Clausewitz

This is an updated version of the post that was made live at 16.55 on March 23rd.

EVEN as French warplanes set off on March 19th, under a United Nations mandate, to stop Muammar Qaddafi’s tanks and artillery reaching the Libyan rebel stronghold of Benghazi, it was clear that the hastily assembled “coalition of the willing” would have to make it up as it went along. The pace of events on the ground had left little time for reflection. 

Security Council Resolution 1973, passed less than 48 hours earlier with Russia, China, Brazil, India and Germany abstaining, was a triumph for French and British diplomacy. France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, had worked energetically to persuade Arab countries to make an appeal through the usually fairly useless Arab League for the UN to come to the aid of Libyan civilians. David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister, had done his part by nudging the Americans to overcome their reservations about military intervention. Remarkably the resolution, which was co-sponsored by Lebanon, gave the allies an almost free hand, short of a full-scale invasion and occupation, to use “all necessary measures” to protect civilians from Colonel Qaddafi’s advancing forces.

Yet those words have led to some confusion, among both allies and rebels, about what could or should be done. There has been wrangling, too, over who should lead the operation when the Americans carry out their pledge, supposedly within the next few days, to withdraw to a merely supportive role.

It already looks as if establishing the no-fly zone was the easy part. The first barrage of nearly 120 Tomahawk cruise missiles from American warships and a British submarine, which struck 20 command-and-control sites, severely damaged the regime’s ability to operate its air-defence system. Further salvoes of cruise missiles and attacks by British, American and French aircraft over the next few nights appear to have finished the job, although Colonel Qaddafi may have saved some of his radar simply by turning it off.

By March 22nd a no-fly zone covered most of the rebel-held eastern coastal region. Combat patrols were being flown by aircraft from countries including Canada, Spain, Denmark, Italy and Belgium. Planes from Qatar were expected by March 27th. Over the next few days the aim is to extend the zone eastwards until it covers the whole of the coast to the capital, Tripoli. A de facto maritime exclusion zone has also been imposed, preventing Colonel Qaddafi from either resupplying his forces or shelling rebel-held cities from the sea.

How useful the no-fly zone will be in halting the regime’s counter-offensive is debatable. Colonel Qaddafi may have had fewer than 40 operational combat aircraft at most, and has many fewer now; but his fleet of attack helicopters (also vulnerable to “all necessary measures”) has provided close support for ground troops, which at times has given him a critical advantage.

In some ways, the no-fly zone is as much a diplomatic as a military tool—a way of binding together a visibly fragile 14-nation alliance. But as the drafters of the resolution realised, it was never going to be enough on its own to prevent Colonel Qaddafi from killing his people.

Even without their combat aircraft and helicopter gunships, Colonel Qaddafi’s paramilitaries are proving too well-trained and well-equipped for the motley rebel forces to withstand on their own. The spectacularly destructive results of the first French attack on the loyalist forces descending on Benghazi may have led the rebels to think that their fighting would be done for them, and that their enemies would quickly crumble. But it had its effect because Colonel Qaddafi’s men, in their desperate attempt to reach Benghazi before the allies could get their act together, had allowed their supply lines to become dangerously overstretched, leaving tanks, transporters and rocket launchers strung out as sitting ducks along the desert road.

Benghazi and other rebel towns in the far east of the country, such as Tobruk, are now relatively secure from any attempt by the regime to recapture them—a huge change from only a few days ago. But the picture in towns already controlled by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces is less clear-cut. The rebels’ attempt on March 21st to relieve the strategic crossroads town of Ajdabiya, 145km (90 miles) south-west of Benghazi, showed what they are up against and the limits of their military capability.

Emboldened by the coalition’s demand that the regime should pull back from Ajdabiya, which was retaken by government forces last week, the rebels hoped that air attacks would do the same job for them as they had outside Benghazi. When jets were heard overhead, followed by big explosions, a few hundred rebels, toting a variety of light weapons from pick-up trucks, charged forward. But as shells and rockets began raining down on them they fled as quickly as they had come. Without discipline or training, adequate communications or a unified command structure, they are no match for Colonel Qaddafi’s men.

Repulsing government forces from Ajdabiya, which controls the water supply to Benghazi, is a key objective for the coalition and the rebels. Coalition aircraft began launching strikes on the loyalist forces on March 22nd, but they have so far proved hard to dislodge.

The situation in Libya’s third-largest city, Misrata, only 130 miles east of Tripoli and with a population of more than half a million, appeared even more desperate. After more than a week of heavy fighting in which well over 100 people are said to have died, the government announced on March 21st that it was in full control of the town. That now looks premature. Loyalist tanks and artillery that had been sporadically bombarding the city for several weeks were silenced (at least temporarily) after pinpoint air strikes on the 23rd. According to reports from within Misrata, many of the tanks were destroyed and many of Colonel Qaddafi’s men were seen fleeing. Snipers, however, continued their deadly work in the centre and around the main hospital.

In Tripoli, despite the nightly attacks on the regime’s command-and-control centres, there is not much sign of the government losing its grip. The regular pro-Qaddafi demonstrations do not accurately reflect feeling within the capital, but there is no way of knowing how strong opposition to the colonel may be.

A further complication for the coalition is the predictable exploitation of “human shields” (apparently, mostly volunteers) to protect high-value government targets. On March 21st an RAF Tornado aborted its mission close to Tripoli after it was warned that civilians, including some foreign journalists, were close to its target.

The strikes on Tripoli also raised the question of whether trying to kill Colonel Qaddafi himself was consistent with the terms of the Security Council resolution. The legal advice appears ambiguous. “Regime change” is not an allied goal, even though nobody believes that a peaceful, democratic Libya is possible while the colonel is around. On the other hand, if it is clear (as it surely is) that Colonel Qaddafi has given orders that have resulted in the butchering of Libyan civilians, he is indeed a legitimate target. This seems to be the position of the British government, which on March 21st was quick to slap down the chief of the defence staff, Sir David Richards, who had grumpily told a BBC journalist that going after Colonel Qaddafi was “absolutely...not allowed”.

Who leads?

All this means that the coalition urgently needs to work out what its strategic objectives are and what it is prepared to do to achieve them. But before that, it must sort out who is going to lead it.

The Americans were willing to accept that role in the first phase of the campaign because of the range of assets (from the opening cruise-missile barrage, to electronic jamming, intelligence-gathering, mission co-ordination and fuel supply) that only they could bring to the speedy establishment of the no-fly zone. But in line with the new humility and commitment to multilateralism that Barack Obama preaches, they were adamant that they would then hand over to somebody else.

That did not, however, mean falling in with Mr Sarkozy’s preference for a Franco-British command. Mr Sarkozy argued from the start that he did not want the operation led by NATO, because NATO is seen in the Arab world as a tool of American power, and Arab support for the coalition is already weak. The Americans and the British, however, were reluctant to sideline NATO. The result was a fudge agreed late on March 22nd. Mr Sarkozy and Mr Obama agreed that NATO would assume day-to-day military command of the no-fly zone under Admiral James Stavrides, the American supreme allied commander in Europe; but that, reflecting some of NATO’s own divisions, particularly the ambivalence of Turkey and Germany, political control would lie with the members of the coalition rather than with the North Atlantic Council, the main decision-making body of the alliance. However, late on March 23rd Turkey’s opposition to coalition ground attacks stalled the signing of the compromise.

Obstructions of this sort make it all the harder to settle other essential matters swiftly. The first is to devise a realistic set of strategic goals. One may already have been achieved. With no more than about 10,000 troops available and with any advance across the desert acutely exposed to coalition air strikes, Colonel Qaddafi has almost certainly lost his chance to reimpose his authority in the east.

However, there have been doubts about how far attacks from the air could help the civilians who are within Colonel Qaddafi’s reach. The position of the government forces besieging Ajdabiya looked precarious after air attacks on March 22nd, and they were said to be running out of ammunition. But the big test is bringing help to Misrata. Admiral Samuel Locklear, a coalition commander, said that all options were being considered.

Misrata is important not just for humanitarian reasons. If it cannot be saved, or the cost of doing so is deemed too high, the coalition would be sending a signal that for now there is not much it can do to prevent Colonel Qaddafi consolidating his position in the western half of the country. But if coalition air strikes are able to take out government heavy weaponry in urban areas without significant risk to civilians, as appears to be happening in Misrata, the pessimists may be confounded.

What happens to Misrata, in other words, could define the extent of the coalition’s objectives, at least in the short term. It must decide whether there is any realistic prospect of the rebels taking on Colonel Qaddafi’s forces and power structure in the west. The rebels themselves are reported to be divided between those who believe that the regime can be toppled with one more push, as long as they are supported by coalition air power, and those who believe that a temporary stalemate makes more sense. During such a stalemate, the rebels’ national council in Benghazi could turn itself into a government-in-waiting capable of speaking with one voice, and much-needed military capabilities could be developed.

There may also be some tension within the coalition between those keen to attempt a speedy resolution and those who are resigned to a lengthier engagement. Patience is still likely to be the better bet, unless the regime collapses from within.

Misrata makes that outcome just a bit more likely. Colonel Qaddafi’s troops and supporters are rapidly learning just how devastatingly effective western air power can be. But without substantial defections from the loyalist army, the rebels cannot hope to become a cohesive military force unless they receive weapons and training from outside, which would seem to be in breach of the UN arms embargo.

A short-term partition of Libya might be bearable, but a long-term one raises the prospect of an arms race, rapid economic decline and Colonel Qaddafi resuming his sponsorship of international terrorism. Algeria, which disavows the Arab League declaration, might start rearming the colonel across his western border.

Two further pressing issues for the coalition will be the enforcement of sanctions against the regime and the question of whether the rebels can gain access to Libya’s (diminished) oil revenues. The biggest refinery, at Ras Lanuf, lies in what is likely to be the rebels’ area of control; so too do many of the oilfields. On the other hand, if reports that the colonel has $6.4 billion-worth of gold stashed away in the country’s central bank in Tripoli are true, he has a potential advantage in any war of attrition. If he can liquidate this hoard into cash, arms and food, his chances of clinging on indefinitely will be boosted.

Given the range of uncertainties, the question of targeting Colonel Qaddafi himself becomes more relevant. Without him, it is hard to see the regime surviving for more than a few weeks. The coalition will not change its declared position that killing the Libyan war leader is not on its list of objectives. But were it somehow to happen, few would complain.

THE comforting idea that Muammar Qaddafi might go relatively gently into that good night like his more conventional autocratic neighbours has been dashed. Instead the Libyan dictator seems determined to follow the poet’s advice by burning, raving and raging against the dying of the light. It would be bad enough if Mr Qaddafi were merely determined to kill as many of his fellow citizens as possible before quickly succumbing to his own end. But the prospect is for something even worse: either a stalemate that allows Mr Qaddafi the time he needs to re-establish his authority in the east of the country; or a bloody civil war with an uncertain outcome and the possibility of a humanitarian catastrophe. 

Which is why after much pious rhetoric in Western capitals about Mr Qaddafi’s growing illegitimacy, there is now urgent discussion of what kind of practical assistance could be extended to the rebels. However, after a flurry of excitement on February 28th when the British prime minister, David Cameron, told parliament that he had asked “the chief of the defence staff to work with our allies on plans for a military no-fly zone”, the following day, Robert Gates, the American defence secretary, warned about the dangers of military intervention in another Muslim country. Mr Gates announced he was sending two naval vessels towards Libya, an amphibious assault ship, USS Kearsarge, and an amphibious dry dock, USS Ponce, but with the aim of providing humanitarian assistance.

At this point there are many objections to the use of force by outsiders to remove Mr Qaddafi. Foreign intervention would not be popular with Libya's opposition. There is so little intelligence about what is happening on the ground that it would be hard to distinguish friends from foes. America has both theoretical and practical objections to using force: it does not want to divert resources from Afghanistan and is in no rush to resume toppling Arab dictators.

Nevertheless, the option of creating a no-fly zone may yet gain ground. Mr Qaddafi’s 18,000-strong air force with its 13 bases is a critical element in his bid to hold on to power. The regime’s use of ground attack jets against its enemies may have been exaggerated—they are hardly the weapon of choice for street-fighting.

But of much greater use to him are his 30 or so attack helicopters (Russian Mi-25s and Mi-35s) and his substantial aerial transport capacity. These comprise seven squadrons equipped with Russian 23 An-26s, 25 IL-76s and 15 C-130s. He also has a heavy transport helicopter squadron with four Boeing Chinooks and a medium transport squadron with Soviet-era 35 Mi-8s and Mi-17s which can also be used as gun-ships. According to the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, the transport squadrons are by some measure the most effective part of the Libyan air force.

Mr Qaddafi’s ability to move reinforcements rapidly around the vast country has already proved important. According to intelligence estimates, far from being the delusional loon he affects to be, the Libyan leader has been preparing for the situation he finds himself in today for many years. Unlike the well-equipped, albeit poorly run, air force, the nominally 50,000-strong Libyan army (most of whom are conscripts) has long been distrusted by the regime and kept on short rations. In contrast, Mr Qaddafi and his sons have built up a paramilitary force of some 20,000 well-armed and well-drilled tribesmen loyal to their clan and supplemented by handsomely paid mercenaries from Chad and Niger. 

It was tribal militiamen ferried by air from the Sahara who were dropped into the streets of Tripoli on February 21st and who bloodily cowed resistance in the capital. A few days later air transport was crucial again to Mr Qaddafi’s plan to recapture the coastal towns close to Tripoli from rebel hands. Both Zawiya and Misurata still appear to be controlled by the opposition after assaults by heavily armed forces loyal to the regime were repelled on February 28th. But Mr Qaddafi’s forces have surrounded the towns and cut off the road links to Tripoli.

A further concern for the opposition is that any attempt it makes to move its own forces along the 1,000km coast road to Tripoli from its stronghold in Benghazi will be highly vulnerable to air attack. There were also reports on February 28th of Libyan warplanes flying over Benghazi as if to warn the rebels they could be bombed at any time and of an attack on an arms depot 160km to the south either by jets or helicopters that had been seized by the opposition. 

At present, without clear leadership, the rebels appear divided about whether they actually want an American/NATO no-fly zone. Some say that Western help would tarnish their revolutionary credentials and besides they hope (perhaps a little naively) that a combination of defecting air force pilots and planes seized on the ground will soon give them the ability to launch air attacks of their own. Buoyed by their early spectacular gains and the large number of army defections in the eastern province of Cyrenaica, they may, however, have over-estimated the ability of popular momentum to deliver victory over the whole country. Others realise that without help from Western air power they could be sitting ducks. On March 1st, the newly created revolutionary council was reportedly considering a request to the United Nations for air strikes against some of the regime’s military assets.   

Without a no-fly zone the anti-Qaddafi revolution could yet stumble and fail. However, while the West has plenty of experience in policing no-fly zones, they are neither easy to put into effect nor guaranteed to prevent large-scale killing on the ground. Although Saddam Hussein was deterred from taking terrible retribution on the Kurds after the first Gulf war by the no-fly zone in the north, a similar attempt to neuter the Iraqi air force in the south was much less successful in curbing his brutalities against the Shi’ite population. It is also worth recalling that the no-fly zone over Bosnia did not stop the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, while, if anything, the NATO bombing of Serbia four years later accelerated ethnic killings in Kosovo. 

If a no-fly zone over Libya is to be established, it looks as if it will have to be through another “coalition of the willing” rather than with the blessing of a UN Security Council resolution which would probably be opposed by both Russia and China. In the first instance, planes flying from an American carrier, probably the USS Enterprise, could establish the no-fly zone, but land bases, such as the well-positioned US Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily or a similar facility at Souda Bay in Crete, would soon be needed to sustain a long campaign. And while enforcement of a no-fly zone is not especially complicated once everything is in place, it does require both careful planning and adequate resources (a fleet of around a hundred fighter jets, aerial refuelling, airborne warning and control, robust data links between coalition aircraft, rescue arrangements for any pilots shot done).

In establishing the no-fly zone, coalition aircraft would first have to nullify Libyan air defences, which include nearly 100 Mig-25s and 15 Mirage F-1s equipped with still-capable Soviet era air-to-air missiles and a huge arsenal of Russian surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) that come in all shapes and sizes. It is unlikely, however, that either Mr Qaddafi’s pilots would fare any better than the similarly equipped, but better trained, Iraqis who failed to shoot down a single allied aircraft in 11 years of no-fly zone patrolling. But military experts, including Lieutenant General David Deptula, a former fighter pilot who until recently oversaw air force intelligence at the Pentagon, believe Libya has succeeded in acquiring more up-to-date SAMs in the past few years than were available to Iraq and that these could pose a serious threat to allied aircraft.  

Before going ahead with a no-fly zone over Libya, the allies (America and Britain perhaps joined by France and Italy) would have to ask themselves two more questions. The first is how long they are prepared to stick at it if Mr Qaddafi manages to hang on. The second is what degree of “mission creep” they are prepared to contemplate. A no-drive zone to prevent the regime from using the full weight of its ground forces against the rebels might be a next step. The prospect of an open-ended, possibly escalating military commitment without UN sanction is hardly a welcome one.

Getting rid of a burning, raving and raging Mr Qaddafi may prove a lot more difficult both for the brave Libyan opposition and their anxious well-wishers in the West than was hoped only a few days ago.

SO THE rumours that EADS had managed to gain an edge over its rival, Boeing, on price in the long and bitter contest to supply the United States Air Force with a new generation of aerial re-fuelling tankers turned out to be wide of the mark. On February 24th the secretary for the air force, Michael Donley, announced that the home team had after all beaten the European defence firm that also owns Airbus to win a $35 billion contract to replace the 1950s-era Boeings (pictured above) that currently do the job.

It should not have come as a surprise, because this was a competition decided more by politics than the capabilities of the two aircraft on offer. In 2008 EADS and its then-partner in America, Northrop Grumman, pulled off a shock victory when its KC-45 triumphed over Boeing’s 767-based alternative. The air force had preferred the bigger plane based on the much more modern Airbus A330 mainly because of its ability to shift more fuel and other payloads. It was also in many ways a less risky option because the aircraft actually existed (see picture, below) and had been picked by other air forces, while Boeing’s offering, even now, will not make its first flight until 2015. There was also little difference in the number of American jobs that either plane would secure: about 50,000.

But amid howls of rage on its behalf from (mainly) Democratic members of Congress, Boeing refused to take defeat lying down and exercised its right to protest at the award, coming up with 110 complaints about a bidding process that had been unusually fair and transparent (in part because of a scandal six years earlier when Boeing had first bid but had been disqualified on grounds of criminal collusion with an air-force official). The Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog, upheld seven of them. With a presidential election looming, the Pentagon decided to kick the can down the road.

In September 2009 the air force duly issued a new draft Request for Proposals (RFP) that, by making price the main criterion for selection, effectively undermined the case for the KC-45. A Northrop executive condemned it as a “lowest-common-denominator approach designed to favour a less capable, smaller aircraft by turning the contest into a cost shoot-out”. Unless the RFP changed Northrop, he said, would pull out of the bidding, which it duly did in March last year. At the time, I wrote a piece with the provocative headline of “The best plane loses”. It attracted a huge number of venomously furious e-mails, accusing The Economist of bias, ignorance and probably being in the pay of EADS. Quite a few of the correspondents had direct connections with Boeing.

As it happened, EADS was not ready to throw in the towel and it tried hard to find another American partner to help it carry on the fight. But one of the firm’s most senior executives told me that fears of possible political retribution had meant that no big defence company was willing to raise its head above the parapet. Even so, EADS soldiered on, partly because it still believed that the combination of its plane’s superiority and much lower procurement risk might still prevail, partly because it calculated that the campaign would help to establish its credentials as a serious competitor in America whatever the outcome.

In the end, Northrop’s concerns proved fully justified. Boeing’s offer came in more than 1% lower than that of EADS, which meant that the air force could bypass a set of 96 non-mandatory requirements that could have tipped the balance the other way. Another factor in the Boeing plane’s favour was its lower fuel burn—a direct consequence of the KC-45’s 25% higher maximum take-off weight. EADS may still find grounds to protest and says it is studying the air force’s reasons for its decision closely. Whether it would be wise to do so is another matter. As for Boeing, its persistence and political clout has paid off, but it will be under pressure now to execute flawlessly, something it has struggled to do in recent years.

Read on: Boeing launches the latest incarnation of the 747

Louis Gallois heals EADS's wounds (Dec 2010)

THE mood at the 11th annual Herzliya conference, where Israel’s top policymakers come to debate strategy and diplomacy with invited international experts, is understandably twitchy. The events in Egypt hang over the conference like the threatening grey clouds. And yesterday those clouds unleashed a savage hailstorm, in the form of a stinging attack on the Netanyahu government by Tzipi Livni, the former foreign minister who now leads Israel’s fragmented opposition. Nobody here claims that they saw the upheaval in Egypt coming, and few think that President Hosni Mubarak's regime will be replaced by one that Israel will find anything like as easy to live with.

Members of the government have taken a vow of silence not to comment, even off the record, on the unfolding situation in Egypt. But if you talk to people here privately, they suggest there are three possible scenarios. The first (intended to sound incredible) is that Israel’s biggest neighbour will be transformed into a peaceable, pluralist democracy. The second is that Egypt will become something like Turkey, either with an army-dominated government as in the past or with a government a bit like the present one in Ankara that has a quite a strong Islamist flavour (either more or less intense, depending on the role within it of the Muslim Brotherhood). The third is that something similar to the Iranian revolution in 1979 is played out “with dramatic consequences”. If the third scenario were to be realised, the psychological impact on Israel will be such that any conceivable land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians will have to be accompanied by much more rigorous security arrangements on the ground. That said, the emergence of a moderately Islamist government that remained committed to peace with Israel could, after the initial shock, prove quite positive.

Perhaps inevitably, the turmoil in Egypt is only entrenching people here in their existing positions. The right is saying that it goes to show how quickly things can change in the unstable Arab world. Even if you could do a deal with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who anyway only speaks for half the Palestinians, how confident can you be that the peace would hold? For its part, the pro-peace camp says that the situation in Egypt means that there may be only a narrow window to get a settlement negotiated and that a new urgency is required. Realistically, few people here expect this Israeli government to do very much given Mr Netanyahu’s dependence on the support of parties ideologically hostile to the whole idea of “land for peace”. 

Yet neither the possibility of an Egyptian repudiation of the 32-year-old peace treaty with Israel nor the remote prospect of progress on the Palestinian front are the biggest security concerns among those at the Herzliya. Iran’s nukes are still seen as the overwhelming existential threat to Israel, but the difficulties that the Iranian nuclear programme is thought to be having, thanks to tighter sanctions and the disruptive effects of the Stuxnet computer virus, are widely believed to have pushed the timeline for acquiring a bomb out to at least a couple of years from now. And that may be affecting the strategic calculus of at least some within the Iranian leadership. 

A veteran of the Sharon and Olmert governments suggested to me that if only America was prepared to do as foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman suggested last year—and impose on Iran the kind of far-reaching sanctions that have applied to Cuba for half a century—the regime in Tehran, which is already under severe economic pressure, would not last for more than 12 months. The fact that the Castro brothers are still in power seems not to weaken the argument. Generally speaking, there’s a view here that America needs to get more serious about regime change in Iran, as that may be the only thing that will lead to any alteration in the country’s determination to press on with becoming a nuclear power able to bully the region. As usual, however, the details of how to do it are a bit sketchy.

Of more immediate concern even than the menace of a nuclear Iran is the growing threat from Lebanon since Hizbullah’s bloodless coup last month. With up to 50,000 missiles of increasing accuracy and technological sophistication having been supplied by Syria and Iran, government sources here claim that the Shiite guerrilla force (which for most practical purposes should now be regarded as Lebanon’s real army) has around four times the missile power it had when it unleashed 4,000 projectiles at Israel during the bloody five-week war in 2006. The Israeli military believes that Hizbullah has also learned lessons from the conflict in Gaza two years ago and that in any future confrontation IDF soldiers will sustain significantly more severe casualties.

Despite large investments in anti-missile defences with the help of the Americans, there are fears that Tel Aviv is still vulnerable to attack from salvoes of 200km-range Zelzal II guided missiles fired from south Lebanon and cruder devices, such as the 50km-range Fajr-5 missile, that could be launched by Hamas from Gaza in the event of hostilities. In a speech yesterday General Gabi Ashkenazi, the outgoing chief of the IDF general staff, warned that while Hizbullah and Hamas could not take territory, the battlefield had now shifted to the home front. No missile shield can be fully effective, especially when the missiles fired cost a tiny fraction of the interceptors used to stop them. Israel will still need superior intelligence and the ability to put boots on the ground to defend itself.

Israelis often feel the need to remind their critical European and American friends that they live in a pretty tough neighbourhood. Special criticism among most of the people you meet at Herzliya is reserved for Barack Obama. After the row over settlement building, which many Israelis thought was the wrong fight to pick, and what is seen here as shameless flipflopping by the administration over the fate of Mr Mubarak, the kindest description of the president you will hear in Herzliya is that he is naïve. Others are harsher, saying that he is a serial blunderer who is presiding over a rapid waning of American power and influence within the region. In particular, there is both puzzlement and anger over what is seen as the very public betrayal of Mr Mubarak, which, it is claimed, will cause every moderate Arab government to review its security relationship with America. As one source puts it: “They could have told him in private that his time was up, while sticking outwardly to a position of neutrality. But by saying they supported all the aims of the protesters and telling Mubarak he must go immediately, they took a very serious, very dangerous risk.”

Correction: An earlier version of this post got the names of its missile-defence systems in a twist. This has now been fixed.