August 17, 2006

What GWB and Condi are Thinking re: The U.N. Resolution on the Israel-Hezbollah War

U.N. Resolution 1701 on the Israel-Hezbollah war was passed less than a week ago, and already no one can tell why the U.S. supported it, or what good we thought it was supposed to do. The resolution leaves it up to Lebanon to enforce its provisions against Hezbollah, and as of today:

• Lebanon has already balked at doing so.
• Most pundits believe that Hezbollah will not be disarmed.
  

So the question I'd like to look into today is, why did Condi support this resolution?

Let's start with her stated goals for the resolution before it was passed:

"We do seek an end to the current violence, we seek it urgently. We also seek to address the root causes of that violence," she said. "A cease-fire would be a false promise if it simply returns us to the status quo."

I see no reason to doubt that she really wanted to achieve this. Anything less will be seen - is already being seen - as a huge failure on her part.

Next, let's turn to her USA Today interview yesterday. She's been widely criticized for saying:

"I don't think there is an expectation that this (U.N.) force is going to physically disarm Hezbollah," Rice said. "I think it's a little bit of a misreading about how you disarm a militia. You have to have a plan, first of all, for the disarmament of the militia, and then the hope is that some people lay down their arms voluntarily."

If Hezbollah resists international demands to disarm, Rice said, "one would have to assume that there will be others who are willing to call Hezbollah what we are willing to call it, which is a terrorist organization."

There's a link to the complete interview, in which Rice discusses in some detail her views on the disarming of Hezbollah. Note the emphasis she puts on changes in the official stance of the U.N. vis-a-vis Hezbollah:

QUESTION: But if - say Hezbollah decides it does not choose to live up to this agreement and does not choose to disarm. What happens then?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I don't want to speculate because I think so much depends on conditions, but let's look at it this way. First of all, the Hezbollah, I think, was hurt by the military action that has been taken against it. It does not have the positions in the south that it once had. It doesn't have the positions along the border. It's not going to be on the border with Israel. Those will be international forces and the Lebanese armed forces.

It will - can it be kept from being resupplied? Yes; if the international embargo is carried out and carried out with vigor, they can be prevented from rearming. So already, this organization will be weaker because its dominant position in the south, which allowed it to carry out this attack, a position that they've built up essentially since the Israelis withdrew in 2000, they have been dislodged from that. So part of the answer to how to deal with Hezbollah is not just the matter of arms, although it's important, but also keeping them out of those strategic positions in the south.

And then I think there will be a lot of pressure on Hezbollah to make a choice and if, in fact, they make the wrong choice, one would have to assume that there will be others who are willing to call Hezbollah what we are willing to call it, which is a terrorist organization. Europe does not, for instance, currently list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. I would think that a refusal to live up to obligations that were undertaken by the Lebanese Government, clearly putting Hezbollah outside of the Lebanese Government consensus might trigger, for instance, something like that.

QUESTION: So it would isolate Hezbollah in the world?

SECRETARY RICE: Yes, in ways that - we consider them a terrorist organization now, but Hezbollah is a little different than Hamas. Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by the Europeans; Hezbollah is not. I would think that this would be another further isolation for Hezbollah.

...SECRETARY RICE: [The resolution is] backed up by an international arms embargo for the first time, which means that those states that now supply Hezbollah are in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution and that should help the forces as well.

...because [Hezbollah] launched this war, unprovoked, clearly without the authority of the Lebanese Government, they are - have been branded by this international - by the international community, by a 15-0 vote of the Security Council as the aggressors. I think that is unheard of in the history of the Middle East...

Now let's look at what Tony Snow said today on the subject:

Israel, U.S.: Lebanon must disarm Hezbollah

Israel and the United States expect Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah.

"It's important to realize that the Lebanese government will be in charge of disarming Hezbollah, and we expect that to happen," Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said Wednesday.

And, from the full text of the press conference:

Q You said you expect that to happen, you expect the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah. But do you feel confident, does the White House feel confident that there's the will within the government to do that?

MR. SNOW: I don't want to get too much into conversations we've had, but the general answer is, yes, that the Lebanese government understands the importance of making sure that you don't have what amounts to a de facto competitor in the form of Hezbollah operating independently.

I think one of the things to note is that for the last 30 years, there has been little or no Lebanese armed forces presence in southern Lebanon. It's been either Israelis or Hezbollah. And it's going to take time for the forces, once again, to be able to move there and to get the lay of the land and be able to operate effectively. And that's one of the reasons why also we deem it necessary and appropriate to have UNIFIL forces assisting.

Okay, so with all that input, here are a few conclusions:

First, for some reason, GWB and Condi seem to think Lebanon really is going to disarm Hezbollah. Where they're getting this from, I have no idea, but it's evident they haven't given up on it yet.

Second, GWB and Condi have decided to trade the possibility of an imminent outright destruction of Hezbollah by Israel, for specific advances in the official stance of the U.N. vis-a-vis Hezbollah. They actually believe that the threat of U.N. resolutions and sanctions will make it difficult for Iran and Syria to provide arms to Hezbollah. They're essentially hoping for long-term peer pressure, over a period of years, to take the place of an immediate victory on the ground, which they felt presented too great a danger of initiating a larger war.