Austin Returns to Israel With a Harder Message and Classes Discovered

After three years as President Biden’s quiet man on the Pentagon, Protection Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III stepped off his airplane at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv on Monday and into the limelight.

It was his second go to to the area since Israel launched a warfare in Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led terrorist assault on Oct. 7. Throughout conferences and conversations with Israeli officers, Mr. Austin has confused each the Biden administration’s help for Israel and issues concerning the rising Palestinian dying toll.

However his message has change into extra blunt: Israel, Mr. Austin not too long ago predicted, may face “strategic defeat” that would depart the nation much less safe if it doesn’t do extra to guard civilians.

The warning is one which Mr. Austin is effectively outfitted to ship. The retired four-star basic brings a wealth of army expertise in fight, together with city warfare. Early U.S. efforts to focus on the Taliban and insurgents in Afghanistan in 2004. The troop “surge” in Iraq in 2007. The planning to pry Mosul, Iraq, from the fingers of the Islamic State in 2016. Mr. Austin was concerned in all of that.

Because the Biden administration navigates the Gaza disaster, the intensely non-public Mr. Austin is taking a distinguished function and in addition revealing extra of himself.

“You know, I learned a thing or two about urban warfare from my time fighting in Iraq and leading the campaign to defeat ISIS,” he mentioned in a speech on the Reagan Nationwide Protection Discussion board earlier this month. “The lesson is not that you can win in urban warfare by protecting civilians. The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians.”

Republicans criticized the protection secretary for not sounding supportive sufficient of Israel. The day after the speech, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, instructed CNN’s “State of the Union” that Mr. Austin was “naïve,” including “I’ve just lost all confidence in this guy.”

However critics of Israel’s bombing marketing campaign say the message is lengthy overdue, because the dying toll in Gaza nears 20,000, in response to well being officers there.

“This level of civilian killing and destruction, and the rage it generates, guarantees militant recruitment and support for resistance among future generations, both in Palestine and beyond,” mentioned Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator who’s now the president of the U.S./Center East Venture. “That’s a problem for both Israel and the U.S.”

Criticism of how Israel is conducting the warfare has grown in latest days after its army mentioned that troopers on Friday by chance killed three Israeli hostages held in Gaza. The lads have been holding a makeshift white flag once they have been shot, the army mentioned.

Throughout his earlier journey to Israel, six days after the Hamas assault, Mr. Austin warned his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, and the nation’s army chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, that the massive variety of troops that they had assembled on the border of Gaza, mixed with the air marketing campaign, was extreme.

Israel wanted to ascertain humanitarian corridors and an outlined algorithm to guard Palestinian civilians, he instructed them. The Israel Protection Forces, he mentioned, ought to perform a focused precision air marketing campaign, with restricted numbers of particular operations troops on the bottom to behave shortly on intelligence leads concerning the location of senior Hamas leaders.

Someday later, on Oct. 14, he took his warning public. In a Pentagon assertion describing his telephone name with Mr. Gallant, and in different statements about their calls since then, Mr. Austin raised the difficulty of civilian casualties.

Mr. Austin’s recommendation comes from each successes and failures of the U.S. army, together with the hundreds of civilian deaths in American bombing campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Final yr, Mr. Austin ordered the U.S. military to strengthen its efforts to forestall civilian deaths in fight operations.

He has additionally urged Israeli leaders to prioritize efforts to get better hostages taken by the group and others on Oct. 7, sending scores of U.S. Particular Operations forces to advise Israeli planners and dispatching MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drones to fly over Gaza to seek for clues concerning the captives’ places.

Because the warfare in Gaza started, Israel has insisted that it’s attempting to restrict civilian casualties in a battle towards a terrorist group that embeds itself among the many inhabitants.

Israeli army officers scaled again their floor marketing campaign considerably. However they didn’t observe Mr. Austin’s steering on utilizing largely precision munitions accompanied by focused particular operations raids, as a substitute persevering with to bombard Gaza with unguided “dumb bombs.”

On Dec. 2, Mr. Austin turned up the stress.

“In this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population,” he said on the protection discussion board. “And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”

Practically half of the air-to-ground munitions that Israel has utilized in Gaza have been unguided, in response to a U.S. intelligence evaluation, which Pentagon officers say might assist clarify the excessive civilian dying toll. Even the precision-guided munitions that america army has favored in its campaigns in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan produced excessive civilian casualties. Unguided munitions pose a good better menace to civilians, analysts say.

The USA and Britain used dumb bombs over Dresden, Germany in 1945, killing about 25,000 folks. However “military doctrine has evolved since World War II days, and today, the preferred doctrine in highly dense urban areas is to do intelligence-led precision strikes with precision munitions, and special operations forces,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the previous chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees, mentioned in an interview.

“You have to go slower, with greater precision, and it’s going to take longer and it’s harder, but you have to do that — that’s what Austin is trying to get at,” Normal Milley mentioned. “He is a soldier. He has experience in combat operations. He understands the military instrument and how you should use it.”

Pentagon officers mentioned the warning would dominate the protection secretary’s conferences in Tel Aviv. Mr. Austin was anticipated to inform Mr. Gallant that Israel should transition to a brand new part within the battle.

In June, Mr. Austin provided recommendation that went unheeded in Ukraine’s warfare with Russia. He and different senior Pentagon officers urged their Ukrainian counterparts to concentrate forces in their counteroffensive in a single essential effort to punch by Russian strains. Whereas Ukraine may lose many troops, Mr. Austin mentioned, Ukrainian forces would stand a greater probability of reaching the ocean and breaking Russian defenses.

However as a substitute, Ukraine break up up its troops, sending some to the east, and a few to different fronts, together with within the south. The counteroffensive failed, and now U.S. and Ukrainian officers are searching for a new strategy to revive Kyiv’s fortunes.

Mr. Austin “clearly was right, from my perspective,” Adm. Mike Mullen, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees throughout the George W. Bush and the Obama administrations, mentioned in an interview.

Throughout his time as protection secretary, Mr. Austin, 70, has stored a low-key profile.

It has been greater than a yr since he appeared on the lectern on the Pentagon briefing room to deal with the information media, and he has been identified to generally keep away from reporters who journey with him abroad.

On these journeys, he prefers to dine alone in his lodge room when he doesn’t have an engagement with a overseas counterpart.

For many of his tenure, he was overshadowed by the voluble Normal Milley, whose time period as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees expired on Oct. 1. Now Mr. Austin is teamed with Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who one senior official joked could be the solely individual on the Pentagon extra restrained than Mr. Austin.

Mr. Austin’s time period has been characterised by his means to soak up a sequence of nationwide safety crises (the coronavirus pandemic, the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, Russia and Ukraine, a maintain by Senator Tommy Tuberville on tons of of army nominations). As the primary Black man to run the Pentagon, Mr. Austin has additionally confronted a stream of criticism from pro-Trump Republicans that the Pentagon he leads has change into too “woke.”

He not often defends himself towards political critics, and in reality, left it to General Milley to reply when a Republican congressman complained that the Protection Division was instructing crucial race principle.

As an alternative, behind the scenes, Mr. Austin pushed on.

When the Supreme Courtroom overturned Roe v. Wade, he put in place a coverage offering paid depart and journey reimbursement to service members needing to journey for reproductive well being care, together with abortions. He made historical past for the Marine Corps, which had by no means earlier than had a Black four-star basic, when he advisable that Mr. Biden promote Gen. Michael E. Langley to be the head of Africa Command, a four-star place.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, he shortly put collectively a contact group of protection chiefs from greater than 40 nations who meet each month to determine army help and help for Kyiv.

And when the Biden administration sought to woo the Philippines again from China’s embrace, it was Mr. Austin who delivered one thing that President Rodrigo Duterte desperately needed — Covid vaccines — in July 2021.

Mr. Austin walked into a gathering with Mr. Duterte and began chatting about how his father had served within the Philippines throughout World Battle II, aides mentioned. By the tip of the assembly, Mr. Duterte mentioned he would restore an important pact governing the presence of American troops within the Southeast Asian nation.

Now, with the Gaza disaster, Mr. Austin is attempting to carry Israel again from what the Pentagon views as the sting.

Firstly of the battle, a senior Protection Division official mentioned, the Israelis have been speaking about annihilating Hamas in a approach that Pentagon officers nervous would end in excessive civilian casualties. The official spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of she was not approved to talk publicly.

Throughout his journey to Israel in October, Mr. Austin urged army officers to decelerate. “This is a time for resolve and not revenge,” Mr. Austin mentioned at a news conference with Mr. Gallant, the Israeli protection minister, at his facet.

Mr. Austin talked concerning the battle to liberate Mosul and his experiences combating in a posh city setting, the official mentioned, including that the protection secretary spoke of Israeli forces combating the “right way.”

Extra vital, Mr. Austin is worried that Israel’s bombing marketing campaign is driving extra Palestinians towards extremism.

In delivering that message to Israeli officers this week, Mr. Austin “is talking to them not on a moral level, but on a very practical level,” Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who heads the Armed Companies Committee, mentioned in an interview. “He’s saying, ‘If you want to just lash out, well, that will buy you some time, but it won’t buy you victory.’ ”

Gen. Joseph L. Votel, who succeeded Mr. Austin at Central Command throughout the Islamic State marketing campaign, mentioned that Mr. Austin realized the significance of minimizing civilian casualties the onerous approach.

“President Karzai called us on the carpet time after time, and ultimately we had to completely change the way we were operating,” Normal Votel mentioned, referring to the previous Afghan chief, Hamid Karzai. “Ultimately we went from trying to go straight into people’s houses to going in and just surrounding them, and calling people out.”

Mr. Austin, Normal Votel mentioned, is aware of that for the I.D.F., it’s “never ever too late to change.”