My friend and neighbor, Abu Aardvark, has a great post today on the failures of US strategy for the current fighting in Lebanon.  By not pressing for a ceasefire immediately, the US has isolated itself as the sole supporter (in the sense that our inaction permits Israel to continue to press the fight) of the Israeli offensive.  It is rapidly becoming apparent that, if the fighting does not end soon, the US will face new obstacles in gaining cooperation of many states, both regional Arab states and others, on other issues of importance.  It is letting its global strategy – on the war on terrorism, on the long-term response to changing balances of power in East Asia, etc. – be dictated by the short term tactical needs of the Israeli military.  Not a very smart stance for a global power.

    Which brings me back to Sun Tzu.  The emerging political-diplomatic disaster suggests that the Israeli offensive is reaching its limits.  At some point, and I suspect this is going to happen fairly soon, US policymakers will come to realize that the war-fighting is contrary to American global interests and they will press Israel to stop bombing civilian (and UN!) targets and pull back within some sort of buffer zone in southern Lebanon. 

     If Israel persists, it will be prolonging the war in politically untenable ways, and that is where Sun Tzu comes in:

Thus, while we have heard of blundering swiftness in war, we have not yet seen a clever operation that was prolonged.

For there has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited. (chapter 2.6,7)

    Perhaps we could argue about whether there has been a protracted war that has been successful – Mao Zedong certainly thought there was – but the key point here is that time matters in war-fighting.  And the political context of a war will determine if time is working against you or for you.  In the case of Israel, and by extension the US, even though the fighting has only lasted for two weeks or so, it may be crossing into the realm of "protracted."  Whatever advantages Israel may have had in a lightening strike are gone, the benefits of swift maneuvers have dissipated and the costs of protracted war now mount. 

   If they are reading their Sun Tzu, Israeli commanders may want to think about accepting that ceasefire offer, cutting their losses, and looking to their broader strategic goals.

     It may be going too far to say, but if Israel and the US do not recognize the perils of protracted fighting, they may be making a fundamental strategic mistake, a la Sun Tzu:

Thus, those unable to understand the dangers inherent in employing troops are equally unable to understand the advantageous ways of doing so.  (chapter 2.8)

UPDATE: it seems that the conservative blogosphere is also coming to the conclusion that a ceasefire should come sooner rather than later, as this Andrew Sullivan post demonstrates.