Hizbullah / Hezbollah (just the group)

[davidbfpo]

Having read this thread and it's references to more contempoary conflicts, can I suggest two from the past that illustrate defeat can happen for a first rate power.

The Russian Civil War 1917-1922 (?) led to massive Great Power intervention against the Bolsheviks. For all sorts of reasons each power withdrew and the Bolsheviks / USSR won. Does this rate as a defeat?

The Second Boer War, with a series of defeats for the British forces at the start, then victories and the dispersal of the Boer forces, who then followed a guerilla campaign - which took even more resources and time to end. The Boer guerillas used the support from the rural Boer community to fight on and led to "concentration camps" and many tactics seen in COIN since.

I will now sit back in my armchair.

davidbfpo

[Global Scout]

SurferBeetle,

I would occasionally wander the old WWI Battlefield of Asiago. It was above treeline so my breathing was a bit labored but no matter how much ground I covered the plethora of splintered bones, sharp shrapnel, live ordnance, and shattered rock always helped me to think about the true nature of war.

I agree with you as far as this statement goes, but would add the large conventional battles are not the only true reflection on the nature of war. A walk in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Philippines, etc. will also shed light on the true nature of war. It comes in many forms, and war isn't simply about large conventional armies fighting one another. The reason I mention this is because you requested additional reference material on the Korean War (the untouched classic is, "This Kind of War" by TR Fehrenbach). That request led to a brain fart of sorts. TF Smith (there was a lot more to the story than the simplified vignettes covered in our leadership manuals) has been drumed into our minds from the first day we ever read anything about military leadership, so it has the call "no more TF Smiths", and not without good reason, but I now wonder if that was the turning point in our history where we jettisoned our knowledge of irregular warfare and focused almost entirely on conventional warfare? To me that seems to the event that shaped our Army's leadership almost more than any other, and I would bet it influenced GEN Westmoreland's views in Vietnam. I recall a quote by a senior Army officer in Vietnam (I'm sorry I can't cite the source off the top of my head), who said we're not going to destroy our Army for this miserable little war. I think he meant were not going to devolve into irregular warfare tactics and risk another TF Smith in the event we had to fight a "real" war. Just a thought, but I would definitely like to this council's ideas on it.

As for Hezbollah's TTP, I have read numerous outstanding studies on them, but for the civil affairs type focus I highly recommend you read S.W.E.T. and Blood. It was in the NOV/DEC 07 issue of the Armed Forces Journal, but I also found it at this link.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-172010720.html

[Norfolk]

Following this thread, I'm starting to find myself a little overwhelmed by some of the different points being made, and their implications. Responding to these with a few somewhat disjointed thoughts of my own, I'll start off by saying that Hizbullah is, in some ways, the archetypal la bete noire of contemporary warfare: it is likely to outlive Al-Qaeda, already has a "state" of its own, effectively, and also unlike AQ, has demonstrated a more or less consistent ability to achieve victory at the Strategic level, against all comers, regular or irregular. Hizbullah rarely, if ever, takes its eyes off the political objective, which of couse is what it's all about. As long as they stick to that, and Israel stumbles a few times at critical moments, ultimate victory may well pass to Hizbullah - whether it is in possession of potent regular forces by then or not.

There is a "recent" precedent for irregular forces utterly defeating and disposing of a regular opponent and state, and an opponent that was a true master of irregular warfare itself at that - Rhodesia. Zanu-PF and the like may have lost the war, may even have lost the free and fair election that immediately followed the end of the war in 1980, but it never took its eyes off the political prize, and in the finest Sunzian tradition, shaped, manipulated, and rode the international and regional political situation, forces, and trends to its own supreme advantage. All they otherwise had to do was to continue to maintain a military/paramilitary threat in being - however ineffective tactically or operationally that was in and of itself.

Hizbullah enjoys many of the same advantages as Zanu-PF did, and for many of the same sorts of reasons - Israel can take little comfort in comparing her own position to that of Rhodesia's. That said, Rhodesia's own military performance, generally superlative as it was, though incapable of winning the war by itself, would have been indispensible to victory in any case even had it been coupled to a successful political strategy. Israel so far has has been able to avoid the international ostracism that doomed Rhodesia, and ultimately, South Africa. But when you are on the strategic defensive as Rhodesia found itself and as Israel finds itself, and the enemy is not only on the strategic offensive, but is principally an irregular enemy at that, there is no substitute for superlative leadership and training at the individual, sub-unit, and minor-unit levels.

Rhodesia found Pseudo-Operations to be particularly effective against its irregular enemies, and much the same sort of approach, provided there was a sustained political will to persevere in their use, might go some way to not only wearing down Hizbullah's military strength, but even eroding its political position as well. Hizbullah has no shortage of other enemies, who might not hesitate to pounce at signs of weakness. Not least the Lebanese Government itself.

Pseudo-Operations have rather about as much in common with espionage as they do with "warfare" per se. I doubt that they are covered under the Geneva Conventions - except by the same provisions regarding spying, and they certainly blur the Law of Armed Conflict, probably beyond usefulness. That is a problem for lawyers and the like however; soldiers do not get too concerned, considering the enemies they fight often do not to observe the Geneva Conventions anyway. Where this becomes a problem is when the civil authorities oppose, equivocate, or lose heart in support of such operations; where there is solid support, such legal niceties may become meaningless. War is like pornography; you may not be able to fully and cleary define it in theory, but you recognize it when you see it. War is war, and an enemy is an enemy, and if you can maintain basic morality whilst engaging in such operations, you're okay; if you run into serious problems there, then you're probably engaging in something that you shouldn't be undertaking in the first place. And that usually goes back to decisions made at the political level, and subsequently the soldiers find themselves in the impossible position of being required to carry out.

The old Colonial Wars observed few, and recognized even fewer, if any, of the legal definitions that existed even then, let alone now. There was little to no distinction made between soldiers performing a deliberate company attack on a guerrilla hideout, or sending a capable individual or small party behind the lines to infiltrate the enemy's territory and spy away, or destroy some hideout, or raid some enemy caravan. Those were operations directed towards the same political end; nowadays we tend to try to formalize, create technical language and categories, make artificial or inappropriate distinctions where they shouldn't exist or at least should not be so hard, and generally get too abstract and ignore the organic nature of these things. Hizbullah doesn't.

[Ken White]

Steve:

David Halbertsam's new book The Coldest Winter offers some good insights with recent research. So does Clay Blairs The Forgotten War. Both are more detailed than Fehrenbach's classic that Global Scout recommends -- as do I -- This Kind of War. If you want some interesting reading, Ed Evanhoe's Dark Moon talks about US special operations and behind the lines efforts in Korea.

Don't know much about Hezbollah but will send you one document if you'll PM me with an e-mail. BTW, not at all sure I agree with the conclusions in the article you linked. Most of that is IMO biased and speculative.

Global Scout:

"...but I now wonder if that was the turning point in our history where we jettisoned our knowledge of irregular warfare and focused almost entirely on conventional warfare? To me that seems to the event that shaped our Army's leadership almost more than any other, and I would bet it influenced GEN Westmoreland's views in Vietnam. I recall a quote by a senior Army officer in Vietnam (I'm sorry I can't cite the source off the top of my head), who said we're not going to destroy our Army for this miserable little war. I think he meant were not going to devolve into irregular warfare tactics and risk another TF Smith in the event we had to fight a "real" war. Just a thought, but I would definitely like to this council's ideas on it."

Having been around before Korea, I'm in strong disagreement with that conjecture. World War I was the turning point. The Army got on the global stage and liked it. There were no irregular warfare commitments by the Army after WW I.

Then along came WW II and the 'big war' syndrome got firmly implanted. Further, since the bulk of the Army served in NW Europe; those that had served there got an extra share of promotions -- to the detriment of those who served in Italy and the Pacific. That was a terrible shame because those who had been in the latter two theaters were used to fighting outnumbered, used to being isolated and developed some innovative tactics -- whereas in NW Europe it became "High Diddle Diddle Right Down the Middle" with MASS -- no tactics to it other than kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out.

The NW Europe Generals with few exceptions led the Army into the big war syndrome and have endeavored to keep it there; their logical heirs, the Heavy Division fans of the Cold War kept the Army there. Even though their attempt with the Weinberger / Powell "doctrines" to force the Nation to do it their way failed miserably, I have little doubt they'll try again -- are trying now, in fact. In my view, that is very short sighted. Dumb, even...

That NW Europe mentality was shown in Korea by Walker and most of the Division Commanders. Couple with MacArthur's pathetic staff, they screwed up Korea. It took Ridgeway (NW Europe but from a very different tradition than the Armor folks) to turn it around and then Van Fleet, a NW Europe guy, who had other experience in Greece, to keep it going.

Edited to add: Korea, BTW, was viewed by the senior leadership of the Army in just as poor a light was later was Viet Nam. Most of 'em hated Korea, Truman and everything to do with it. The majority of the Army commanders there misused heir Armor because they tried to fight a European war in the hills and paddies of NE Asia. We made a lot of mistakes there.

In Viet Nam, Harkins set the course early on; Westmoreland was not an innovator so he just followed Harkins lead. Both were NW Europe alumni. So we tried to fight a land war in Europe in the paddies of SEA. Stupid. Sad thing is, most of the units who were there in 1965-66 knew how to do COIN but were directed to do the search and destroy foolishness instead. Seven long years of dumb tactics. We made a lot of mistakes there, too...

Bruce Palmer Jr. was DepComUSMACV, a Pacific veteran and an innovative thinker -- he was the architect of the the plan Abrams adopted and that led to the success of CORDS. After seven years, we started doing it righ but it was too late politically -- all because the Army blew it going in...

When the Army designed the Pentomic structure in the mid-50s, all the Airborne, Pacific and Italian veterans not only coped with but supported the structure -- the NW Europe types screamed about it -- they weren't flexible enough to adapt. They outnumbered the others so the concept was scrapped in less than ten years. When the entire Army (outside Europe...) started COIN training in 1962, they took to it pretty well and most units got good at it. Those folks went to Viet Nam in 1965-66 and knew what needed to be done. When the Second Team came in in 1967, guess where most of the replacements for Commanders came from...

Nah, Korea didn't do that -- the damage was done long before then and Eurocentric thinking is the culprit.

[Merv Benson]

Iran and to some extent Syria supplied Hezballah with beau coup rockets for a purpose beyond responding to a Israeli attack on on Lebanon. Iran wanted the rockets to act as a strategic deterrent against an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. In that regard the war was a spectacular failure for Iran, because the missiles were so ineffective that Israel would have no difficulty making the decision to wipe out the nukes because they are potentially much more dangerous to Israel.

Another remarkable aspect of the Hezballah rocket attacks is that they only hit IDF forces by accident if at all. In other words the rockets were completely ineffective on military targets and were not that effective in hitting population centers that were the likely targets.

Hezballah's defenses in Southern Lebanon were somewhat effective in slowing an Israeli advance, but would have been ineffective against a determined invasion. Israel also demonstrated the ability to operate behind enemy lines and disrupt operations.

Israel's biggest failure was in using combined arms operations. They had an air war and a ground war, but they did little to tie the two together. They would have been much more effective if the ground forces had been used to "fix" enemy hard spots to be knocked out by the IAF.

While Hezballah may claim it won with a draw, Iran should have a different perspective. The IAF attacks in Syria should also have Iran worried.

[Global Scout]

Ken,

You put a lot of history in your last vote that I'm not familiar with, or only vaguely familiar with, but I'll get on it when I return from this extended TDY. While WWI may have been the turning point where the Army developed a myoptic focus on big wars, the Army did quite well in Greece immediate after WWII, and they established a constabulary force in post WWII Germany to control the population there and rid the country of the remaining few Nazi true believers who tried to start an insurgency. As you said we got it completely wrong in Vietnam to start with, just as we did in Iraq, which points more to the failure of our officer corp than the politicians, though both were to blame. If it was new territory, then the mistakes we made would be understandable and pardoned, but the mistakes we're making now could have been avoided if we didn't officers who blindly adhere to the war is war mindset. The American people should speak out strongly against incompetence in the Army. Losing our young people in pursuit of national security is a terrible necessity, but losing them to incompetence is not acceptable.

[Ken White]

the Constabulary in Germany post WW II. It was more dog and pony show than effective -- but it did work well enough to deter any resurgence, no doubt about that.

There were some minor successes other than Greece but IMO you got this 110% correct:

"If it was new territory, then the mistakes we made would be understandable and pardoned, but the mistakes we're making now could have been avoided if we didn't officers who blindly adhere to the war is war mindset. The American people should speak out strongly against incompetence in the Army. Losing our young people in pursuit of national security is a terrible necessity, but losing them to incompetence is not acceptable."

Stay alert and keep your head down.

[tulanealum]

The success in Greece had more to do with the Greeks than with us...and the idiocy of the Communists there...