Having spent his career working for the State Department both in Washington and abroad, including numerous diplomatic postings in the Middle East, Alberto Fernandez is now the president of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, a U.S. government-funded Arabic-language radio and television network. In an interview with Robert Nicholson, Fernandez discusses the moral component of American foreign policy, and how his own Roman Catholic faith has informed his work:

[America’s priority should be] our national interests in the Middle East, our relations with historical allies, and the need to confront aggressive adversaries like Russia and Iran. But our long-term interests are ultimately best served by regimes that respect human dignity and promote policies that encourage human flourishing. We tend—overwhelmingly—to have the opposite [approach] today across the region. The region desperately needs more critical thinking, more honesty and understanding of the “other” in the face of daunting political and socioeconomic challenges.

But we also have a built-in problem in foreign policy because we tend to have a short attention span, something our adversaries often do not. . . . And we have tended to cultivate the type of tools, I am thinking here of the training of personnel, that focus on the more shallow, short-term, and superficial. I remember in Sudan being the only Western chief of mission who spoke Arabic. But the Russian, Iranian, and Chinese ambassadors all spoke Arabic. . . .

All too often Westerners come to the Middle East with a built-in sense of the superiority of postmodern liberal society over a supposedly benighted and fanatical East. The reality is rather more complicated than that. [Furthermore], being a [religious] believer can and should help you understand people’s motivation, what touches their heart and spirit, what is most precious to them, more than life itself. Westerners, especially the highly secularized members of the elite who tend to staff Western foreign ministries, have sometimes forgotten, if they ever learned, that man does not live by bread alone.

This dismissal of the spiritual (or if you prefer, ideological or inner) dimension of the human condition can be worse than folly. It can be deadly. This is not to present a simplistic clichéd image of a spiritual East and material West, but the world is broader and deeper than the jaundiced view from Foggy Bottom or Brussels or the island of Manhattan.

On Tuesday, a Hizballah drone attack injured three people in northern Israel. The next day, another attack, targeting an IDF base, injured eighteen people, six of them seriously, in Arab al-Amshe, also in the north. This second attack involved the simultaneous use of drones carrying explosives and guided antitank missiles. In both cases, the defensive systems that performed so successfully last weekend failed to stop the drones and missiles. Ron Ben-Yishai has a straightforward explanation as to why: the Lebanon-backed terrorist group is getting better at evading Israel defenses. He explains the three basis systems used to pilot these unmanned aircraft, and their practical effects:

These systems allow drones to act similarly to fighter jets, using “dead zones”—areas not visible to radar or other optical detection—to approach targets. They fly low initially, then ascend just before crashing and detonating on the target. The terrain of southern Lebanon is particularly conducive to such attacks.

But this requires skills that the terror group has honed over months of fighting against Israel. The latest attacks involved a large drone capable of carrying over 50 kg (110 lbs.) of explosives. The terrorists have likely analyzed Israel’s alert and interception systems, recognizing that shooting down their drones requires early detection to allow sufficient time for launching interceptors.

The IDF tries to detect any incoming drones on its radar, as it had done prior to the war. Despite Hizballah’s learning curve, the IDF’s technological edge offers an advantage. However, the military must recognize that any measure it takes is quickly observed and analyzed, and even the most effective defenses can be incomplete. The terrain near the Lebanon-Israel border continues to pose a challenge, necessitating technological solutions and significant financial investment.