The Sovereignty Code

The United States needs a national security strategy reset. WWII ended 79 years ago, and the U.S. has engaged in some form of conflict for roughly 61 of those 79 years. The post-WWII era has been one of almost continual conflict and to what end? Republican and Democrat Administrations alike have made a practice of rushing into conflict absent decisive strategy and without achieving decisive outcomes.

False hopes regarding the rules-based order and its effectiveness have warped the West’s view of war and its understanding of why the Allies were able to achieve a durable victory in WWII.

The Allies won WWII because they broke the will of the Axis powers through the sheer magnitude of death and destruction dealt to their civilian populations, not just to their armies. But ever since then, the United States has so feared conflicts escalating into vicious interstate wars that—perversely—it has tried over and over to fight limited wars for limited objectives, believing that such wars can either achieve our objectives or bring diplomacy into focus.

It is time for the United States to try a different tack and, by doing so, to also put itself in the position of having to use military power less frequently. With an actual framework to help guide the application of force, the U.S. would also be able to bring greater coherence to how and when it wages war and supports allies and partners.

Anna Simons, Joe McGraw, and Duane Lauchengco published a book in 2011 called, The Sovereignty Solution, which offers a framework worthy of consideration.

The Sovereignty Solution advocates for a national security strategy based on making more, not less of sovereignty. What does this mean? It means that the U.S. responds to violations of its sovereignty forcefully and overwhelmingly in order to stop the violator from engaging in more violence. What the U.S. will not do is deploy forces to reshape or rebuild whole countries and their societies. The U.S. military exists to defend U.S. sovereignty and provide security for its people, its territories, and its national interests and treaty partners. Period. This stands in stark contrast to how the U.S. has employed its military capabilities since 9/11 or how it is addressing Iran’s near constant attacks on U.S. personnel and interests now.

The goal in taking sovereignty seriously is to foster a system of mutual respect among nations. The U.S. will refrain from interfering in, or with, other countries, but where and when U.S. sovereignty is violated, the U.S. will respond forcefully against the perpetrators—and their sponsors. We expect our allies and partners to do the same and will support them when they are true partners (as described in the book).

This approach diverges from traditional strategies by focusing on reducing U.S. combat missions overseas and by insisting instead on strong accountability by states for the actions of their citizens and not just their militaries; to include supporting or providing safe havens for terrorists. The Sovereignty Solution also promotes strengthening countries’ domestic social fabric, addressing vulnerabilities like political polarization, which adversaries can exploit.

There is no better example of how fecklessly the United States currently manages conflict than the Biden Administration’s response to Israel’s current war. The Biden Administration has been bi-polar in its approach to Israel’s conflict and unforgivably submissive towards Iran.

For instance, the Administration supports Israel’s right to defend itself but does so while demanding restraint. How does this make sense when Hamas’s attack on October 7^th of 2023 was the manifestation of Iran’s stated aim of annihilating Israel? The Biden Administration has worked overtime to reign in Israel while leaving Iran and its proxies unchallenged, which in effect protects Iran.

Clearly, President Biden, members of his administration, and many leading Democrats believe that Israel has gone too far in Gaza and is now over-reaching against Hezbollah in Lebanon. They seem to believe that Israel has more than gotten even and should now prioritize finding a diplomatic solution to end the fighting. The Administration believes that only a ceasefire and well-defined road map for achieving a two-state solution will lead to long-term stability, and that this will undermine Iran’s long-term goal of destroying Israel. 

But Israel’s defense of itself is not about getting even. And it is not about the Palestinians. It is about re-securing Israel’s sovereignty.

According to a sovereignty rules framework, what happened on October 7^th is that Hamas, the de facto sovereign government of Gaza, violated Israel’s sovereignty through an act of war. Israel therefore not only had the right to reciprocate with overwhelming force, but a duty to reduce Hamas’s military capability so that it can no longer present a viable threat to Israel’s security. Israel has a similar duty vis-à-vis Hezbollah. Likewise, Israel has an obligation to its citizens to strike Iran with as much force as is needed to stop Iran’s support for Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and to halt Iran’s own direct attacks on Israel.

Israel has given peace a chance. Israel has given the two-state solution a chance. Israel has long tried trusting the rules-based order to help it protect itself. Indeed, Israel has tried everything militarily possible through overt and covert means to prevent Iran from reaching its stated goal of annihilating Israel—which is the ultimate violation of sovereignty! Yet, none of these things have been sufficient to dissuade Iran or its proxies from seeking Israel’s destruction.

Disappointingly, not only has the liberal version of the rules-based order failed to work, but the United Nations—the flagship organization for that order—has itself provided diplomatic cover for Hamas via the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which ignored and may have abetted Hamas in militarizing its society and indoctrinating Palestinians to liquidate the Jews.  How perverse that in his remarks at the 79^th United Nations General Assembly, President Biden said that Gazans did not ask for the war that Hamas started. Clearly, my eyes must have been lying to me when I watched footage of Gazans cheering and celebrating on October 7^th.

In a further dereliction of its duty, the UN chose to not enforce Security Council Resolution 1701, which was meant to firewall southern Lebanon from Israel and Hezbollah, and thereby prevent another war after the Second Lebanon War of 2006. Instead, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon did nothing as Hezbollah infiltrated southern Lebanon and militarized it much the same way Hamas did Gaza. 1701 was made exceedingly hollower when Iran equipped Hezbollah with sophisticated indirect fires systems and drones that could range across Israel from inside Lebanon.

Another RBO shortcoming relates to how exit strategies are conceived of these days. The idea that countries that respond to violations of their sovereignty are responsible for putting everything back together again in the violator’s territory goes hand-in-hand with the West’s fantasy that it can remake whole societies through regime change. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya are proof that none of this works. Not only is it impossible to rebuild other people’s nations for them, but it is also a terrible waste of resources and time.

Equally wasteful is not destroying an entity that has attacked you, that has expressed its intent to destroy you, and that retains the capacity to destroy you.

Israel has no alternative but to give war a chance—to use sufficient force to break the back of Iran’s capability, which includes breaking the backs of Hamas and Hezbollah. Destroying them remains a work in progress given the scale of the problem. The human cost in Gaza and Lebanon is real; however, this war must be waged if peace is ever to have a chance.

People want to believe that modern countries can achieve their military goals without civilian casualties. People think that modern militaries with exquisite targeting capabilities, like those demonstrated by the Israeli Defense Forces, can defeat their enemies through selective targeting, but frequently this isn’t true. When an adversary’s entire society has been indoctrinated and mobilized, selective targeting is insufficient—by definition. Also, selective targeting can’t spare civilians when an enemy has burrowed into the civilian infrastructure as Hamas and Hezbollah have—with civilian complicity. 

The West has yet to come to grips with the fact that few of its adversaries share the West’s sensibilities. Nor does the West seem to recognize that adversaries will mold their methods to take advantage of Western sensibilities. Case in point, Hamas and Hezbollah are both more than willing to use civilians as human shields and, even more barbarously, they set up civilians to be killed in order to make Israel look bad.

During WWII, the Allies couldn’t bomb accurately enough to avoid civilian casualties. This inadvertently worked to the allies’ advantage because it necessitated total war that exhausted Germany and Japan to the point that both countries acceded to unconditional surrender. How ironic that in an era when we can target with precision and when we have come to revile total war as an option, we not only fail to exhaust our enemies, but our enemies resort to tactics and strategies that deliberately put their own populations at risk. They do so because they know that they can offset our targeting capabilities by using our sensibilities against us.

Hamas and Hezbollah have backed Israel into an unwinnable IO war by developing strategies that make it impossible for Israel to decisively crush them and extirpate them without also killing thousands of civilians. The slaughter of civilians is the doing of Hamas and Hezbollah. The only way out of this for Israel requires that Western leaders adjust their sensibilities to this fact.

Unfortunately, another reason Israel’s campaign against Hamas has been so fraught is because crushing Hamas is impossible to square with freeing the hostages. The only way Israel can get its hostages back is by letting Hamas cut a deal for a ceasefire. But Israel cutting a deal with Hamas is antithetical to Israel’s destruction of Hamas’s ability to function as a movement that will continue to pose a long-term threat to Israel’s security.

Many have speculated that Prime Minister Netanyahu is prolonging the war in Gaza out of political self-interest. Maybe. Or perhaps Bibi Netanyahu is smart enough to recognize that Hamas is toying with the Israeli population’s emotions over the hostages to preserve its ability to live to fight another day. Many critics argue that Israel should give in and agree to a ceasefire because nothing Israel does will alter Palestinians’ animosity or lead to Hamas’s dismantlement. True, the Israelis aren’t going to be able to kill the idea behind Hamas. But they can attrit the organization and degrade its capabilities until it can no longer function as a movement.

We must remember that given the fact that Israel’s enemies are committed to Israel’s eradication, there is no accommodation to be had. Israel is fighting to restore its security now and for the future. The fact that Hamas jumped the gun before Iran was ready to join in Israel’s destruction inadvertently provides Israel a unique opportunity to confront Iran now rather than wait until Iran is better armed and better prepared in the future. We can only hope that Trump will view this moment for the opportunity that it presents.

Israel’s current fight on behalf of its sovereignty has not only exposed the Biden Administration’s strategic incoherence, but also deeper flaws in how the U.S. thinks about our national security and the security of our allies.

The U.S. says Israel has the right to defend itself, but then proceeds to try to compel Israel to do things that aren’t good for Israel. What is even crazier is that the U.S. keeps trying to urge Israel to implement methods and tactics that didn’t work for us in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Americans keep scolding the Israelis regarding their use of force, chastising them for their failure to employ a counterinsurgency strategy, and berating them for not identifying a political solution to the Palestinian problem. The Administration began calling for de-escalation and a ceasefire long before Israel had achieved any military victories against Hamas, and the Administration wanted Israel to leave Rafah untouched despite its centrality to Hamas’s smuggling infrastructure, or the fact that it was where Yahya Sinwar was hiding.

The Administration has wanted to keep the conflict from escalating regionally but has striven to do this by holding Israel to account―and not Iran. Yet, Iran is who made this a regional war by attacking Israel from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and from Iran itself.

The U.S. fails to appreciate that Hamas’s attack de-synched Iran’s strategic plans, thereby providing Israel with both the opportunity and the moral justification to thwart Iran’s long-term goal of annihilating it. The U.S. keeps pressuring Israel instead to stop short, which will only leave Iran and its hateful proxies confident that eventually they will destroy Israel because they will still possess the means to do so. This really makes no sense. But nor does it make sense given our own history with Iran.

Iran has murdered approximately 900 Americans and seized dozens of American hostages since 1979. Iranian proxies have attacked American troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan several hundred times, killed three U.S. service members, and injured scores more since October 7^th, 2023. Iranian backed Houthis repeatedly attack commercial shipping and U.S. naval assets in the Red Sea with negligible consequences. The U.S. employs what can best be called a passive defense and only occasionally responds to attacks in Syria and Iraq, all of which adds up to a weak, never-ending game of tit-for-tat.

Adopting a Sovereignty Solution approach would handle these violations of U.S. sovereignty differently. It would also lead the U.S. to stop making Israel’s war more complicated than it needs to be. The U.S. should support the legitimacy of Israel’s response, respect its decisions, and let it fight. The U.S. should also warn Iran that the next time it attacks U.S. forces directly or by proxy, the U.S. will respond with devastating force. For instance, should the Houthis fire on a U.S.-flagged vessel again, the U.S. will regard this as the act of war that it is and respond with overwhelming might. 

Critics of such an approach might contend that it is overly bellicose and risks overlooking complex global interdependencies. Or they might claim that non-state actors often operate beyond state controls. However, sovereignty and security are deeply intertwined. Each reinforces the other to sustain a country’s autonomy and stability. Non-state actors wouldn’t and couldn’t exist if governments were held to account, which they would be in a sovereignty rules world as outlined in The Sovereignty Solution.

Unfortunately, the Biden Administration’s submissiveness has only invited contempt from our adversaries and enemies―and many allies too. Worse, submissiveness invites further aggression. Somehow, we have erroneously come to believe that the answer to transgressions of sovereignty resides in forever war, sanctions, and capitulation masquerading as diplomacy. But, if we don’t like war, we need to remember that the real antidote to long drawn-out conflict is to accept the need for short, sharp, definitive military action when sovereignty is violated.

Ideally, President-elect Trump won’t just see the use of force this way but will prove to be the right leader at the right time to break with increasingly outdated dysfunctional post WWII conventions about the use of force. Ideally, he will implement a national security framework that approaches conflicts and security threats around the world with greater common sense, to include Iran’s threat to Israel.

J.B. Books is an experienced expert in the region and on military matters.

Check out the Book titled "The Sovereignty Solution."