Washington – Former Pentagon official Anthony Cordesman, who also has held NATO and State Department security posts, is an expert on military strategy for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. He discussed the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict Tuesday.
Q. It seems Israel’s goal is to essentially cleanse southern Lebanon of Hezbollah. How do you do that militarily?
Cordesman: It isn’t clear that’s the goal at all. So far this is a very limited set of military actions. But without being able to target virtually every element of the Hezbollah, all you can do is use the best intelligence you have, try to find clusters of fighters, hope they don’t disperse, or hide or bury or move their weapons, and do the best you can.
Q. How much do you think Hezbollah has been weakened in southern Lebanon by these attacks?
Cordesman: We have absolutely no idea. Hezbollah, obviously, denies it. Israel has made surprisingly moderate claims. If you look at the casualties they’ve claimed, they’d probably be less than a tenth of Hezbollah’s strength. It’s almost impossible at times to know how much damage has been done.
Q. What about the price that Israel is paying for this offensive?
Cordesman: There is obviously a human cost. It’s an extraordinarily expensive operation. It’s often using weapons that cost close to $100,000 to hit weapons that cost $2,000 or $3,000 – and that’s if it’s successful. It’s lost some aircraft. We’re talking about very quickly things in excess of $100 million. And that, compared to the cost of maintaining Hezbollah forces or reconstituting them, is a very high price indeed. The political cost is not new to Israel, but certainly most of Europe sees this as excessive and unnecessary. Anger in the Arab world and a good part of the Muslim world as well as much of the rest of the world had been significantly increased. Israel at this point has only one ally, and that’s the United States.
Q. Is there any chance that the Israeli incursion would result in new sympathy, new support, new recruits for Hezbollah?
Cordesman: Over time there is a very good chance that it will. Hezbollah had a core strength of anywhere from 300 to 1,200 full-time fighters and 3,000 to 12,000 reservists. It doesn’t take many volunteers to make significant differences.
The real problem here is never how many fighters there are, it’s how many skilled people actually can carry out ambushes, can use bombs, can conduct specialized raids. This isn’t a matter of body counts or boots on the ground. That’s largely irrelevant.
Q. What about an international peacekeeping force?
Cordesman: Sending in a peacekeeping force is easy in one sense. But if it actually has to fight, take casualties and kill people, it’s going to be perceived as the enemy, not the liberator, and Hezbollah can attack it as well as conduct raids and sabotage and bombings.
