The United States has already embarked, alongside Israel, on a new cycle of regional Middle East wars that is sure to end as a generational catastrophe—in human and societal destruction for Palestinians and Lebanese, and in strategic disaster for everyone involved.
America’s leaders have failed to heed the recent lessons of 9/11, apparently determined to repeat the central mistake of the forever wars and seek to remake Middle Eastern societies and governments through military force. That effort will be in vain; it is not possible to bomb so hard that a policy fantasy comes to life. But Israel’s excessive force, which has reduced Gaza to ruins and is now turned on Lebanon, can kill a great number of people and reduce institutions and social norms to tatters. It can also bring Iran directly into war with Israel and the United States.
Gaza is already suffering a genocide. It is also too late to avert regional war. But it is not too late to stop additional killing, reverse the strategic folly of constant escalation, and limit the fallout. As bad as the situation in the Middle East is, it could still get worse.
U.S. policymakers have joined in Israel’s delusion that mayhem and power vacuums will somehow lead to the emergence of states and societies that will hew to the policy preferences of Israel’s right-wing rulers. History shows the opposite. Direct occupation can keep resistance under a lid, for a time, and complete destruction can vanquish a rebellion. But massive killing and displacement will not suffice to solve Israel’s political and security problems, and likely will only multiply them in the long run. Total war occasionally accomplishes its stated aims (see for example the Allied area bombing of Germany and Japan, and more recently Russia’s war in Chechnya and Sri Lanka’s war against the Tamil Tigers), but at a horrific cost in human life and democratic practice. And even if Israel achieves absolute military victory this year or the next, it has inflicted a deep injury to its international standing that will last decades—and which will make those military gains ever harder to sustain.
The United States should call for an immediate end to the invasion of Lebanon and for Israel to end its war in Gaza. The United States should encourage Israel to move into a counterterrorism posture, pursuing Hamas and Hezbollah but no longer engaging in total war against Gaza and Lebanon. The United States has leverage to persuade Israel, for instance by limiting offensive weapons shipments. Decisive American action could probably force Israel to end its invasion of Lebanon and limit any direct conflict with Iran, but would not prevent Israel from continuing to fight in Gaza and the West Bank, as it saw fit. If America stopped directly participating with bomb deliveries in the most excessive elements of Israel’s wars, the U.S. government could end its direct involvement in the burgeoning regional war, and conclusively end the conflicts that Washington has started or gotten embroiled in since 9/11.
But it doesn’t appear that restraint will prevail either in Tel Aviv or Washington. The United States appears headed, with bipartisan support, into a new round of forever wars.
Total War
In a video message to the Lebanese on October 8, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of destruction to come: “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”
There’s nothing that Lebanon can do to avoid the Israeli attack, nor are the millions of displaced civilians—in any sense, moral or legal—culpable for Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel.
Netanyahu’s declaration is likely to end up joining other Israeli official statements in the ongoing genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice. It’s a threat, not a negotiating position—there’s nothing that Lebanon can actively do to avoid the Israeli attack, and nor are the millions of displaced civilians in any sense, moral or legal, culpable for Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel.
Israel has made its goals clear. It intends to secure its northern boundary by decimating southern Lebanon, killing civilians, and destroying homes, health centers, and schools—just as it has already done in Gaza.
The supposedly reasonable Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid is publicly proposing reviving the quisling South Lebanon Army, which Israel used from 1982 to 2000 to occupy southern Lebanon, while other Israeli leaders muse about depopulating Lebanon’s south, establishing Israeli settlements, or provoking a new Lebanese civil war.
All of these extreme ideas were attempted in the 1980s, and all failed, at huge cost to Lebanese life and Israeli security. Netanyahu seems to imagine that under Israeli attack the Lebanese will rise up against all the Lebanese movements that Israel doesn’t like, and elect a strong new government that wants nothing more than to help Israel.
It’s true that many Lebanese loathe Hezbollah. But Israel’s plan to remake Lebanon has eerie echoes of the American neocon dream for Iraq twenty years ago. The policy discussion ignores the enormous amount of killing and displacement and brushes aside the multitudinous historical examples of similar attempts that caused great harm and still came to nothing. It is dehumanizing, and pure fantasy. And in fact, Israel already tried it in Lebanon, when it attempted (and failed) to install a loyalist president in Beirut in 1982, who was quickly assassinated.
Schemes like these that rely on the manipulation of a weaker country’s internal politics after invasion follow the shameful blueprint of nineteenth-century colonialism. And they don’t work—not in Lebanon in 1982, and not when the United States tried to create a pro-American government in Iraq after 2003. Israel’s leaders, out of ideas and unwilling to concede the equal rights and humanity of Palestinians, Lebanese, or other Arabs, are openly reverting to the failed scorch-earth interventionist tactics of the 1980s.
Revenge Is Bad Policy
Israel’s escalating attacks on Lebanon, according to Israeli leaders, are supposed to eliminate Hezbollah’s military reach and make Israel safer. Strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, by this logic, would presumably delay an Iranian nuclear bomb. This school of escalation dominance always dismisses other worse possibilities—that attacking a social movement might deepen its support, that striking a wealthy oil state might motivate it to break out to a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible.
But if there is one clear lesson from the wars since 9/11, it’s that brute military force can never solve a political problem. Movements like Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon represent a significant number of people, and a powerful political idea. Israel has tried over and over to secure itself through force—and each time has failed.
As if plagued by amnesia, Israeli leaders repeatedly claim that Israel’s opponents “only understand force” and can never be placated through negotiations. The only solution, they seem to believe, is an unending cycle of wars to push back foreign adversaries and punish Palestinians who live in areas occupied by Israel.
Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Neither the leaders nor a broad swath of Jewish Israelis seems ready to accept a reality in which Palestinians and Arabs are equal human beings with equal rights—a reality in which Israel will have to negotiate coexistence with fully sovereign Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, and Lebanese. For now, Israel’s only plan appears to be to strike with military force, each time more lethal and indiscriminate, in the delusional hope that war crimes and mayhem will bring peace to Israel rather than the more likely outcome—renewed and reinvigorated political opposition and military resistance.
America, meanwhile, doesn’t have to follow the path of its reckless regional partner. The monetary cost of U.S. support for Israel since October 7, according to the Brown University Costs of War project, has been at least $22.76 billion, and counting. But the true long-term cost of U.S. support for Israel’s total war will be much greater, and will take years to tally.
After Hamas’s deadly attacks last year, Biden warned that Israel should learn from America’s mistakes after 9/11 and not overreact to attacks that shock the conscience. Since then, however, the U.S. government and the president himself have ignored their own advice. Washington has actively partnered in Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza; entered a direct war with the Houthis in the Red Sea; and is now getting drawn into conflict in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. While supposedly trying to negotiate ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, U.S. diplomats have repeatedly watched Israel scuttle agreements and then have provided political cover for Israel’s next escalation. And on October 9 this year, Biden, in a call with Netanyahu, dropped all pretense of advocating for a ceasefire and pledged his “ironclad support” for Israel’s expanded war.
It’s only dumb luck that America isn’t already engaged in a direct war with Iran—an outcome for which many extremist Israeli leaders are striving. Americans can hope that the United States snaps out of its fugue state soon, before it has fully committed to a new round of forever wars.
Hero Image: Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during the UN General Assembly on September 27, 2024, in New York City. Source: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
Tags: foreign relations, gaza war, middle east, israel
The Dangerous Delusion of Remaking the World by Force
The United States has already embarked, alongside Israel, on a new cycle of regional Middle East wars that is sure to end as a generational catastrophe—in human and societal destruction for Palestinians and Lebanese, and in strategic disaster for everyone involved.
America’s leaders have failed to heed the recent lessons of 9/11, apparently determined to repeat the central mistake of the forever wars and seek to remake Middle Eastern societies and governments through military force. That effort will be in vain; it is not possible to bomb so hard that a policy fantasy comes to life. But Israel’s excessive force, which has reduced Gaza to ruins and is now turned on Lebanon, can kill a great number of people and reduce institutions and social norms to tatters. It can also bring Iran directly into war with Israel and the United States.
Gaza is already suffering a genocide. It is also too late to avert regional war. But it is not too late to stop additional killing, reverse the strategic folly of constant escalation, and limit the fallout. As bad as the situation in the Middle East is, it could still get worse.
U.S. policymakers have joined in Israel’s delusion that mayhem and power vacuums will somehow lead to the emergence of states and societies that will hew to the policy preferences of Israel’s right-wing rulers. History shows the opposite. Direct occupation can keep resistance under a lid, for a time, and complete destruction can vanquish a rebellion. But massive killing and displacement will not suffice to solve Israel’s political and security problems, and likely will only multiply them in the long run. Total war occasionally accomplishes its stated aims (see for example the Allied area bombing of Germany and Japan, and more recently Russia’s war in Chechnya and Sri Lanka’s war against the Tamil Tigers), but at a horrific cost in human life and democratic practice. And even if Israel achieves absolute military victory this year or the next, it has inflicted a deep injury to its international standing that will last decades—and which will make those military gains ever harder to sustain.
The United States should call for an immediate end to the invasion of Lebanon and for Israel to end its war in Gaza. The United States should encourage Israel to move into a counterterrorism posture, pursuing Hamas and Hezbollah but no longer engaging in total war against Gaza and Lebanon. The United States has leverage to persuade Israel, for instance by limiting offensive weapons shipments. Decisive American action could probably force Israel to end its invasion of Lebanon and limit any direct conflict with Iran, but would not prevent Israel from continuing to fight in Gaza and the West Bank, as it saw fit. If America stopped directly participating with bomb deliveries in the most excessive elements of Israel’s wars, the U.S. government could end its direct involvement in the burgeoning regional war, and conclusively end the conflicts that Washington has started or gotten embroiled in since 9/11.
But it doesn’t appear that restraint will prevail either in Tel Aviv or Washington. The United States appears headed, with bipartisan support, into a new round of forever wars.
Total War
In a video message to the Lebanese on October 8, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of destruction to come: “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”
Netanyahu’s declaration is likely to end up joining other Israeli official statements in the ongoing genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice. It’s a threat, not a negotiating position—there’s nothing that Lebanon can actively do to avoid the Israeli attack, and nor are the millions of displaced civilians in any sense, moral or legal, culpable for Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel.
Israel has made its goals clear. It intends to secure its northern boundary by decimating southern Lebanon, killing civilians, and destroying homes, health centers, and schools—just as it has already done in Gaza.
The supposedly reasonable Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid is publicly proposing reviving the quisling South Lebanon Army, which Israel used from 1982 to 2000 to occupy southern Lebanon, while other Israeli leaders muse about depopulating Lebanon’s south, establishing Israeli settlements, or provoking a new Lebanese civil war.
All of these extreme ideas were attempted in the 1980s, and all failed, at huge cost to Lebanese life and Israeli security. Netanyahu seems to imagine that under Israeli attack the Lebanese will rise up against all the Lebanese movements that Israel doesn’t like, and elect a strong new government that wants nothing more than to help Israel.
It’s true that many Lebanese loathe Hezbollah. But Israel’s plan to remake Lebanon has eerie echoes of the American neocon dream for Iraq twenty years ago. The policy discussion ignores the enormous amount of killing and displacement and brushes aside the multitudinous historical examples of similar attempts that caused great harm and still came to nothing. It is dehumanizing, and pure fantasy. And in fact, Israel already tried it in Lebanon, when it attempted (and failed) to install a loyalist president in Beirut in 1982, who was quickly assassinated.
Schemes like these that rely on the manipulation of a weaker country’s internal politics after invasion follow the shameful blueprint of nineteenth-century colonialism. And they don’t work—not in Lebanon in 1982, and not when the United States tried to create a pro-American government in Iraq after 2003. Israel’s leaders, out of ideas and unwilling to concede the equal rights and humanity of Palestinians, Lebanese, or other Arabs, are openly reverting to the failed scorch-earth interventionist tactics of the 1980s.
Revenge Is Bad Policy
Israel’s escalating attacks on Lebanon, according to Israeli leaders, are supposed to eliminate Hezbollah’s military reach and make Israel safer. Strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, by this logic, would presumably delay an Iranian nuclear bomb. This school of escalation dominance always dismisses other worse possibilities—that attacking a social movement might deepen its support, that striking a wealthy oil state might motivate it to break out to a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible.
But if there is one clear lesson from the wars since 9/11, it’s that brute military force can never solve a political problem. Movements like Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon represent a significant number of people, and a powerful political idea. Israel has tried over and over to secure itself through force—and each time has failed.
As if plagued by amnesia, Israeli leaders repeatedly claim that Israel’s opponents “only understand force” and can never be placated through negotiations. The only solution, they seem to believe, is an unending cycle of wars to push back foreign adversaries and punish Palestinians who live in areas occupied by Israel.
Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Neither the leaders nor a broad swath of Jewish Israelis seems ready to accept a reality in which Palestinians and Arabs are equal human beings with equal rights—a reality in which Israel will have to negotiate coexistence with fully sovereign Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, and Lebanese. For now, Israel’s only plan appears to be to strike with military force, each time more lethal and indiscriminate, in the delusional hope that war crimes and mayhem will bring peace to Israel rather than the more likely outcome—renewed and reinvigorated political opposition and military resistance.
America, meanwhile, doesn’t have to follow the path of its reckless regional partner. The monetary cost of U.S. support for Israel since October 7, according to the Brown University Costs of War project, has been at least $22.76 billion, and counting. But the true long-term cost of U.S. support for Israel’s total war will be much greater, and will take years to tally.
After Hamas’s deadly attacks last year, Biden warned that Israel should learn from America’s mistakes after 9/11 and not overreact to attacks that shock the conscience. Since then, however, the U.S. government and the president himself have ignored their own advice. Washington has actively partnered in Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza; entered a direct war with the Houthis in the Red Sea; and is now getting drawn into conflict in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. While supposedly trying to negotiate ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, U.S. diplomats have repeatedly watched Israel scuttle agreements and then have provided political cover for Israel’s next escalation. And on October 9 this year, Biden, in a call with Netanyahu, dropped all pretense of advocating for a ceasefire and pledged his “ironclad support” for Israel’s expanded war.
It’s only dumb luck that America isn’t already engaged in a direct war with Iran—an outcome for which many extremist Israeli leaders are striving. Americans can hope that the United States snaps out of its fugue state soon, before it has fully committed to a new round of forever wars.
Hero Image: Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during the UN General Assembly on September 27, 2024, in New York City. Source: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
Tags: foreign relations, gaza war, middle east, israel