Cost of neglecting conflict resolution in favour of conflict management is rather steep

https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/cost-of-neglecting-conflict-resolution-in-favour-of-conflict-management-is-rather-steep-2719941

It’s never too early to pick lessons from the wreckage of a conflict outbreak. As a conflict continues, subsequent — not necessarily more pertinent — lessons could otherwise over-write ones gleaned earlier. From the terror onslaught over the weekend ...

Since the war is set to continue, with Israel already at levelling much of Gaza and readying for a ground offensive in case the secret talks to release the hostages taken by Hamas fail, it is clear that costs of neglecting CR in favour of CM can be rather steep, not only for belligerents but also for the international community.

As with the military disaster suffered by the Israelis exactly 50 years ago at the onset of the Yom Kippur War, the Hamas has dealt a blow at the very outset. For the Hamas, the reckoning is underway. The aftermath will unfortunately exact a greater toll of innocent Palestinians, as Israel goes about choosing a more lasting landscaping than this time to just ‘mow the lawn’.

As for the region, the costs are in a hastily aborted putative peace initiative. There were indicators abroad over a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, in the spirit of the Abraham Accords. In return for a blanket security guarantee from the United States (US), rumour has it the Saudis were to jettison their hitherto commitment of not normalizing relations till Israel accepts a self-regarding Palestine as an equal interlocutor.

However, Israel used the cover of the peace initiative to unfurl a ‘grab what you can’ strategy to further the right-wing agenda of its hardline Netanyahu government. It feared a closing of the door on its agenda to restrict the post-normalization space for Palestinians.

Palestinians, who were subject to Israeli impositions in terms of a continuing land grab in West Bank and a creeping attempt to change the status of the Temple Mount complex, were skeptical of the peace initiative. Their fight back against Israeli repression has resulted in over 300 casualties this year, in part prompting the conflict.

Hamas reasoned that allowing normalcy over Palestinians heads would leave them out in the cold. They were also worried that the Palestinian Authority, run by their rival Palestinian faction, Fatah, in the West Bank, might succumb to the enticement from the promise of developmental support by the international community, in the form of the ‘peace support package’ discussed on the sidelines of the General Assembly high-level week, to buttress peace deals.

The reacted in the only way they know how: the launch of asymmetric war. Their expectation is that subject to such terror, Israel would resort to what could amount to state terror, placing it afoul of international humanitarian law since its reaction would be compounded by its unfolding also in occupied territory.

Hamas also rode on regional dynamics. The Iranians were worried that the Saudis position would stand enhanced with the backing of the US and Israel. Suspicion is that Iranian might have prodded Hamas on, given its own penchant for asymmetric war developed under late General Qassem Soleimani.  

In short, the CM approach that under-grid the mentioned peace initiative has been upturned. Conflict management puts a lid on conflict by eliding addressing of root causes. The time and seeming stability bought by the approach can vanish by some or other actor either taking unfair advantage, as did Israel by pursuing a right-wing agenda, or another acting as spoiler, as has Hamas in its terror attack. The limitations of CM are now obvious.

CR on the other hand addresses root causes. It holds the conflict parties to the table, incentivizing and pressurizing them into a negotiated resolution. The habits from engaging with each other act as eddies, expanding the space for possibilities and cooperation, termed in peace theory as conflict transformation. The cost of abandoning of this approach, that had a promising start in the early 90s with the Oslo Accords, is self-evident.

The lesson for South Asia is stark. The region nurses a territorial conflict for as long as the Israeli-Palestinian one has been on the table. South Asia appears sanguine with its own CM approach extant over the Kashmir issue. It is equally liable to be evicted from this comfort zone should it continue turning a blind eye to the attractions of CR, made explicit in Israeli Titanic hitting Hamas’ iceberg. 

 

 

 

Israel matters but only so much
http://www.purpleberet.com/details/cs_detail.aspx?id=246

Israel has been important for India not only for its defence relationship, but equally from the point of view of India’s post Cold War identity. The premier element of the identity reconfigured for the world emerging from the Cold War has been liberalization. The neo-liberal program acquiring center stage status has inevitably had follow on implications. Strategically this has meant an unapologetic turn to realism, wherein national interests are taken as defining the direction of strategic posture and foreign policy. The opening up to the US and the reaching out to Israel, were part of this overall policy shift. Two decades on, the relationship can be said to have withstood the test of time, acknowledged by the commemorative visit of the foreign minister to that country.

National interest dictated strengthening of India’s defence sinews. The defence profligacy in the eighties, pursuant to the Indira doctrine, had led in part to the financial problems of the early nineties. This along with the demise of the reliable Soviet Union made India cast about for a fresh source of defence supplies. While the Indo-US relationship for reasons of historical baggage took time to stabilize, Indo-Israel equations moved ahead further and faster. This owed not only to Israel sensing an opportunity but the fact that the relationship, largely based on technological and commercial aspects of the defence sector, could be kept off the national radar screen in the levels of its intimacy and intensity.

The relationship is a symbiotic one. India gains access to technology, such as for air defence with its spill over into the nuclear dimension in terms of ballistic missile defence. Israel for its part gains understanding and tacit support of a rising power. At the micro level its citizens gain a destination to unwind from their demanding conscription. The ties have seemingly had little political cost so far, both internally and externally. This testifies less to the dexterity of the foreign policy establishment as to the subterranean nature of the areas of engagement. The fact that effects have not been remarked upon does not imply that they have not been in evidence, even if evidence has been kept scant on account of its sensitivity. Even as India’s defence capability and defence technology has gained, there have been influences of ambiguous benefit too. Take for instance, India’s approach to Pakistan’s proxy war. There is an unexceptionable consensus on policy that there can be no negotiations under a gun held to the head. This is of a piece with Israel’s strategy towards the Palestinians. India’s policy of procedural negotiations even as it builds up the asymmetry in relative strengths with a Pakistan in descent has shades of Israel’s management of its periphery. Israel’s strategy is for keeping the foe unstable in order that it is unable to pose a credible threat. It privileges conflict management over resolution. Shades of this are visible in India’s approach to Pakistan under a ‘wait and watch’ strategy that belies both its agency and positive prospects of meaningful engagement. India thus engages in talks more as a confidence building measure than for security building.

Operational strategy too has drawn on the Israeli model. India has moved from a defensive approach to counter insurgency towards an offensive strategy. This has included activation of the line of control by the late nineties. One area of learning has been the employment of counter infiltration methods based on the Isreali wall along the LC fence. India’s encounter with terror being taken as part of a wider Islamist challenge, an intelligence beltway also exists. Given the asymmetry in professionalism of the two sides, India can safely be taken as the recipient. India’s handling of the youth unrest in Kashmir has shades of Israel’s approach to the intifada, where that state was similarly inconvenienced. At the conventional level, the turn towards an offensive military doctrine, predicated on shallow thrusts, is reminiscent of the Israeli assaults on Lebanon and later on Gaza. This survey of the induction effect suggests greater critical attention to the relationship.

At the political level, to its credit, India maintains an autonomous view of the world, despite Israel’s persuasive advocacy of policy planks that serve its national interest. India has not bought into a ‘clash of civilisations’ view of the world. While a convergence of interest in the status quo in West Asia exists, prescriptions have not coincided. For India stability in the region is useful for its energy sources, remittances and labour diaspora, for Israel it is in warding off a non-existent Arab challenge, subject to buffeting to the unfolding of the Arab Spring. Israel’s citing of the Islamist threat has had limited effect on India’s more nuanced approach, despite the Israeli echo in strategic writings.

Given that the engagement with Israel has not been an unmixed blessing, India needs to keep the relationship under scrutiny. Also, there exists strong strategy advocacy alongside a political thrust, albeit currently latent, for closer ties. There is also a thrust, based on a reading of the structural level contest between the US and China, for India to gravitate towards a US led ‘democratic camp’, with Israel as member. While legitimate in a democratic polity, there is a possibility of these thrusts vying for institutional support in the security establishment. Defence technologists and the military are more susceptible in light of the necessarily close and less-than-transparent ties they maintain. As a first step, institutional interest must not be allowed to usurp policy space, and second, any orchestrated campaign by hyper-nationalists and cultural nationalists must not stampede the government into any policy mis-steps in West Asia, particularly with the Iranian stand off likely to culminate over the near term.

India’s multi-vector foreign policy has paid dividend. In this Israel has proved useful. But as per the dictates of the ‘national interest first’ strategy, India must keep its Israel connection from going beyond the pragmatic to constrict the normative input in policy.