World
Order after
the Lebanon War
By
Richard
Falk, TFF Associate
August 31, 2006
There has been much commentary on
the significance of the Lebanon War. There is an
unresolved debate about whether there was a victorious
side in the war, and even what the idea of victory means.
There are various suggestions about how to prevent a new
war between Israel and Hezbollah, whether by relying
mainly on the UN stabilization force or by reviving
diplomacy between Israel and its various adversaries. Is
it time to talk with Hezbollah and Hamas? What does the
inconclusiveness of the war tell us about the benefits
and limitations of military superiority in such a
conflict? Could Israel have used its military
capabilities more effectively, or were deeper structural
restraints operative? These are all important issues,
deserving of reflection and dialogue, and hopefully
encourage a turn away from violence by all sides in their
search for peace and security.
Beyond these immediate concerns
lies the question of world order, and the extent to which
some gaps and weaknesses were disclosed by the Lebanon
War and its outcome. In a deep sense this question of the
shape of world order has been present at least since the
collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. It was
given a temporary spin by the first Bush president,
George H.W, Bush, who introduced the phrase `a new world
order' to describe the possibility of using the UN
Security Council as an effective instrument of collective
security in the aftermath of the Cold War. The Security
Council was no longer gridlocked by the pervasive
antagonism between East and West, as was shown by the
mandate to reverse Iraqi aggression against Kuwait in the
first Gulf War. It seemed possible to implement the
Charter promise to protect victims of aggression and
conquest by enlisting the world community as a whole in
an undertaking of collective self-defense.
There were many criticisms of the
manner in which the UNSC gave unrestricted discretion to
an American-led coalition in 1991 to take over the
conduct of the war, determine its goals, and control the
dynamics of post-conflict diplomacy. But the undertaking
did effectively restore Kuwaiti sovereignty, and in that
sense could properly proclaim `mission accomplished.' But
no sooner were the guns silent in Iraq than the idea of a
new world order was quietly abandoned by Washington, put
back `on the shelf' as one senior American diplomat
described the new mood. On reflection, the US Government
seemed reluctant to affirm UN authority to such an
extent, or to find itself assigned unwelcome undertakings
in the future by a more confident Security Council.
In any event, subsequent
developments during the 1990s moved the United States
away from a reliance on the UN to address world order
challenges. The failure of peacekeeping in Somalia
(1993), the non-response to genocide in Rwanda (1994),
and the apparent ineptitude of the UN in Bosnia,
especially the dismal spectacle of UN peacekeepers
standing by as virtual spectators during a series of
events, culminating in what most of the world has
regarded as the massacre of some 6,000 Muslim males at
Srebrenica in 1995, a perception that continues to be
contested be some responsible critics.
To blame the UN for these world
order setbacks is to miss the central point that the UN
can only do as much as it is authorized to do by its
major members, above all the United States. These
developments that did so much to undermine the UN took
place during the presidency of Bill Clinton, a moderate,
supposedly internationally minetworked world civil
society acting in unison. And still others emphasized the
revolutionary relevance of climate change, bringing about
extreme weather in the form of tsunamis, hurricanes,
polar melting, droughts, and disease, threatening human
catastrophe that could be averted only if effective
global governance were established as a matter of
urgency.
All of these developments have
greatly complicated our understanding of the nature of
world order in the 21st century, but we have yet to
absorb the implications of the 9/11 attacks on the United
States, and the American decision to declare a `global
war on terror' in response. The Lebanon War (as well as
the Iraq War) reinforces what I would call the unlearned
lessons of 9/11.
The most important of these is the
change in the nature of power and security: even the most
traditionally powerful state is now vulnerable to a
devastating attack by a determined and skilled non-state
actor, and unlike an enemy state, this adversary is
itself basically invulnerable to a debilitating
counter-attack by military means. Such an actor occupies
no territory, and offers no targets, and has no
leadership that can be persuaded to surrender. The
failure to heed the lesson of 9/11 resulted in relying on
a war strategy to address the adversary instead of
adapting the response to the non-state nature of the
threat. What was appropriate after 9/11 was not a
generalized war, but a set of particularized responses
associated with greatly improved international law
enforcement possibly supplemented in exceptional
situations by special forces operations undertaken with
the consent of either the territorial government or the
UN. Such a police approach, to be successful, would need
to be combined with concerted efforts to address whatever
legitimate grievances had played some part in motivating
such extreme violence.
What does the Lebanon War add to
this picture? It reinforces in a more vivid fashion this
new ratio of power with respect to combat between state
power and a non-state adversary. The military machine of
the state can inflict virtually unlimited destruction and
cause great suffering to civilian society, and yet it
cannot consistently destroy the capacity of its non-state
adversary to strike back.
Israel had repeatedly defeated and
deterred Arab states that had challenged its security in
a number of wars. Its military might and skill had been
successfully used in the past to achieve a series of
political victories in a series of wars that expanded its
territory, raised its prestige, intimidated its
neighbors, while creating a reputation of invincibility.
But in this different world order, relying on military
muscle against a seemingly weakly armed opponent will not
yield a victory, even for Israel. Instead, militarism now
exposes the vulnerability of supposed military
powerhouses to the increasingly effective tactics of
non-state political adversaries. Of course, both sides
learn within their respective paradigms. Israel adapts
future war plans to overcome failure in Lebanon, while
Hezbollah tries to anticipate these adjustments in
planning to mount an even more devastating resistance in
the course of the next flair-up.
In the face of experiences in Iraq
and Lebanon, the frustrated states, addicted as they seem
to be to military solutions for political problems, are
likely to go back to their drawing boards, devising new
weapons and tactics, but convinced that in the future it
will be possible to restore the relevance of superior
military power as measured by wealth and technological
capacity. This will be a costly mistake. It overlooks the
extent to which war is becoming dysfunctional in the 21st
century, wasting incredible amounts of resources that
could be put to much better uses in raising living
standards and creating a more stable, cooperative world.
If military power is not the
answer, what is? It has never been more important to find
sustainable solutions to the deep, unresolved conflicts
of the Middle East. The problems of Israel could be most
reliably addressed by a fair political compromise that
acknowledges Palestinian rights, restores Syrian
territory, and produces a full withdrawal from Lebanese
territory.
The United States could similarly
gain security and confidence by disengaging from wars
that have no foundation in law or morality, and joining
with other countries to protect the societies of the
world from extremist violence, constructing arrangements
for improved international cooperation and for global
governance. It is instructive to take account of the
greatest achievement of Europe since 1945, which is not,
as generally believed, the high level of economic
integration, but rather the truly remarkable
establishment of a culture of peace that has made the
outbreak of war within the boundaries of the EU virtually
unthinkable.
An appreciation of the Lebanon War
from the perspective of world order may encourage this
perception that the viability of the war system was based
on being able to limit the playing field of international
conflict to sovereign states exercising governmental
control within recognized international boundaries. Even
this role for war has been earlier deeply challenged by
the advent of weaponry of mass destruction, especially
nuclear weapons, the existence of which continues to
threaten humanity in a variety of ways.
But with the rise of non-state
actors as international players, modalities of war are
more and more likely to lead to the persistence of deadly
conflict rather than to victory. The United States
currently spends more on its military capabilities than
the rest of the world combined, and yet it has never in
its history felt as vulnerable to attack or as unable to
translate battlefield outcomes into desired political
results.
All in all, the Lebanon War is
likely to be remembered not for the birth pains of 'a new
Middle East' (Condoleezza Rice), but as the death throes
of a system of world order that accepted war as the
inevitable basis of stability and change in relations
among sovereign states.
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TFF & the author 2006
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