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With the failure of the United States and Israel to achieve decisive victories in Iraq and Lebanon, the age of Western military dominance in the Middle East appears to be ending. It's time for a new strategy.

EVER SINCE BRITAIN AND FRANCE overthrew Ottoman rule in World War I to create the modern Middle East, Western nations have relied on unquestioned military superiority to secure their position in the region. Between the world wars, European imperialists ruthlessly employed firepower to crush nationalist uprisings. After World War II, as the United States supplanted Europe, American military power underwrote the oil-for-protection bargain forged with Saudi Arabia and eventually made Washington the ultimate guarantor of regional stability. When Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had the temerity to challenge American primacy in 1990, the outcome served only to affirm US military preeminence.

Meanwhile, Israel was subjecting its Arab neighbors to recurring military humiliations. The Israel Defense Forces improvised in 1948 became by the 1960s a seemingly invincible army. That Israel was itself a Western implant and that it relied increasingly on weapons with a ``Made in the USA" label seemed further proof of Western military superiority.

Not that Arabs had hesitated to contest that superiority. Beginning with Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and ending with Saddam Hussein, a series of Arab strongmen attempted to beat the West at its own game. They acquired massive fleets of armored vehicles, heavy artillery, jet fighters, and missiles, calculating that with a large enough arsenal they could overcome the West's advantage. Although the Egyptian army came close to defeating Israel in October 1973, this approach never worked -- Arab tanks and fighter-bombers tended to end up as smoking heaps of twisted metal.

Today the tables are turning. Despite a massive American and Israeli technological edge, including nuclear arsenals, mounting evidence suggests that the age of Western military ascendancy is coming to an end. Muslim radicals have evolved an Islamist way of war that is as complex as it is cunning. As a consequence, in and around the Persian Gulf the military balance is shifting. The failures suffered by the United States in Iraq and by Israel in southern Lebanon may well signify a turning point in modern military history, comparable in significance to the development of blitzkrieg in the 1930s or of the atomic bomb a decade later. Although the full implications of this shift are not clear, they promise to be huge, calling into question basic strategic assumptions that have held sway in the United States and Israel.

In Washington and Jerusalem alike, officials and commentators classify the activities of diverse groups like Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iraq's Sunni insurgents as ``terrorism." That label sells our adversaries short. Resistance, the term that these groups favor to describe their actions, is more accurate. Although the methods employed by radical Islamists include terrorism -- that is, violence directed against civilians for purposes of intimidation -- they do not rely on terrorism alone.

We should take care to avoid exaggerating what this strategy can accomplish. For the moment at least, the Islamist way of war does not pose an existential threat. Hamas and Hezbollah are not going to overrun the IDF and occupy Jerusalem anytime soon. As long as the United States remains vigilant in guarding its borders, the Islamist ability to penetrate North America will remain minimal.

What the Islamist way of war does represent, however, is the ability to prevent conventional armies from achieving decisive results. Resistance is a strategy not of conquest but of denial. Wars undertaken with the expectation that they will be short and conclusive -- on the model of the Six Day War or Operation Desert Storm -- instead become open-ended and inchoate. Politically, the Islamist way of war is demonstrating that the West can no longer impose its will on the Middle East.

The inhabitants of that region now have options other than submission or collaboration. Both the United States and Israel must grapple with the implications of this fact. Predictably, the initial reaction of both is to look for ways of tipping the military balance back in the other direction.

Hoping to turn things around in Iraq, the Pentagon is presently engaged in a furious effort to resurrect and relearn the lessons of Vietnam. Once discredited counterinsurgency doctrines have suddenly returned to favor. The warriors of the US Army and Marine Corps are again contending for "hearts and minds." For its part, Israel, determined not to repeat the mistakes that marred its encounter with Hezbollah, is launching a top-to-bottom examination of that conflict. Some politicians and generals will probably lose their jobs, clearing the way for other politicians and generals to reform the way that the IDF trains, operates, and equips itself.

However worthy, these efforts will prove to be beside the point strategically. The truth is that, for reasons that go far beyond questions of technique or tactics, history shows that countries like the United States and Israel just don't do protracted unconventional war especially well. It requires patience, self-restraint, bureaucratic agility -- qualities not found in abundance in modern liberal democracies. In a strictly military sense, we're about as likely to beat the Islamists at their game as Nasser or Saddam Hussein were to beat us at ours.

For both the United States and Israel, the real issue is not how to defeat the Islamist way of war but how to circumvent it, rendering it irrelevant. This implies resetting the terms of the competition.

Some argue that the way to accomplish this is through escalation, enlarging and recasting the fight in hope of making it ``our kind of war." Here lies the appeal of attacking Iran. As advocated by some American and Israeli hawks, such a confrontation would play to our strengths and negate the enemy's. High-tech air forces with precision munitions would render resistance of the sort encountered in southern Lebanon or Iraq's Anbar Province moot. A quick win over Tehran would restore both the perception and the reality of Western military dominance and pay large political dividends.

That such expectations reflect the same sort of naÔve optimism heard prior to the US invasion of Iraq goes without saying. In 2003 the hawks predicted that the march to Baghdad would be a cakewalk; in 2006, they make similar predictions regarding a war with Iran.

A second approach to circumventing the Islamist resistance, premised on a more sober appreciation of war's efficacy, begins with admitting the possibility that the problem posed by radical Islamists has no military solution.

Over the past five years, the quasi-permanent ``war on terror," as conceived by the Bush administration and generally endorsed by the government of Israel, has enjoyed a fair trial. During that period, it has bred widespread anti-Americanism, generated sympathy for the Islamist cause, and provided ``the terrorists" with a ready supply of recruits. To continue down this path will only produce more of the same.

Second, revive in modified form the Cold War principles of containment and deterrence, incorporating explicit security guarantees for Israel, much as the United States has long guaranteed the security of Europe, Japan, and South Korea.

Third, initiate a new Manhattan Project to develop alternative sources of energy, thereby increasing US freedom of action and reducing the flow of wealth to the Persian Gulf, wealth that ends up subsidizing the Islamist cause.

Fifth, patiently nurture liberalizing tendencies within the Islamic world, not by preaching or threats of regime change, but by demonstrating at home and inviting Muslims abroad to witness, the manifest advantages of freedom and democracy.

This alternative strategy will also entail costly exertions over a long period of time. Unlike the current ``war on terror," however, it promises to be affordable and sustainable, while holding out the prospect of delivering success in the long run.

For Israel, the risks posed by such a shift in strategy are considerable and very much at odds with the self-reliant strategic traditions of the Jewish state. A US strategy of containment places Israelis in the position in which West Berliners found themselves throughout the Cold War: a democratic island in a hostile sea, their survival dependent on the good faith of the United States. An Israeli government might well judge those risks unacceptable. Rather than relying on Washington, it may count instead on the IDF to hold the Islamists at bay.

What makes sense for the United States does not necessarily make sense for Israel. Israel must do whatever best serves its own interests; so, too, must the United States. We are two nations. Our circumstances differ. At some point Israeli policies and US policies for dealing with the Islamist threat may diverge. This pivotal juncture in modern military history may bring us to that moment.

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His most recent book, ``The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War" (Oxford), has just come out in paperback

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