Tag Archives: war

The Outlook? More of the Same

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The formula is familiar. On one hand, there is some of the world’s greatest armed forces. Raised, maintained and paid for by the state, which means that they can operate in the open without any need to conceal what they are doing. Commanded by men—yes, nowadays, a few women too—with dozens of years’ experience during which they attended every kind of military and civilian academy, course, staff college, war college, super-war college, one can think of. Armed to the teeth with the most modern available weapons including, in many cases, warships, submarines, bombers, fighter bombers, ballistic missiles, anti-ballistic missile missiles, cruise missiles, and drones of every size and kind. And including, in many cases, nuclear arsenals which, had they been put to use, are fully capable of wiping out entire countries almost within the twinkling of an eye.

On the other side, groups made up of rebels, terrorists, guerrillas, insurgents, or whatever they may be called. Without exception, they started from nothing at all. Just a few men and women getting together in some room and swearing not to cease struggling until they achieve their aim. Operating underground against the state, either their own or a foreign one, they have great difficulty in obtaining bases, weapons and equipment, training, refuge, medical care, briefly everything an armed force needs. Initially they are very poor—to the point that, starting operations in Rhodesia during the mid-1960s, some of the groups involved were unable to pay their telephone bills. One even contacted the Israeli embassy in London, asking for help! No wonder some of them, including the Jewish ones that fought the British in Palestine before 1948, resorted to robbing banks.

Yet somehow the terrorists very often manage to win. In fact, taking the post-1945 period as a whole, it would be hard to find even a single case when a modern, especially but not exclusively Western, armed force did not end up by losing the struggle. Excuses there have been galore, but this does not change the situation on the ground. Or the fact that some of the greatest and most powerful empires in the world have been humiliated, defeated, beaten.

The latest episode of this kind, so typical of the contemporary world, unfolded last week in an around the Gaza Strip. On one hand, there is the Israeli Defense Force. One of the most powerful in the world, fully at the disposal of a democratically-elected government, able to make use of conscription, tightly organized, and armed to the teeth with a variety of modern weapons, many of them so advanced that they have turned into export hits. Plus, it is a force which, unlike so many others before it—just think of the Americans in Vietnam Afghanistan, and Iraq—is not obliged to operate far from home at the end of a long and impossibly expensive logistic lifeline. A force which, thanks to the vast array of intelligence-gathering people and instruments at its disposal, knows the terrain almost as well as its enemy, operating on home territory, does.

The enemy, Hamas, was established in 1987 by just two men, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al Rantissi. Both are long dead, sent to the delights of paradise by the kind of precision strikes that are the specialty of the IDF and the IAF in particular. It is a multifaceted organization; including a religious core, a political arm, a military arm, and various sub-groups that engage in charity. It also has a financial wing which is responsible for obtaining funds from Palestinians as well as several Arab and pro-Arab governments around the world.

Some males could not gain or maintain erections during a session of physical intimacy. canada viagra generic http://raindogscine.com/?order=7732 uk generic viagra This is because the sudden break from the medication can cause priapism, a painful erection lasting for more than 4 to 6 hours. This is not shameful because if there sildenafil india is a problem faced by millions of men. It order generic cialis raindogscine.com is better to speak to your doctor about all those concern regarding your intimate function or speak to your partner and their issues. Right from the beginning, Hamas has emphasized its opposition to any kind of deal with Israel that would involve recognizing the latter. Its objective, openly proclaimed, is to wipe the Jewish State off the map and establish a Palestinian one in its place. In this it differed from the Palestinian Authority which seemed prepared to take a road towards compromise, culminating in the 1994 Oslo Agreements. In so far as both Israel and the Authority fear Hamas and operate against it, the agreement between them has lasted to this day, more or less.

Meanwhile, starting in 2001, Hamas activists have been launching rockets from Gaza into Israel. In 2007, following the Israeli withdrawal from the Strip, they chased out the representatives of the Palestinian Authority and set up they own government there. Since then Hamas has greatly increased its attacks on the neighboring Israeli settlements, engaging in endless rounds of fighting, most small, others quite large. Starting with potshots across the border with Israel, passing through the “attack tunnels” dug into Israeli territory, changing to incendiary-carrying “terror” balloons, kites and drones, and culminating, for the time being, with thousands of rockets capable of reaching most Israeli targets south of Haifa.

If Hamas’ history is ever written, no doubt it will bring to light an epic struggle. One during which the organization faced formidable obstacles, went through periods of intense Israeli offensives, suffered any number of setbacks as well as countless casualties, yet allowed nothing to divert it from its chosen path and always gathered strength. The kind of epic, in other words, that commands respect, perhaps even admiration.

And Israel? Like so many others who have tried their hands at this game, it has used practically every trick in the book. Doing so, like so many others it stands accused of clumsiness, heavy-handedness, and using greatly excessive force. All, be it be noted, to no avail. Like so many others who tried their hands at this game, Israel has been unable to overcome its enemy by breaking his will. But unlike so many others who tried their hands at the game, it has nowhere to retreat to.

The outlook? Since both sides have claimed victory, each in his own camp, more of the same.

A Tale of Two Methods

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Throughout history groups, rulers and states that wanted to change borders and annex territories, including the populations that lived on them and the resources they contained, had the choice between two methods.

One was waging war, meaning the forcible conquest and annexation of land; no further explanation needed. The other was dynastic, principally marriage but sometimes adoption as well. Seen from a dynastic point of view, for a ruler to have no marriageable daughters could be almost as great a disaster as having no sons. How else to gain allies? The Byzantine emperors in particular were adept at this game, always offering their daughters to the chiefs of neighboring tribes. So did their Chinese colleagues. However, the unrivalled champions were the Habsburgs. Of them, it used to be said that alii bellum gerant, tu felix Austria nube (others wage war, you, happy Austria marry). Both methods were used on all continents and are probably as old as history itself. As, is shown, for example, by a series of diplomatic letters exchanged between the Pharaohs of Egypt and the kings of Babylon around 1350 BCE.

Reflecting the rise of mass nationalism and of democracy, the first of these method to go out of fashion was marriage. The last European ruler who still re-distributed territories and created principalities specifically in order to provide his brothers, sisters and in-laws with crowns and land was Napoleon. True, throughout the nineteenth century royalty continued to marry each other as often as they could. If Napoleon III broke the pattern in favor of the Spanish Countess Eugenie Montijo, then mainly because no important European ruler was willing to entrust his daughter to a parvenu; as he himself said, “I have preferred a woman whom I love and respect to a woman unknown to me, with whom an alliance would have had advantages mixed with sacrifices.” Later in the century the fact that Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria married Princess Elizabeth (“Sissi”) of Bavaria, Emperor-to-be Frederick III of Germany Princess Victoria (Queen Victoria’s daughter), and King-to-be Edward VII of England Princess Alexandra of Denmark did not make any difference to the distribution of territory among any of the realms involved.

While dynastic politics went into decline, the use of war for conquest and annexation continued much as it had always done. Examples are the 1848 war between the U.S and Mexico, the Franco-Austrian-War of 1859, the Austrian-Prussian-Danish War of 1864, the Prussian-Austrian War of 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Nor was this the end of the story. In 1878 the Congress of Berlin, convened in the wake of the war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, recognized Britain’s occupation of Cyprus and Austria’s that of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The 1895 war between Japan and China ended with the former gaining Taiwan and Korea. World War I brought about rather drastic changes in the borders of France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Russia among others. The 1939-40 “Winter War” resulted in the loss of territory by Finland in favor of Russia; whereas World War II led to an entire series of territorial changes both in Eastern Europe and in the Far East.

The impotency is a major problem that has become hurdle in male sexual life is commonly recognized cialis buy cheap as erectile dysfunction. Men usually do not react much but when they do it through the power of intention. generic levitra india Research shows that gentle prostate massage viagra cipla india can benefit people with gastroparesis or delayed digestion. Here are the different stages: Stage A This is the reason, why women india online viagra have stopped preferring it anymore. Given this long, long history, one is rather surprised to find it said, in article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter of 1945, that “all Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity… of any state.” Since then, not only has the number of members tripled but the principle has been reaffirmed several times by various international organizations. Including, in 1970, the United Nations General Assembly. More surprising still, on the whole it has been remarkably well observed. When what was then the kingdom Trans-Jordan occupied and annexed the West Bank in 1948, in the entire world only two countries, Britain and Pakistan, recognized the change. Morocco’s attempt to have its attempt to annex the Spanish Sahara has also met with very limited success. Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait in 1990 not only failed to bring him recognition but provided his enemies with a cause around which they were able to rally much of the world. To be sure, nothing is perfect. India has been able to gain recognition for its annexation of Goa and Indonesia, that of Western Papua. On the whole, though, the introduction of the principle and the widespread recognition it enjoys has probably been beneficial. Both helping prevent some armed conflicts and, as happened e.g in 1965 when the Treaty of Tashkent between India and Pakistan was signed, making it easier to resolve them.

Even Russia, one of the world’ most powerful countries, has failed to have its 2014 annexation of the Crimea recognized by any other United Nations member. Perhaps the most interesting case of all is the Israeli one. Following its establishment in 1948 Israel, its occupation of land not assigned to it by the U.N notwithstanding, was able to win recognition of its borders by many of the world’s states. It has, however, had great difficulty in doing the same in respect to its capital, Jerusalem, as well as the additional territories its forces occupied during the 1967 war. Along comes President Donald Trump. First he moved his embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thereby going a long way to recognize the latter as Israel’s capital. Next he recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights—a step which he took without asking for, let alone obtaining, the approval of Congress first.

The true impact of Trump’s latest measure remains to be seen. Starting on the regional level, certainly it will do nothing to help the cause of an eventual peace between Israel and Syria; instead, it should be understood as an admission that such a peace remains forever impossible and, on Israel’s part, undesirable as well. Proceeding to the global one, it could be seen as an important step towards the breaking of the 1945 consensus; not by some marginal member of the international community, but by the most powerful one of all.

Does this mean that dynastic diplomacy may also enjoy a comeback one day? Let’s wait and see.

Just as in 1948

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Some years ago I spent some days at Churchill College, Cambridge. One morning, having a few hours to spare, I went to the great man’s archive which is housed there. Among other things, I was shown a small part of a collection of letters which he, as Secretary of the Colonies, received in connection of his visit to Palestine in the winter of 1921. Some of the letters were written by local Jews, others by Arabs.  One that has stuck in my memory, written in good English by an Arab resident, argued that there would never be peace in the Holy Land until and unless the Balfour Declaration—with its promise of establishing a Jewish National Home in the country—were cancelled.

A century has passed. Some of the smallest and weakest trees in the forest have been reaching for the sky, some of the largest and mightiest have been cut down or else fell of their own accord. Amidst all this turmoil, attempts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there have been by the hundred. Nevertheless it persists and has lost none of its underlying hatred and bitterness. Just as the letter predicted.  With President Trump promising to publish his “peace plan” in the near future, today it pleases me to reflect on some of the outcomes to which it may still lead.

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* Separation. This is the solution much of the world, as well as I personally, would prefer. The idea of solving the conflict by establishing two states, one Jewish, the other Palestinian, has been in the air at least since the British came up with it, as the map shows, back in 1920-21. In 1947 the idea of applying it to the territory west of the Jordan was adopted by the United Nations which voted in its favor, thereby enabling the State of Israel to be established. In 1994, twenty-seven years after the 1967 Six Days’ War in which Israel occupied the Palestinian-inhabited part of the country, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Agreements which seemed to represent a small step in that direction. Since then, however, no further progress has been made. The main obstacles are, first, the fate of the Jewish settlements in West Jordan, as it is sometimes known. Second, control over East Jerusalem, which each side claims for itself. And third, the Palestinian Right of Return. It is as a Palestinian diplomat once told me to my face. We have our rights; why should we give them up?

* A single State with a Palestinian majority. This is the Zionist-Israeli nightmare. The very purpose of setting up the State of Israel was to make sure that Jews would never again have to live in a country where they are a minority and, as such, exposed to discrimination and persecution of every kind. Yet already today, counting Israel’s own Arab citizens, about as many Palestinians as Jews live in the land west of the Jordan. In every way that matters, all of them come under the same government, i.e. that of Israel in Jerusalem. Had it not been for Israel, Abu Mazen’s Palestinian Authority, such as it is, would have been toppled by its own people in a very short time. In this sense the single Palestinian State, reaching from the Mediterranean in the west to the Jordan River in the ease, already exists or will do so quite soon. As in the former unlamented South Africa, all that is needed is a change of government. And of the flag, of course.

* A single Jewish State. In view of the demographics, which are working against it, clearly such a state could only come about as a result of war. And clearly the most likely cause of such a war would be a double one. A desperate Israeli attempt to avert a single Palestinian State on one hand; and an opportunity provided by the collapse of the Hashemite regime in Jordan on the other. A collapse followed by the kind of chaos that will enable organizations similar to Hamas, Hezbollah and ISIS to use it as a base for terrorism against Israel, dragging the latter into an unwinnable war like the American one in Afghanistan and spreading west across the Jordan River. Here the fact that a great many—no one knows, just how many—citizens of Jordan are themselves Palestinian or of Palestinian origin could play a critical role.

Both many Israeli Arabs and many right-wing Israelis see the problem the way the French saw that of Alsace Lorraine in 1871-1914. To quote Prime Minister Léon Gambetta (1881-82): Never speak of it, always keep it in mind. And just as the conflict over Alsace-Lorraine played a large role in turning what started as a relatively minor conflict in the Balkans into World War I, so the collapse of the Jordanian State, the outbreak of terrorism from across the Jordan, and an Israeli attempt to throw at least a considerable number of the Palestinians currently under its rule across the river is almost certain to lead to a much larger war in the Middle East.

Just as in 1948, let me add.

Like Robots to Men

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For over ten years now, the world has been watching the strange spectacle unfolding in and around the Gaza Strip. Strange, because of the total imbalance between the forces on both sides. On one hand there is the mighty Israeli Army with its F-35 fighter bombers, Merkava tanks, and God knows what other multimillion-dollar items of equipment. On the other there are Hamas and the Islamic Jihad with their rockets, incendiary “terror kites” (as the Israelis call them) and unarmed youths demonstrating along the border line on the other.

Watching events, I cannot help but recall the words I wrote in The Transformation of War a little under thirty years ago:

“Here we are concerned with a situation where the relationship between strength and weakness is skewed; in other words, where one belligerent is much stronger than the other. Under such circumstances the conduct of war can become problematic even as a matter of definition. Imagine a grown man who purposely kills a small child, even such a one as came at him knife in hand; such a man is almost certain to stand trial and be convicted, if not of murder than of some lesser crime. Not be accident is the word bellum itself said to come from due-lum, a combat of two… The very fact that fighting takes place almost always implies a degree of equality, real or perceived, between the forces available to both sides. Where no such equality exists war itself becomes ultimately impossible.

A war waged by the weak against the strong is dangerous by definition. Therefore, so long as the differential in forces is not such as to render the situation altogether hopeless, it presents few difficulties beyond the tactical question, namely how to inflict the maximum amount of damage on the enemy without exposing oneself in open fighting. By contrast, a war waged by the strong against the weak is problematic for that very reason. Given time, the fighting itself will cause the two sides to become more like each other, even to the point where opposites converge, merge, and change places. Weakness turns into strength, strength turns into weakness. The principal reason behind the phenomenon is that war represents perhaps the most imitative activity known to man. The whole secret of victory consists of trying to understand the enemy in order to outwit him. A mutual learning process ensues. Even as the struggle proceeds, both sides adapt their tactical methods, the means that they employ, and—most important of all—their morale to fit the opponent. Doing so, sooner or later the point will come where they are no longer distinguishable.

A small, weak force confronting a large, strong one will need very high fighting spirit to make up for its deficiencies in other fields. Still, since survival itself counts as no mean feat, that fighting spirit will feed on every victory, however minor. Conversely, a strong force fighting a weak one for any length of time is almost certain to suffer from a drop in morale; the reason being that nothing is more futile than a series of victories endlessly repeated… Over the long run… fighting the weak demeans those who engage in it and, therefore, undermines its own purpose. He who loses out to the weak loses; he who triumphs over the weak also loses. In such an enterprise there can be neither profit nor honor…
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Another very important reason why, over time, the strong and the weak will come to resemble each other even to the point of changing places is rooted in the different ethical circumstances under which they operate. Necessity known no bounds; hence, he who is weak can afford to go to the greatest lengths, resort to the most underhand means, and commit every kind of atrocity without compromising his political support and, more important still, his own moral principles. Conversely, almost anything that the strong does or does not do is, in one sense, unnecessary and, therefore, cruel…

A good war, like a good game, almost by definition is one fought against forces that are at least as strong as, or preferably stronger than, oneself. Troops who do not believe their cause to be good will end up by refusing to fight. Since fighting the weak is sordid by definition, over time the effect of such a struggle is to put the strong into an intolerable position. Constantly provoked, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Should they fail to respond to persistent provocation, their morale will probably break down, passive waiting being the most difficult game of all to play. Should they hit back, then the opponent’s very weakness means that they will descend into cruelty and, since most people are not cut out to be sadists for very long, end up by hating themselves…

Since the very act of fighting the weak invites excess, in fact, is excess, it obliges the strong to impose controls in the form of laws, regulations, and rules of engagement. The net effect of such regulations is to demoralize the troops who are prevented from operating freely and using their initiative. They are contrary to sound command practice if they are observed and subversive of discipline if they are not. Hence the truth of Clausewitz’s dictum, plainly observable in every low-intensity conflict fought since World War II, that regular troops combating a Volkskrieg [people’s war] are like robots to men.”

Looking back over these words, I have nothing to add.

Seven Things that Will Not Change

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Ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution during the last decades of the eighteenth century, humanity has become obsessed with change. First in Europe, where the revolution originated. Then in Europe’s overseas offshoots, and finally in other places as well. By the middle of the nineteenth century, at the latest, it was clear that the world was being transformed at an unprecedented pace and would continue to do so in the future. As change accelerated there appeared a whole genre of visionaries who made it their job to try and look into that future—starting with Jules Verne and passing through H. G. Wells all the way to Ray Kurzweil and Yuval Harari.

Today it pleases me to try to put the idea on its head. Meaning, I am going to focus on some of the things I think are not going to change. Certainly not any time soon. Perhaps, not ever.

1. A world without war, meaning politically motivated and organized violence, is not in the cards. To be sure, starting in 1945 much of the planet has enjoyed what is sometimes known as the Long Peace. Meaning that, relative to the size of the earth’s population, fewer people have died in war than was the case during any other period from which figures are available. But let there be no illusions: the most important, if not the only, reason behind the decline is not the kind of sudden wish for peace (“the better angels of our nature”) some authors have postulated. It is nuclear deterrence, which has prevented the most important countries from fighting each other in earnest.

Unfortunately experience has shown that, under the shadow of the mushroom cloud, there is still plenty of room left for smaller but no less bloody conflicts. Especially, but certainly not exclusively, of the intrastate, or nontrinitarian, kind as opposed to the interstate, trinitarian one. Such being the case, a world without war would require two things. First, a situation where every person and every collective is always sufficiently happy with his/or its lot to refrain from resorting to violence. Second, a world government capable of identifying and deterring those who would resort to it from doing so. Since war is to a large extent a product of the emotions, moreover, such a government would have to pry into the hearts of every single person on earth. For good or ill, though, there is no indication that either of those conditions, let alone both, are anywhere close to being met.

2. Poverty will not be eradicated. Taking 1800 as their starting point, economic historians have estimated that, world-wide, real per capital product has risen thirtyfold. Based on this, there have been countless confident predictions concerning a golden future in which everyone will be, if not exactly as rich as Jeff Bezos, at any rate comfortably off. However, these predictions have failed to tqake into account two factors. First, wealth, poverty and of course comfort itself are not absolute but relative. In many ways, what was once seen as fit for a king is now not considered suitable even for a beggar. Second, though the production of material goods has in fact increased, the way those good are distributed has not become more equal. If anything, taking 1970 as our starting point, to the contrary.

3. We shall not gain immortality. It is true that, starting in late eighteenth-century France and Sweden and spreading to other countries, global life expectancy has more than doubled. Moreover, the pace at which years are being added to our lives has been accelrating. This has led some people to reason that, if only we could increase it fast enough (meaning, by more than a year every year), death would be postponed to the point where we shall become immortal. The first person to live for a thousand years, it has been claimed, has already been born or is about to be born soon enough. However, the calculation is flawed on two counts First, most of the increase in longevity has resulted from a decline in the mortality of the very young. Second, while the percentage of old people has been growing rapidly, there is no indication that the life span granted to us by nature has been increasing or is capable of being increased.
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4. There is no reason to think the world in which we live is happier than previous ones. Not only is happiness the product of many different interacting factors, but its presence or absence depends on circumstances. Does it presuppose a minimum of physical comfort? Yes, of course, but the extent of that comfort, and even what counts as comfort, is largely dictated by what we expect and do not expect. Does it require a belief in God? Possibly so, but there is no proof that religious people are happier than unbelievers. Does it require leisure? Yes, of course, but the fact that, in Rome during the second century CE, almost half of the year consisted of feast days does not mean that the contemporaries of Marcus Aurelius were happier than their ancestors or their successors. Does it require good interaction with at least some other people? Yes, of course, but there is no reason to believe that such interaction was less common and less satisfying in previous generations than in our own. Does it require purposeful activity? Yes of course, but then what does and does not count as purposeful is almost entirely up to the individual.

5. Whatever feminists may say, men and women will not play the same role in society, let alone become the same That is partly because they are not the same—witness the biologically-determined differences between them in respect to size, physical strength, and the reproductive functions (some experts would add a tendency towards risk-taking, aggression, dominance, and a penchant for mathematical science, but that is moot). And partly because they do not want to be. “The more like us you become, mes dames,” said that incorrigible skirt chaser, Jean Jacques Rousseau, “the less we shall like you.” Conversely, the worst thing one can say about a man is that he is like a woman. It is the differences between men and women, as much as the similarities, that attract them to each other. So it has been, and so it will remain,

6. The question how consciousness could have arisen will not be answered. Starting at least as long ago as the Old Testament, people have always wondered how dead material could ever give birth to a living, sentient being. Especially to the brain as the most important organ in which thought, emotion and, not least, dreaming take place. To answer the question, they invented a God who, to speak with Genesis, blew “the spirit of life” into man’s nostrils. Recent advances in neurology, made possible by the most sophisticated modern techniques, are indeed astonishing. However, they cannot tell us how objective chemical and electric signals translate into subjective experiences; no more than our ancestors knew why certain substances led to increased awareness and others, to torpor. To that extent, the advances in question have not really got us any closer to solving the problem.

7. Our ability to predict the future, let alone control it, has not improved and will not improve one iota. There used to be a time when looking into the future was the province of shamans, prophets, oracles, and Sibyls, and even the dead who were raised specially for the purpose. Other people tried their luck with astrology, palmistry, augury (watching the flight of birds), haruspicy (interpreting the entrails of sacrificial animals), yarrow sticks, crystal balls, tarot cards, tea leaves, and patterns left by coffee in near-empty cups. Starting around 1800, at any rate among the better educated in Western countries, two techniques have dominated the field. One is extrapolating from history, i.e. the belief that what has been going up will continue to go up (until it doesn’t) and that what has gone down will continue to go down (ditto). The other is mathematical modelling, which consists of an attempt to identify the most important factors and link them together by means of algorithms. Of the two the second, especially as applied to very large numbers of people, has been the most successful. But only as long as conditions do not change in a radical way; and only at the cost of ignoring what to most people is the most important question of all, i.e. what will happen to them.

Is that enough to put change, that keynote of modernity about which everyone is talking all the time, into perspective?

On Technology and War (3)

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Two weeks ago I tried to answer the question, how to use military-technological superiority when one has attained it. A week ago, to point out the things that technology does not change and will not change and cannot change. Today’s post is the last in the mini-series. I want to use it in order to ask: How is a new military technology received, and what happens to it once it is received?

Many of you will be familiar with the name of Giulio Douhet (1869-30). The Italian general who in 1921, published Il dominio dell’aereo, probably the most famous volume on the topic ever written. His portrait graced this column last week. But it is not this book I want to discuss here. In 1913 Douhet was a major on the general staff. In that capacity he produced an article on the above question, which I have used as my guide.

Stage A. A new technology is introduced. Normally this is done by the inventors and manufacturers who hope to make a profit and turn to the military as a potentially very large client. The idea meets with skepticism on the part of the officers who are sent to examine it. Though ingenious it is a mere toy, or so they declare. Good examples for this argument can be found in the Zeppelin; heavier than air aircraft; the submarine; and the tank. All of which were invented before 1914, and all of which initially met this fate. There is even a story about a British regimental commander, who receiving a couple of machine guns, told his men to take the “bloody things” to the wing and hide them.

Stage B. The manufacturers do not give up. They continue to push, sometimes by offering their invention to an enemy of the country they first approached. Sir Basil Zaharoff, though not an inventor but a merchant, was the undisputed master in this game, selling warships to both Turkey and Greece. Slowly and gradually, the military undergo a limited shift. They are now ready to see whether there is any way in which they can incorporate the new weapon or weapon system into the existing organizations without, however, acknowledging the need to change that organization in any fundamental way. At times indeed, they start adopting a new invention in order to prevent change; as the German Luftwaffe did when it developed the V-1 as a counter to the early ballistic missiles favored by the land army. Other good examples of the attempt to pour new weapons into old organizations are, once again, the heavier-than-air aircraft, and the submarine. And the aircraft carrier, of course.  

Previously, because of some overly spread out myths on tadalafil 20mg generic regarding loss of vision for couple of minutes being medically proven , most people got scared , and were reluctant buy even a single erectile dysfunction drugs. It has been utilized by different individuals far and wide and encountered the positive change in cheap viagra in india see description their sexual health. Some partial reactions like head ache, pains in muscles, gastric tendencies, vision loss, painful and less urination than normal identified level and abdominal pain can sometimes levitra pills look these up bother you and should be treated instantly to prevent the health deformation. The reality is viagra cost in canada quite different. Stage C. Quite suddenly, the wind changes. As older officers die or retire, younger ones—those in charge of the new technologies and in favor of them—start shouting their virtues from the rooftops. Military history is making a fresh start! They (the new technologies) are about to take over! Everything else is ripe for the dustbin! And so on and so on. Douhet himself set the example. By the time he wrote his book he had convinced himself that armies and navies were about to disappear and that aviation, like the Jewish God in one of the prayers addressed to him, “all alone would rule in awe.” Similar claims on behalf of aircraft were made in the US by General Billy Mitchel; whereas in Britain another officer, Colonel John Fuller, was doing the same on behalf of tanks. Nowadays they are being made on behalf of artificial intelligence and autonomous killing machines among other things,

Stage D. It becomes evident that, useful as the new technologies are, they do not provide answers to all problems. As the defense becomes stronger, pilots find that their aircraft cannot simply bomb the hell out of whomever they want at any time they want. Submariners discover that, without support from the air (later, satellites), their ability to find their targets is very limited. Tanks are threatened by anti-tank guns and are, moreover, only useful in certain, well-defined, kinds of terrain. Carriers have to be escorted by entire fleets of anti-missile destroyers, anti-submarine destroyers, and supply ships. And autonomous killing machines kill indiscriminately. Briefly, the new technologies must be integrated with everything else: strategy, tactics, command and control, logistics, intelligence, doctrine, training and what not.

Stage E. Following the usual logistic curve, shown above, the process of reorganization has been driven as far as it will ever be and is now flattening out. Advanced, even revolutionary, weapons and weapon systems have become an integral part of the forces. Perhaps, as in the case of carriers from 1941 on, their lynchpin. By this time most of those who initially opposed the changes are gone. A new generation officers has risen and takes things as they now are for granted. And they start asking themselves: What has really changed?

Which, of course, itself is both cause and consequence why, as we have seen, so much does not change.

On Technology and War (2)

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In last week’s post I addressed the following question: In view of rapid military-technological development that affects every aspect of war, how to best use military-technological superiority in order to win? Today, while remaining in the same general field, I want to look at the relationship between technology and war from a different point of view. In view of the speed and comprehensiveness of change, are there any aspects of war that remain essentially the same?

  1. The causes of war. Whether war is due to man’s nature (which is inclined towards evil from his youth on, as the Talmud puts it), or to structural problems inside human communities (as Rousseau and Marx, each in his own way, claimed), or to issues that arise between those communities (which seems to be the “realist” position), is moot. Nor is there any shortage of other explanations, including evolutionary ones such as are rooted in our biological nature. Which of them is correct I shall not presume to judge. What I do want to emphasize, though, is that not one of the has anything to do with technology; they are the same now as they were about fifteen thousand years ago when war, to the best of our knowledge, was firs invented.
  2. War requires an enemy. Without an enemy, no war. Many years ago, I had this fact brought home to me by a director general of the Australian ministry of defense with whom I had a conversation. He had succeeded he said, in formulating a strategy for a country that does not, or did not at that time, face any threat. With Papua-New Guinea to the north, Chile to the east, South Africa to the west, and penguins to the south, a difficult feat indeed! War, to put it in a different way, consists of the interaction between two (or more) belligerents. A single blow, delivered without opposition and over before it has even started, is not war.
  3. Strategy. Originating in ancient Greece (stratos means army, or host; strategos means general, strategama means stratagem, and strategia, generalship) strategy has become one of the buzzwords of our age. Definitions vary. The way I understand it, it is the art of waging a conflict between two or more opponents, each of whom has the right and the ability to pursue his objective while actively trying to prevent the other from doing the same. So understood, strategy is the same regardless of the environment in which war is waged (land, sea, air, space, cyberspace); the level at which it is waged, high or low; and the size of the forces that wage it. And also, nota bene, of the kind of technology in use at any particular place and time.
  4. War is the domain of uncertainty, friction, hunger, thirst, fatigue, deprivation, suffering, pain, and death. Also, last not least, sorrow. So it has been, so it is, and so it will remain. Such being the case, the qualities needed for waging war do not change. At the level of the individual they are courage in the face of death, determination, endurance, and perhaps a certain kind of callousness as well; fighting is no business for the soft of heart. At that of the unit or formation they include discipline, cohesion, and sheer fighting power; and at that of the commander, all of these plus the willingness and ability to bear the horrendous responsibility involved. All this was true at the time when Roman legionaries, carrying javelins, swords, helmets, body armor, and greaves conquered the oikoumene (known world). And all this remains true in the face of today’s most advanced and most powerful weapons and weapon systems.

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  5. The difficulty of containing escalation. Starting a war may—perhaps—be a rational act. One that those in charge perform with a clear mind on the basis of cool calculation. No sooner does it break out, though, then things change. Whether for hormonal or for psychological reasons, the most elementary and most powerful emotions known to man emerge from deep inside the soul and start playing a major role. Among them are anger, fury, revenge, cruelty, and above all, hatred. Under such conditions making sure that war does not degenerate into a sheer orgy of violence, which is of no use to anyone, but continues to follow the direction of policy is certain to be very difficult, not seldom impossible.

 

See you next week.

On Technology and War (1)

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As anyone who casts even an occasional and superficial view at the media knows, military-technological development, driven by hundreds of billions in R&D funding, is proceeding at a furious pace. Not a day passes without the announcement of some new and revolutionary weapons and weapon systems that have recently transformed the entire face of war or are about to do so in the near future. The objective is always the same: namely, to obtain that elusive and often ill-defined thing, military-technological superiority.

As one who has spent much of his life studying military history, specifically the interaction between technology and war, today I want to address the following question. Suppose you have got this kind of superiority. In that case, how do you go about using it?

 

  1. On its own, even the most novel and most powerful weapon or weapon system is useless. That is why it is essential to embed it in everything else that waging war involves. Including, at the very least, organization, logistics, training, doctrine, strategy and tactics. The officers responsible for all these fields must learn what the technology they are working with can and, above all, cannot do. Also, which is equally important, how the various factors interact and how to make them work together in a seamless team.
    It gives you the effects of natural product cipla tadalafil price without any unwanted side effects, and save some cash that could have been wasted. You would require a doctor’s prescription as this drug is a safe way to get rid buy levitra no prescription of erectile dysfunction have been elevating in a regular basis. She has always been a good wife and I understood her urges. order tadalafil This solution has the power within to work against the functions of PDE5 enzyme, the chemical that pfizer viagra without prescription was discovered to obstruct the mechanisms of cyclic guanosine monophosphate. A good example of what can happen if this is not done is provided by the rise of modern armored divisions. Come 1940, it was the French who had the most and the heaviest tanks. However, it was the Germans who, having learnt how to use them along with other technologies in an armored division, went ahead and won a victory so spectacular as to turn into a legend.
  2. Any weapon (except nuclear ones, against which the only defense is deterrence) can, in principle, be countered by one means or another. The enemy is not stupid. That is why, the longer the war the more likely this is to happen. Such being the case, the side with technological superiority has a strong interest in making sure that the war is as short as possible. And the other way around, of course.
  3. To shorten the war, it is necessary to take the enemy by surprise. To take the enemy by surprise, the new technology must be developed and introduced in secret, as far as possible. A technology whose existence and characteristics are known is a technology half-countered. But pay heed: maintaining secrecy comes at a price. It can lead to a situation where one’s own troops do not know the new technology as well as they should and where the integrated whole mentioned above is not achieved. A well-known example was the mitrailleuse, an early kind of machine gun. Come war in 1870, it was a revolutionary weapon the French alone possessed. Being large and heavy, though, it was misunderstood and misemployed as an artillery weapon. In World War II, the fear lest the Germans would use proximity fuses against the Allied bombers caused Washington to delay their operational use by about one year.
  4. Any new technology should be used en masse. Short of nukes, rarely if ever in war has any weapon been so powerful as to be capable of acting as a silver bullet. That is why new ones must be husbanded until there are enough of them around to make a real difference. The British in 1915-17 violated this principle. As a result, their armored attacks made little impression on the German defenses. Only towards the end of 1917 did things begin to change. As Guderian, the creator of modern armored warfare, used to put it during the 1930s: boot them, don’t tickle them.
  5. Following directly from this premise, the new technology should be used at the decisive point. In other words, at that point where it can do the greatest good to one’s own side and the greatest harm to the other. Again, 1940—the German breakthrough at Sedan—provides as good a case in point as may be had. French armor was so dispersed that entire units never saw any action at all. By contrast, the German armored divisions were concentrated against a single sector of the French front (so much so, in fact, that the queue of vehicles reached back a hundred kilometers all the way across the Rhine). Supposing there is no decisive point, a situation of which Afghanistan provides a particularly good example, not even the greatest military-technological superiority will be of much avail. The outcome is likely to be a long war which will finally be decided by attrition

Is that enough for today? See you next week.

What to Do?

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While tensions in Korea have gone down, those in the Middle East, specifically along Israel’s northern borders with Lebanon and Syria, are going up. As a flurry of consultations in Tel Aviv, Washington DC, and Sochi shows, they are higher today than at any time since Israel invaded Lebanon back in 2006.

That round, let me remind you, got underway when Hezbollah, apparently in the hope of freeing some of its prisoners who were being held by Israel, kidnapped some Israeli soldiers and killed several others. This led to what the Israelis call the Second Lebanese War, which ended with a smashing Israeli victory. Not because Hezbollah was finished—it was not—but because, for what is now more than a decade, it lost its will to take on Israel. And not because Israel’s forces performed particularly well—especially on the ground, they did not. But because their sheer firepower, mercilessly delivered over a period of some six weeks, taught Sheikh Nasrallah, his Hezbollah organization, and Lebanon’s population in general a lesson they did not quickly forget.

Now, with the Syrian civil war perhaps—perhaps, I say—finally starting to wind down, the situation is changing. Hezbollah’s recent victories against Daesh and other anti-Assad organizations have raised its morale and made it feel more confident in its own capabilities. Behind Hezbollah is Iran, which is intent on gaining some kind of presence in the Eastern Mediterranean and is using its anti-Israeli policy as a sort of battering ram to enter the Arab world. And behind Iran there is Russia. Like Iran, Russia wants a presence in the Eastern Mediterranean. Unlike Iran, it has no particular reason to oppose Israel, let alone engage in hostilities with it. Especially because doing so may very well cause complications with the U.S. On the other hand, it also has no particular reason to restrain Iran or Iran’s client, Hezbollah.

In my post of last week, My Meeting with Mr. X, I argued that never since 1945 have two nuclear powers engaged each other in earnest. Instead calm—albeit often a tense one—has prevailed. So, first of all, between the superpowers. So, later on, between the Soviet Union and China. So between China and India, and so, since at least the 1999 “Kargil War” (which in reality, was not a war at all, only a skirmish between minuscule forces over impossibly difficult terrain along an impossibly difficult border), between India and Pakistan. In all those cases, to quote Winston Churchill, some form of peace has become the sturdy child of terror. Hence the idea, presented to me in a half-joking, half serious, manner, of periodically assembling the world’s heads of state so as to show them the damage nuclear weapons can really cause.
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So what to do? I am not worried about an Iranian nuclear arsenal. As I have argued before, there is excellent reason to believe that such an arsenal, far from leading to war between Israel and Iran, will force both sides to behave more responsibly than they do now. Not to speak of preventing Benjamin Netanyahu from ever realizing his threat to attack. Rather, the real crux of the problem is formed by the fact that Hezbollah, unlike Israel, does not possess a nuclear arsenal. Paradoxically, but as also happened during the October 1973 War (and, some say, the 1982 Argentinian invasion of the Falklands), it is precisely this fact which, in a certain sense, gives it a free hand and enables it to confront the Israelis without fear of nuclear retaliation and escalation.

So following the logic of my friend, Mr. X, here is what I propose. Let Israel, or anyone else who is feeling generous, hand Nasrallah a few bombs. Big or small, old or new, as long as they have the word NUCLEAR written on them in giant letters it does not really matter. Complete with their safety devices, so as to put responsibility for anything that may happen squarely on his shoulders. Without ifs and without buts.

And then, as the Jewish prayer has it, there will be peace upon Israel.

“Disaster Area”

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Hanging in my kitchen I have a so-called “New Zealand Tourist Map of the World.” Like other humoristic maps of its kind, it carries a brief description of each region. New Zealand, painted green, is best of all. It occupies an entirely disproportionate part of the map and is marked as having such things as “the biggest fish,” “the muddiest mud,” and “the friendliest mermaids” in the world. By contrast, Australia is a “desert island populated by a backward tribe known as strines.” Japan has “earthquakes,” the US, “hamburgers,” and Africa, “wild women.” These are just examples; most of the world has more than one epithet applied to it. Not so the Middle East, which is summed up in just two words: “disaster area.”

Fun aside, for a hundred years now the Middle East has in fact been a disaster area, much to the loss of most of its unfortunate inhabitants. Nor, the recent agreement between Presidents Trump and Putin notwithstanding, does there seem to be any immediate prospect for the turmoil to end. In this brief article I propose, 1. To trace the conflicts themselves; 2. Explain, very briefly, the factors that have prevented peace; and, 3. Say a few words about the probable shape of the future.

*

Many of the problems in the Middle East go back far into the nineteenth century. For our purposes, however, a good starting point is formed by World War I (1914-18). In 1916-18 the British, coming from the Sinai as well as the Persia Gulf, defeated the Ottomans and overran the entire Middle East. Next they divided the spoils with their French allies. France got Syria and Lebanon, whereas Britain took the rest.

The aftermath of the war saw the establishment of the colonies—which later developed into independent states—of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, the Gulf, and Trans-Jordan (as it then was). Saudi Arabia, which was never occupied by either Britain or France, became independent by default. Last not least the Balfour Declaration, which was issued in November 1917, promised that His Majesty’s Government would “view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” As one Arab resident wrote to Winston Churchill, who as colonial secretary had been entrusted with fixing the various borders and toured the country in 1922, as long as the Declaration was not repealed peace would “never” return to that country.

Since then the peace to end all peace, as it has been called, has remained the source of endless trouble. First the British had to cope with Arab uprisings in Palestine and, on a much larger scale, in Iraq. No sooner were those revolts suppressed than trouble broke out on the border between Trans Jordan and Saudi Arabia, an entirely artificial line on the map that the local tribes refused to respect. In 1927-29 it was the turn of the French to cope with what is still remembered as the Great Syrian Revolt. Additional Arab revolts broke out in Palestine in 1929 and 1936-39 and in Iraq in 1940.

No sooner had World War II ended than Palestine witnessed another anti-British revolt, albeit that this time it was the Jews who revolted. The establishment of Israel in 1948 was immediately followed by an entire series of Arab-Israeli Wars that lasted until 1973. But trouble was not limited to Israel and its neighbors. The British having gone, during much of the 1950s and 1960 the Kurds in Iraq waged more or less open warfare against the central authorities in Baghdad, a problem that has still not been resolved. The Kurds also tried to break loose from Turkey, another problem that has still not been solved.

In the 1960s Yemen was devastated by a civil war (as, at present, it is once again). In 1970 the Syrians briefly invaded Jordan which was just then engaged in civil war against the Palestinians in its territory. Six year later civil war broke out in Lebanon, and six years after that Israel launched a massive invasion of the latter country. It took until 2006 ere another massive Israeli blow finally brought hostilities in southern Lebanon to an end—and even so there is no guarantee that they will not break out again at any time.

The 1980s saw a massive war between Iraq and Iran. No sooner had it ended than Iraq made a grab for Kuwait and had to be expelled by the United States and its allies (1991). In 2003 hostilities in the Persian Gulf resumed. This time not only Iraq’s armed forces but its government was smashed, leading to chaos that, fourteen years later, shows hardly a sign of abating. Worst of all is the situation in Syria where civil war broke out in 2011. As of this writing it has succeeded in turning much of the country into a wasteland from which t will take decades to recover, if indeed it ever does.

*

How to account for all this trouble? Perhaps the most important answer is the extraordinary complexity of the region. A complexity which the new states, lacking firm roots in the population as they did, never succeeded in controlling. There are, of course, Egyptians and Syrians and Iraqis and Saudis and so forth. But there are also Israelis and Palestinians. And Arabs and Kurds. And Egyptian Muslims and Egyptian Copts. There are Sunnis and there are Shi’ites (and there are Allawi’s, whom some do not recognize as Muslims at all) and there are Druze. There are also many kinds of Christians. True, the Christians’ overall role in the region is declining into insignificance. But how strong the hatreds among them are can be seen on major feast days when monks belonging to different denominations at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher regularly take up cudgels and bicycle chains and go after each other.

Had the men—there were no women among them—who made the modern Middle East back in 1915-22 been as saintly as Christ and as wise as mandarins, they would have been hard-put to take all these complications into account. Let alone bring them to an end. If anything, the contrary. Operating on the old, old principle of divide et impera, as when the French separated Lebanon from Syria and the British in Egypt favored the Copts, often they did what they could to accentuate them.

Thus, it is efficiently utilized http://appalachianmagazine.com/2019/08/12/the-history-of-school-lunches-the-most-glorious-hour-of-my-childhood/ ordine cialis on line in making ayurvedic libido enhancer supplements for women. When any partners have sexual disorders or dysfunctions such as: Less time erection soft pill cialis Problem to maintain the erection Size of the penis which gets enzyme known as guanylate cyclase. Reforms described by Ann Weaver Hart and Diana cialis pill Pounder (2005) hold out promise for improving training for instructional management and leadership. Health perils like immense cholesterol level, heart attack or stroke, lung disease, kidney break down and many more problems which include problems in your personal relationships and physical health is viagra effects women affected as well. Next, poverty. Early in the twentieth century the countries of the Middle East were, without exception, poor and undeveloped. So much so that, by one estimate, per capita income in what later became Israel, which even then was starting to emerge as one of the more developed regions, stood as just four percent of the US figure (currently it stands at 56 percent). Israel apart, no country in the Middle East has managed to cross the threshold into a mature industrial, let alone post-industrial, society. An antiquated social structure, based on extensive ties between extended families and clans, acts as both cause and effect of this fact.

True, over the last century agriculture has declined and urbanization spread. Yet most of the urban population remains very poor indeed. Nor do most of these people have the kind of education needed to create and maintain a modern economy. As a result, what wealth there is owes its existence mainly to the primary sector. Chiefly oil and related products such as natural gas.

But not all Middle Eastern states possess significant reserves of the precious black liquid. Both in those that do and those that do not, income is so unevenly distributed as to act as the source, not of progress but of conflict, some of it armed. These conflicts in turn are tied to the fact that, again with the exception of Israel, no Middle Eastern country has ever succeeded into converting itself into a true democracy. Meaning one characterized by popular elections, a freely elected parliament able to supervise the executive, human rights anchored in law, and an independent judiciary. Iraq and Syria until they were torn apart by war, and Jordan and Egypt right down to the present day, were or are run by a team of four: namely the head of state, the ruling party, the army, and the secret services. Security of life and property exist, if at all, only to a very limited extent. And liberty is a very occasional guest.

To the internal factors must be added external ones. From antiquity on, the Middle East has always been an extraordinarily important region, geopolitically speaking. The reason is because through it passed the lines of communication leading from north to south and from west to east. With the discovery of oil early in the 20th century, which led to some of the greatest concentrations of wealth in history on one hand and to the most intense competition on the other, its role became even greater. Going back at least as far as 1918 and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, not for five minutes has the Middle East been free of foreign intervention.

At first, as already explained, the leading role was played by the British and the French. After 1945 it was mainly the Americans and the Soviets who called the shots. Both superpowers sought to extend their own zone of influence and expel the other. Now by treaty, now by economic aid, now by assisting a rebel group to mount a coup and overthrow a government, and now by having their respective clients fight one another. Nor were the US and the Soviet Union, later succeeded by the Russians, the only ones with a finger in the pie. As is exemplified by the fact that, currently and at any rate on paper, no fewer than 68 countries are officially committed to fighting Daesh.

Many of the countries in question are at odds not only with their local rivals but with each other too. Take, as an example of the resulting complexity, the case of Syria whose regime has been fighting its own citizens for the last six years. In Syria alone there are said to be some fifty different militias, some fairly large, others very small. Though all or most seem to have this in common that they hate President Assad’s government, many also reflect various religious, ethnic and local interests. The Russians, the Iranians and the terrorist organization Hezbollah (which has its roots in Lebanon, and is made up of Shi’ite fighters operating in Syria, which is mostly Sunni) have all been consistently supporting Assad.

The Turks claim to be fighting terrorists, but in reality they are more interested in keeping the Kurds down and the Iranians, out. The Saudis, bent on bugging Iran wherever they can, are determined to get rid of Assad and provide the Syrian rebels with weapons by way of Jordan. Ostensibly to prevent the war from spreading to that country, the US has stationed troops there. It is also bombing both Assad and his opponents, Daesh. To not much avail, as far as anyone can see. With the US are, as so often, some of its NATO allies playing the role of the jackal. As for Israel, up to the present it has managed to keep out of the conflict. But this does not prevent it from constantly calling on others to topple Assad and so, hopefully, pulling its own chestnuts out of the fire.

*

Niels Bohr, the Nobel-Prize winning Danish nuclear physicist, is supposed to have said that prediction is difficult, especially of the future. The Talmud concurs, saying that “the gift of prophecy is handed out to fools.” One does not, though, need divine insight to understand that, the abovementioned agreement between Trump and Putin notwithstanding, the Middle East is indeed a “disaster area” and likely to remain so for a long time in the future. To proceed in reverse order, one reason for this is foreign intervention which has often aided and abetted local conflicts. Then there is the absence of democracy, representative government, and human rights; all of which, along with the frequent presence of thuggish rulers, are rooted in societies most of which have never succeeded in overcoming their tribal character. Thuggish rulers—in truth, it is hard to see how anyone but a thug could govern the countries in question—are responsible for the fact that free economies could not develop and the distribution of wealth is as unequal as it is.

These facts and many others like them explain many things. They do not, however, explain everything. Some years ago I had the pleasure of coming across a book by the aged doyen of “oriental studies,” Bernard Lewis. Titled What Went Wrong and first published in 2002, it tried to explain how and why the brilliant civilization of the Middle Ages had declined until, finally, it reached the point where the epithet “Arab” is positive only when applied to a horse.

Though I read it twice, I still do not know.