Print
PDF FormatWhat emerges most clearly from the cases of failure on the part of the French in Algeria, the Americans in Vietnam, and the Israelis in southern Lebanon is very much the flip side of what we already have seen with respect to Northern Ireland, Gaza, and Chechnya: That in all these cases, it was not the citizenry which lacked the patience and resolve required to support their government and military through a protracted conflict. Rather, in all these cases, it was democratic leaders who first despaired of being able to win; once they decided to abandon the fight, public opinion quickly followed their lead.
The prevalence in recent history of small wars waged between terrorist or guerilla forces and sovereign nations requires a different kind of strategic thinking. The new age of warfare not only requires changes in tactics on the battlefield, but a change in how we understand the sources and politics of conflict. The realist paradigm, based on the idea of war as “politics by other means,” as Clausewitz put it, may no longer really obtain. Armed organizations go to war on behalf of religious beliefs and moral ambitions that are at odds with traditional notions of politics or the best interests of their constituencies. However, democratic nations are capable of being inspired by similar passions, and they, too, are capable of mustering vast resources of courage and stamina in the face of a vicious enemy. It is wrong to suppose that the advantages of tenacity and willpower fall only to the militarily weak side, struggling for independence or fighting against a major power.104
In certain respects, this state of affairs is a result of the operational successes of guerilla warfare and terrorism. Mao Zedong said that one of the principles of guerilla warfare is to strike at the enemy but to stop before he becomes incensed. In other words, an overly destructive attack is liable to trigger devastating retaliation.105 The harder the terrorists hit, the more the leaders of victim nations abandon circumspect political rationality in favor of military action, and complex political substantiations give way to unsubtle slogans such as “the Global War on Terror,”106 “World War IV,”107 and “the axis of evil.” In the speech U.S. President George W. Bush made on the night of September 11, 2001, he was not in need of sophisticated explanations of the kind that were perhaps in the minds of Lyndon Johnson and his advisers. He used the simple and unsophisticated language of life and death:
Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack.… These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed…. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America… we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.… We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them… we stand together to win the war against terrorism.108
There is not a single word here of realpolitik, no mention of constraints, interests, or any attempt to discuss the fine points of terrorism or whether it is possible to defeat it. And precisely because of its simplicity, such language is successful. Even though a conventional terror attack cannot defeat a tank division, Osama Bin Laden, Yasser Arafat, and whoever blew up the apartment block in Moscow in 1999 succeeded in convincing the citizens of the nations they attacked that a war of survival was at hand. In the end, terrorism’s success in making itself such a profound influencing factor has also been its greatest failure.
This is not surprising. Numerous historic examples bring into question the supposition that it is possible to break the enemy’s will by waging a slow war against its citizens. To take an extreme example, during World War II the German and Japanese peoples never reached a real breaking point, despite the colossal destruction visited on them, for example, by the firebombing of Japanese towns, the maelstrom in Hamburg in 1943, and the bombing of Dresden.109 No underground movements sprang up and no popular movements were formed to resist the government. German citizens whose homes had been destroyed still sought to pay their taxes, and until the end of the war, more than 90 percent of Japanese factory workers were still coming to their jobs every day.110
The behavior of democracies is slightly more complicated, but ultimately not materially different. The examples of Algeria, Vietnam, and Lebanon, and the counter-examples of Northern Ireland, Gaza, and Chechnya, paint a clear picture of the strengths and weaknesses of democratic societies: On the one hand, the public’s endurance is much greater than the conventional wisdom; and on the other, in order to break such a country through a war of attrition, all that is necessary is to influence a small and concentrated group—that is, its leadership. If the leadership decides that the war is not worth the cost or the trouble, the public will probably follow it.
But if both political leaders and public opinion are convinced of the rightness and necessity of war, it is extremely difficult to withstand the wrath of a democratic country. The staying power of such countries does not depend on the damage they suffer in human lives and property. Their power lies in what defines their very existence—their belief in democratic values and their wish to protect them. If a democratic society believes in the rightness and necessity of its struggle, and if its leadership can provide a simple and clear answer to the question, “What are we fighting for?” the public will be willing to bear any burden required of them, including casualties, political and military fiascoes, and the economic burdens of war. And this, in the end, is the most important conclusion to be drawn: At the most critical junctures of its history, the citizenry is not the weakest link in a democratic country, but its greatest resource.
Yagil Henkin is a doctoral student in military history at Bar-Ilan University. He is the author of the forthcoming book Un-Guerilla Warfare: The History of the War in Chechnya, 1994-1996 (Ministry of Defense Publishing).
Notes
I wish to thank Martin van Creveld, Yossi Hochbaum, and Ze’ev Elron for their helpful comments.
1. The expression “small wars” is preferable in my view to “low intensity conflict,” “military operations other than war,” and “limited conflict,” because “small wars,” an expression coined in the nineteenth century, best describes conflicts that every now and then can be of such high intensity (for example Operation Defensive Shield or the recent battles in Fallujah and Najaf in Iraq), that it is justifiable to define them as wars.
2. Robert M. Cassidy, “Why Great Powers Fight Small Wars Badly,” Military Review (September-October 2002), pp. 42, 43.
3. Cassidy, “Why Great Powers Fight Small Wars Badly,” p. 48.
4. Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam (Cambridge: Cambridge, 2003), p. 13. It is important to note that Merom raises the notion of “asymmetry of willpower,” but only partially agrees with it. This notion is based on the historian Martin van Creveld’s definition of “the war for existence” as a form of a non-political war, in which the fear for survival can drive people “to make sacrifices beyond anything imaginable in ‘ordinary’ times” and ignore cost-benefit considerations that guide policies under normal conditions. Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 145.
5. From a historical point of view, the success of an asymmetric uprising is rare. Until the middle of the twentieth century, the weaker side usually lost small wars. Its lack of resources, unconnected to its will to win, is what eventually determined the outcome. In the middle of the nineteenth century, for example, Tsarist Russia suffered heavy defeats in the Caucasus at the hands of Imam Shamil and his followers, but in the end—it took 30 years—he was defeated. In 1879, Britain was hit hard by Zulu warriors in Isandlwana, but a little more than a year later the Zulu Empire was on its knees. The annihilation of General Custer’s force at the battle of Little Big Horn in 1876 did not prevent the U.S. Army from subduing the Indian tribes. For Shamil’s wars see Moshe Gammer, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnya and Daghestan (London: Frank Cass, 2004); for the battles in Isandlwana and the Zulu Wars see Donald R. Morris, The Washing of the Spears: A History of the Rise of the Zulu Nation Under Shaka and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879 (New York: Da Capo, 1998); Ian Knight, Isandlwana 1879: The Great Zulu Victory (Campaign 111) (London: Osprey, 2002). According to the historian John Ellis, out of approximately 130 guerilla wars throughout history, “less than twenty of them could really be considered to have been ultimately successful” from the point of view of the guerillas. John Ellis, A Short History of Guerrilla Warfare (London: Ian Allan, 1975), p. 196.Today, however, guerilla forces score relatively more victories, but in contrast with the past, the stronger side—meaning the country—does not usually deal so harshly with the weaker side and at most it denies it the opportunity to self-determination and certain rights.
6. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, p. 15.
7. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, p. 230.
8. Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, p. 231.The historian Martin van Creveld also points out that the power of strong countries occasionally works against them because there is no glory in defeating a weak opponent, and thus motivation is low. A boxer fighting a little boy cannot “win.” He can allow himself to be beaten by the boy and suffer humiliation, or hurt the boy and be considered a criminal. A conversation with Martin van Creveld, September 2005. See also van Creveld, The Transformation of War, chs. 6-7.
9. Henry Kissinger, “The Vietnam Negotiations,” Foreign Affairs 47 (January 1969), p. 214.
10. This was said to cadets at the company and regimental commanders’ course at the end of 1997; the author heard it with his own ears.
11. Ben Caspit, “Giladi Program,” Maariv, January 2, 2004.
12. Yehuda Wegman, “The IDF’s Accomplishments are Canceled Out by Conception,” Makor Rishon, September 15, 2004. The theory of the triumph of will is gaining popularity, since it appears to explain many contemporary small wars in which the outcomes have contradicted Napoleon’s famous remark that “God is on the side of the strongest battalion.” It is also popular among many in the military, if only because it makes the minimum demand of them: If it is impossible to defeat an uprising, they cannot be responsible for not winning.
13. An important book on the subject is Democracies and Small Wars, ed. Efraim Inbar (London: Frank Cass, 2003). Although not all authors in that book are mentioned below, it had a significant influence on this article.
14. See R. J. Rummel, Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1997).
15. General Arthur Harris, commander-in-chief of the Bomber Command, was in favor of “area bombing” as the best strategy to break the Germans. He opposed precision bombings because he considered it a “pointless search for panacea targets” to paralyze the Third Reich’s economy. See David J. Lonsdale, The Nature of War in the Information Age: Clausewitzian Future (London: Frank Cass, 2004), pp. 154-155.
16. There are varying estimates of the number of casualties in World War II and the Vietnam War. Matthew White has made a broad survey of different sources for such statistics in twentieth-century wars, at http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatx.htm. According to some estimates, the Vietcong and North Vietnamese lost more than a million people out of a population of approximately 20 million on the eve of the war. According to other estimates, the number of casualties was more than twice as great, and two-thirds were civilians. This number is greater, for example, than the number of Afghan casualties in the war against the Soviet Union, in both absolute and relative terms. See Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1997). According to an official report by the Hanoi government, published by the AFP news agency on April 4, 1995, the death toll in North Vietnam (even though it is unclear what is included in that definition) between 1954 and 1975 reached 3,000,000, of whom 1,100,000 were soldiers. The report did not specify if the military casualties included those of the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (arvn). If they are included, the number of military casualties of the north would be around 900,000, and the total North Vietnamese losses 2,900,000. Hanoi claimed that to prevent demoralization in the north, the figures were adjusted down during the fighting, at www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html.
17. R. J. Rummel, Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 (Charlottesville: Center for National Security Law, 1997), table 14.1B.
18. Merom compares the actions of Germany in German Africa between 1904 and 1907 with the Boer War to demonstrate the difference in efficiency between democracies and dictatorships. In German Africa, 18,000 soldiers were deployed; the cost of suppressing mutinies was 22 million pounds sterling and African casualties totaled approximately 400,000 (more cautious estimates refer to half that number). On the other hand, during the Boer War the British deployed 449,000 soldiers and lost 22,000 (only 7,900 of them in battles!); the war cost 220 million pounds sterling and the number of casualties on the enemy’s side amounted to only 25,000 (see Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, pp. 44-45). However, it seems that in this case Merom is ignoring a very important factor, perhaps the most important factor: The identity of the enemy. The British were fighting Europeans, who were properly armed, of a similar culture, and had knowledge of Western warfare. Fifty years later, against Mau-Mau rebels in Kenya who did not have proper weapons or high capabilities, the British lost roughly 95 Europeans while the Africans lost 11,000. In these campaigns, about 2,000 Africans who sympathized with Britain also met their deaths (Merom doesn’t say how many casualties in the war in Africa were German sympathizers). For a review of different sources for the number of casualties, see Matthew White, “Death Tolls for the Man-Made Megadeaths of the Twentieth Century,” at http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatx.htm.
19. On the progress of the conflict, see Peter Rose, How the Troubles Came to Northern Ireland (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2001); John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 151-162.
20. By the time administrative detention was suspended in 1975, 1,981 people had been detained under it. In Malaya the corresponding number was 34,000, and in the fighting against the Mau-Mau in Kenya, 77,000. Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, p. 166.
21. The number of bombs planted by the IRA increased from 150 in 1970 to 1,382 in 1972 (and dropped to 978 in 1973). Their strength also increased greatly. Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, p. 167.
22. From methods of fighting subversion to policing and back, and then again to policing, assassination of organization activists, and so on.
23. Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, “From War to Peace in Northern Ireland,” in A Farewell to Arms? From ‘Long War’ to Long Peace in Northern Ireland, eds. Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke, and Fiona Stephen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 31.
24. Marie Smyth, “The Human Consequences of Armed Conflict: Constructing ‘Victimhood’ in the Context of Northern Ireland’s Troubles,” in A Farewell to Arms?, p. 121, table 9.2. It should be noted that the number of civilian casualties includes both Catholics and Protestants.
25. Canadian Security Intelligence Service, “Irish Nationalist Terrorism Outside Ireland: Out-of-Theatre Operations 1972-1993,” CSIS, Commentary 40, February 1994, at www.csis.gc.ca/en/publications/commentary/com40.asp.
26. M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 175.
27. Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, p. 191; Jane M. Jacobs, Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 64; and Timothy Hillier, “Bomb Attacks in City Centers,” Emergency Response and Research Institute, September 1994, at www.emergency.com/carbomb.htm.
28. Smith, Fighting for Ireland?, p. 125.
29. PRO, PM/72/10, Douglas-Hume to Edward Heath, March 13, 1972, prem 15/1004. Online photocopy at cain, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/publicrecords/1972/index.html.
30. Kennedy-Pipe, “From War to Peace,” p. 33.
31. The number is according to Malcolm Sutton, “Sutton Index of Deaths: An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland,” at http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/index.html. The number is greater in Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles: Ireland’s Ordeal 1966-1996 and the Search for Peace (Boulder: Roberts Rinehart, 1996), p. 262, which gives the number of dead as 160 between 1988 and 1992. For a critical description of the British government’s actions and the question of the link between it and Protestant terrorist cells, see above, pp. 241-324 and Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, pp. 187-190.
32. Martin Mansergh, “The Background to the Irish Peace Process,” in A Farewell to Arms?, p. 14.
33. Kennedy-Pipe, “From War to Peace,” p. 33.
34. Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, p. 193.
35. Smyth, “The Human Consequences,” p. 119, table 9.1. Malcolm Sutton puts the number at 3,550 dead between 1969 and 2005, with an additional 18 dead about whom it is not clear if they were murdered in connection with the conflict between 2002 and 2005. Sutton, “Sutton Index of Deaths.”
36. “IRA Says Armed Campaign Is Over,” BBC News, July 28, 2005, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4720863.stm. Ireland is an example of a relatively “light” conflict. Its relevancy can be rejected by claiming it to be a special case. All in all, the majority of Northern Ireland’s inhabitants want to remain part of Britain (although this is usually the situation in many international disputes in which there is a large group of non-separatists, as in Algeria). But it should be noted that every conflict is unique, and the IRA and sections of the British public believed that the British would eventually withdraw. In addition, the cost in lives of the conflict, combined with the psychological effect of the London bombings and the shelling of the prime minister’s residence, were greater than the price Britain paid against the Mau-Mau in Kenya. There are many things that affect the outcome of an uprising; the British-Irish example is enough to show that the same government can run its affairs in different places in entirely different ways, but that the direct effect on Britain of the conflict in Northern Ireland was immeasurably greater than the effect of the conflict in Kenya. Notwithstanding the uniqueness of the conflict in Ireland, we can learn from it that the number of dead and the psychological effect of terror are not fixed terms in the equation.
37. For more on the Northern Ireland conflict see, for example, John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995); Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland: Power, Conflict and Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1996); David McKittrick and David Vea, Making Sense of the Troubles: The Story of the Conflict in Northern Ireland, 2nd ed. (London: Penguin, 2001).
38. Daniel Naim, “The Development and Destruction of Terror Organizations in the Gaza Strip and Their Expulsion 1967-1973” (master’s thesis, Bar-Ilan University, n.d.), chs. 3-4. [Hebrew]
39. Naim, “The Development and Destruction of Terror Organizations,” p. 61.
40. Naim, “The Development and Destruction of Terror Organizations,” p. 71 and appendix xiii. See also David Maimon, The Terror That Was Defeated: The Quelling of Terror in the Gaza Strip, 1971-1972 (Tel Aviv: Steimatzky, 1993), pp. 44-50, 195. [Hebrew]
41. Naim, “The Development and Destruction of Terror Organizations,” pp. 93-94.
42. Maimon, The Terror That Was Defeated, pp. 99-106.
43. Ariel Sharon with David Chanoff, Warrior: The Autobiography of Ariel Sharon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), p. 252.
44. Those who were moved out—about two thousand families—were moved into empty apartments close to or in El-Arish; most of them stayed near where they had previously lived (Naim, “The Development and Destruction of Terror Organizations,” p. 87). See also Maimon, The Terror That Was Defeated, pp. 109-114.
45. Avihai Becker, “How Terror Was Defeated in the Gaza Strip,” Hadashot, April 11, 1993.
46. Amatzia Chen, “The IDF Doesn’t Learn the Lessons of War,” News First Class, July 28, 2005 [Hebrew], at www.nfc.co.il/archive/003-D-11231-00.html?tag=23-27-38. Other units mistakenly killed more innocent people, but the number is extremely small.
47. Naim, “The Development and Destruction of Terror Organizations,” p. 103.
48. To the best of my knowledge, there has been only one study of the fighting in the Gaza Strip during that period and it was by Naim, above. Other sources important to the subject are Maimon, The Terror That Was Defeated and Uri Milstein and Dov Doron, Shaked Commando Unit (Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot, 1994), ch. 13, pp. 221-233, and Sharon, Warrior, pp. 248-262. It is probably possible to explain why the Gaza Strip is not a particularly good example. But then the question would arise why every example in which the subversive forces lost is not representative and every example in which the subversives won is representative.
49. For more information, see Yagil Henkin, Un-Guerilla Warfare: The History of the War in Chechnya 1994-1996 (Tel Aviv: Army Training and Doctrine Division, 2004). [Hebrew]
50. “Russians Losing Faith in Chechen War,” BBC News, January 30, 2000, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/624668.stm.
51. John Dunlop, an expert on the Caucasus, recently claimed that “the Russian public does not in the main support Vladimir Putin’s war in Chechnya … Rather they… favor a negotiated settlement.” In a poll conducted in February 2005 by the liberal Levada Institute, 69 percent of the Russian public was in favor of negotiating and 21 percent wanted the war to continue. See John B. Dunlop, “Do Ethnic Russians Support Putin’s War in Chechnya?” Chechnya Weekly 4, January 26, 2005, at www.jamestown.org/images/pdf/cw_006_004.pdf, Levada Tsenter, “The Socio-political Situation in Russia in January 2005,” February 8, 2005, at www.levada.ru/press/2005020801.html. It seems that even if Russians were in favor of negotiations, they clearly were not in favor of negotiating with the extant Chechen leadership. In February, of 42 percent who were in favor of negotiating and thought that the government should talk to “the representatives of the opposite side,” only slightly more than a quarter (or less than one-eighth of all those asked) thought that they should talk to Maskhadov. The willingness to talk therefore remained theoretical, because it was not accompanied by a willingness to negotiate with someone who actually represented the insurgents. In March 2005, only 9 percent of those who believed that the ceasefire announced by the late Chechen leader Maskhadov a month before his elimination was genuine; 86 percent of them (about 40 percent of respondents) thought that the ceasefire was a kind of “trick.” See The Public Opinion Foundation Database (FOM), “The Chechen Drama: Characters and the Plot,” February 24, 2005, at http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/map/projects/dominant/edomt0508_2/ed050822; “The Chechen Conflict: The Situation and Personalities,” March 1, 2005, at http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/Chechnya/eof050802.
52. About one-third of respondents thought that Russia could settle the matter in Chechnya but did not want to, and about one-tenth of Russians thought that Russia could not and did not want to. The rate of respondents who expressed confidence in the government’s wish to settle the Chechen war was 40 percent; only one-quarter of them believed that Russia was also capable of doing so. FOM, “The Situation in Chechnya: Monitoring,” February 24, 2005, at http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/Chechnya/chechnya_position/etb050811.
53. See FOM polls dealing with the subject, at http://english.fom.ru, and especially the following: “Should Chechnya Be Part of Russia?” December 7, 2004, at http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/Chechnya/stat_chechnya/eof044806; “The Situation in Chechnya: Monitoring”; “Chechnya: 10 Years On,” December 7, 2004, at http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/Chechnya/chechnya_position/erb044805. The Russian minister of defense recently announced that conscripted soldiers will no longer be sent to Chechnya, only volunteers. Since his announcement had no significant effect on support for the war, we can assume that the opposition to sending inexperienced conscripts—and sometimes also untrained: Some had been in the army less than a month before being sent—bore no relation to opposition to the war. Official data on the number of casualties varies greatly depending on the source reporting them. The lowest estimate was reported by the Russian ambassador to Belgium, Vadim Lukov, who spoke of only 1,329 dead between 2001 and October 2004 (and perhaps more than this number among members of the Chechen militia). However, the Russian prosecutor-general in Chechnya claims that the number of Russian losses to March 2005 was greater than six thousand. See Vadim Lukov, “Whom Does Chechnya Support?” published in the Belgian newspaper Tijd, January 19, 2005, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, at www.ln.mid.ru/brp_4nsf/0/46346ad8df78b2d7c3256f9500372d37?openDocument; “Over 6,000 Russian Servicemen, Police Killed in Chechnya: Prosecutor,” China View, March 17, 2005, at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-03/17/content_2711629.htm. According to a report from a Russian army source to the Russian Itar-Tass news agency, in 2002 alone 4,739 Russian soldiers were killed and 13,108 were wounded. Itar-Tass, February 17, 2003. Quoted in Johnson Russia List #7065, February 17, 2003, at www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7065-4.cfm. For a comprehensive discussion of the number of dead, see the website Human Rights Violations in Chechnya, at http://hrvc.net/htmls/references.htm/. For the number of dead in the first Chechen war see Svante E. Cornell, Small Nations and Great Powers—a Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2001), p. 229; John B. Dunlop, “How Many Soldiers and Civilians Died During the Russo-Chechen War of 1994-1996?” Central Asian Survey 19 (2000), pp. 330-338; Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya—Calamity in the Caucasus (New York: New York University, 1998), p. 399, n. 9; Olga Trusevich and Alexander Cherkasov, An Anonymous Soldier in the Kavkazian War, 1994-1996 (Moscow: Zven’ya, 1997), at www.memo.ru/hr/hotpoints/N-Caucas/soldat. [Russian]
On the dead and injured in Afghanistan, see Dunlop, “How Many Soldiers and Civilians Died?” p. 332; Lester W. Grau and William A. Jorgensen, “Beaten by the Bugs: The Soviet-Afghan War Experience,” Military Review (November-December 1997). For statistics on the number of civilian dead, see John Ellis, From the Barrel of a Gun: A History of Guerrilla, Revolutionary and Counter-Insurgency Warfare, from the Romans to the Present (London: Greenhill, 1995), pp. 246-247. For the number of Afghan inhabitants before the war, see John C. Griffiths, Afghanistan: Key to a Continent (Boulder: Westview, 1981), pp. 79-80, and Jan Lahmeyer’s Population Statistics website, at www.library.uu.nl/wesp/populsst/Asia/afghanic.htm.
54. There is also no way of knowing if he was elected mainly because of his handling of the war in Chechnya. However, it is clear that the way he managed the war did not arouse opposition powerful and extensive enough to dissuade many from voting for him. Some of the votes in the elections were apparently forged, but there is no doubt that even without the forgeries he would have won by a large majority. About 65 percent of those eligible voted in the elections.
55. In October 2004, a month after the terrorist attack in Beslan and two months after the bombing of two civilian aircraft, 44 percent of Russians did not agree with Putin’s claim that an organized war was being waged “against Russia,” against 37 percent who believed this to be the case and others who had no opinion on the subject. FOM, “Who Declared War on Russia?” October 11, 2004, at http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/Chechnya/act_terrorism/eof043904.
The reason may be that the Russian public agreed with the content if not the terminology. After the wave of terrorist attacks in August-September 2004, 76 percent of Russians thought that all the attacks were attributable to one source. About half of respondents believed that it was the work of foreign terrorists. Only 5 to 8 percent thought that the attacks were aimed at achieving independence for Chechnya or a retreat of the Russian army from it. FOM, “Who Kidnapped the Children in Beslan, and Why?” at http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/map/ed043723. In this situation, the question of whether it was a “war” or simply an “organized terrorist campaign” is less important, especially considering the fact that the president’s call for national steadfastness in a speech he delivered after Beslan was well received and gained wide support. It is interesting to note that in a poll carried out by the Levada Center in February 2005, 44 percent of respondents thought that Russia was under a military threat from other countries, against 33 percent who had thought so in 1998. See Levada Tsenter, “Russians Speak About the Army for National Army Day,” at www.Levada.ru/press/2005022201.html. [Russian]
56. For example, at the end of January 2004, a majority of Russians (including those who favored negotiations) believed that the Russian government was fighting to protect the country’s integrity, the Russian Republic, or against international terrorism. Rosbalt News Service, February 1, 2004, at www.rosbalt.ru/2004/02/01. The poll allowed for more than one answer; the overall number who took a positive view of the Russian government’s policy reached 149 percent.
57. An English version of the speech appeared in the New York Times on September 5, 2004. The speech appears in Russian on many Internet sites.
58. FOM, “Nord-Ost and Beslan: President Putin’s Message to the Nation,” September 16, 2004, at http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/map/analytic/klimov/ed043727. Seven percent—almost half of those opposed—made no mention whatsoever of the content of the speech, but only of Putin’s clumsy handling of the affair. We now know that obvious blunders by the Russian forces, such as using flamethrowers during the assault on the school, aggravated the proportions of the disaster. It should be noted that support for the assault on the Nord-Ost Theater reached 81 percent. Part of the difference is perhaps attributable to the shock of seeing hundreds of dead children in Beslan in comparison with the lighter losses in Nord-Ost.
59. Forty-eight percent thought that Chechnya should remain part of Russia as a normal republic, 16 percent believed it should be granted “special status” as an autonomous republic inside Russia, and 21 percent maintained that it should be given complete independence. See FOM, “The Situation in Chechnya,” December 9, 2004, at http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/Chechnya/chechnya_position/ed044913.
In addition, opinion polls on the Chechnya conflict were stable for about two years, and at the end of 2004, 25 percent of Russians—the highest rate for the previous two years—believed that the conflict had improved that year, compared with only 7 percent who opined that the situation had deteriorated (about half the public thought that there had been no change). (FOM, “The Situation in Chechnya”) Even the deadly terrorist attacks of 2004, including Beslan, did not change that trend. It should also be noted that President Putin worked resolutely and with completely undemocratic methods against those who opposed the war. See, for example, Andrei Smirnov, “Chechen Rebels Hand the Anti-War Movement an Olive Branch as the Kremlin Tightens the Screws,” Chechnya Weekly 6, February 9, 2005, at www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=409&issue_id=3226&article_id=2369237. At the end of 2005, there was a slight increase in FOM polls in the number who thought that the situation in Chechnya had worsened or had not changed at all (53 percent of Russians believed that it had not changed, 13 percent said it had deteriorated, and 17 percent said it had improved, against 49 percent, 9 percent and 23 percent, respectively, in the previous poll), although Putin’s situation improved. Support for him rose from 38 to 42 percent, and only 5 percent gave him a negative rating. Moreover, the percentage of those who thought that the situation in Chechnya had deteriorated in comparison with the previous period is not proof positive of whether the situation had deteriorated in comparison with all periods, and it should also be noted that the percentage of those who thought that the situation had worsened was still far smaller than during the peak of 2003-2004. FOM, “Final Ratings of Russian Politicians in 2005,” December 22, 2005, at http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/policy/rating/ed055123; “The Situation in Chechnya, October 2005,” at http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/Chechnya/Chechnya_position/ed054310.
60. It could justifiably be said that the brutality employed by Russia in Chechnya in no way testified to weakness. It is difficult to level charges of complacency against the army, who twice destroyed the Chechen capital in bombings that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of citizens. It should also be remembered that Putin’s target audience was the Russian public. Accordingly, the important question is whether Putin was successful in convincing this audience—and the answer, by four to one, is an unqualified “yes.” Another important point is that Putin has long insisted that the war in Chechnya is over. The Russian public consistently refuses to agree with him. The contradiction between Putin’s claim that the war was over and his demands on the Russian public lacks all practical significance—especially after conscription ended in Russia.
61. Eighty percent of the Muslim population took part in the referendum. Ninety-six percent of them supported the continuation of French rule despite the attempts of the guerilla organization the National Front for the Liberation of Algeria (FLN) to interfere with the referendum. There was no evidence of significant numbers of forgeries.
62. This was despite the fact that the French government adopted an ambivalent policy toward the crisis. Even after it introduced conscription and called for a general (metaphorical) conscription of its citizens, the government avoided declaring the conflict in Algeria an obligatory war situation as necessitating “immediate attention” and preferring to see it as no more than a situation requiring the “maintenance of order.” See Stuart A. Cohen, “Why Do They Quarrel? Civil-Military Tensions in LIC Situations,” in Democracies and Small Wars, pp. 27-29. It should be noted that the French government perpetuated the deception to such an extent that it refused to give war medals to heroes of the battles in Algeria. The Americans employed a similar deception during the Vietnam War, defined by the president of the United States as a policing and assistance action. At the end of 1994, the Russian government under Boris Yeltsin repeated the mistake when it sent forty thousand troops with 230 tanks into the rebellious republic of Chechnya while repeatedly emphasizing that the forces were only “restoring constitutional order.” The almost total annihilation of two Russian brigades in a matter of two days in the capital, Grozny, resulted from the Russians entering the town as a procession instead of in battle order, and taking up positions in open and unsecured parking places instead of in battle formation.
63. It is possible that de Gaulle was so minded earlier. On his own admission, even when he was declaring “Long Live French Algeria,” he was pessimistic about finding a solution to the crisis. According to the historian Alistair Horne, in April 1958, before he had been elected, de Gaulle said to the Austrian reporter Artur Rosenberg that “Certainly Algeria will be independent.” See Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York: Viking, 1978), p. 281 (see also ch. 14 on de Gaulle’s policy in 1958, and p. 344 on his 1959 declaration).
64. Immediately prior to de Gaulle’s election, there was even a real drop in the number of Frenchmen who thought that the Algerian conflict was the most important item on France’s agenda. An absolute majority of the French thought that Algeria should remain French. In January 1958, only 37 percent of France’s citizens thought that the Algerian question was the most important one for their country, in comparison with 51 percent who were of that opinion in September 1957. Yet because of de Gaulle’s intense preoccupation with Algeria, and after he declared that Algeria would be granted “self-determination,” 68 percent of the French maintained that the problem of Algeria was the most important subject for France, a percentage that would increase as the date for the withdrawal drew closer. See Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, p.102, table 6.2, and p. 105, table 6.3.
65. François Maspéro, The Right of Disobedience, the “Case of the 121” (Paris, 1961). [French]
66. It is not certain that by this declaration de Gaulle meant full independence for Algeria. There is some dispute about what his intentions were, when precisely he decided to give up “French Algeria,” and what prompted him to make that decision. See, for example, Horne, A Savage War of Peace, pp. 377-381; Gil Merom, “A ‘Grand Design’? Charles de Gaulle and the End of the Algerian War,” Armed Forces and Society 25 (1999), p. 267. In any case, the meaning of de Gaulle’s declaration was clear and its effect was soon felt.
67. There are some who maintain that coverage of the Tet Offensive in January-February 1968 led to a sea of change in public opinion because it brought home to America what was really happening in Vietnam, or alternatively, because the media twisted the truth and presented the American victory as a defeat. The first opinion was held, for example, by Michael Maclear in his book Vietnam: The Ten-Thousand Day War (New York: St. Martins, 1981); the other opinion was best expressed by Peter Braestrup, Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington (Boulder: Westview, 1977). Braestrup does not blame the media for the American defeat in the Vietnam War, only for its amateurish and misleading coverage; harsher and more explicit criticism can be found from Los Angeles Times correspondent Robert Elegant. In his article “How to Lose a War: Reflections of a Foreign Correspondent,” Encounter 57 (August 1981), pp. 73-90, he categorically states that the Vietnam War was decided by television; even now, this opinion is extremely prevalent. See also Ron Ben-Yishai, “Attrition in the Media,” in The Strategy of Attrition in a Limited Conflict: Choice or Necessity?,ed. Gideon Tern, Essays on National Security 4 (March 2003), pp. 119-126. Based on a seminar from January 2002. [Hebrew]
68. Some of the most prominent songs were “Send the Marines” by Tom Lehrer, “Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation” by Tom Paxton, both from 1965, and “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” by Country Joe and the Fish from a 1967 album of the same name. The song was around thirtieth on the charts for two straight years. This, for example, is how Paxton described the protest against the government’s dishonesty:
Lyndon Johnson told the nation: Have no fear of escalation
I am trying everyone to please.
Though it isn’t really war / We’re sending fifty thousand more
To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese.
Country Joe and the Fish went a lot further and to the sounds of happy circus music they sang a song calling—obviously satirically—for the Americans to hurry and send their children to serve in the army:
Be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box!
(The song ended with a fusillade.)
69. The march, in which 70,000 people participated, was accompanied by scuffles with the police and the burning of draft cards.
70. In December 1967, when they were asked about General Westmoreland’s conduct of the war, 68 percent answered “good” or “excellent,” 16 percent “only fair” or “poor,” and 16 percent “unsure.” Braestrup, Big Story, vol. 1, p. 688. In a 1968 survey, 56 percent of those asked defined themselves as “hawks” and only 28 percent as “doves,” in support of downsizing the war or opposing it altogether. See John Mueller, War, Presidents and Public Opinion (New York: John Wiley, 1973), p. 107; William M. Hammond, Reporting Vietnam: Media and Military at War (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1998), pp. 121-122; C. Dale Walton, The Myth of Inevitable U.S. Defeat in Vietnam (London: Frank Cass, 2002), pp. 34-35.
71. Walton, The Myth of Inevitable U.S. Defeat, p. 34.
72. An excellent example of this is Johnson’s denial in 1965 that North Vietnam was being bombed, when every writer in Saigon knew that it was a downright lie.
73. Walton, The Myth of Inevitable U.S. Defeat, p. 33.
74. Thompson made a name for himself as one of the most successful commanders in the fighting against guerillas in Malaya, and he also commanded the British contingent to Vietnam. His book, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam (New York: Praeger, 1966) is still considered a cornerstone in fighting against an insurgency.
75. Robert Thompson, “Squaring the Error,” Foreign Affairs 46 (April 1968), p. 448. Among other things, Thompson noted that the Americans are not good at coordinating their different resources: diplomatic, informational, military, economic (dime), and concentrating on the military without looking at the political, social, and intelligence context.
76. In smaller forums military commanders warned about a mass attack by the Vietcong at the beginning of 1968, and intelligence reports and other indicators also pointed to one. For its own reasons, the White House chose not to inform the public of these predictions. Johnson would later admit that it was a grave error. See, for example, William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (Garden City: Doubleday, 1976), pp. 313-316; Maclear, Vietnam: The Ten-Thousand Day War, p. 204; Braestrup, Big Story, vol. 2, p. 71; Peter Braestrup, “The Tet Offensive: Another Press Controversy II,” in Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons From a War, ed. Harrison E. Salisbury (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), pp. 167-171; John Laurence, “The Tet Offensive: Another Press Controversy III,” in Vietnam Reconsidered, pp. 172-178.
77. After the name of the famous book by Don Oberdorfer, Tet! The Turning Point in the Vietnam War (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971).
78. Before the Tet Offensive, 62 percent of the battles were declared as victories, 28 percent as defeats, and 2 percent as draws. After the offensive, reports of American victories dropped by almost one-third, reports of defeats increased by four percent and reports of draws or uncertain results rose from 2 percent to 24 percent. Daniel C. Hallin, The Uncensored War—The Media and Vietnam (Oxford: Oxford University, 1986), pp. 161-162, 166.
79. Hallin, The Uncensored War, p. 170.
80. Maclear, Vietnam: The Ten-Thousand Day War, p. 199. Johnson never mentioned it in his memoirs. Cronkite is mentioned only once, in the context of Kennedy’s assassination.
81. Hallin, The Uncensored War, p. 170. The quotation is in Hallin’s words.
82. According to him, he was already thinking about resigning as early as 1967, and General Westmoreland assured him that it would not affect the morale of those enlisting.
83. Lyndon Baines Johnson, Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency 1963-1969 (New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1971) p. 418.
84. “President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Address to the Nation Announcing Steps to Limit the War in Vietnam and Reporting His Decision Not to Seek Reelection, March 31, 1968,” Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, at www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/680331.asp.
85. Johnson, Vantage Point, p. 383.
86. Johnson, “Address to the Nation 1968.” Contrariwise, Westmoreland thought that an additional recruitment could lead to victory by exploiting North Vietnam’s failure in the Tet Offensive with a massive counter-attack.
87. At the beginning of February 1968, 61 percent defined themselves as “hawks,” whereas the number of “doves” dropped to 23 percent. Seventy-one percent opposed ending the bombing of North Vietnam. Fifty-three percent favored some kind of escalation, whereas only half of this percentage was in favor of downsizing the war or withdrawing, and 10 percent was interested in maintaining the status quo. At the end of February, 58 percent registered as “hawks” and 26 percent as “doves.” See Mueller, War, Presidents and Public Opinion, pp. 90, 106-107 and Braestrup, Big Story, vol. 1, p. 680.
88. According to a Gallup poll taken between March 16 and 20, 1968, 41 percent described themselves as “hawks” compared with 42 percent who described themselves as “doves.” Allowing for sampling error, it is impossible to know whether there were more hawks than doves, or vice versa. See Mueller, War, Presidents and Public Opinion, pp. 106-107.
89. Fifty-two percent thought that Westmoreland’s conduct of the war was “good” or “excellent” and 35 percent thought it was “only fair” or “poor.” In another poll, 54 percent of respondents were confident about the United States’ military strategy in Vietnam; in late February 1968, 42 percent felt that the war was “standing still.” At the height of the Tet Offensive, 74 percent of those asked expressed confidence in American strategy. Braestrup, Big Story, vol. 1, pp. 686-688, and Hammond, Reporting Vietnam, pp. 121-122.
90. A March 25 Harris poll showed that 60 percent “regarded the Tet Offensive as a defeat for U.S. objectives in Vietnam,” but this information says nothing about how respondents felt about the question of whether to continue the war or not. See Maclear, Vietnam: The Ten-Thousand Day War, p. 221. Surprising data from the same month provides a clue to this in the form of poll results from Senator McCarthy supporters—McCarthy was known for his opposition to the war—after the New Hampshire primaries in which he came second. Almost two-thirds of those who held that view among McCarthy voters were hawks who did not oppose the war but only its handling and the fact that the United States was not exerting its full power in the war. See Braestrup, “The Tet Offensive,” pp. 170-171.
91. Vaughn Davis Bornet, The Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1983), pp. 273-274. In Johnson’s speech of February 2, 1968, for example, he said: “It may be that General Westmoreland makes some serious mistakes or that I make some. We don’t know. We are just acting in the light of information we have.” The president also said that in the future “there will be moments of encouragement and discouragement.” It was certainly impossible to take much comfort from these statements.
92. Braestrup, “The Tet Offensive,” p. 171.
93. Adam Garfinkle, “Aftermyths of the Antiwar Movement—Vietnam: No Discharge from That War,” Orbis (Fall 1995), at www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0365/is_n4_v39/ai_17473108. On the antiwar movement and its influence during the Johnson and Nixon administrations, see Adam Garfinkle, Telltale Hearts: The Origins and Impact of the Vietnam Antiwar Movement (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995).
94. For a critical analysis of American strategy in Vietnam see, for example, Harry G. Summers, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1982). It should be noted that the war strategy of the United States in Vietnam until 1968—“seek and destroy”—was an attempt to quickly destroy the enemy before he could train new soldiers. However, the effect of this strategy was to allow the enemy to choose when and where to fight and the erosion rate it “wanted.” Added to this were the restrictions the United States imposed on itself, including giving immunity to important North Vietnamese installations (including runways and anti-aircraft rocket batteries under construction), refraining from cutting off the Vietcong supply routes in neighboring countries, a prohibition on attacking enemy forces from the moment they left the Vietnamese border, and so forth. For a live description of the American operational restrictions from the point of view of a bomber pilot, see, for example, Jack Broughton, Thud Ridge (New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1969). For a discussion of the failure of U.S. strategy in Vietnam, see Walton, The Myth of Inevitable U.S. Defeat. For a discussion of the structural failures of the American military in Vietnam, see Richard Gabriel and Paul Savage, Crisis in Command: Mismanagement in the Army (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978). Walton maintained that the American failure was not attributable to one specific error but to a general refraining from doing anything that could have brought them victory in the war.
95. Hammond, Reporting Vietnam, p. 292.
96. Garfinkle, “Aftermyths of the Antiwar Movement.”
97. For example, Operation Grapes of Wrath in April 1996, and the understandings that were reached as a result, were considered by 57 percent of the public as successful or very successful, in comparison with 35 percent who thought that they were unsuccessful or not at all successful (“The Peace Index, April 1996,” the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research, Tel Aviv University). This was despite the fact that in retrospect the agreement appears to have tied the IDF’s hands. Immediately afterward, there was a steep drop in the number of dead among the Lebanese organizations fighting against Israel, whereas the average losses suffered by the IDF and the South Lebanese Army (SLA) did not change significantly. In the years 1993, 1994, and 1995, for example, 104, 104, and 105 members of Hezbollah and other Lebanese organizations, respectively, were killed in fighting. Seventy-two were killed in 1996 (27 in Operation Grapes of Wrath). The number dropped to 54 in 1997, and in 1998 the number killed was 43—the first time in the history of southern Lebanon that the IDF and the SLA suffered greater losses than they inflicted. I have no precise data for 1999-2000, but it should be noted that there was a reduction in the number of Israeli dead in Lebanon during that period, mainly as a result of changes in tactics, restrictions on the extent of IDF activities in the region, and other factors. The number of Hezbollah dead during the same period also continued to drop. It is possible to provide various explanations for this trend after Operation Grapes of Wrath, but it is difficult to believe that the proximity is coincidental. It should be noted that there are conflicting data about Hezbollah and Amal losses in Lebanon, attributable, among other things, to the fact that several Israeli sources got into the habit of adding “presumed” losses to confirmed ones. Moreover, Israeli public opinion did not pay sufficient attention to the price being paid by members of the SLA, whose losses did not have the same repercussions as Israeli losses.
98. There was no correlation between the percentage of those opposed to a unilateral withdrawal and the number of IDF dead. In 1997, when IDF losses in Lebanon reached a peak of 39 dead in addition to the 73 killed in a helicopter disaster, the percentage of support for a unilateral withdrawal did not change, remaining the view of less than one-third of the public in comparison with 60 percent opposed. In February 1997, 61 percent of the public was opposed to a unilateral withdrawal and 29 percent supported it; in September 1997, 60 percent were against and 32 percent for; in March 1998, about 86 percent of Israelis were opposed to a unilateral withdrawal (23 percent unconditionally and 63 percent on the condition that the Lebanese government guarantee appropriate security arrangements) and 12 percent were in favor (the question was framed slightly differently in March 1998, which probably affected the results). In November 1998, although there was a sharp drop in the numbers opposed to a withdrawal (only 48 percent of the public at that time against 42 percent in favor), it was a one-time event, similar to the sharp increase in opposition to a withdrawal in March 1998. In the two weeks preceding the poll, seven soldiers were killed, five of them in the area of Tel Kaba’a, almost on the security fence, in incidents that demonstrated the ability of Hezbollah to reach the Israeli border almost unchallenged. It is difficult to estimate to what extent those events influenced the poll results. See “The Peace Index” for the relevant dates.
99. “The Peace Index,” February 1997, June 1999. It should be noted that one study did find that between January and March 1999, 55 percent of Israelis supported unilateral withdrawal. Asher Arian, “Israeli Public Opinion Concerning Lebanon and Syria—1999,” Strategic Assessment 2 (June 1999), pp. 19-23. If this study is correct, then at the end of 1998 and the beginning of 1999 there was indeed a sharp drop in the support for staying in Lebanon. But even if we accept Arian’s figures completely, they would only support our thesis. If the protest movement had had any real effect, there would have been a steady drop in the percentage opposed to a unilateral withdrawal. If after an all-time low at the beginning of 1999, the opposition to unilateral withdrawal could return to its February 1997 levels, then this was not a simple case of eroding support for the fighting in Lebanon. According to Maariv,the first time a majority supported withdrawal from Lebanon was in February 2000. During the years 1997-1999, prior to Barak’s declaration, support for withdrawal zigzagged but never exceeded 40 percent. Afterhis declaration, however, support for withdrawal rose consistently. See also Yigal Haccoun, “The Israeli Unilateral Withdrawal from Lebanon: The End of Fifteen Years of Military Intervention, 1985-2000” (master’s thesis, Bar-Ilan University, n.d.), p. 80. [Hebrew]
100. Post facto support for unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon reached almost 63 percent in the week after the withdrawal, compared to 33 percent opposed. Sixty-one percent thought that the withdrawal had been prudent, as against about half of that percentage that thought the IDF’s exit from Lebanon was evidence of weakness. Moreover, 58 percent of respondents felt that “the Four Mothers” and public protests had either somewhat or significantly affected the decision on the withdrawal. See “The Peace Index,” May 2000. It is interesting to note that a majority of the public believed the withdrawal would encourage the Palestinians to engage in armed activities against Israel.
Lieutenant-Colonel (res.) Dani Reshef, a member of “the Four Mothers” organization, said that at the beginning of 1999 Prime Minister Barak treated the movement’s demands for a withdrawal with total contempt, and claimed that they “simply did not understand the significance and the enormity of their error.” Even during the withdrawal itself, Barak still hoped that it would be possible to stop it and bring the Syrians back to the negotiating table. (Dani Reshef, “Barak Rewrites History,” Makor Rishon, June 17, 2005). If this is correct, then Barak adopted the proposal to withdraw from Lebanon as a measure intended to increase his chances of success in the elections and nothing more, and was swept along by events. However, as stated above, he was not swept along with the public, but—even if he did not intend to—he changed the public’s mind. That is therefore proof that a minority group in a democratic society can tip the balance and influence the leadership in a way that is not proportional to the real clout they have in public opinion.
101. Amos Harel, “The Soldiers in the Yakinton Post Want a Withdrawal Now,” Haaretz, February 10, 2000.
102. Ron Leshem, “The Cursed Mountain,” Yediot Aharonot,May 11, 2001.
103. Al-Manar Television, June 6, 2000. Cited in Eyal Zisser, “The Return of Hizbullah,” Middle East Quarterly 9 (Fall 2002). This statement appears in many sources. According to former Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon, it is actually Yasser Arafat who has the copyright on it. Ari Shavit, “There Are People On Your Own Side Who Really Undermine You. It Drives Me Crazy Sometimes,” Haaretz, August 28, 2002.
104. One myth that is very likely to become a popular belief is that the disengagement plan and the Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip in 2005 was caused by the weakening of Israeli society and its lack of resolve in standing against the armed Palestinian struggle. This is, for sure, the version that the Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are trying to promote, claiming that “The army of the Jews was defeated,” and that, “the liberation of the land of Palestine in Gaza… was achieved solely by the heroes and warriors of jihad, not through barren peace negotiations and bowing our head.” (Quoted in Nadav Shragai, “Dealing with Demography,” Haaretz, March 7, 2006). Indeed, prior to, and during the first stages of, the Palestinian armed struggle against Israel after the outbreak of hostilities on September 2000, many feared or believed Israel would buckle under the pressure of repeated terrorist attacks and suicide bombings. Maj.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon, then deputy commander of the IDF, articulated such a fear when he said in January 2001 that “This is a clash of interests, of wills, of two peoples or of two political entities… the nation must first be convinced [of this] because in my opinion, in a struggle of this kind society is the weakest link…. This struggle will be decided by attrition. We call it ‘fatigue’… we can’t talk about [winning] militarily.” (Quoted from Amnon Lord, “In the Mire of Fatigue,” Makor Rishon, October 15, 2004.) Concerning “the theory of fatigue,” see the remarks of Colonel (res.) Shmuel Nir, one of the originators of the theory: “the conflict is… a clash of national wills. National will cannot be dispelled by brandishing a sword. It follows that we need to adopt a strategy, the deciding factor of which is breaking society’s will to fight and loss of the ability to act effectively, by causing a revolution in the consciousness of the society that has the assistance of military means. Military power does not decide the conflict.” Shmuel Nir, “Attrition and Adaptation,” in The Strategy of Attrition, p. 166. Emphasis added.) If “society is the weakest link,” as Yaalon said, Israel’s death toll, incomparably higher than anything suffered since the Yom Kippur War, should have worn the public down completely. In 2002 alone, the conflict claimed 452 Israeli lives, with 2,309 injured. Israeli civilians paid the highest price, accounting for about 80 percent of the dead between 2000 and 2002. (Don Radlauer, “An Engineered Tragedy: Statistical Analysis of Casualties in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, September 2000-September 2002,” International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, September 2002, www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=439 and “Four Years of Violent Conflict between Israel and the Palestinians—Interim Summary,” Intelligence and Terror Information Center, October 2004, www.intelligence.org.il/sp/10_04/four.htm.) But instead of breaking the national will, the Palestinian terrorism campaign convinced the Israeli public that it was confronting a threat to Israel’s very existence. In January 2001, 70.4 percent of Jews (and 71.4 percent of all Israeli residents, Jewish and Arab) thought that the Israelis and the Palestinians were fighting to gain additional concessions in their negotiations, and only 24.3 percent (22 percent of Jews and Arabs together) felt that the Palestinians were not interested in making peace. But by the end of November, 61.8 percent (58.7 percent of Jews and Arabs) already felt that Israel was in “reasonably high” or “very high” danger from the point of view of national security, and only 11.4 percent (13 percent of Jews and Arabs) thought that it was not in any danger. In August 2001, the number of Israelis who believed that the Palestinians were fighting for concessions or nationhood dropped to 41.6 (46.3 of Jews and Arabs), while the number of those who believed that the Palestinians were fighting because they wanted to annihilate Israel, hate it, did not want peace or were bloodthirsty and the like rose to 41.8 percent (36.7 of Jews and Arabs). An additional 11.1 percent (11.7 percent of Jews and Arabs) believed the Palestinians were willing to die rather than lie under occupation. See the data file of “The Peace Index” in the relevant months. March 2002 was the bloodiest month of the Intifada since September 2000, during which 136 Israelis were killed (IDF spokesperson’s site, www1.idf.il/dover/site/mainpage.asp?sl=HE&id=22&docid=37572.HE). At the end of the month, most Israelis refused to change their way of life, claiming that doing so would constitute a victory for terrorism. A month earlier, almost two-thirds of Jews (65.4 percent of Israelis) thought that Israeli society could withstand a protracted conflict better than Palestinian society, and approximately 5 percent thought that they both had similar powers of endurance (only 20.2 percent thought that the Palestinians could better cope with the conflict). In April 2002, after a wave of March terrorist attacks, approximately 85 percent of the public thought that the terrorist attacks and the Israeli response in Operation Defensive Shield had strengthened the sense of Israeli unity (“The Peace Index” data file, February-April 2002). Following the lethal terror attacks, reserve soldiers reported for duty to participate in Operation Defensive Shield at a rate of more than 100 percent, as even those who were not called wanted to join the fight. “Fighting for our homes” became a common expression. A good example of sentiment at the time can be found in Gil Mezuman’s documentary film, “Jenin Diary: The Inside Story” or in the diary (partly written after the fact) of a reserve soldier in Operation Defensive Shield, on the site www.fresh.co.il/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=58537. In September 2003—a very short time before then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon presented his disengagement plan—some 60 percent of Israelis thought that their society was better able to withstand a protracted conflict than Palestinian society (only 19 percent thought the opposite was true, and 8.4 percent thought that both societies were equally capable), and, while most favored negotiation, they believed that there should be no negotiation under fire. The Israeli public was neither driven to the extreme of demanding all-out war, nor faint-hearted in favoring surrender to the demands of the other side. See “The Peace Index” for the relevant dates.
The above makes it quite clear that Sharon was not forced to execute the disengagement under pressure of Israeli public opinion and the weakening of its will; without expressing an opinion about the rightness or wrongness of the disengagement, it is sufficient to say that Sharon could have taken a different path without risking much pressure from the Israeli public. The support for the disengagement plan is another illustration of the above argument in regard to leadership. A survey published at the beginning of March 2005 showed that Israelis thought of Sharon as a corrupt prime minister, but that at least he seemed to know where he was going. Eighty percent said he was a “leader,” an accolade that explains the support he received. (Yossi Verter, “Four Years of Sharon: Acknowledge His Shortcomings, Trust His Leadership,” Haaretz, March 4, 2005.) Verter assumed that Sharon derived support from the disengagement plan; however, in my opinion he confuses cause and consequences. A less ambitious plan, suggested by Labor Party candidate Amram Mitzna, did not win the public’s trust in the 2003 elections, and at the same time Sharon was saying that “painful concessions” would only be made in a permanent agreement, a process that would take, in his opinion, one or two generations. It seems that the explanation should be the other way around: The more the prime minister was portrayed as being determined—despite (and maybe because of) the absence of public discussion as to the significance of the disengagement plan in terms of security, economics, and demographics—the more the public was inclined to follow him, not because of its strong ideas on the subject, but because it believed personally in Sharon as a leader. (After all, if the question of Gaza retreat was a deciding factor, Sharon would have lost the elections to Mitzna; but the latter’s Labor Party got only half the votes of Sharon’s Likud Party.) It should be noted that in the poll there are several pieces of information that do not fit: For example, 44 percent of the public thought that the prime minister was an honest man, whereas 62 percent thought he was corrupt.
105. See, for example, Yaakov Amidror, “What We Are Fighting For and How It Should Be Done,”in The Strategy of Attrition, pp. 143-156; Dan Schueftan, “Decades of Attrition Wars—The Cumulative Lesson of Israeli Experience,” in The Strategy of Attrition, pp. 61-64; Yehuda Wegman, “The Limited Conflict Catch,” Nativ 92 (May 2003), at www.nativ.cc/May2003/vagman.htm.
106. A problematic slogan in itself that camouflages the fact that terrorism is usually an instrument in the hands of its operators and not merely a cause in its own right; it seems that the slogan was intended to obscure the fact that there is someone behind terrorism. In this article, for the sake of convenience, I have also referred to “terror” as an entity in itself, when I obviously mean those who employ terrorism and share the same ideas.
107. Norman Podhoretz and other neo-conservatives coined the term. From their point of view, the Cold War was World War III. See Norman Podhoretz, “How to Win World War IV,” Commentary (February 2002).
108. A transcript of the speech on September 11, 2001, is available at http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/bush.speech.text.
109. It is known that Germany’s production output, augmented with forced labor, actually grew during the bombings. Moreover, as can be seen from their quick recovery after the war, Germany and Japan were not crushed nations. For the German example, see the writings of General Lucius Clay, who was in charge of Germany’s rehabilitation. Lucius Clay, Decision on Germany: A Personal Report on Four Critical Years That Set the Course of Future World History (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1950). My thanks to Yossi Hochbaum for referring me to this book.
110. Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca: Cornell, 1996), p. 130.
