The Second Lebanon War: Democratic Lessons Imperfectly Applied

Abstract

There is next to consensus that the second 2006 Israeli war in Lebanon was a hasty military adventure that ended in failure. This article takes a different view. Relying on recently published testimonies and accounts, it is argued that the decision to go to war was calculated and grounded in widely shared assumptions that Israel's deteriorating deterrence posture required an offensive booster. After mapping Israeli failures, this article argues that Israeli military performance should be attributed to the influence of domestic democratic politics on the formation of military strategy, more so than to battlefield incompetence. The article concludes by suggesting that, in fact, the Israeli war demonstrated a positive if imperfect adjustment of strategy to domestic constraints. The indications of democratic learning suggest that future asymmetric conflicts may end differently than expected for the enemies of democracies who poorly understand democratic power and politics.