Journal of Politics and Law; Vol. 8, No. 1; 2015 ISSN 1913-9047 E-ISSN 1913-9055 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education The Israel-Lebanon War of 2006 and the Failure of US Foreign Policy Hamed Mousavi1 1 Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada Correspondence: Hamed Mousavi, Room B640, Loeb Building, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel by Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada. E-mail: [email protected] Received: January 19, 2015 Accepted: February 5, 2015 Online Published: February 27, 2015 doi:10.5539/jpl.v8n1p130 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/jpl.v8n1p130 Abstract This paper argues that the US encouraged the starting, continuation and even expansion of the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon in order to achieve its own hegemonic objectives in the region. While global hegemony has always been on Washington’s agenda, in the Bush administration, with neoconservatives sitting behind influential desks in the capital, the initiative got new impetus. According to this new approach, the goal was to be advanced with the confrontation and eventual defeat of the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas axis, a move that would help create a ‘New Middle East’ in which opposition to US-Israeli policies would not be tolerated. The paper uses a Neoclassical Realist theoretical approach to show that Washington’s miscalculation of power relations in the region led to the failure of its foreign policy. Like the Iraq War of 2003, the 2006 Lebanon War was a disaster for the US. With the encouragement and support of the Americans, the Israeli war machine fought an inconclusive war with Hezbollah, as a result of which the status of the Israeli military as the Middle East’s ‘Invincible Army’ was shattered and archenemies Hezbollah and Iran were strengthened. Keywords: 2006 Lebanon War, US foreign policy, neoclassical realism, Middle East politics, Israeli-Arab conflict, US-Israel relations 1. Introduction On July 12th 2006 Hezbollah forces in a cross border attack on two Israeli armored Humvees killed three soldiers and took two soldiers prisoner. In retaliation Israel started a massive assault on Lebanon. What ensued was an open war between Israel and Hezbollah that lasted for 33 days, left over 1100 Lebanese and 43 Israelis killed and caused major destruction to Lebanese infrastructure with minimum estimates standing at 3.6 billion dollars. There are however estimates as high as 15 billion dollars on the destruction on Lebanese economy according to the UN development program (Zafiris & Sayed, 2008). Israel’s aim was to cause massive destruction to Lebanon, or to put it in the words of Israel’s Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, “turn Lebanon's clock back 20 years" (Avnery, 2007). The aim of this policy was to turn the Lebanese population against Hezbollah. Initially there was wide spread speculation of pre-planning by Israel for the summer 2006 war, with the San Francisco Chronicle stating that Army officers had started giving power point presentations on a “three week assault” on Lebanon, with very similar details to the conflict in question, to the US administration and think thanks, almost a year in advance of July 2006 (Kalman, 2006). Speculation turned into fact when in a leaked testimony to the Winograd commission, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert confessed to have started planning for the conflict at least 4 months in advance. According to the leading Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, which obtained the leaked testimony, Olmert discussed the possibility of war in January 2006 and asked to see military plans in March of the same year (Urquhart, 2007). In the years prior to the 2006 conflict some elements of the Bush administration especially in the State department had advised restraint on Israeli assaults on the occupied Palestinian territories mainly due to the fact that the US was fighting a war in Iraq and was working to “win the hearts and minds” of the Iraqis. The state department and more sensible elements within the administration were strongly against any joint Israeli-US military efforts mainly due to the fact that the State Department correctly believed that this would make the ‘War on Terror’ look like a US-Israeli war on Muslim countries. However when the time came America’s actual policy was much more in tune with the views of hawkish neoconservatives who were occupying key positions in Washington. This article will try to address how and why the US administration encouraged the starting, continuation and even expansion of the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon using a neoclassical realist theoretical 130 www.ccsenet.org/jpl Journal of Politics and Law Vol. 8, No. 1; 2015 framework. 2. Theoretical Framework In the Theory of International Politics, Kenneth Waltz (1979) lays the foundation of Neorealist IR theory by isolating structural variables and ignoring state level variables. The theory’s main assumption is that unlike domestic politics, the state of international affairs is one of anarchy. His theory also takes states as the main actors of this arena and assumes that they rely on self-help to ensure their survival. All these are core realist assumptions and are shared by scholars such as Carr, Morgenthau, Mearsheimer and even classical writers such as Machiavelli, Hobbes and Thucydides. However what makes Waltz’s theory unique is that by distinguishing between structure and process he is able to build a theory that is both parsimonious and powerful. His theory is based on the assumption that the position of units in the system is not a property of the units themselves but rather a property of the system and thus by studying the system one can find regularities in state behavior. Another logical conclusion to this assumption is that the structure only changes when the arrangement of its parts changes and not by any change in process level variables. Thus by isolating the third image from the first and second images, Waltz aims to explain the constraints imposed on the units by the structure. Therefore the third image is influencing and affecting the first two images, not the other way round. A well-devised structural theory will explain how states with vastly different unit level variables will behave similarly due to the impositions of the structure (Waltz, 1979, pp. 79-101). Nevertheless while neorealism provides important improvements over past realist approaches, it has been criticized for completely ignoring domestic level factors such as the ideological orientations of decision makers. This weakness of Waltz’s theory is caused by its assumption that all states are homogeneous units of the international system (Rosecrance, 1981, pp. 700-708). To address these weaknesses neoclassical realism brings unit level factors into the analysis, while at the same time accepting many of neorealism’s assumptions. Neoclassical realists assert that a state’s foreign policy is driven primarily by its place in the international system and its relative material capabilities. This is a major area of commonality with neorealist theory. Where it differs from structural theory is that it argues that a state’s relative power in the system is not directly translated into foreign policy. Rather its impact is dependent on unit level “intervening variables” which act in between the independent (relative power capabilities) and dependent (foreign policy) variables. Neoclassical realists for example stress that the perception of decision makers and domestic state structures are key to how states view the international system and how they define their country’s interests. By accounting for intervening variables that ‘translate’ the independent variable, realist theory becomes more complex but at the same time results in greater accuracy and specificity (Rose, 1998, pp. 166-167). Neoclassical Realism also differs from constructivism in that the main driver of a state’s foreign policy is its relative power capabilities and the other factors pointed earlier only act as intervening variables, whereas constructivism sees norms as constituting the very identity and interests of states. Also there are objective structural constraints and incentives on state behavior in neoclassical realism and as a result anarchy is not what states make of it. As future sections will demonstrate neoclassical realism can be successfully used to analyze how the ideology of decision makers can affect American policy in the Middle East in negative ways. 3. Encouragement Beyond the Usual Endorsement From the start of the 2006 Lebanon War it was evident that the Bush administration strongly supported Israel’s war with its northern neighbor. This support came through in terms of both public statements and more importantly via actions on the ground. A day after the war started President Bush repeated the right of Israel to “defend” itself, which is usually used by Washington whenever Israel attacks its opponents with disproportional force. The American President also called Hezbollah “the root of the problem” (CTV News, 2006). The US Congress tried not to fall behind the executive branch in supporting Israel by passing Senate resolution 534 with a 98-0 vote, "Condemning Hezbollah and Hamas and their state sponsors and supporting Israel's exercise of its right to self-defense" (United Sates Senate, 2006, p. Res.534), and the house passing resolution 921 with a 410-8 vote, with such an exaggerated tone that is hard to find even in Israel. On the ground according to the New York Times, Washington expedited the delivery of satellite and laser guided bombs to Israel (Reuters, US rushes precision-guided bombs to Israel: paper, 2006). Also on July 14th just two days after the start of the conflict the US Congress was notified of a very large JP-8 jet fuel shipment to Israel amounting to 210 million dollars so that “the jet fuel will be consumed while the aircraft is in use to keep peace and security in the region” (Defense Security Cooperation Agency, 2006), or to put it in other terms it was needed for the Israeli Air Force more than 12,000 combat missions in the 33 war.