[SmallWarsJournal] ABSTRACT
The decisive terrain in a Taiwan contingency extends beyond the Taiwan Strait to the maritime gaps of the First Island Chain, where land forces will play a critical role in deterring and contesting Chinese power projection. This article argues that the US and allied land forces are already evolving into a distributed network of sensing, fires, and sustainment designed to secure these key chokepoints. However, to remain effective against a peer adversary, forward-positioned forces must combine resilient network-enabled munitions, modular containerized systems, and distributed logistics to survive and persist inside contested maritime terrain. These capabilities are essential to strengthening deterrence, preserving allied freedom of maneuver, and preventing a strategic breakout into the Pacific region.
“A little research, a little study and reflection bring out the facts that Clausewitz’s book on war, published in 1832, occupies about the same relation to the study of the military profession as does the Bible to all religious studies.”
— Oliver Prescott Robinson, The Fundamentals of Military Strategy (1928)
THE MULTIPLE IMAGES OF CLAUSEWITZ
Carl von Clausewitz outpaces every contemporary from Napoleon and Jomini to Scharnhorst and Wellington as the premier military theorist of the modern age. His masterwork, On War, published posthumously in 1832, gave the intellectual rationale for later thinking on mid-nineteenth-century warfare and advanced the first rigorous case for civilian control of the military. Admirers have called him the “Shakespeare of military writers” and the “Marx of military theory.”
His most famous detractor, B.H. Liddell Hart denounced Clausewitz as “the Mahdi of mass and mutual massacre,” due to his theoretical contribution to the practice of frontal assaults during the First World War. That a single theorist provokes such extreme and opposing reactions across a century of strategic writing is itself a subject worth examining.
What follows is a historiographical argument: that Anglo-American writing on Clausewitz from 1950 to the present divides into three distinct schools — strategic holism, strategic atomism, and strategic relativism — and that the competition among them mirrors a deeper transformation in how the word “strategy” itself changed.
Strategy began in the twentieth century as a verb, a practice — something commanders did during mobilization to the battlefield. Toward the end of the century, it became a noun —a framework—something governments theorized in committee rooms. Clausewitz, depending on who was reading him, authorized both. The debate over Clausewitz was therefore also a debate over strategy’s transformation: whether strategy remained an art practiced by commanders, had become an abstract framework for policymakers, or could survive only by continual adaptation to new political and technological conditions.
MAPPING THE FIELD
Strategy and tactics once belonged to the same professional universe. A general understood both because both lived on the same ground — one describing the engagement, the other the campaign it served. You could argue about where one ended and the other began, but the argument happened between soldiers; after 1945, that changed. Strategy got pulled away from the people who had always owned it and handed to a different kind of expert — economists, physicists, political scientists — men whose relationship to combat was largely theoretical. The map table didn’t disappear. It just stopped being where the important conversations happened.
[IsraelTimes] The head of Realign for Palestine speaks about the newly anointed head of Hamas, Khalil al-Hayya, and its restrengthened ties with Iran and Hezbollah
Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, the head of Realign for Palestine, an Atlantic Council project that challenges entrenched narratives in the Israel and Palestine discourse.
Alkhatib gives us an overview of the conditions on the ground right now in the Gaza Strip. We learn about an uptick in diseases such as chickenpox due to extreme unsanitary conditions and a lack of vaccinations. There are new efforts to allow residents to open bank accounts — but where is the money to be found when paper bills are so worn they are disintegrating?
Khalil al-Hayya has been elected the new leader of Hamas, the terror group announced Monday after months of speculation following a vote in the General Shura Council. We learn how, following the subjugation of protests in the Gaza Strip in late June, al-Hayya’s anointing is another signal that the terror group is entrenching its ties with Iran and continuing consultations with Hezbollah.
In the second half of the program, we discuss the intensity of support for Hamas in three population centers: the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority, and Jordan. Alkhatib’s comment on the Palestinians living in the Hashemite Kingdom may surprise.
Finally, Alkhatib describes his new short book, “Hamas and its Two Million Hostages.” Part memoir, part explainer, the work is an attempt to offer an approachable take on the past almost three years of war and how Hamas’s stranglehold on the people in the Gaza Strip is only tightening.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Leonid Tsukanov
[REGNUM] Eighty years ago, on July 22, 1946, an explosion rocked one of Jerusalem's then-largest buildings, the King David Hotel. Ninety-one people died in the fire and rubble. The attack was the work of the underground Jewish organization Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization).
The Zionists claimed the target of the attack was the headquarters of the British administration,
…that’s because that’s exactly what it was. They interrogated prisoners in the basement, as I recall…
which controlled Palestine at the time. More specifically, the Irgun was taking revenge on the British for their roundups of Jews. But instead of colonial officials, innocent civilians were killed. The victims included 41 Arabs, 28 British subjects, and 17 Jews.
The subsequent careers of the bombing's organizers were successful, and one of the suspects took the highest post in the State of Israel.
FROM THE WHITE BOOK TO THE BLACK SABBATH
The Middle East conflict essentially began in 1917. That year, the British expelled the Turks from Jerusalem, and Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, in a letter to Baron Lionel Rothschild, promised that London would support the creation of a "national home" for Jews—but with due regard for the interests of Arabs and other communities. In 1920, the Entente allies divided up the holdings of the Ottoman Empire, which had lost World War I.
Not all by itself, of course. But the sultan had made the mistake of choosing the wrong side.
France (formally under a League of Nations mandate) received Syria, while Britain took lands on both banks of the Jordan.
Under the terms of the Mandate, London promised to facilitate Jewish immigration. With the support of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), Jews from Europe acquired land and founded settlements and kibbutzim. At the same time, since World War I, the British had been actively working with the Arab elites of the Middle East. They were categorically opposed to the growth of the Jewish community, let alone the Israel project.
In 1922, Winston Churchill, then Colonial Secretary, prepared the White Paper. This document divided the Mandate into an Arab-Muslim portion, Transjordan (present-day Jordan), and Palestine, with a mixed population. While Jews accounted for no more than 11% of the Palestine population in 1922, by 1937, due to immigration, the proportion had grown to 28% (or 460,000 people).
In 1936, the "Arab street" revolted.
Sure, but by that point there had been a series of murderous anti-Jewish riots by the local Arab population that went back decades. This wasn’t sudden, new behaviour.
The jihad, including volunteers, was organized by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, Yasser Arafat's uncle. On the other side, Zionist militant organizations fought—the Haganah (Defense) and the Irgun. In 1939, to calm the tide, London adopted a new "White Paper," which reduced the Jewish immigration quota.
Right as the Nazis started ramping up the first steps of what blossomed into their Final Solution to the Jewish Problem, as doors were slamming closed toJews all over the world.
In response, Zionists, led by the future founding father of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, organized illegal immigration schemes. Radicals from the Irgun began an armed struggle against the British, demanding access for Jewish refugees.
During World War II, most Zionist groups paused their anti-British war. But the Irgun splinter organization Lehi (Israel Freedom Fighters, nicknamed the "Avraham Stern Gang" by the British) continued its attacks. One of Lehi's field commanders was Yitzhak Shamir, a future Israeli prime minister.
Stern explained that it was futile to hope that democratic England would grant independence to the Land of Israel; "only Jewish weapons could provide the answer." Moreover, the LEHI leader counted on contacts with Nazi Germany against a common enemy: "The Germans could 'cleanse' Europe of Jews by transporting them here." To be fair, the scale of Jewish persecution in Europe was unknown in Palestine.
On the other hand, Mufti al-Husseini met with Hitler, instructed Muslim SS units, and in March 1944, on Radio Berlin, called for a jihad against the Jews.
By 1946, despite the onset of the Cold War, the US and Soviet positions on the Palestine issue had converged. Joseph Stalin and Harry Truman advocated dividing the British Mandate into Jewish and Arab parts. The White House was influenced by the Jewish lobby.
Utter and total nonsense. President Roosevelt despised Jews in common with the upper classes of America, Britain and Europe. Had he been influenced by them,America would not have almost completely closed its doors to Jewish immigration during that crucial period.
Moscow, meanwhile, saw the Zionist movement as an enemy of the British and the proposed state of Israel as an opportunity to weaken the US-British nexus. London, meanwhile, sought to maintain the status quo.
By the summer of 1946, the British military had taken a firm grip on Jewish groups, including those considered "conditionally loyal" by local officials.
There were plenty of pretexts. By 1946, Zionists had blown up eight roads and railway bridges, kidnapped six British officials, and carried out several other attacks. Raids on British arms convoys and ammunition depots became more frequent.
London sanctioned a large-scale police operation, "Operation Agatha." On June 29, 1946, 25,000 British Army soldiers, police officers, and secret police officers surrounded kibbutzim suspected of harboring armed Zionists and launched a wholesale filtration of the local population. Arrests took place in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa.
In Israeli historiography, these events are referred to as "Black Saturday." Following the raids, the British seized or destroyed 60% of the Jewish arsenals. In Kibbutz Yagur alone, they found approximately 400 firearms (mostly rifles), about 100 mortars, 5,000 hand grenades, and over 400,000 rounds of ammunition of various calibers.
The British arrested up to 3,000 people (while the underground movement consisted of around 10,000 activists). Ben-Gurion himself almost came under attack. He was saved only by the fact that he was in France at the time and managed to lie low before the British learned of his whereabouts. Future Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett was imprisoned.
Some of those arrested faced the death penalty. But High Commissioner for Palestine Alan Cunningham, by then about to retire, unexpectedly commuted the death penalty to life imprisonment. This was on the condition that the remaining Zionist coordinators cease shedding British blood.
Most people actually agreed with this proposal, but only in words.
OPERATION CHICKEN
A plan for revenge was quickly hatched: Irgun militants (by then led by another future prime minister, Menachem Begin) decided to attack the headquarters of the British administration, troops, and police in the King David Hotel. The telephone exchange and police archives were also located in the same building.
It was decided not to take responsibility for the “action”: the raid was disguised as a demonstration by Arab “irreconcilables”.
A team of bomb disposal experts was to arrive at the hotel disguised as Arab workers and plant explosives in the basements of the south wing, disguised as milk cans for the kitchen. The team leader, disguised as a Sudanese waiter, was to provide cover (and coordinate the operation).
He was supposed to signal the bomber in the hall at the right moment to close the circuit. But the plan proved too risky and put the lives of the underground workers themselves at risk. Therefore, it was decided to use timed explosives, which were smuggled into the hotel basements disguised as building materials.
Among themselves, the squad members referred to the target as "Malonchik," meaning "little hotel." But to prevent the British from guessing that underground Jewish fighters were behind the attack, they shortened the codename to "Chick."
The underground workers were only able to obtain the explosives on their second attempt—the first shipment was seized by British troops. An informant among the hotel staff came down with a fever. There was a long debate about how to warn innocent guests of the hotel (which also housed a restaurant and the French consulate).
Ultimately, it was decided to give the attackers a half-hour head start. At the appointed time, the attackers' "phone operators" did indeed call the hotel lobby, the local police station, the Palestine Post newspaper, and the French consulate, but the warnings were not taken seriously.
The hotel managers considered the call to be a hoax, the police thought it was a trap, and the French diplomats took too long to find a translator. Fortunately, the French had the foresight to begin an evacuation. There were 15 minutes left before the detonation.
There wasn't enough time to get everyone out: at 12:40 a powerful explosion rocked the hotel.
SCAPEGOATS
The attack's results caused panic in the Israeli underground—no one expected such a crude operation from the Irgun. The moderate Haganah called the incident a murder and expressed condolences to the victims. However, it tactfully omitted any mention of contacts with Irgun fighters, the transfer of intelligence to them, or assistance in procuring explosives. All of this would become clear much later from the memoirs of underground members.
The militants tried to shift the blame onto the British themselves. They allegedly failed to respond to warning calls, and therefore were to blame for the civilian deaths. Predictably, this argument proved weak.
And then what the "moderate" underground activists feared most happened. A week later, Britain launched Operation Shark, a counter-terrorism operation against the Zionists.
Troops blockaded Tel Aviv and arrested approximately 800 underground fighters (including virtually all the leaders and fighters of the Irgun and Lehi). Although public opinion at the time was overwhelmingly on the British side, the leaders of Mandatory Palestine (including Cunningham) chose not to launch repression against local settlers. London intensified behind-the-scenes dialogue with the Haganah, which over time began to play a role in stabilizing the regional situation, rallying around itself opponents of unnecessary terrorism.
However, the Zionists did not forget the Irgun fighters: most of them were able to return after the creation of Israel and built political and military careers.
In modern Israel, attitudes toward the raid on the King David Hotel are mixed. On the one hand, the attack didn't advance Israel's independence (and almost led to the collapse of the Zionist movement), but on the other, it clearly frightened the British and forced them to take the threats of the underground fighters seriously. A compromise view remains: it was a necessary (though not entirely justified) sacrifice in the struggle for Israeli statehood. The underground fighters are honored, but the date of the raid is not celebrated. This includes remembering the 17 Jewish civilians who perished.
The ruling Likud party, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, cherishes the memory of the "military exploits" of the Irgun underground (in part because the organization's leader, Menachem Begin, was the "grandfather" of the party). However, these positive assessments are conveyed only to a domestic audience and with extreme caution, so as not to damage relations with the British, for whom the Irgun remains synonymous with brutality.
And the further we get from 1946, the less desire the Israeli authorities have to stir up the dark pages of their own history.
#1
Britain did everything possible, including complicity by silence in Holocaust, to prevent the formation of the Jewish state. It failed. Certain, highly respected, current day, novelist/politicians should learn the lesson.
Posted by: chris ||
07/23/2026 5:43 Comments ||
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#3
Utter and total nonsense. President Roosevelt despised Jews in common with the upper classes of America, Britain and Europe. Had he been influenced by them,America would not have almost completely closed its doors to Jewish immigration during that crucial period.
Roosevelt had it in his power to drastically reduce the scale of the Holocaust but he refused. A lot of people don't want to hear that about him but it's the truth. He had to know how bad things were getting in 1930s Germany but he let it happen anyway.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/23/2026 13:31 Comments ||
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[SLASHGEAR] The "D" variant of the North American P-51 Mustang has long been considered one of the greatest aircraft ever to fly. It is considered by many to be one of the leading technological reasons why the United States won the air war over Europe against the forces of the Third Reich. Mustangs have even been credited with defeating the first ever fighter jet, the German-engineered Messerschmitt Me 262, in air-to-air combat. Similarly, the Royal Air Force's iconic Spitfire was instrumental in defending the United Kingdom against the Luftwaffe's onslaught of fighter planes and bombers. A Spitfire defending Britain is also the subject of Iron Maiden's song "Aces High."
Both planes served their respective countries valiantly in battle, and aside from the Mustang and Spitfire both belonging to Allied forces, variants of the Spitfire and the Mustang share an engine, the Rolls-Royce Merlin (the P-51 used a licensed copy of the Merlin built by Packard). The Merlin was produced in several variants in the years leading up to and during World War II and served within the engine bays of numerous aircraft that helped turn the tide of the war.
#1
...COOL TRIVIA: There were two competitors for the Merlin contract here in the states - Ford and Packard. Ford was working under the assumption that they were going to get the contract no matter what, and were cruelly surprised when the RR tech team told them no; their work was not up to RR standards.
Packard though - whose mechanical standards were legendary - was another matter. The RR team discovered that not only did Packard's work meet their standards, it exceeded them in some places. and they were doing it with hand tools and 40s era machine tools.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
