Aurelian2022 | In reality, the relationship between the use of force and the attainment of a defined political objective is a highly complex, inexact and uncertain art, and is much easier to explain theoretically than to do in practice. It implies a whole series of complicated, asserted relationships that don’t necessarily exist tidily in real life. To begin with, of course, you need to have a defined political objective, which is agreed, practicable and measurable. Bombing somebody, or firing off some shells like the French ship, is not an objective in itself, and is often indistinguishable from a display of pique to make yourself feel better. What the military call the “end-state” has to be clearly distinguishable from the current state, not to mention better than it, or there is no point in pursuing it.
You also have to be reasonably sure of how the political end-state will play out, or you could be in a worse situation than you were at the start. This implies a realistic knowledge of the political situation you are trying to affect, and what the political consequences of your military actions might be. So the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999 was intended to humiliate the government of Slobodan Milosevic by forcing the surrender of Kosovo, and so remove him from power in the elections the following year. It was assumed that the government that replaced his would be grateful to NATO for bombing them, and would adopt a pro-western, pro-NATO stance. What was not anticipated (well, except by those of us who were paying attention) was that Milosevic would be brought down by nationalist agitation, and replaced by a hard-line nationalist President, Kostunica. And as for the idea that a teetering Gaddafi, perhaps on the point of being overthrown in 2011, could be pushed over the brink by western intervention, leading to a stable, pro-western democratic system … well if there is a stronger word than “catastrophic” to put before “misunderstanding” let’s by all means use it. Oh, and let’s not even get into the political fantasies of western capitals about what would follow the forced resignation of Vladimir Putin.
So this use-of-force-for political-objectives thing looks a bit more complicated than we thought at first sight, doesn’t it? It also means that you might just get your fingers trapped in the wringer. For example, the US has deployed two carrier battle groups to the eastern Mediterranean. Now, this is a traditional action of governments that have no other options really open to them, and not, of itself, necessarily criticable. In the circumstances there is a political obligation to do something, whatever that something might be. And to be fair, carriers are very useful for evacuating foreign nationals, under military protection or otherwise, as the French showed in Beirut in 2006.
The problem is that it’s virtually certain that the carrier groups have been deployed according to this “do something” logic, which is to say that there is almost certainly no accompanying political strategy: as often, the US is making it up as it goes along. (Talking about “deterrence” or “stabilisation” is not a strategy, it’s an attempt at a justification.) The difficulty with all such deployments, though, is that they are much easier to start than stop. To withdraw the force is to send a political message that you think the crisis is over, or at least manageable, which may not be the message you want to send. So you keep the force in position, and eventually you replace it, because you don’t have any choice. The difficulty is that, apart from evacuations, there’s almost nothing for which the career group can be usefully employed. Intelligence gathering maybe, but there are far easier and more discreet ways of doing that. In the meantime, they are large targets, probably limited to flying patrols and not much else. (I’m assuming that the US would not be so insane as to join in the bombardment of Gaza itself.)
In turn, this reflects the effective impotence of the US in the present conflict. Its historical attempt to combine the positions of independent facilitator with doglike devotion to one side was always dubious, but was tolerated insofar as the country was actually able to have some influence. That’s clearly no longer true. Nobody in the Arab world is going to be influenced by the US now, and it has also ruled itself out of any influence over Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. Biden’s initial maximalist rhetoric has effectively given away most of the influence the US might have been able to assert over Israel as well. Which doesn’t leave a lot, and doesn’t leave a lot for US military power to actually do, either.
In any event, even if a decision were made to use military power, in a political vacuum, and just to look threatening, what could the US actually do? For the moment, nothing. Now if a major ground invasion were to start in Gaza, and if Hezbollah were to react militarily along the northern frontier, then theoretically the US could target them, but with massive attendant risks to the Lebanese population, and considerable risk of casualties to itself, in other places where there are US troops. Put simply, an attack agains Hezbollah which is large enough to make a difference could cause massive collateral damage to Lebanon, whereas anything smaller will not make a difference anyway. The US has invested massively in the stability of Lebanon in recent years, and is not to going to put that investment in jeopardy now.
There is certainly every chance that Iran would consider a large-scale attack on Hezbollah to be an unfriendly action, and then retaliate. The problem for the Americans is that the Iranians can inflict far more damage on them and their interests than they can inflict on the Iranians. This is nothing to do with the sophistication, or even numbers, of weapons: it’s a lot more mundane than that. Get out a map, and have a look at the region, and ask yourself, where could US carrier groups safely go? Which countries could be expected to provide airfields, ports and harbours and logistic depots? In the present political situation, the answer is probably “none.” No doubt an air- and sea-launched missile attack on Iran could do some damage, but what would be the point? What possible proportional political objective could be served thereby? No conceivable amount of damage caused to Iran could compel the government, for example, to cut off support for Hezbollah, or for the current government in Syria. By contrast, severe damage to a single carrier, even if it were not sunk, would be enough to drive the US out of the region.
I think we can draw some general lessons from these examples, which in turn may help us understand how the current Gaza crisis may eventually resolve itself. We can start by recalling that the theory of using military power to achieve political end-states is important, but primarily as a limitation. That’s to say that, whilst military action without a political objective is pointless, the mere fact of starting military action towards a declared political end-state doesn’t mean that you will automatically get there. You still have to do the hard work of turning the one into the other, and it’s that that I want to talk about now.
Consider a political end-state of some kind. It doesn’t have to be heaven on earth or for that matter the surrender of your enemy. It can be something simpler, such as an enforceable decision by your neighbour to stop supporting separatist groups in your country. So let’s assume you define that political end-state, which we’ll call P(E). Now the first thing to say is that this political end-state must actually be politically (not just militarily) possible. It must be within the capacity of the other government to agree to, or failing that the balance of political forces at the end of the conflict must at least make it possible. It is pointless and dangerous to attempt to force a country or a political actor do do something that is beyond their power to do; not that this hasn’t been attempted often enough.
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