t’s an excellent axiom to never put your citizen soldiers into a fair fight if you can help it. To the extent preparations, planning, and timing are up to you, you should always seek the maximum advantage going into war. This doesn’t just spare your own people’s lives. It spares the opponent’s death toll as well, both military and civilian. The greater the initial advantage, the faster a war can be won, if the will is there to do it. Where military advantage prevails quickly, the grim toll of attritional stalemates and the pile-up of fatalities can be minimized.
Israel, I propose, should not have to be in a fair fight with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the U.S. could help.
The Canada-based site Honest Reporting, which offers news and opinion from a pro-Israel perspective, on 20 June 2024 published a feature article on the topic “What All-Out Israel-Hezbollah War Would Look Like.”
Honest Reporting cited a study done of the matter by Reichman University’s (Herzliya, Israel) International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT). The study was reportedly presented to Israeli officials in 2023, in the weeks before the 10/7 attack by Hamas, and was compiled with the participation of the IDF as well as other government officials.
In the interest of focusing on my own main topic, I commend to readers, as usual, the links and their ancillary links for additional reading. The study and its summarizers present a discouraging worst-case picture: one that is feasible, and must be considered (as the most Israel should be prepared for), even if Hezbollah probably couldn’t execute all of it as perfectly as the accounts suggest.
I do note that the most irreducible problem previewed for Israel in the study – if it goes unaddressed – is the enormous inventory of missiles, rockets, and drones Hezbollah can now marshal against Israel. It is accurate to say that at some point, fairly early on, Hezbollah by itself could overwhelm Israel’s defense systems and inventory on hand. If Iran joined the barrage, it would happen faster.
I also stipulate here that, yes, it is increasingly inexplicable that so much prior development had been done of scenarios like the one that unfolded on 10/7/2023, and so much observation and intelligence on Hamas’s activities before the attack was reportedly available, and yet Israel was caught flat-footed. That’s not the subject of this article, so I will note it and move on.
The tight focus here is on what the U.S. could do, if we had the will to execute properly, to deter Hezbollah, Iran, and Iran’s other clients (e.g., the Houthis, the Iraqi militias, and what’s left of Hamas), while helping shape the battlespace conditions to Israel’s advantage. Everything could be done with no U.S. boots involved in the fight on the ground. (In that regard, however, it would behoove us to make our defenses adequate at U.S. base locations in Iraq and Syria, and be prepared for counterstrikes, on a level we haven’t punched at before, in case of Iran-backed attacks. Prepare in advance to dish it out, not take it.)
We ought to want to do both of those things: deter and shape. Israel, a fellow consensual democracy with shared values, is our close partner; its security is gravely at risk; and Israel is clearly the responsible status quo power in the mix. Israel wants to establish a stable security situation on its perimeter when it’s all over. The Israeli government and people have no desire to see instability spread, to enlarge or even change borders, or assault the interests of other regional nations.
Iran and its terrorist proxies want the opposite. They want regional instability for Iran to take advantage of. Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and even the PA, with its roots in Fatah, want arrangements that will so imperil Israel’s security and viability that Israel will fall, and be no more. Iran’s regime is not just willing but determined to change the political lordship and orientation of as much territory as necessary in the “Great Crossroads,” to bring about that end; e.g., with a land-bridge to the Mediterranean.
Iran wants to flank Israel on the north and the south, by establishing military presence, starting with proxy presence, in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon (the three-border land-bridge), and Yemen. Iran wants to exercise an armed veto from shore over the use of the Red Sea. The Houthis are Iran’s little helpers on that. But in the last 20 years, Iran has also come and gone and come again in Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea. Rinses and repeats are guaranteed as long as the U.S. and our regional partners are slow to counter those moves.
If a special political and cultural affinity with Israel isn’t enough justification for the U.S. to support and empower Israel, these pragmatic security concerns make up any deficit. The balance and stability of the Great Crossroads can’t be breached without rapid reverberations throughout all U.S. security pillars at either end of the Afro-Eurasian land mass. In a shrinking world, the importance of those guarded perimeter gateways to the reliance of our ocean bastions is more, not less immediate than ever. And as we’ve seen with the Houthis in the Red Sea, local breaches instantly affect global trade, the bread and butter of American prosperity.
What happens with Israel, our other regional partners, and the Middle East as a whole is very much our business. Any error here would lie in imagining that we need to put boots on the ground to address every contributing situation. We don’t; and the suggestions below for what the U.S., even in a parlous state, is still the nation capable of undertaking, don’t entail putting our young men in the mud.
In no particular order – but starting with some key factors that are different from the fight in Gaza – here is a list. I note that this is not a comprehensive list. It leaves off virtually all the paperwork boilerplate about what the U.S. should be doing through “diplomacy.” That boilerplate typically robs diplomacy of its potential by assuming that it must be congenial, tentative, and ephemeral, as opposed to strong-willed, persuasive, and determined. Much of what’s in the list is diplomacy; it’s just not the Peter Pan-and-Tinkerbell diplomacy most auditors of that vitiated word usually have in mind.
The list is also simply not a complete list in any sense. I want to get this posted, not try to account for everything anyone sensibly thinks the U.S. should be doing. Failure to include the other measures readers can think of doesn’t mean I would exclude those measures. It means I want to emphasize the robust ones briefly introduced below.
Not Uncle Gaza
There are some key ways in which a fight with Hezbollah will not be like the fight in Gaza. One is the geopolitical reality that Gaza is a territory, not a recognized nation-state, and has been wholly governed by a basically post-legitimate terrorist organization. Significantly, Gaza’s borders and coastline exposure to the Mediterranean were already under the armed supervision of the IDF (and at one end, Egypt). Persistent third party interests were mainly those of the UN, longstanding and deeply compromised.
Lebanon, on the other hand, is a recognized nation-state with theoretical state sovereignty of its own and formal relations with most of the earth’s other nations. Hezbollah’s power in essentially holding that state over a barrel and dictating its course is of a different order from that of Hamas in Gaza. Lebanon, the nation-state, administers its own coastline and land borders. If the situation is not intervened in by an outside patron, that means Hezbollah is the administrator.
Iran’s influence in Lebanon is at the sufferance of the Lebanese government and its outside patrons, including the U.S.
Iran’s influence in Gaza has essentially been at Israel’s sufferance.
These features of the geopolitical landscape are actually good news, from at least one perspective. They mean that the U.S., as a chief patron of the Lebanese government – a patron that arrives regularly with boatloads of cash and arms – has influence on the situation and policies in Lebanon, if we will use it. I will propose below some ways of doing that, for a U.S. that wants Israel to win through to a better peace in an engagement with Hezbollah.
As a general note, when I speak of using our influence, I don’t mean sharing a candy bowl and making hopeless appeals to the non-Hezbollah elements of the Lebanese government.
I mean jerking the rug out from under the status quo that enables Hezbollah, and being ready to state and enforce what will meet our conditions, for those who’d like to see life continue with any degree of regularity and assurance (e.g., through U.S support of the LAF and our support of the premise behind UNIFIL). I mean being polite but ruthless, and sending whiners to the grief counselors we have assembled in Room 123 down the hall. Whether the whiners are in Lebanon, Brussels, Turtle Bay, Foggy Bottom, or the nosebleed floors of big international banks, they either “blow up” their support to Hezbollah, or we’ll blow it up for them.
It’s easily deduced that there’s a prominent implication here. The current status quo in Lebanon will not survive any war Hezbollah proposes to make on Israel. Israel can’t pry Hezbollah out of the Lebanese government. But, used correctly, and in quiet concert with our other partners in the region (I would start with the Saudis and Egypt; Turkey and Jordan have interests as well), U.S. power can. The limit of what can be done would be set by our own political courage, not by any immutable conditions.
The instrument of a post-bellum settlement is guaranteed to be a factor. The U.S. should have a vision now for a settlement in which Hezbollah is not in charge of Lebanon, and Lebanon is not a franchise of Tehran.
I would prefer to get that settled. But if the real prospect of it frightens Iran, Hezbollah, and Lebanon into deciding against a pitched confrontation with Israel at this time, that’s a Plan B we could make some use of. We shouldn’t ask Israel to fight “right now” beyond what Jerusalem sees as necessary for its national security.
It would also be fine if that decision were not reached for effective purposes until after most of Hezbollah’s missile and drone inventory had been destroyed.
Keep in mind that the current “status quo” in Lebanon is inherently unstable. It exists as a powder keg unceasingly waiting for a match. The status quo in Lebanon is not stability. Stability, rather, would come from controlled guidance to a better peace, one that starts by not harboring Hezbollah or facilitating the purposes of the radical regime in Iran.
In one particular way the U.S. is uniquely situated to mount a supporting effort to the project of prying Hezbollah out of Lebanon. We have the means to meaningfully suppress Hezbollah’s finance and criminal coalition activities in the Americas, and we should use them. Causing Hezbollah to wither away will have to entail giving Hezbollah no protected rear to retire to. Collaterally, being ready to receive a fleeing Hezbollah in that hemispheric rear would be an excellent starting position for bludgeoning Hezbollah’s wagon and hauling Hezbollah off in chains.
The geometry factor
A second consideration in this category (“not like Gaza”) is more narrowly focused on the realities of military geometry. General Charles Q. Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, articulated it in June, when he said that U.S. missile and air defense assets can’t have the same relevance and effect in the event of missile barrages from Lebanon (and potentially Syria) that we had with the missile and drone volleys from Iran on 13 April 2024.
General Brown was not making specious excuses. He’s quite right. The geometry of missiles and drones flying toward Israel north to south, inland, for shorter runs and, in many cases, at lower altitudes is simply prohibitive for a significant contribution from U.S. assets offshore or in (potentially) Jordan. In a scenario defined by massed barrages of missiles, rockets, and drones launched at Israel from near Israel’s borders, short flights and low altitude would put much of the threat out of interdiction capability for our Navy Aegis warships off the coast. And such barrages would put shorter-range U.S. intercept systems in Syria or Iraq out of contention entirely.
It would actually work to our advantage if threat projectiles were launched from further away; e.g., Iran, or even eastern Iraq. U.S. systems would be in position to assist with that defense picture at the robust level they’re designed for.
The problem is that Hezbollah has a far larger inventory than Hamas of short-range rockets with relatively large warheads, and short-range ballistic missiles with larger Scud-class warheads: threats that can be launched from Lebanon and Syria and give defenders little time to react. Such launches, crucially, would also give Aegis ships offshore less-propitious intercept geometry to work with. The Navy’s Standard Missile interceptors can be effective against incoming missiles dozens of mile inland, but the more distant the intercept, the greater the need for detection and targeting at higher altitudes.
Drones, meanwhile, would put U.S. Navy assets out of the game. They can be flown at such low altitudes over short approach paths, like an approach from Lebanon, that air search radars offshore may not even detect them.
Hezbollah will have everything the Houthis have; if Hezbollah tries to use such weapons offshore, U.S. capabilities may be engaged as back-up for the IDF. If Hezbollah is using them against targets in Israel, U.S. engagement in purely defensive mode will be limited by a prohibitive geometry.
The 2,000-pound solution
In the Red Sea, the Navy has responded to the Houthi offshore threat mainly with purely defensive shootdowns of missiles and drones in flight, and occasionally with preemptive attacks on individual launchers near the coast, and radars used by the Houthis for targeting support to their projectiles.
This mode of operation has been notably ineffective, in that it has done nothing to deter the Houthis from continuing to menace merchant shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Global shipping remains mostly diverted around Africa. This isn’t because the U.S. Navy is incapable of suppressing the Houthi threat. It’s because, due to national policy, we’re not even trying to.
The way to suppress the Houthi threat is the same way to change the game for the Hezbollah threat: destroy the threat inventory. Destroy it in warehouses and underground bunkers. Seize or destroy it in transport on the way to the terrorist militants. Systematically reduce it until there is no option for the opponent of eventually overwhelming Israel’s defenses.
It would also be desirable and necessary to eliminate the energy infrastructures for the terror proxies: for the Houthis, in Yemen, for Hezbollah in Lebanon. They have to have fuel for tactical transport of their weapons, and for fueling rockets and drone motors.
The most reliable and efficient way of eliminating the weapons inventory and the energy infrastructure is interdiction bombing.
Much energy infrastructure is very cooperative in its own demise, going off in dramatic mushroom clouds when the fuel is engaged by even relatively small warheads.
But getting at the weapon stores is often dicier. Hezbollah has arranged it so, with a network of hardened and underground storage and manufacturing sites in Lebanon.
For the latter problem, the exact weapons that Biden is withholding from Israel – 2,000-pound bombs mated to JDAM precision-guidance kits – are the premier weapons needed to eliminate the inventories. Israel needs those bombs, and to improve the odds fighting Hezbollah, needs a lot of them. The way for Israel to get ahead of the threshold at which the air/missile threat would be overwhelming is to get rid of Hezbollah’s drones and missiles at the outset. That job is feasible with time-honored methods – if there are enough bombs for it.
It would not be edifying to spend extended time expressing chagrin about this. Consider it felt, and acknowledged. The point for this article is that this is one of the most important things the U.S. could be doing for Israel (and hence for the future of the entire region).
The U.S. difference – if we would implement it
All that said, America has the ability to shape this whole problem even outside the construct of Israel using the interdiction-bombing model on-scene in Lebanon. Some key considerations for why this would be preferable are that U.S. intervention could potentially spare a lot of 2,000-pound warhead explosions Lebanon has no need to endure, and that U.S. intervention could reset the supply game between Iran and Iran’s proxies. The latter would be likely to spare explosions in a number of other places as well, such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia, which has been targeted by the Houthis on numerous occasions.
The U.S. intervention option could be used against both the weapons-supply problem and the fuel (and other energy) infrastructure problem. The principle at work would be a credible menace to the supply infrastructure, which ideally – perhaps after a signal demonstration or two – would induce complicit actors to opt out of the supply chain.
There’s no reason the U.S. couldn’t approach the recognized government of Lebanon and explain that if it will cooperate in removing huge stashes of Hezbollah’s weapons, it can save itself a lot of explosions as well as other unpleasantness, such as sanctions rigorously enforced on related supply infrastructure. This could be applied to fuel as well. (We might as well go for the touchdown and offer Lebanon the deal of a lifetime: cooperate in imposing electrical and cyber blackouts on Hezbollah, and then nobody, naming no names, would have to regret imposing such events on the rest of Lebanon. Providers of telecom and information services to Hezbollah should be approached as well.)
In a similar fashion, Iraq and Syria can be informed that they are in the happy position of having a choice: whether to prohibit Iranian transport vehicles from ferrying arms through their land and airspace, or suffer the consequences of hosting the armed interdiction that will be undertaken in default of their cooperation. Any armed resistance by those nations to this ultimatum would of course meet with the necessary retaliation.
Iran has no power to actually force the U.S. to back down on such threats, which we are well capable of carrying out. Any ignominious backdowns would be a result of American loss of will. But if a live demonstration were necessary, it could be accomplished with what we usually have available in theater. One demonstration would probably be enough, if a president who was not Joe Biden or a successor chosen by Democrats were carrying it out.*
Complaints would be referred to the grief counselors in Room 123. Of note, preventing arms proliferation to terrorists would be sufficient justification for any live use of U.S. military power.
Interdicting the arms flow to the Houthis, and destroying the current inventory in Yemen, would further tilt the general strategic conditions against Iran and Iran’s proxies, as a decision factor in their enthusiasm for a war against Israel.
The Houthis are terrorists attacking global shipping and putting numerous lives at risk on a daily basis. The justification already exists.
Hezbollah is conducting daily terrorist attacks on Israel, and appears to be breaching the agreements underlying UNIFIL’s mission in service of those attacks; the justification already exists there as well.
It’s also important to note that the U.S. could ramp up the intimidation of Hezbollah, the Houthis, and their facilitators at any time. No pretext beyond the current situation is needed. A culminating point is that Iran is proliferating arms to designated terrorists, and we already have sanctions on the books for that.
An approach on similar principles could be applied to the general fuel, energy, and broader financial infrastructure of Iran’s connection to the fighting proxies on the field today. One key is to start at the terrorists’ end and interdict whatever they’re using, from their energy sources to their banking arrangements. They have no legitimate purposes for anything they do; this approach isn’t out of line, it’s merely sensible and fully justified.
The interests of complicit third parties would be likely to suffer impact, and that’s too bad. See our counselors in Room 123. That goes for banks as big as HSBC and BNP-Paribas, as well as foreign governments that ought to be ashamed of themselves. It’s very possible that metaphorically “blowing up” Hezbollah’s finances would zero out bank accounts that third parties have stakes in. Making them sit still and take it – being ready to punch back 10 times as hard for any attempts at economic or cyber retaliation – may be beyond Israel’s capacity in the middle of a shooting war, but it’s what the USA was made for.
The idea is to cripple Hezbollah – and indeed the Houthis, and remnants of Hamas – while their inventory and local infrastructure are disappearing, and then see how they feel about the urgency of fighting Israel, and for that matter, trying to provoke Saudi Arabia or even other Gulf nations with missile and drone attack campaigns.
Warning the spider
To this point we have looked primarily at Hezbollah and the Houthis. An all-fronts approach incorporating both of them in the strategic calculus is the perspective and capability the U.S. can bring to the problem.
The spider at the center of the web is the radical regime in Iran, and it’s essential to ensure that pressure is kept directly on Iran, as well as indirectly on Iran’s proxies.
Iran is behind the exceptional move against law, order, and the global peace made by Hamas on 10/7. It is of supreme importance to “get” that this move was not merely the next one in a long, low-level harassment campaign against Israel. It was clearly a move intended to launch a war that would change the conditions and reality of the region in a visionary and long-term way.
Iran meant for the move itself, whatever date it started on, to be that war for a different goal. Hamas may have chosen the specific day; Iran has chosen the season, which is defined principally by U.S. weakness. The 10/7 attack and the belligerent intent behind it were timed precisely because America under Biden is weak and ineffective to a degree unprecedented since 1945 (and certainly since the mullahs seized power in 1979).
It will take more than a few stray verbal warnings to get the radical regime to relinquish or postpone its purpose. But that’s what the U.S. should be aiming for. We have the capacity to achieve it; we don’t currently have the political will.
The key is to thwart the regime’s pursuit of its highest priorities. Beyond retaining its power in Iran, the regime’s priorities are to tilt the field of peril steadily against Israel, using Iranian proxies; gain geostrategic position against Israel; intimidate and entice the other nations of the region, trying to impose an Iranian geostrategic vision; and acquire an arsenal of nuclear weapons with which to deter meaningful opposition from those regional nations, as well as from the United States.
The temptation should be resisted to suppose that the only way to deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions is head-on. A great deal would actually be accomplished by cutting off the regime’s access to cash, by resuming rigorous sanctions on its energy trade, and by taking aim at the set of activities by which the regime tries to retain the forward geographic position it was able to establish over the last decade.
Important elements of that position are inherently addressed by thwarting Iran’s proxy operations in the Middle East. Knee-capping Hezbollah and the Houthis is dealing blows to Iran’s strategic position – as is eliminating the rule of Hamas in Gaza. Conveniently, those necessary measures are either already in progress, or should be, as elements of reestablishing a stable status quo.
Other elements should be addressed as well. High on the list is keeping a completed “land-bridge” from Iran to the Mediterranean out of reach.
Under Trump, the U.S. left just enough somewhat scattered forces in key locations in Iraq and Syria to hold the land-bridge path at risk. The path naturally must follow the Euphrates into Syria as it primary route, and from the border crossing and the way-point of Deir-ez-Zour may continue westward across northern Syria. It can also, less conveniently (due to terrain), cut directly from the border crossing at Al-Qaim/Al-Bukamal through southern Syria. It could even divert in Iraq across Anbar Province closer to Jordan, and be cultivated with preparations to break across Jordan toward Israel, if deemed necessary. (The movements of Iran-backed Iraqi paramilitary groups have indicated Iran does have this option in view.)
As part of a salutary and badly needed renewal of energy and purpose in U.S. dealings with Iraq, and our presence in Syria, we should hit Baghdad with a diplomacy offensive to reaffirm our commitment to blocking Iran through this area. Iraq will inevitably need to coexist and treat with Iran, but can do so most independently, and for the good of the entire region, if Baghdad’s independence is bolstered by the United States. We could do much good by reinforcing the embargo on an Iranian land-bridge across Mesopotamia.
Uptooled and strengthened site defenses for our small concentrations of troops in Iraq, northern Syria, and the Syria-Jordan border are badly needed. We need long-term strategic refreshment regarding our purpose with those troops, and the process of review and revision should start immediately. But while that’s being undertaken, the worst thing we could do is be squeezed out of Iraq and Syria by pinprick strikes. Iran is daunted as much by being thwarted along the geography of the regime’s long-term strategy as by being cut off from cash and resources for the nuclear program.
I note that there’s more than one way to make a point with the Iranian regime as well. Hybrid warfare methods can do funny things to ships, aircraft (of all kinds), missile batteries, and telecom connections, not to mention oil and gas infrastructure. The ideal goal and effect would be impressing the regime with what a bad idea it would be to invite such an unfortunate cycle of punitive engagement.
The other priority element I would emphasize is blocking Iranian moves in Central America. The radical regime in Tehran derives considerable gratification, and no little material advantage, from its success in sneaking around to America’s south, notably by flying cargo in and out of Venezuela, and doing sanctioned business through Venezuelan ports. Central America (again, primarily Venezuela) is a hub for Iranian Qods Force connections with Hezbollah and Hamas, which both have established ties to the Maduro government, and cartel-linked money-making ventures across the region.
Iran’s presence and ability to move materiel between Iran and Venezuela is a growing military threat to the region and the United States. That’s especially the case given Iran’s emphasis on missile development, and – as tracked recently with a converted cargo ship, Shahid Mahdavi – innovative ways of deploying missiles to forward locations.
In general, America needs to harden our homeland defenses against both conventional threats being dispatched against us in our hemisphere, and hybrid-warfare threats concocted to go with them. One of the most essential measures to implement is securing our borders against the influx of unvetted migrants from around the globe, especially (but not limited to) military-age men. Part of the strategy of each Asian-axis threat nation – China, Russia, Iran – is taking advantage of that vulnerability. It’s being used by terrorist organizations too.
Purpose, priorities
Resetting stability in the Middle East, the necessity of which Hamas and Iran clearly demonstrated on 10/7, is an American security interest. To be clear one more time: what’s needed is not a restoration but a reset. Old assumptions like the inevitable participation of existing terrorist actors, and the “two-state solution” concept based on premises now more than a decade out of date, need to be discarded. We should not even want to preserve those conditions as a foundation for the future. The conditions themselves were never a basis for stability.
Hezbollah and Hamas may or may not lead the charge to bring the war to America’s doorstep – but we can affect how far they’re willing and able to go in that regard. Doing so would have the effect of assisting Israel as well.
For the short term, America’s priorities should be arming Israel to interdict Hezbollah hard and deep; flattening the Houthi threat into a pancake and safe-ing the Red Sea chokepoint for global shipping again; shepherding Lebanon into a better frame of mind with an iron staff; hardening our defenses at home and in Iraq and Syria; and convincing our other Middle East partners the eagle is back.
In default of that complete list, the number one priority – arming Israel to interdict Hezbollah – should be urgently prayed for and insisted on to our representatives in Washington, D.C.
Whatever the deficiencies of unified will in Washington in the coming days, we can rejoice that the Gaza pier is to be packed up and shipped home. That ill-begotten strategic gambit to shoehorn U.S. influence into Gaza is off the table.
The USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) carrier strike group arrived in the CENTCOM theater 12 July.
Reporting on Saturday 13 July indicated aircraft from TR conducted strikes on Yemen’s Hodeidah airport, on the Red Sea coast in Houthi-controlled territory.
I haven’t seen confirmation that TR has arrived in the Red Sea; the strikes could have been flown from the Gulf of Aden. But clearly this is the general area where the carrier will operate for now.
We still have several dozen Air Force strike-fighters in theater; we lack the use of airfields. It’s worth noting, though the ideal is to regain the use of Middle Eastern airfields for power projection, that some purposes in Syria and Iraq could be served from bases in the Mediterranean. We’re not without options.
I recommend fortifying each person’s mind to remember in the future that we did have means in 2024, and there were plenty of things we could do, and could have done. Never has it been so apparent what evil may come from a loss of will. We cannot honestly or intelligently look back on this moment and say there was nothing the U.S. could do. The reality is shaping up to be, instead, that there was nothing the handlers of the Biden presidency would do.
* This isn’t snark, by the way. It’s a basic of using armed force. There is no such thing as force simply “working” somehow, as if it’s a machine with programmed output that switches on and off. The elements of human will and determination are always decisive factors. It matters who is executing, what use of force he authorizes, and how courageously he does it and how strongly and relentlessly he pursues it. Punches cannot be pulled in the use of armed force and later yield a crop of respect and credibility for the mere threat of doing it again.
This, incidentally, is the key to unlocking the use of Gulf-nation airfields again for U.S. strike aircraft. As long as we appear certain to act tentatively, pull our punches, and leave host governments located close to Iran holding the bag, those governments are much more likely to prefer to stay out of it. If our armed intervention is going somewhere and will have a payoff for them, and if we can be trusted to face down an infuriated regime in Tehran, we can expect more cooperation and trust from our hosts.
{Reposted from the author’s site}
