After three years as President Biden’s quiet man on the Pentagon, Protection Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III stepped off his aircraft 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 harassed each the Biden administration’s assist for Israel and considerations in regards to the rising Palestinian dying toll.
However his message has develop into extra blunt: Israel, Mr. Austin lately predicted, might face “strategic defeat” that would go away 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 outstanding function and in addition revealing extra of himself.
“You realize, I discovered a factor or two about city warfare from my time preventing in Iraq and main the marketing campaign to defeat ISIS,” he mentioned in a speech on the Reagan Nationwide Protection Discussion board earlier this month. “The lesson shouldn’t be that you would be able to win in city warfare by defending civilians. The lesson is that you would be able to solely win in city warfare by defending 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, advised CNN’s “State of the Union” that Mr. Austin was “naïve,” including “I’ve simply misplaced all confidence on this man.”
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 stage of civilian killing and destruction, and the fad it generates, ensures militant recruitment and assist for resistance amongst future generations, each in Palestine and past,” mentioned Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator who’s now the president of the U.S./Center East Challenge. “That’s an issue for each 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 big variety of troops they’d assembled on the border of Gaza, mixed with the air marketing campaign, was extreme.
Israel wanted to determine humanitarian corridors and an outlined algorithm to guard Palestinian civilians, he advised 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 rapidly on intelligence leads in regards to the location of senior Hamas leaders.
At some point 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 1000’s of civilian deaths in American bombing campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Final yr, Mr. Austin ordered the U.S. army to strengthen its efforts to forestall civilian deaths in fight operations.
He has additionally urged Israeli leaders to prioritize efforts to recuperate 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 in regards to the captives’ places.
Because the warfare in Gaza started, Israel has insisted that it’s making an attempt to restrict civilian casualties in a battle in opposition to a terrorist group that embeds itself among the many inhabitants.
Israeli army officers scaled again their floor marketing campaign considerably. However they didn’t comply with Mr. Austin’s steering on utilizing principally 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 strain.
“In this sort of a struggle, the middle of gravity is the civilian inhabitants,” he mentioned on the protection discussion board. “And in case you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you change a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”
Almost 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 could assist clarify the excessive civilian dying toll. Even the precision-guided munitions that the US army has favored in its campaigns in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan produced excessive civilian casualties. Unguided munitions pose an excellent better menace to civilians, analysts say.
America and Britain used dumb bombs over Dresden, Germany in 1945, killing about 25,000 individuals. However “army doctrine has developed since World Warfare II days, and at this time, the popular doctrine in extremely dense city areas is to do intelligence-led precision strikes with precision munitions, and particular operations forces,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the previous chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Workers, mentioned in an interview.
“It’s a must to go slower, with better precision, and it’s going to take longer and it’s tougher, however it’s important to do this — that’s what Austin is making an attempt to get at,” Basic Milley mentioned. “He’s a soldier. He has expertise in fight operations. He understands the army instrument and the way it is best to use it.”
Chatting with reporters on Monday after conferences in Tel Aviv, Mr. Austin mentioned that U.S. assist for Israel was “unshakable” and that the nation “has each proper to defend itself.”
He added, “As I’ve mentioned, defending Palestinian civilians in Gaza is each an ethical responsibility and a strategic crucial.”
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 pay attention forces of their counteroffensive in a single essential effort to punch via Russian traces. Whereas Ukraine might lose many troops, Mr. Austin mentioned, Ukrainian forces would stand a greater likelihood of reaching the ocean and breaking Russian defenses.
However as a substitute, Ukraine cut 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 trying to find a brand new technique to revive Kyiv’s fortunes.
Mr. Austin “clearly was proper, from my perspective,” Adm. Mike Mullen, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Workers in the course of the George W. Bush and the Obama administrations, mentioned in an interview.
Throughout his time as protection secretary, Mr. Austin, 70, has saved 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 recognized to typically 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 international counterpart.
For many of his tenure, he was overshadowed by the voluble Basic Milley, whose time period as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Workers expired on Oct. 1. Now Mr. Austin is teamed with Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who one senior official joked will be the solely particular person on the Pentagon extra restrained than Mr. Austin.
Mr. Austin’s time period has been characterised by his potential to soak up a collection of nationwide safety crises (the coronavirus pandemic, the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, Russia and Ukraine, a maintain by Senator Tommy Tuberville on a whole bunch 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 develop into too “woke.”
He hardly ever defends himself in opposition to political critics, and in reality, left it to Basic Milley to reply when a Republican congressman complained that the Protection Division was educating important race idea.
As a substitute, behind the scenes, Mr. Austin pushed on.
When the Supreme Court docket 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 really useful that Mr. Biden promote Gen. Michael E. Langley to be the top of Africa Command, a four-star place.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, he rapidly put collectively a contact group of protection chiefs from greater than 40 international locations who meet each month to determine army assist and assist 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 wished — 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 Warfare II, aides mentioned. By the top 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 making an attempt to carry Israel again from what the Pentagon views as the sting.
In the beginning of the battle, a senior Protection Division official mentioned, the Israelis have been speaking about annihilating Hamas in a means that Pentagon officers frightened would end in excessive civilian casualties. The official spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of she was not licensed to talk publicly.
Throughout his journey to Israel in October, Mr. Austin urged army officers to decelerate. “This can be a time for resolve and never revenge,” Mr. Austin mentioned at a information convention with Mr. Gallant, the Israeli protection minister, at his facet.
Mr. Austin talked in regards to the battle to liberate Mosul and his experiences preventing in a fancy city setting, the official mentioned, including that the protection secretary spoke of Israeli forces preventing the “proper means.”
Extra necessary, 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 speaking to them not on an ethical stage, however on a really sensible stage,” Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who heads the Armed Providers Committee, mentioned in an interview. “He’s saying, ‘If you wish to simply lash out, effectively, that can purchase you a while, but it surely gained’t purchase you victory.’ ”
Gen. Joseph L. Votel, who succeeded Mr. Austin at Central Command in the course of the Islamic State marketing campaign, mentioned that Mr. Austin discovered the significance of minimizing civilian casualties the exhausting means.
“President Karzai referred to as us on the carpet time after time, and in the end we needed to fully change the way in which we have been working,” Basic Votel mentioned, referring to the previous Afghan chief, Hamid Karzai. “Finally we went from making an attempt to go straight into individuals’s homes to stepping into and simply surrounding them, and calling individuals out.”
Mr. Austin, Basic Votel mentioned, is aware of that for the I.D.F., it’s “by no means ever too late to vary.”
