Op-Ed: Santa comes to Lebanon, with US tanks and Russian MIG 29s

This has caused some bafflement in the Middle East. The gifts are as unalike as the motives attributed to them: The M60s are old tanks, a great improvement on the Lebanese army’s featherweight armored capacity. They barely qualify as main battle tanks these days, but in view of recent problems with Hezbollah militants, in which the Lebanese forces were too under gunned to fight effectively, useful. The M60s, which are nowhere near Israeli Merkava 2-4 class tanks in combat capabilities, won’t upset any of the neighbors. The MIG 29s, however, could get on people’s nerves, even if there’s only 10 of them. These are modern front line aircraft, a rough equivalent or slightly better than the current F18 upgrades. They’re considered to be excellent air superiority planes by just about everyone. Even 10 of them would be a problem for most of the regional air forces, and they could control Lebanese airspace quite effectively, unless overwhelmed by numbers. Space War.com explains the various opinions of the Russian offer:

While this unexpected gift from Moscow is indeed a nice gesture from the Russians and will be greatly appreciated by the Lebanese (or at least some of them), as is the more recent announcement by the U.S. State Department that it would be sending the Lebanese M-60 battle tanks, the question begs to be asked: Why the Russians are doing this? How will 10 jet fighters advance Lebanon's security? A mere 10 MiGs certainly will not suffice to defend the Lebanese borders against the country's two far more powerful neighbors: Syria to the north and east, and Israel to the south.

"What is puzzling me," an official in the Christian Lebanese Forces told this reporter, "is the MIG 29s (the Russians are giving) to the Lebanese air force. Is it a message to the U.S. that 'we're back'?" The official went on to say that while the MiG-29 is a "good one," coming into possession of 10 planes "is too little to scare anybody, though, and no mention of the weaponry that will come with it," he said.

Actually you can’t just give people dozens of modern fighters, because there’s a huge infrastructure required to service them, and Lebanon doesn’t have anything of the kind. Ten, they can work with. What they can do is deal with anything in their airspace short of a war with the neighbors, and provide modern quality air support. This would be a fairly effective warning to any internal elements intending to get unduly cute, or cute on a scale of major unappreciated cuteness. They can also operate as a functional training cadre. You can’t even sit in modern fighters without training, and in about 5 years, Lebanon could well have a respectable core unit of about 50 trained pilots. If that translates into 50 upgraded MIG 29s, different ball game. Meaning the Russians have trumped the American gift. As a policy move, this is pretty much in line with Russia’s Putinized initiative-taking movements, and it will earn them Brownie points in the region as good business sense with a good product. It is possible, as the article suggests, that both the US and Russia are aware of Lebanon’s military situation, but the opportunity to score points off the US is rarely missed by the Russians.