John Hillen, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, had this to say about the implications of the Israel-Hezbollah war on U.S. arms sales and on the future of armed conflict in the latest issue of Defense News:
Q: What did you learn from the Israel-Hezbollah war?
HILLEN: From a policy perspective, we have been working to bring peacekeepers to southern Lebanon. Our main focus is to train and equip the Lebanese armed forces, which ultimately is the key to success.
From a defense trade perspective, Iranian support for Hezbollah raised serious questions. So how do you craft end-user agreements and third-party transfer limits with non-state actors sworn to bad purposes?
I have pressed our allies hard to understand our concerns. We recently put off-limits the sale of lethal arms to Venezuela, given our concerns about President Hugo Chavez's intentions. We had to work very hard with allies who have seen this as a market.
Q: Hezbollah used against Israel lots of sophisticated gear, including exact copies of American TOW anti-tank missiles said to be made in Iran.
HILLEN: What happened between Hezbollah and Israel, and what is happening every day in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the future of conflict. Not many people are standing up and saying this whole insurgency thing is a fad and that in a few days we'll get back to good old state-on-state conflict. Rather, we must improve quickly.
Hillen's final statement, that this is the future of conflict, is probably dead-on. What we saw from Hezbollah was a terrorist organization operating as a state within a state that was armed as well as or superior to recognized states thanks to Syria and Iran. This has obviously thrown up many red flags in world capitals about their arms sales agreements and being able to restrict the second-hand sale of those arms. We believe that the world can go a long way towards seeing this same scenario unfold over and over again if the international community fully implements a complete arms embargo against terror groups and non-state actors as envisaged in Security Council Resolution 1701.
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