Understanding Hezbollah’s rockets:Katyushas and the failed Westphalian system

De Austin Bay, muy interesante. Menos mal que Israel está reaccionando de manera desproporcionada (visto en Instapundit):

To appreciate the thorny, complex, multi-layered difficulties Israel confronts –from house to house battles to the highest levels of international diplomacy– one needs to understand the rather simple Katyusha rocket Hezbollah shoots at Haifa and other Israeli cities.

I should say Katyusha-type, for the barrage rocket Hezbollah is using out-ranges the Katyushas the Russians once aimed at NATO ground units in Western Europe.The Katyusha is a “barrage rocket.” The Russians fired them from multiple-launchers. Hezbollah has some small mobile launchers but the Katyusha can be fired singly, from a pipe or one-rail launcher.Fired singly or in small numbers there is little likelihood they’ll hit a specific target unless the target is “Haifa” or “Tel Aviv.” Depending on range you can expect a rocket barrage to “scatter” over a rather wide surface area. In the case of northern Israel Hezbollah is using rockets to target predominantly civilian zones. If a rocket hits a hospital in the civilian area it hits a hospital. Hezbollah’s attacks on Haifa are –compared to Israeli attacks in Gaza and Lebanon– quite indiscriminate.

When fired from positions in southern Lebanon or Gaza, the extended-range Katyushas place roughly sixty percent of Israel’s population in range. (That’s my estimate.) All of Israel’s major cities and towns may soon be a bull’s eye– Hezbollah leaders boast of striking beyond Haifa and “beyond beyond Haifa.” Indeed, there are indications that longer range rockets are being employed. These rockets are “FROG-type” — free rocket over ground. They lack guidance systems but have more reach. They may be able to carry chemical warheads (the Russian series of FROGs could carry chemical warheads).

But now for the layer complexity: Hezbollah hides these weapons among apartment houses and in villages– other words, nests of rockets in neighborhoods.

These neighborhoods and villages are controlled by Hezbollah, not the Lebanese government.

Israel is being fired upon from a Lebanon that “is not quite Lebanon” in a truly sovereign sense.The rockets, of course, come from “somewhere,” but Hezbollah’s “somewhere” is a political limbo in terms of maps with definitive geo-political boundaries. Lebanon is a “failed state”– a peculiar failed state (its not Somalia), but nevertheless failed. It will continue to fail so long as the Lebanese government cannot control Hezbollah–and control means disarm.

So Hezbollah attacks Israel with ever more-powerful, longer-range rockets, then hides behind the diplomatic facade of the greater Lebanese nation state.

Thus terrorists and terror-empowering nations, like Iran and Syria, abuse the nation-state system– or exploit a “dangerous hole” in the system..

Iran and Syria then appeal to the United Nations (a product of the Westphalian “nation state” system) to condemn Israel for attacking Lebanon– when Israel is attacking Hezbollah, which “is and is not Lebanon.”

Everybody’s got to be somewhere, but maps and UN seats and press bureaus don’t make an effective nation state; they are the trappings of state-dom.

Weaknesses in the Westphalian system exist, in part because it has never been a complete system. (The Westphalian system evolved from the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) and the series of peace settlements that ended the Thirty Years War in Europe.) Westphalia’s “nation-state system” has always faced “gaps” (anarchic regions) and “failed states” (which are often collapsing tribal empires with the trappings of modernity, not the institutions).

Israel indicates disarming Hezbollah is its objective. But to truly achieve that goal –to stop the rockets– means ending Iranian and Syrian control of Lebanese neighborhoods.

Terrorists and tyrants together exploit failed states.