Author Archives: Martin van Creveld

New Under the Sun?

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No. I will not tell you who authored the following text, when, where and on what occasion. You will, in any case, have no trouble in finding out for yourselves.

“After all, how near one to the other is every part of the world! Modern inventors have brought into close relation widely separated peoples and made them better acquainted. Geographic and political divisions will continue to exist, but distances have been effaced. Swift ships and fast trains are becoming cosmopolitan. They invade fields which a few years ago were impenetrable. The world’s products are exchanged as never before, and with increasing transportation facilities come increasing knowledge and larger trade. Prices are fixed with mathematical precision by supply and demand. The world’s selling prices are regulated by market and crop reports. We travel greater distances in a shorter space of time and with more ease than was ever dreamed of by the fathers. Isolation is no longer possible or desirable. The same important news is read, though in different languages, the same day in all Christendom. The telegraph keeps us advised of what is occurring everywhere, and the press foreshadows, with more or less accuracy, the plans and purposes of the nations. Market prices of products and of securities are hourly known in every commercial mart, and the investments of the people extend beyond their own national boundaries into the remotest parts of the earth. Vast transactions are conducted and international exchanges are made by the tick of the cable. Every event of interest is immediately bulletined. The quick gathering and transmission of news, like rapid transit, are of recent origin, and are only made possible by the genius of the inventor and the courage of the investor. It took a special messenger of the government, with every facility known at the time for rapid travel, nineteen days to go from the city of Washington to New Orleans with a message to General Jackson that the war with England had ceased and a treaty of peace had been signed. How different now!

Annihilation of distance.

We reached General Miles in Porto Rico by cable, and he was able through the military telegraph to stop his army on the firing-line with the message that the United States and Spain had signed a protocol suspending hostilities. We knew almost instantly of the first shot fired at Santiago, and the subsequent surrender of the Spanish forces was known at Washington within less than an hour of its consummation. The first ship of Cervera‘s fleet had hardly emerged from that historic harbor when the fact was flashed to our capital, and the swift destruction that followed was announced immediately through the wonderful medium of telegraphy. So accustomed are we to safe and easy communication with distant lands that its temporary interruption even in ordinary times results in loss and inconvenience. We shall never forget the days of anxious waiting and awful suspense when no information was permitted to be sent from Peking. and the diplomatic representatives of the nations in China, cut off from all communication inside and outside of the walled capital, were surrounded by an angry and misguided mob that threatened their lives; nor the joy that thrilled the world when a single message from the government of the United States brought through our minister the first news of the safety of the besieged diplomats.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was not a mile of steam railroad on the globe. Now there are enough miles to make its circuit many times. Then there was not a line of electric telegraph; now we have a vast mileage traversing all lands and all seas. God and man have linked the nations together. No nation can longer be indifferent to any other. And as we are brought more and more in touch with each other the less occasion is there for misunderstanding, and the stronger the disposition, when we have differences, to adjust them in the court of arbitration, which is the noblest forum for the settlement of international disputes.”

Having read all this, do you still think there is anything new under the sun?

Change and Continuity (Again)

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As a few readers may recall, this is the third time I’ve addressed this topic, which has now been haunting me for several years, in this blog. Partly that is because I believe, with Nietzsche, that the fact that everyone thinks something does not prove it is true. If anything, to the contrary. And partly because, if the study of history, to which I have devoted my life, is to go beyond mere incoherent tales and be of any use at all, some things must remain the same.

What I wanted to know is this: against the background of the constant and often tumultuous change that everyone keeps talking about, is there anything that does not and will not change? Originally I hoped to write a book about that question; having already published a volume about the history of man’s attempts to see into the future, at first I thought the task would be fairly easy. Never have I been more mistaken! In the event writing the new book proved to be beyond my powers, at least for the moment. So I let it go, more or less.

Doing some shopping earlier this morning, for some mysterious reason I found myself thinking about the topic. As many others have also noted, often the best ideas seem to come out of nowhere. Especially during exercise; and especially if the exercise is neither too strenuous to allow for thought or too light to make a difference to the heart and lung system in particular. Think of James Watt who had the idea of a separate boiler, leading to the modern steam engine and thus to the industrial revolution, come to him, completely unexpected, during a Sunday walk in Edinburgh Common.

So what I am going to do today is draw up a list, however incomplete and however superficial, of some propositions that, as far as I can see, have been, are and presumably always will remain true. Such as form a sort of skeleton, or chassis, or framework, for social life to hang itself on, so to speak.  As I do so, maybe, just maybe, one thing will lead to another. Until, probably by working by fits and starts, one day I shall have something to say on the topic that is more inclusive, more solid, and more worth publishing in some other suitable format.

*

The laws of physics the laws of physics provide just what I’ve been looking for: namely, a sort of skeleton, or chassis, or framework, for social life to hang itself on. The laws of physics do not change—or else they would not be laws.

*

Emotion, Thought, Knowledge and Understanding

Just how emotion, thought, knowledge and understanding grow out of, and interact with, our biological makeup on one hand and the surrounding physical world is unknown. And unknown it will almost certainly remain until the end of time.

Now as ever, so much of our thought is governed by our cultural background on one hand and wishful thinking on the other as to make “objectivity” very difficult, often all but impossible.

Everyone believes he is the most intelligent, except for a few who agree with him (Thomas Hobbes).

The more we learn about the world, the more numerous and more difficult the questions that present themselves and demand an answer.

Obtaining a good picture of the past is hard enough; obtaining a good picture of the future, all but impossible.

Economic Life

Man does not live by bread—here broadly understood as nutrients of every kind—alone. That said, the need for bread goes a long way—though never all the way—to govern the shape and functioning of every individual and every society. And the other way around.

There never has been a human society whose members, or at any rate many of them, did not produce/work for a living.

Where an army cannot go, an ass loaded with gold will (Philip II, father of Alexander the Great).

Resources, whether in the form of nutrients, or living space, or mates, or allies, or honors, are always limited. Those who pursue them will face competition and pay a price; those who own them will have to defend them.

Prices are governed by the interaction between supply and demand.

Gresham’s law: Bad money will drive out good.

Wealth is always relative. That is why poverty will never disappear from the face of the earth.

Psychology

The essence of life (not just human life, but that is beside the point in the present context) is the quest for growth/power in its endlessly varied forms (Nietzsche). Conversely, when the quest comes to a halt death cannot be very far away.

Freud was right. Not only does the sub-consciousness really exist, but it strongly influences everything we are, think and do.

Given the right circumstances, almost any person on earth is capable of extreme tenderness and extreme cruelty. Not seldom, both.

As often as our senses tell us the truth, they deceive. Ditto, our memory.

Very often, when circumstances prevent us from venting our anger on others we will direct it at ourselves. And vice versa.

The one thing we humans cannot do is sit still and alone in a room and do nothing (Blaise Pascal).

Social Life

Everything in social life is interwoven with everything else and impacts on everything else,

Man is a social animal (said Aristotle). No man can live on his own.

Absolute freedom can only exist in a desert.

If only because they cannot cope on their own, the young are always subject to some kind of education.

No society has ever been, or ever will be, without religion, art, music, fashion, ceremonies, feast days, games, etc.

No society has ever been, nor will be, completely egalitarian in the sense that every one of its members occupies a similar position, owns the same amount of goods, is addressed in the same manner, and always treats all the rest equally.

Politics

Man is the conspiring animal (Lyndon LaRouche).

Politics is the art of the possible (Otto von Bismarck).

It is politics that determine who gets what (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin).

Any government is better than no government (Thomas Hobbes).

Telling truth to power is always difficult, often dangerous.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely (Lord Acton).

Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.

Had it been possible to open a tyrant’s soul, it would be found covered with scars.

Niccolò Machiavelli: Amidst so many who are bad, how can a good one maintain himself?

Aside: Gender and Sex

Women form half of humanity, and not the least important half.

So powerful and potentially so disruptive is the drive to mate that no society has ever existed that did not do its best to regulate it in one way or another.

Everything about women is a riddle, and the riddle has one solution: pregnancy (Nietzsche).

The relationship between the sexes is highly asymmetrical. The more manly a man, the more women will like him. The more a woman tries to become/behave like a man, the less men will like her (Jean-Jacques Rousseau).

Now as ever, women do most household work. Ditto childcare, nursing, social work, etc.

Society is run by men and strong women (Margaret Mead).

Women on average are smaller, lighter, weaker, less robust and more vulnerable than men. That is why they need the protection of men. Not only does that need go a long way to govern the relationship between men and women, but it guarantees that, in the future as in the past, women will be dependent on men. And, to some extent, subordinate to them.

A man who sacrifices himself for a woman will be admired. A man who allows a woman to sacrifice herself for him will be ridiculed, despised, or both.

A man who competes against a woman and loses, loses. A man who competes against a woman and wins, also loses.

A man’s pleasure is in a woman’s hand (Aristophanes).

Where women are respected, the gods dwell (Hindu proverb).

War

No known human society has ever been, nor ever will be, without some form of legalized group violence. Aka, war.

If you want peace, prepare for war (Roman proverb).

A centralized state is hard to conquer but easy to hold. With a decentralized one the opposite applies (Machiavelli).

Dulce bellum inexpertis (Desiderius Erasmus: sweet is war for those who have not experienced it). But don’t get me wrong: terrible as war is, and precisely for that reason, it can also provide the greatest joy there is.

War is motivated by a combination of interest—hence Clausewitz’s famous dictum—on one hand and emotion on the other. The two can, and sometimes do, pull in opposite directions.

War is a moral and physical struggle waged by means of the latter (Clausewitz again).

The essence of war is fighting around which everything else revolves. No fighting, no war.

The cardinal coordinates of war are violence, pain, danger, fatigue, uncertainty and friction.

War is a duel on an extended scale. Ancient or modern, large or small, it is governed by the rules of strategy just as many games are.

The principles of war—intelligence, deception, surprise, concentration, economy of force, and the like—are eternal. Not one of them has changed, and not one of them ever will.

The larger the distance between base and front, the more expensive and the more difficult waging war becomes.

Other things equal, the stronger form of war is the defense. Still, no war has ever been won by a pure defense.

A stream of water pouring out of a bucket will only spread for so long before coming to a halt. Similarly, attackers only have limited time at their disposal. Either they win within that time, or else they will be forced on the defense. For the defender, provided only he can hold out long enough, the opposite is the case.

A sword, plunged into salt water, will rust!

The longer a war, the less profitable it is likely to be.

Only the dead will see the end of war.

*

Given these and tens of thousands of other truths, how can anyone seriously maintain that nothing ever changes?

So Many Deflated Hopes

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As Nietzsche—my favorite philosopher—once said, history is a succession of atrocities. Overrunning the Middle East, the ancient Assyrians must have killed hundreds of thousands of people. Julius Caesar probably killed a million Gauls—one fifth of the entire population—and sold another million into slavery. Genghis Khan slaughtered millions. Taking into account sickness and famine, the Thirty Years War cost the lives of an estimated twelve million people. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars are estimated to have killed about three and a half million. All this before we get to the vast and extremely bloody upheavals China went through during the nineteenth century. Before we get to the two world wars which, between them, may have killed 60 million. And before we get to Auschwitz on one hand and Hiroshima/Nagasaki on the other.

That is not to say there have been no hopes. The Greeks and Romans had their visions of a long-past golden Age before iron weapons were invented and enabled people to slaughter each other on an unprecedented scale. Medieval Christians hoped to enter heaven when they died. Looking back on the Pax Romana—approximately 29 BCE to 200 CE—the late eighteen-century English historian Edward Gibbon considered it the happiest in the whole of history. A contemporary of the French author and pundit Francois-Marie Voltaire, the German poet Friedrich Schiller, and the equally German composer Ludwig van Beethoven, he agreed with them that national differences were being eradicated and that progress was making the world a happier place almost by the day.

Stimulated by the spread of mechanical transport, around 1870 an international pacifist movement started making its impact felt. In 1889 (the year Hitler was born, incidentally) the Austrian Baroness Bertha von Suttner published Nieder die Waffen, down with the arms, in which she denounced war and argued in favor of universal disarmament. In 1909 the British economist and writer Norman Angell published The Great Illusion, a book in which he argued that rising productivity and expanding communications were encouraging trade while driving war into obsolescence. Both authors ended by being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize: Suttner in 1911 and Angel in 1933. 1919-20 saw the establishment of the League of Nations, an organization specifically intended to ensure that the war that had just ended would also be the last one.

Probably never at any time were such hopes more intense, and shared by a greater number of people, than in the years immediately following 1989. It all started in 1945 when, following the most destructive war in history, much of the world saw itself divided between two camps: the “Western.” or free, or capitalist, one on one hand and the “Eastern,” or socialist, or communist, one on the other. Both looked at the other as the incarnation of evil. Both proclaimed themselves carriers of the one ideology that would lead mankind towards a dazzling future. While armed to the teeth, both saw themselves as “peace loving.”

For decades on end the two camps confronted one another. Doing so they fought many wars by proxy. So in Asia, so in Africa, so in the Middle East; and so, albeit on a much smaller scale, in Latin America. Taking into account such massive meat-grinders  as the Chinese Civil War (1946-49), the Korean War (1950-53), and the two Vietnam Wars (1949-1975), the number of those killed in these and other armed conflicts may well  have exceeded that of those who died in 1914-45, albeit that they were spread over forty years instead of thirty. Twice did humanity, or at any rate large parts of it, seem to stand on the verge of nuclear annihilation. Once in 1962, when the US and USSR clashed head-on over Cuba and may only have been saved by a disobedient Soviet officer. And once in 1973, when the same Powers found themselves at loggerheads over the Arab-Israeli War of that year.

Come 1989, the year of miracles. The Berlin Wall, which for decades had stood as the very symbol of the world’s partition between the two camps, came crashing down. So did the East Bloc—perhaps the one case in all of history when a major empire fell not by means of war and massive bloodshed but because almost all of its people had lost faith in it. Much of the loss of faith in question was due to the fact, which in the age of radio and television (soon to be joined by a myriad other newfangled devices) could no longer be concealed, that the East had fallen way behind. Not just in terms of affluence but in others as well; including health, education, freedom of speech and movement, the quality of the environment, and so on. Put together, they and other criteria were known as the “human development” index.

Playing the role of Norman Angell in the immediate post-Cold War period was an American political scientist, Francis Fukuyama. His 1989 article, The End of History, which was later expanded into a book, told people what millions upon millions of them wanted to believe: namely that humankind was standing on the threshold of a new epoch. One in which democracy (as defined by the West) would become the religion of almost everyone, power politics abolished, and war, if not completely disappear, at any rate confined to unimportant, relatively backward but forward-looking, regions and countries. Providing strong support for Fukuyama was another American academic, the psychologist Steven Pinker. The list of contents of his most important book, The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011) say it all.  I quote. “The Pacification Process.” “The Civilizing Process.” “The Humanitarian Revolution.” “The Long Peace,” “The New Peace.” “The Rights Revolutions.” “Better Angels.” And, most pretentious of all, “On Angels’ Wings.”

It reads like paradise, doesn’t it? Not just political and social change, but the kind of moral improvement we poor humans have always been looking for but always failed to achieve. The kind the Biblical prophets spoke about. The kind Mahatma Gandhi had in mind before he was assassinated. Alas, it was not to be. Not in much of Asia and Africa, where what we got was an exploding population that can hardly be fed, let alone provided with a decent standard of living where everyone has access to clean water. Not, in North America, greater freedom but a repressive social regime known as political correctness that, in so far as the repression comes from below rather than above, is without precedent in history. Not in the EU, where massive immigration is even now leading to an almost equally massive movement away from neighborly love towards the xenophobia of the “extremist” political right; and that, even as once lovely city centers are being converted into hotbeds of violence and crime. Not well behaved electorates casting their votes for such things as a better education for their children but, especially in Russia and several other former Soviet republics, an entire series of new bloodthirsty dictatorships taking the place of the old. Not peace among nations, but new wars—in the former Yugoslavia, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Zaire, in the Sudan, in the Middle East, to mention but a few—also taking the place of the old.

So many deflated hopes. So many broken lives.

On Happiness

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There once was a certain king who fell gravely ill and was very unhappy. So he said to his servants: I will give half my kingdom to whomever can cure me. Whereupon all the realm’s wise men gathered and conferred on how to cure the king. But none knew what to do. Until one of them, the wisest of the wise, came up with an idea: they had to search for the happiest man and, having found him, ask him to take off his shirt so the king could put it on. Thus they would cure the king and make him happy again.

The king took the wise man’s advice and sent his servants all over the realm to look for a happy man and bring him to the palace. However, the task proved anything but easy; wherever the servants went, all they found was unhappiness. Wealthy people were sick. Healthy people were poor. The few who were both rich and healthy had wives who made their lives a misery. And those who had good wives found that something was wrong with their offspring who either had accidents or disobeyed their parents. Not one man who was happy with his lot.

Enter the king’s eldest son. One evening he went for a walk and passed the shack of a poor peasant. “Thank God,” he heard a voice say. “Today I had useful work to do. Now I can go to bed with a full belly. That’s all one needs to be happy, isn’t it?”

The king’s son listened and rejoiced. Next he told his servants to knock on the door, pay the peasant anything he might ask for, and get hold of the shirt. The servants hastened to carry out the prince’s order. Only to discover that the peasant did not have a shirt.

(Following Leo Tolstoy).

Konseptsia

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As you may have guessed, konseptsia (plural, konseptsiot) is a Hebrew word we Israelis often use. It means, roughly, a system of interlocking ideas (sometimes known, in English, as “parameters”) that, taken together, form a framework for thought. Rather than try to provide a closer definition, I will provide you with three examples of past konseptsiot that have paid a critically important role in the Israel’s history and are helping shape world history right down to the present day.

Konseptsia No. 1. To say that Israel has long history of fighting many of its Arab neighbors would be an understatement. The Arab Revolt of 1936-39, the 1948 War of Independence, the 1956 Suez Campaign, and countless smaller incidents followed each other in an almost unbroken chain. Still, as of the winter of 1966-67 there seemed to be no sign of an immediate threat. At the General Staff, the Intelligence Division was inclined to attribute this to the fact that Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had sent some of his best troops to Yemen to assist rebels against the government there. As a result, it was thought, he was in no position to wage war against Israel until further notice.

So far so good. But then, all of a sudden, things began to happen. Rather than allowing events in Yemen to give up any plans for a war with Israel, Nasser, perhaps because he worried lest Israel would soon be in possession of its first nuclear warheads, decided to use the prevailing tension between Israel and Syria to withdraw his troops from Yemen. Next, on 14 May 1967, he sent 110,000 of them into the Sinai Peninsula. Not content with this, on 18 May Nasser demanded that the UN withdraw its troops which had been stationed there since 1956-7 and were meant to separate the two sides. Granted his wish, on 22 May he closed the Red Sea to Israeli shipping, thereby undoing the fruit of the 1956 Suez Campaign and effectively cutting Israel’s maritime communications with the Far East. On 30 May King Hussein of Jordan arrived in Cairo where he signed a mutual defense pact with Egypt; a few days later Iraq too joined the alliance. As Israel watched the konseptsia, which said that another war any time soon was highly unlikely, collapsed, triggering a crisis in the government and near panic among the population. In the end it was only by means of a full-scale Israeli offensive against its neighbors that the situation was saved.

Konseptsia No. 2. Following its spectacular victory of June 1967, Israel was left in possession of the Sinai Peninsula (taken from Egypt), the Golan Heights (taken from Syria) and the West Bank (taken from Jordan). Six years later, in spite of the so-called War of Attrition waged by Israel and Egypt along the Suez Canal in in 1968-70, this situation still prevailed. Central to the confidence Israel exuded during those years was the belief, firmly held by the General Staff, that neither Egypt nor Syria would dare go to war without making sure they had air superiority first. Since this kind of superiority was deemed to be beyond those countries’ reach, Israeli Intelligence considered war to be highly unlikely.

However, reality refused to agree with theory. Instead of building up their air forces to the point where they could match the Israeli one the Egyptian and Syrians armies, lavishly supported by the Soviet Union, focused on vast arrays of anti-aircraft defenses to provide them with the cover they needed. On 6 October 1973, with some 350,000 first line troops between them, they attacked. They crossed the Suez Canal and, in the north, came very close to overrunning the Golan Heights. It took the Israelis eighteen days of ferocious fighting, as well as some 3,000 casualties (KIA only), to redress the situation. Once again, the konseptsia had failed.

Konseptsia No. 3. Though they fought outnumbered two or three to one, the October 1973 War did bring out the best in Israel’s fighting forces. Still the outcome of the war in question was much less decisive than that of its 1967 predecessor. Which explains why, starting late in that year and spilling over into 1974-75, an inquiry was held to discover the origins of the intelligence failure that had caused Israel to be taken by surprise and made possible the Arab’s early victories. The investigation appears to have been thorough, leading to the dismissal of the chief of staff and the chief of intelligence. A third high ranking casualty was the commander, Southern Front. Perhaps more important in the long run, both the intelligence-gathering process and the organization responsible for obtaining and disseminating it were reformed, albeit in ways that are not always available to the public.

Fifty years passed. By late 2023 Israel had been battling terrorism, especially but not exclusively that launched from Gaza, for ages. Assuredly it was a nuisance; but one to which the Israel Defense Forces had become accustomed and with which it had learnt to live, more or less. The border was fortified—with the aid, among other things, of a one-of-its-type heavy steel, sensor-studded, partition that surrounded the Strip and prevented the construction of underground tunnels—and equipped with lookout posts positioned so as to support each other and leave no square inch of land uncovered. Fences, searchlights, killing zones, and any number of other devices combined to make crossing the border without being detected almost impossible. For months prior to 7 October intelligence, some of it electronic, some obtained with the aid of drones, and some originating in the (mostly female, incidentally) lookouts in their lightly fortified positions, showed signs that something was afoot. Including, in particular, exercises mounted by Hamas by way of rehearsing an attack. Repeatedly, warnings went up the chain of command. As repeatedly, they were pushed aside. With Hamas’s past performance in mind, neither the Intelligence Division nor Southern Command could bring themselves to think that Hamas was capable of much more than mounting a company-size raid.

*

Came 7 October, a Jewish holiday. In a replay of 1973, several key commanders were with their families, enjoying a well-deserved break from duty. Presumably that was one reason why the Israelis were slow to react, requiring hours and hours before its armored forces and air force took up the fight. What happened next has been told many times and will surely continue to be told many times in the future. Instead of coming up with a company sized attack or two, Hamas sent in the equivalent of a brigade. In its wake came a mob of less disciplined marauders who, it turns out, were responsible for many if not most the atrocities committed by Hamas on that day. Instead of operating by stealth while trying to infiltrate the defenses, they brought bulldozers to tear them down. Instead of trying to avoid the lookouts, they attacked them head-on in their bunker-like, but still all too light, fortifications. Having crossed the frontier they spread out westward. Blocking Israeli roads, shooting up Israeli traffic, overrunning some nearby Israeli settlements, disrupting a music festival held nearby, and inflicting over a thousand casualties in dead alone—the largest number, as has been pointed out, of Jews killed in a single day since the end of the Holocaust. As these lines were being written over two months later Israel, its society and its armed forces were still fighting to deal with the consequences of the attack.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that those who did not see the writing on the wall were idiots. Or that they neglected their duty, “falling asleep while on guard,” as the Hebrew phrase goes. Or that the technology deployed along the frontier was not good enough. Far from that being the case, it was some of the best and most advanced ever seen. What I am saying is something far more profound and much more important: namely that, much as people blame the konseptsia as the factor that guided and misguided Israel’s political-military thought, without some kind of konseptsia thought itself is impossible. Sticking with it may mean disaster; dismantling it risks leaving behind a jumble of incoherent, often vague and conflicting and misleading, ideas. When Clausewitz famously wrote about war, waged by fallible human beings under the most intense kind of pressure, being the province of confusion and misunderstanding he knew what he was talking about.

And so, dear readers, regardless of what technological progress, specifically including AI, may still some up with, it will remain. And not just in the military sphere either.

Disabled

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As the Israeli-Palestinian fighting in the Gaza Strip drags on and on, it is time to say a word about the human cost of war. Of all war, let me quickly add, and on both sides. To my knowledge, no one has tackled this difficult topic better than Wilfred Owen did. A British officer who fought in World War I, he was killed in action just a week before the ceasefire of 11.11.1918. He left behind the following lines:

Disabled

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,

And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,

Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park

Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,

Voices of play and pleasure after day,

Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

                *        *        *        *        *

About this time Town used to swing so gay

When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees, 

And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,—

In the old times, before he threw away his knees.

Now he will never feel again how slim

Girls’ waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,

All of them touch him like some queer disease.

               *        *        *        *        *

There was an artist silly for his face,

For it was younger than his youth, last year.

Now, he is old; his back will never brace;

He’s lost his colour very far from here,

Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,

And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race 

And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.

                  *        *        *        *        *

One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg,

After the matches carried shoulder-high.

It was after football, when he’d drunk a peg,

He thought he’d better join. He wonders why.

Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts.

That’s why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,

Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts,

He asked to join. He didn’t have to beg;

Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years.

Germans he scarcely thought of, all their guilt,

And Austria’s, did not move him. And no fears

Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts

For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;

And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;

Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.

And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.

                  *        *        *        *        *

Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.

Only a solemn man who brought him fruits

Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.

                  *        *        *        *        *

Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes,

And do what things the rules consider wise,

And take whatever pity they may dole.

Tonight he noticed how the women’s eyes

Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.

How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come

And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?

Old Man, What Next?

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Maath, the Egyptian goddess of Justice

As those who read my autobiography, History and Me, know, I first discovered history in 1956 when I was ten years old. Rummaging in a sack full of books that my parents had put away in a storeroom that served all the neighbors in our building, I came across a volume entitled, Wereld Geschiedenis in een Notedop (Dutch: World History in a Nutshell). Probably published around 1932, it was meant for children about my age and was full of interesting stories as well as illustrations. To provide just two examples, there was the story of France’s Louis XIV. So conceited was he that he maintained a special claque to laugh at his jokes as he told them. And there was a black and white drawing of a monk, Berthold Schwarz, who had invented gunpowder and had his cap blown off for his pains. Almost there and then I decided I wanted to know more. In other words, become a historian; even though I had no idea of what historians actually did.

Ten or so years later I was a student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem with history as my most important subject (the other was English, but that is a different story). Working under the supervision of teachers like Prof. Shlomo Avineri, a famous political scientist who, aged 100, left us just a few days ago. An expert on Hegel and Marx, Avineri drew our attention to the fact that there is more—much more—to history than simple stories, good or bad, entertaining or otherwise. The shift was gradual and never quite complete. Going on 78 as I do I still like stories: whether by way of illustrating an argument or simply because they are entertaining.

As time went on I came to look at the matter in a different way. History, Hegel and Marx taught, was not just a question of joining stories like beads on a string—once upon a time there was such and such a person or persons who did such and such things. It was, rather, a vast tapestry which, as it was being unrolled, brought to light, in the form of the patterns woven into it, not just events but the laws that governed them. To be sure, the laws in question were not as rigid as those governing the natural sciences. Still they were real enough. Going along with them brought success; trying to resist them, the opposite. Given hard work, lots of patience, and, on occasion, a touch of genius, they could be discovered, observed in action, understood, and, to some extent, used to look into the future. As it happened, rerum cognorscere causas—to know the causes of things—was the motto of the London School of Economics where I later wrote my dissertation.

The cardinal pillar in all this was truth. Absolute or fuzzy, to be of any use the laws that governed the course of history had to be based on truth. Veritas liberabit vos, truth will set you free (St. John). Sine ira et studio, without anger and without flattery (Tacitus) Wie es eigentlich gewesen [ist], as things really happened (Leopold von Ranke). Truthfulness was the cardinal quality by which history, here understood not as the past itself but as the record of the past, was judged. Much more important than style, or poignancy, or entertainment value, and serving as the granite foundation on which everything else was, or ought to be, built.

The theory, or perhaps it was merely an approach, served me well. Partly because I firmly believed it was the only correct one. And partly because it fitted marvelously well into my chosen field of study, i.e military history. In my experience soldiers, kept busy by their superiors, rarely have much use for military history. If they study it, then that is mainly because they are made to—at military academy, at a staff college, and at a war college. However, ignoring the warnings of commanders such as Napoleon and Moltke, and except when it comes to all kinds of odd traditions, few of them really take it to heart. To the extent that they do so they tend to focus on recent history, often the more recent the better. In a fast-changing world where new technologies and techniques succeed each other at breakneck speed, why waste time on a Caesar, or a Napoleon, or even a Pershing? By following the path I did, I made military history relevant for my students and my readers. As one of the former, an American major, wrote, my course just grew on him. The fact that I often used anecdotes to illustrate what I was saying helped.

So things remained for about four decades. Hard-working decades, decades during which I was able to learn a great deal and visit a great many people, universities, militaries and countries, opportunities for which I have always remained grateful. Still the point came when I began to have my doubts. The key development that triggered off everything else, albeit that I got to it much later than many others, was my encounter with the work of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. To put it in a nutshell, he taught that texts—old texts, new texts, and future texts as far as the eye can see—say not just what they say but whatever the reader, on the basis of his/her interests and his/her personality and will, chooses to put into them. Truth, the one thing I had been looking for throughout my professional life, did not exist. Instead there were as many truths as there were readers. Some interesting, others not. Some well written, others not. But none superior to any of the rest.

This was the opposite of what I had always believed. To make things even worse, Derrida and his countless followers effectively obliterated the distinction between history and literature/fiction. Do not misunderstand me: I have always liked reading fiction, as I still do. It can inspire, it can entertain, it can teach. Provided it clearly defines itself and does not deliberately try to mislead and pretend to be something it isn’t, fiction is no less valuable than any other form of intellectual endeavor, including not just history but the hard sciences too. But to present things that did not happen as if they did—no.

Marching hand in hand with deconstructionism, or postmodernism, or whatever people called it, came the revolution in electronic communications. Instead of a handful of TV stations, there were suddenly hundreds if not thousands to choose from. Instead of focusing on relatively nearby events that were most likely to affect the viewer, they connected each of their users with the furthest corners on earth. To say nothing about the social media, which made it possible for anyone to spew his/her own truth, as well as computers which enabled that truth to be stored and transmitted and brought to life on some kind of screen. And altered and manipulated, of course: when Goebbels claimed that “pictures do not lie,” that itself was the greatest lie of all.

Worse still, many of these things themselves are done in the name of truth. Whether or not that was the case, truth was stifled, drowned, and overwhelmed until it expired by a thousand cuts. To the point where, among the young in particular, many simply gave up. This left me hanging between two cliffs. On one side was the kind of history I had admired, studied and done my best to write during most of my life. On the other, my belief in the factor that used to both justify and underpin this kind of history, namely truth. That belief has now been shattered. Not only because, compared to the vast number of questions that remain to be studied and answered, my efforts had been puny—of course they had been. But because truth does not exist in the first place.

Old man, what next?

Not for the IDF Alone

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Ever since the first day of the current Israeli-Palestinian war on 7 October 2023, Israel’s media have been bristling with stories about heroic Israeli (not Palestinian, needless to say) women. How they received their mobilization orders just as men did. How they took their leave of home and hearth (including, in some cases, their children) just as men did. How they donned uniform, took up their weapons, and went out to fight just as men did. How some of them were killed just as men were. Here I want to say, loud and clear: almost all of it is nonsense. Nonsense in tomato juice, as we Israelis like to say. Nonsense of the kind that, in the long run, will do the IDF incalculable harm.

First, the nonsense. As of the time I am writing this at the end of November 2023, Israel’s mobilized armed forces number about 550,000 uniformed personnel, up from 180,000 in “ordinary” times. Of the latter figure between 25 and 30 percent are women. How many women have been called up and are currently on active service the IDF does not say. However, its official casualty list (in Hebrew) is available here. It shows that, as of 21 November, 392 IDF soldiers had lost their lives. Of those 40, or one in eight, were female.

At first sight one in eight does not appear totally unreasonable, given that most of the troops on active service are reservists and that far fewer female reservists than male ones were called up. However, pay attention to the following. The male casualties on the list are distributed over a period of 35 days. Not so the female ones, all but one of whom lost their lives during the first day of the war. Poor girls; serving as outlooks, insufficiently trained in the use of the infantry weapons with which they had been issued, unsupported either on the ground or from the air, they were in no position either to escape or to fight off Hamas’ surprise attack. Expiring as Odysseus’ maids did (Odyssey XXII 468-73):

[Like birds], with nooses around their necks

that they might die most piteously.

And they writhed a little while with their feet

but not for long.

Shame on you, IDF, for allowing such things to happen. And shame on you, penis-envy driven feminist fiends, for misleading your credulous women followers and pushing them in that direction! The much lower number killed since then suggests that, whatever female soldiers may have been doing from 8 October on, they hardly took part in any serious fighting. Case closed.

Second, the long term harm. It is a truism, observable throughout history and in practically every human field, institution or organization, that wherever women make their entry men leave. So in the case of cashiers, so in that of pharmacists, and so in that of psychologists among many others. In part they do so by default: no two persons can occupy a chair designed for one. But there is more to it than that. To quote Frederick the Great, a commander who knew a thing or two about fighting spirit, the one thing that can make men march into the muzzles of the cannons trained at them is honor. Specifically, I add, male honor, the kind more or less reserved for men that makes them attractive for women. Conversely, for a man to do a woman’s work is not an honor. It is humiliation. Think of Heracles who, at one point in his career, was punished by being made to dress as a woman and acting as a handmaid to the mythical Queen Omphale. Omphale, incidentally, reads like the female form of “navel,” but I’ll let that pass.

A man who competes with (or fights against) a woman and loses, loses. A man who competes with (or fights against) a woman and wins also loses; killing a woman may be profitable, but it is rarely considered honorable. Finding themselves in a lose/lose situation, no wonder many men prefer to withdraw. Supposing only the process goes on long enough, the military will end up by being left with hardly any men worthy of the name at all.

Nor does this warning refer to the IDF alone.

Lest the Pattern be Repeated

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To anyone who has been following the conflict in Gaza so far, the gap between the opposing forces is astonishing. So much so, indeed, that almost the only way to describe it is by using superlatives. On one hand we see what can only be described as a juggernaut. One armed with the most modern, most powerful weapons and weapon systems in the world today; including artillery barrels, armored personnel carriers, and tanks (the latest Israeli tank, known as Merkava IV, is literally the heaviest, best-protected, in the world today); and covered from the air by what is widely believed to be the best air force in the world today. All defended from above by the most advanced anti-missile systems in the world today; all preceded by huge bulldozers fully capable of reducing anything in front of them to rubble; and all linked by inconceivably complicated, if largely hidden, networks of computers and communications produced by one of the digitally most advanced societies in the world today.

Now look at the other side. Men (not women, incidentally), many of them dressed not in uniform but in ordinary civilian clothes. Some wear steel helmets, but most do not. Some drive vehicles such as the famed Toyota Highlanders, but most must go on foot; given the extent of Israel’s technological and numerical superiority, as well as its command of the air, catching a ride in Gaza is bad for one’s health and can easily become deadly. Small crews of missile-launchers apart, very few Hamasniks—that is what Israelis call them—possess heavy weapons of any kind. The weapons they do possess consist mainly of assault rifles, hand grenades, anti-tank rockets and missiles, mines, and booby traps.

Nor is it a question of technological superiority alone. On one hand there stands a regular, well organized and well trained army counting almost 600,000 mobilized men and women; on the other, a semi-clandestine organization numbering, as far as anyone can make out, a few tens of thousands fighters. On one hand a state which, though small in size, surrounds its enemy on three sides. On the other, a heavily populated piece of land just 41 kilometers long and nowhere more than 12 kilometers wide—a distance that, given a little determination and a little drive, can easily be covered in half an hour.

To repeat, the gap between the opposing forces, the result of years of work during which each side prepared as best he could, can only be called astonishing. Such being the case, how to explain the fact that, after more than a month of ferocious fighting, the side with all the advantages had still not managed to decisively defeat the other?

Follows a very short review of some of the factors involved:

Surprise. Surprise, by confusing the opponent and degrading his ability to react, has always played a prominent part in war. Never more so than in this case when even Israel’s vaunted air force taken unawares, needed hours and hours before it finally got its aircraft to the point where they started fighting back. Indeed it could be argued that, by sounding the alarm and alerting all sides to the dangers that the Israeli-Palestinian impasse poses to world peace, Hamas’ offensive had achieved its main objective almost as soon as it got under way.

War on several fronts. Throughout the month-long war, in- and out of Israel, both participants and observers have focused their attention almost exclusively on the Gaza Strip. That is understandable, but it does not change the fact that Israel was fighting on several fronts. Including its border with Lebanon, and including some Houthi missiles coming from as far as Yemen a thousand or so miles to the south. Other IDF forces had to be kept in readiness lest the Palestinians in the West Bank—to the extent that they were able—as well as Syria, Jordan, and Iran join in the battle. Now Israel, owing to its small size, has always been lacking in strategic depth; like Germany (West) during the Cold War, but to a much greater degree, it simply does not have territory it can afford to give up. Willy nilly a cardinal principle of war, namely the concentration of forces, had to be violated.

Urban warfare. The Gaza strip is home to an estimated 2,300,000 people—in truth, no one knows. It is one of the most heavily urbanized regions on earth, second only to places such as Hong Kong and Singapore. As the recent months-long battle for Bakhmut, in Ukraine, has shown once again, urban terrain presents the defender with many advantages. Including the ability to fight not in two dimensions but in three—witness the 300-mile long network of underground corridors Hamas has constructed. And including also the practically unlimited opportunity to find cover. Conversely, the maze of streets and alleys limits the attacker’s ability to maneuver as well as bring up supplies and reinforcements on one hand and evacuate his wounded on the other. Fought at extremely close range among every kind of obstacle, such warfare can also rob an attacker of at least some of any technological advantages he may possess.

The war’s asymmetric character. Here is a story told of American Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara early in the Vietnam War. Asked why the US Air Force did not knock out North Vietnam’s electricity network, he explained that the entire network in question was smaller than that of Alexandria, VA, a suburb of Washington, DC. As such it had been knocked out several times already, to no visible effect either on urban terrorism or on guerrilla operations in the countryside. Ere the current war got under way Gaza’s per capita GDP only amounted to just 7 percent of that of Israel.  Calculated in terms of per capita consumption of electricity, the difference is larger still. In other words, the reason why the Palestinians, like so many others before them since at least 1945, are able to hold out and even emerge victorious is because they have nothing to lose.

The need to minimize casualties. Taking 1948 as the starting point Israel’s Jewish population has grown tenfold, far more than that of any other developed country. Still it is a small and intimate society; as anyone who visits these days will soon notice, people are extremely reluctant to suffering casualties.

Finally, international pressure. Strangely enough, Israel is the world’s only country that is not permitted to win its wars. Time upon time—in 1948 (the war of independence), in 1956 (the Suez campaign), in 1967 (when the US prohibited it from crossing the Jordan River to the east) and in 1973 (when it had to ab abandon its hold on the encircled Egyptian Third Army as well as some of the land it had conquered) international pressure forced it to relinquish some of the fruits of its victories. With the exception of the 1973 War, which later led to peace with Egypt, in each case the outcome was to enable Israel’s enemies to rearm and steer their way to another war.

In seeking a way to finally put an end to the conflict, let the world take care lest the pattern be repeated.

He Knew What He Was Talking About

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From the media:

“The European continent is in danger if Israel fails in its war against Iran and its proxies, including Hamas,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Monday, as he attempted to place the Gaza war within the global context of the battle for Western civilization. “What we see is a broader battle between civilization and barbarism,” Netanyahu told a group of 80 foreign envoys as he continued his stiff diplomatic battle for international backing for the IDF’s military campaign in Gaza to oust Hamas. Netanyahu has been under international pressure to allow for some form of a humanitarian pause in the fighting to allow for increased aid to reach Gaza through the Egyptian crossing at Rafah.”

Whether or not he was aware of the fact, Netanyahu, in taking this line, has at least one predecessor who was much more illustrious than he. Guess who wrote the following lines, when, and against what background: 

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”

As recent events seem to show, science may no longer be enough. To save the West, more may be required. At the time he wrote the above in 1899 the author, a British subaltern, was 25 years old. He also worked as a journalist in the hope of making a name for himself. Assisted by his socialite mother who was said to have used her charms to help him along, he hopped from one colonial campaign to the next, greatly enjoying himself all the while. Twice he fought against Islam. First in the border area between what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan, then in the Sudan where he witnessed the tribesmen’s fanatical courage in front of the newly introduced Maxim guns. Each time the outcome was a book as well as a series of lectures illustrated by magic lantern and delivered throughout Britain.

His name was Winston Churchill, and he knew what he was talking about.