By George Friedman
| I can’t claim to know much about military matters, but I have a few thoughts: |
[GeopoliticalFutures] Geographically, Israel is in a profoundly weak strategic position. At its widest point, it is only 71 miles (114 kilometers) across; at its narrowest point, it is only nine miles across. Israel has no defensive space. It has little ability to withdraw, regroup and counterattack. Defensive depth is essential to national security. It determines how much time there is to recover from an initial attack. Space and time are essential to war.
Ignoring the emergence of drones, Israel cannot tolerate a defeat at its border, because a defeat would give it, at most, 71 miles in which to retreat. From this flows a specific military logic. Israel has to prevent attacks by initiating combat,
| …actually, mostly they don’t initiate combat. They just finish it, bloodily and decisively. You can’t argue, for instance, that Israel started things with Hamas on 10/7, or with Iran and the rest of Iran’s sock puppets thereafter. Unless you are thinking in terms of negative time, I suppose… |
and it has to be able to defeat its enemy early in a war. For Israeli leaders, it follows that the Israel Defense Forces always have to be significantly more powerful than potential enemies.
| When the choice is spending on weapons and training versus letting the enemy kill them all, because if the IDF fails there is no other option, the decision to sacrifice current lifestyle for survival is easy. |
The idea that Israel would never face a force more powerful than its own has always been improbable. During the 1973 attack by Egypt and Syria (which were armed and coordinated by the Soviet Union), Israel came perilously close to disaster. It was saved by the fact that Egyptian, Syrian and Soviet planners had failed to anticipate their dramatic early successes and had no plans to fully defeat Israel and seize its land.
| Israel’s enemies were significant more powerful in 1948, in 1956, in 1967. Hezbollah had something like 200,000 or 250,000 rockets and missiles ready to go on 10/7/2023. It’s just that modern Muslims make terrible soldiers. They’re great at massacring panicking, unarmed civilians, but after 10/7 Israel’s poorly armed civilians and military volunteers who self-organized to go to the battlefront from the rest of the country were already starting to drive Hamas back by the time the IDF officially arrived to finish the job and take the fight into Gaza. |
More at the link |