Monday, August 26, 2024

A Dying Outpost - Vox Popoli - Israel?

 Things are not looking good for Israel, which is reaping the bitter harvest of completely ignoring the sage advice of one of its greatest sons. Though respected by militaries throughout the world, especially the U.S. Marines, the great Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld has been utterly ignored by the generals of the IDF and the Likud politicians as they wage precisely the sort of Goliath vs David war that he has observed tends to enervate a military.

Meanwhile, Simplicius contrasts the difference between Russia’s war on NATO and Israel’s war on Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Yemen, and concludes that very different results are likely.

Analysis continues to be churned out heralding the end of the Israeli economy:

The economic indicators speak of nothing less than an economic catastrophe. Over 46,000 businesses have gone bankrupt, tourism has stopped, Israel’s credit rating was lowered, Israeli bonds are sold at the prices of almost “junk bonds” levels, and the foreign investments that have already dropped by 60% in the first quarter of 2023 (as a result of the policies of Israel’s far-right government before October 7) show no prospects of recovery. The majority of the money invested in Israeli investment funds was diverted to investments abroad because Israelis do not want their own pension funds and insurance funds or their own savings to be tied to the fate of the State of Israel. This has caused a surprising stability in the Israeli stock market because funds invested in foreign stocks and bonds generated profit in foreign currency, which was multiplied by the rise in the exchange rate between foreign currencies and the Israeli Shekel. But then Intel scuttled a $25 billion investment plan in Israel, the biggest BDS victory ever.

It’s difficult to guess the future without going overboard with recency bias, but as the article above states, many figures have now proclaimed that the age of Zionism itself has come to an end, and a slow outflow from Israel, a kind of anti-Aliyah, will continue to take place until Israel itself falls apart and dissolves.

I’ve professed before that I can see Israel’s end resembling that of former Rhodesia. I’ve stated before that Netanyahu and Zelensky are two birds of a feather with the same desperate goals: they need to drag the US into a wider global war to save their regimes and their country. But what they don’t know is: they are doomed whether that happens or not. That’s because the US does not have the power to win a wider war against either adversary, and both Ukraine and Israel would be doomed to their fates, with US merely sacrificing itself in the process as well.

There’s good chance that by 2050-2075 Israel goes the way of Rhodesia, or at least won’t exist in its current form.

I wouldn’t give it that long, since Israel is a Clown World outpost that cannot survive support from the USA and its European puppet states, and the USA is unlikely to survive in its current form more than another decade or so. 2033 is rapidly approaching, but the USD will likely be dethroned before that, with the inevitable debt chickens coming home to roost hard.

What the war in Ukraine has revealed is that the entire basis for the Israeli military superiority necessary for its survival in a hostile environment was built on a false foundation of quality over quantity. That concept works in the small-scale series of battles in which Israel engaged during the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 through 1983, and it works in the foreign adventurism in which the US has engaged for most of its military history, but it doesn’t work in real war.

Real war is existential and attritional. Doctrine doesn’t matter, elan doesn’t matter, technological advantage doesn’t matter. Four things are relevant: industrial capacity, numbers, societal morale, and leadership. And in both the Middle East conflict and the European one, Israel and the USA are severely deficient in all four aspects.

Which is why any serious observer is bound to conclude that both conflicts – which of course are different fronts of the same war – are going to end in defeat for the Clown World side. And that is why Ukraine, Israel, and the USA should all be attempting to negotiate surrenders to their respective adversaries on the best terms they can still obtain. But who surrenders when they are constantly assuring everyone that they are winning and victory is imminent in just two more weeks?

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