Note: this is global guerrilla logic (using an airpower effects based operation to accomplish it). Here's the problems with this approach.Israel's message to Lebanon's government through its bombing of Lebanese infrastructure: "If you want your air conditioning to work and if you want to be able to fly to Paris for shopping, you must pull your head out of the sand and take action toward shutting down Hezbollah-land."
Gal Luft (a friend of the Global Guerrillas weblog) to the Washington Post.
- First, the goal of coercion must be within the capabilities of the target state (it's not in this case).
- Second, coercion like this is only useful if the objective is to get a state to give up a policy (the more ancillary it is to the state's existence the better) than to get them to act proactively -- particularly since large scale systems disruption rips down states. Lebanon is getting weaker by the day and Hezbollah is now existential to the state.
- Third, if the state doesn't officially relent and the state fails, global guerrillas can still achieve a de facto victory. This doesn't work for Israel. The failure of Lebanon only makes things worse.
IF this method of coercion is repeated in both Syria and Iran (and it looks like it will since an EBO is a war on the cheap for the aggressor and current tensions are leading in this direction), what we will end up with are failed states and global guerrillas from the Mediterranean to the Caspian seas. In my view, this is a recipe for the acceleration of the epochal war.