From the COIN Center - two articles of potential interest to academicians, policy makers, and practitioners alike:
In From Lebanon to Gaza: A New Kind of War, Ariel Siegelman draws on first-hand experience in Lebanon and Gaza to describe a new kind of war, in which "the enemy cannot hope to match Western technology, so he operates in a way to make the technology relatively meaningless." Siegelman, who served in the Israel Defense Force (IDF), Special Forces, as a counter terror operative, counter terror sniper and counter terror instructor, argues that the 2006 Lebanon War exemplifies "the wrong way to confront... this new kind of war," but that the recent IDF operations in Gaza demonstrate that Western militaries can appropriately prosecute such conflicts. This new kind of war, however, requires Western militaries to define success in a new way, one that recognizes that violence may ebb and flow, but that the conflict is never truly over.
In The Business of War: How Criminal Organizations Perpetuate Conflict and What To Do about It, Brock Dahl argues that "attacking criminal organizations is an essential element of the COIN fight." Without confronting organized criminal organizations, it is much more difficult to stabilize transitional societies. Mr. Dahl, who served for the US Department of the Treasury in Baghdad and on the Afghanistan Interagency Operations Group from 2006 to 2008, and who is now studying law at The George Washington University, investigates the legal and policy considerations of US military forces supporting law enforcement activities overseas.
Comments
Leaving aside some of the rather simplistic political statements in Ariel Siegelman's piece, I'm also a little taken aback that an experienced special forces operator can argue that "The difference between Lebanon and Gaza is simply how Israel adapted to the enemy."
Undoubtedly the IDF introduced a number of changes in training, command, and intelligence dissemination as a consequences of its 2006 shortcomings in Lebanon. As a consequence of these, its performance in 2008-09 was much better than in 2006. However, these were very different campaigns, against very different foes--a point that it is important for COIN analysts and practitioners to understand.
First, the level of training evinced by Hizbullah is markedly different than that of Hamas. Most Hizbullah NCOs are battle-experienced and/or have undergone training in Iran. This is not true of Hamas.
Second, Hizbullah is extremely well-equipped with later generation RPGs, ATGMs, NVGs, MRLs, COMINT gear, even naval SSMs. Hamas has little more than small arms, a few RPGs, few NVGs, and little or no ATGMs. The vast bulk of its rocket arsenal are ineffectual, home-made Qassams, and it has only a very limited number (in the dozens) of modern Grad-type rockets--something Hizbullah deploys in the many <i>thousands.</i> Given that Hizbullah's military "successes" were largely due to its success in deploying weapons systems that Hamas either lacks (ATGMs, naval SSMs) or has few of (modern artillery rockets), the qualitative differences are very important.
Third, Hizbullah had strategic depth. Hamas has none. The terrain in south Lebanon (rocky hills with few roads, dotted with towns and villages) is completely different from Gaza (a densely populated urban area, surrounded by relatively flat plains/fields and virtually no hills at all).
The Israeli intelligence services have considerable information on Hamas and Gaza, and may even have benefited from some intelligence provided by Fateh intelligence networks there. Hizbullah has proven much more difficult to penetrate, and IDF information is correspondingly more limited.
Finally, I'm not at all sure that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict can be characterized as an unwinnable war, in which the only solution is to "make preemptive strikes, hard and fast at key targets, with viciousness, as the enemy would do to us." As the US military/FM 3-24 understands COIN, a purely kinetic approach is not COIN at all.
It is also unclear that "Israel had achieved its goals," given that rockets continue to land on Israel, that the war had the effect of strengthening Hamas relative to Fateh, and that it appears to have done as much damage to Israel's international reputation as to that of Hamas. Indeed, to date, the IDF paradoxically achieved more deterrence in its "unsuccessful" war with Hizbullah than in its "successful" war with Hamas. In both cases, it may still be too early to definitively determine the ultimate strategic effects of military operations.
That, however, is a far broader discussion!