Those opposed to Ahmadinejad were stunned that their votes were nullified and replaced with nonsensical vote counts. The challenging of the governors of the Islamic Republic began with voters’ rejection of the fixed election. There was now a double motive, a strengthened will.

The Supreme Leader, not satisfied with having spoiled his legitimate monopoly by fixing the vote and betraying Iranian voters, decided to respond to the demonstrators with the batons and guns of the police and militia, beating and killing ordinary citizens more or less at random. The Supreme Leader, after all, represents God and the Islamic Revolution. Except he no longer does. The brutality of the regime has provided a triple motive, an even more strengthened will to the opposition. The Supreme Leader and his acolytes have lost legitimacy, as has this form of rule. So the opposition yells from the rooftop, “Death to the dictator” and “God is great,” invoking the oppositional slogans of the Islamic Revolution.

It is true, as Rubin says, that the opposition have used technology—Twitter, the internet, cellphone cameras—to mobilize and to send abroad their message and images. This is important. But we must remember that martyrs have become legends and spurs for opposition for millennia, long before modern means of communication. And that primitive forms of communication, such as opposition samizdat, have trumped modern communications technology in the hands of the state. So, yes, advanced technology can help, but it is advantageous, not necessary.

If we recall Ibn Khaldun, we will be reminded that, in addition to motive and will, organization and solidarity are factors that can be decisive in regime change. It is the superiority in these elements that Ibn Khaldun credits with the ability of peripheral tribes to conquer states, as so often has been the case in the Middle East and North Africa. And here I would recommend caution in prophesizing the rapid fall of Islamic Republic. The Revolutionary Guard, the militia, and the army are highly organized; the opposition, no matter how strongly motivated, is not. The best hope for change is that a major part of the military, also disillusioned with the loss of legitimacy of the government, will go over to the opposition. If this does not happen, it may take the opposition years to organize sufficiently to challenge effectively the government.

Philip Carl Salzman is a member of MESH.

Netanyahu stressed the historic rights of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel (Palestine) and rejected Obama’s interpretation of the Holocaust as legitimation for the Jewish state. He pointed out that a Jewish state where persecuted Jews could flee the Nazis would have prevented the Holocaust.

Despite the ancient Jewish claim to its historic patrimony, Netanyahu expressed willingness for a territorial compromise in order to satisfy the national needs of the Palestinians (a two-state solution). A large majority of Israelis is ready for a repartition of the Land of Israel. Netanyahu’s acceptance of a Palestinian state came with conditions. His demand for a demilitarized state reflects the ingrained and justified Israeli fears of their dangerous neighbors. Since Oslo, more Israelis have been killed by Palestinians than during the 1973 October War. Netanyahu also demanded the long overdue recognition of Israel as the Jewish nation-state. In line with Israeli consensus, he insisted on Jerusalem remaining the undivided capital of the Jewish state and opposed a total freeze on building in the settlements.

The speech positioned Netanyahu at the center of Israeli politics. His coalition remains strong and a majority of the Kadima opposition party in the Knesset prefers to join the government. Netanyahu’s centrist approach also strengthened the chances that his coalition will survive potential tensions with the United States. Netanyahu reluctantly agreed to mention the two-state solution to please the United States. Even the hawkish faction within his party, the Likud, understands that statements are not enough to create a new political reality. Capturing the center of Israeli politics will allow Netanyahu flexibility if there is an opportunity for peace as well as the needed stature to lead Israel in continuous protracted conflict.

It is not yet clear if Washington is looking for a confrontation with Jerusalem by focusing on a total settlement freeze. Israelis are likely to view such an insistence primarily as a pretext for ulterior motives and are likely to support their government. The territory of the settlements is less than 2 percent of the West Bank. After all, even the PLO agreed to an exchange of territory to incorporate the bloc settlements into Israel.

Moreover, the Israeli political system has demonstrated its capacity to remove settlements when necessary. Israel dismantled settlements in Sinai in the framework of a peace treaty with Egypt in 1981 and in Gaza and Samaria in 2005. Finally, the Palestinian demand to receive a Judenrein area is racist and unacceptable. If Israel hosts an Arab minority, why can’t a few thousands of Jews reside in a Palestinian state, which occupies part of the Jewish homeland?

The Israeli government will try to avert a crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations and will hope for a fast learning curve by the Obama administration. The Obama vision of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement within two years is unrealistic. Jerusalem can still count on a reservoir of friendship on Capitol Hill and by the American public at large. Due to this support, Israel might decide to put up a fight and play for time. Nowadays, Netanyahu is in a better position to do it.

Efraim Inbar is professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University and director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies.

A couple of additional comments regarding Stephen’s article. First, unless it is fairly recent, I am not aware of any U.S. military actions in either Sudan or Syria, but added to the list of post-Cold War U.S. military operations should be Panama and Grenada—two examples that amplify Stephen’s thesis—as well as interventions in Burundi, Northern Iraq, Macedonia, the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Aden, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.

Second, it is hard to look at the historical record to substantiate Tocqueville’s assertions that “warlike passions will become more rare and less lively as conditions are more equal.” However, to also dismiss Tocqueville’s comment that “Men who live in democratic countries do not naturally have a military spirit; they sometimes take it up when they are brought despite themselves onto the fields of battle,” is to miss a key point about the American soldier. For any number of reasons, many brought out by Stephen, there is a predisposition to martial behavior among Americans. But it takes a lot of training, and a lot of un-training, to take kids off the street and turn them into soldiers. I remember talking to a group of my troops heading off to Afghanistan in 2002, and noting my surprise at how well this generation of “Simpson-watching, video-playing couch potatoes” were doing in current combat operations.

The last seven years have done nothing to change that view, and we should take great pride in how well our soldiers have performed on the battlefield. But, should combat operations scale down over the next decade to a pre-9/11 pace, we should not be surprised to see the Army struggle to keep that same sense of combat readiness pervasive within its ranks. Having served in the “hollow Army” of the post-Vietnam era, I would not underestimate how difficult it will be to draw on those “warlike passions” in the post-Iraq/Afghanistan era. That predisposition to martial behavior noted in Stephen’s article may be a part of our Scot-Irish and Quaker heritage, and the heritage of recent immigrants. But modern culture, mores and customs will continue to have the predominant influence on our youth, and we should also be grateful that our Drill Sergeants and Squad Leaders will continue their efforts—as they have since the era of Von Steuben—to bring out that martial behavior.

Mark T. Kimmitt is a member of MESH.

Andrew argues Christian voters had no need for encouragement to vote for March 14, which is for the most part true. Hezbollah’s overreach during the dark days of May 2008 remains fresh not only in the minds of Lebanon’s Christian community but in the Sunni and Druze communities as well. Nasrallah’s pre-election speeches designed to rally his base did nothing to ease their concerns, and many on Aoun’s campaign team expressed frustration with their timing.

However, had the United States not signaled strongly and often that the shape of the next government would impact its relationship with Lebanon, many fencesitters, concerned about where the wind was blowing, may have decided to sit on their hands or vote for Aoun. March 14’s campaign, predicated heavily on the twin threats of Iran and Syria to Lebanese democracy, may not have generated the credibility and momentum that it ultimately did.

The Obama administration’s message to Lebanese voters, which was both nuanced and graduated, was useful in two critical ways. First, the words themselves reassured the Christian community and March 14 supporters more generally that the United States would not abandon them to rapacious Hezbollah demands or allow Syria to reassert itself in Lebanon . To that part of the Lebanese polity paranoid about America’s new realist leanings, especially toward Syria, these reaffirmations were a critical indication of U.S. seriousness. That the message was delivered in Beirut not by the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon but by our Secretary of State and Vice President made the message even more powerful, and emboldened March 14’s leadership. Second, the message made clear to Hezbollah’s leadership and to Aoun’s electorate that should they win and put together a government unacceptable to the United States, all of Lebanon would pay a price for their decision to do so.

If only the Bush administration had done the same prior to the fateful 2006 elections in West Bank and Gaza. At that time, a number of us within the administration urged the administration to make clear to Palestinian voters that while they were free to vote for whomever they wanted, they should consider as they entered the ballot booth that the United States could not cooperate with a Hamas-led government, which would have unfortunate consequences for all Palestinians. The State Department successfully argued that such a statement, however artfully delivered, would be the kiss of death to Abu Mazen and Fatah. Instead we pitifully arranged numerous USAID-sponsored ribbon-cutting opportunities for the feckless Palestinian president, who skipped most of them.

I argued then and now that it would have been better for the Palestinians to have full information to inform their electoral choice. Where the United States stood mattered in those elections, quite apart from our relationship with Fatah, and Palestinians should have had the benefit of knowing how their interests would be impacted by their choices. In the end, Fatah became a victim of protest votes cast for Hamas, and all Palestinians reaped the whirlwind when the latter won. Moreover, the United States, when it subsequently isolated the Hamas government, was saddled with the narrative that we support democracy but only when it serves our purpose. Had we been clearer up front, we may not have lost that public messaging battle, and Fatah may not have lost the election.

The situation in Lebanon for March 14 just a month or so ago was not so dissimilar to Fatah’s. Corruption, government ineffectiveness, and division all weighed March 14 down, contributing to a malaise and an expectation that March 8 was going to win. Aoun’s principal rationalization for aligning himself with Hezbollah was that the Christian community could not count on the West, and that it needed a strong leader—him—to represent them amongst other strong sectarian leaders, i.e. Hariri and Nasrallah. The administration’s persistent messaging, including the President’s defense of the Maronite minority in his speech in Cairo, devastated this argument and contributed to the shift in momentum. Perhaps even Hezbollah felt it. Why, after all, did they so badly undercut Aoun just weeks out from the election? Perhaps they didn’t want to be blamed for the international isolation that they thought would ensue following their victory, especially as Hezbollah feels its weapons provide sufficient safeguards for its interests.

In any case, the Obama administration deserves credit for setting the right tone and for making clear how the United States evaluated its interests in Lebanon. Not only was it the responsible thing to do but it is what Arabs most want to hear: honesty. As Rob correctly argues, the administration should do more of it.

J. Scott Carpenter is a member of MESH.