If only Hezbollah warfighters ran their own staff college, then the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) would be able to study a new model of deterrence.
Reformed and rearmed, Hezbollah's Lebanese fighters have won grudging respect from Israeli defence planners, one of whom conceded this week that "Israel does not know how to beat Hezbollah" (please see article below).
It is likely that Hezbollah's battle strategy is being closely scrutinised not just by Israeli defence planners, but by armed forces professionals who face an Israel Defense Force (IDF) type threat.
Regardless of one's political leanings, one should recognise that Hezbollah's ability to absorb an IDF assault and resist vigorously is noteworthy.
As has been widely reported by staff journals, Hezbollah engaged the IDF in the summer 2006 war with the IDF commanding air and naval supremacy, and an overwhelming advantage in armour and tube artillery. The IDF's order of battle occupies several pages in military balance tables while that of Hezbollah is but a paltry footnote.
All these counted for nought against Hezbollah.
Indeed, defence professionals from countries who have served with United Nations peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon are likely to have returned with firsthand lessons and impressions of the Hezbollah versus IDF battle.
The impact on conventional armed forces is not likely to be seen till several years downstream. This is because it will take time to revise doctrines and concept of operations that armed services are trained to adopt. It will also take time to change mindsets and overcome longstanding unit traditions and loyalties to craft a new paradigm that guides the use of war machines in the battlespace.
For example, a conventional army may resist suggestions to strip away its Armour battalions in favour of raising rocket artillery units with a TO&E unlike any other conventional artillery unit.
Furthermore, the idea that a defending army should allow an aggressor's manoeuvre forces to penetrate one's homeland is unlikely to go down well with commanders who demand that every inch of homeground must be defended. The temptation, both politically and militarily, to demonstrate the defending army's resolve by placing its main line of resistance too close to the border must be tempered by the realisation that an invader will be more vulnerable once its forces have been sucked into one's home ground.
Air force commanders who suggest that long-range strike aircraft should be moved away from a hotspot to serve as a force-in-being during a period of tension may also be chided for cowardice.
Hezbollah's robustness must be seen beyond the tactical, operational art and strategic level of war.
Hezbollah understands how to engage and hurt the National Service-based IDF, which hails from a casualty-averse society which has banked on using plasma to keep its foes at bay.
If Hezbollah could fend off the IDF in 2006, so too can Hezbollah's mimics against an IDF mimic.
Israel can't defeat Hezbollah: Israeli expert
16 Dec 2010, 7:40 am ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel cannot defeat Hezbollah in a direct engagement and the Lebanese guerrilla group would inflict heavy damage on the Israeli home front if war broke out, a former Israeli national security adviser said Thursday.
Though outnumbered and outgunned, Hezbollah held off Israel's advanced armed forces in a 2006 war and fired more than 4,000 rockets into Israeli territory. The group has a domestic political base and has since bolstered an arsenal that Israel describes as a strategic threat.
Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah's Iranian and Syrian backers have stoked expectations of renewed violence in Lebanon.
"Israel does not know how to beat Hezbollah," said Giora Eiland, an army ex-general who served as national security adviser to former prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.
"Therefore a war waged only as Israel-versus-Hezbollah might yield better damage on Hezbollah, but Hezbollah would inflict far worse damage on the Israeli homefront than it did 4-1/2 years ago," he told Israel Radio.
Echoing serving Israeli officials, Eiland said:"Our only way of preventing the next war, and of winning if it happens anyway, is for it to be clear to everyone ... that another war between us and Hezbollah will be a war between Israel and the state of Lebanon and will wreak destruction on the state of Lebanon.
"And as no one -- including Hezbollah, the Syrians or the Iranians -- is interested in this, this is the best way of creating effective deterrence."
Except for a deadly August skirmish between Israeli forces and the regular Lebanese army, the border has been mostly quiet.
But Israelis have been watching for signs that Hezbollah, should it be named in an impending U.N. indictment over the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, will push back by consolidating power in Beirut.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has argued that Hezbollah's role in governing Lebanon would make the country fair game in any future war involving the Shiite militia.
Eiland said such a scenario would have "the entire world crying out for a ceasefire within two days," which would be more in the Israeli interest "than having to deal directly with every one of (Hezbollah's estimated) 40,000 rockets."
(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Michael Roddy)
No comments:
Post a Comment