Dead letter.(diplomacy)

THE goal of U.S. diplomacy in the Israel-Lebanon conflict was always to lock in Israel's military gains. With Resolution 1701, the U.S. achieved that goal. It's just that the Israeli military gains were so ephemeral that there was little worth locking in. Israel's campaign damaged Hezbollah, but it also caused strategically counterproductive destruction in Lebanon and never succeeded in expelling Hezbollah from the south of the country. Thus the Israelis set the stage for precisely what the Bush administration wanted to avoid: a rapid return to the status quo ante.

It was the hope of Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert that U.S. diplomacy would deliver what the IDF either could not accomplish or wasn't permitted to attempt. That was always a forlorn hope, as became evident almost hours after the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1701. According to the resolution, an arms embargo is to cut Hezbollah off from resupply, though it's not clear how. The Lebanese army is to take over southern Lebanon from Hezbollah, though the Lebanese government has made it clear it will operate in the south only in conjunction with Hezbollah. A newly robust U.N. force is to back up the Lebanese army, though the French, who are supposed to lead the force, now say they will contribute only 200 combat engineers.

The reason for the near-immediate unraveling of Resolution 1701 is the inadequacy of the Israeli military campaign. In the final tussling over the resolution, Israel insisted that there be no "vacuum" between the exit of its forces and the arrival of an international force, because such a vacuum could be exploited by Hezbollah to return to the south. But since Hezbollah was never fully pushed from the area, it is still there, vacuum or not. Lebanese officials who are supposed ...