RE: What Trump is doing in the Middle East
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Interesting perspective, good read.
Israel is a Great Power in ascendancy.
That is wishful thinking. Let's just pick Turkey as an example. They aren't too far away.
Compared to them Israel is a glass cannon. They could just march Israel down, no matter how sophisticated Israel struck back.
I would also not underestimate Iran. Talking about Great Powers: Persia was one of the first. These are for the most part the same dudes. They just have madmen in power right now.
But anyways - I think you are probably right with most of the predictions.
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Turkey would be swatted aside. Their armor is ancient and their air force if it came near Israel would be destroyed easily by our short range interceptors. If shooting down Hamas rockets and Houti missiles is commonplace, slow moving fighter jets are trivial.
Besides driving armor through Syria without air cover will not happen.
I don't doubt that, but that wasn't my point.
I also think this would be highly unlikely scenario.
A land invasion is not going to happen.
A Great Power can invade places, embargo ports... bully nations, basically.
I just picked Turkey as a nation, that is pretty closeby and there is no way, Israel could dominate them like (another random example) Great Britain could fuck with India, and China. Or how the Sowjets bullied the nations around them.
I think am not moving the goalpost here...
My point was about being a Great Power (in ascencion).
I play a lot of Victoria...
Your are confusing the term Great Power with Superpower or global empire (British Empire).
A Great Power is a nation that dominates its neighbourhood.
The IDF is far more powerful that the Turkish military.
The IDF has a far more powerful, better equipped and experienced Air Force, far better equipped and larger front line combat forces that have proven extremely effective in the most difficult environment - urban warfare.
Turkey does not have front line tanks and would be absolutely smashed in armoured warfare.
The only area where Turkey is substantially larger is in the Navy, but it is mostly quite old and would be quickly sunk by the IAF if Turkey brought it near Israel.
Note that the Turkish Army has really struggled against the poorly armed Kurds over the last decade while the IDF utterly wiped out the most powerful non-state group in the world (Hizbollah) with very low casualties on its side. Hiz was far more powerful and better armed and trained than any NATO army other than US and perhaps Turkey.
Notice that when Turkey tried to take over air bases in Syria a month or so ago the IAF just wiped out everything and Turkey backed down.
Iran has no tanks, no modern aircraft, no mobile artillery and basically has an army completely incapable of offensive operations. Static defence only.
Its missiles don't work and Israel's air defence is way too good.
Note that while Turkey and Iran have larger populations, their fertility is less than half Israel's and thus Israel has a lot more military age population than its overall population (10.2M) would suggest. Also most Israelis do serious military service while most Turks do not.
Willingness to fight for country in well over 90% in Israel and much lower in Turkey and Iran.
Thus even on raw numbers neither Turkey nor Iran have the combat power their populations might suggest.
At the height of the British Empire in 1805 when Nelson won the Battle of Trafalgar, the UK had only 11M people and lower effective fertility than Israel today.
Israel fields the most powerful military between the US and Russia & India. No European power or ME power is anywhere close.
Agree. Maybe not in every stat, but they also have a lot of veterans and general experience.
Now to go somewhere and invade a place is a whole different matter.
Yeah but GB had vassals, the ANZAC troops, the Gurkhas...
They had boots on the ground.
Israel dominates the airspace, no doubt.
And also the whole intelligence spy stuff.
At least in Victoria and Civ and such, that can only get you so far...
...anyways, I don't want to drag this out.
Your piece seems pretty pragmatic and applies to what's actually going on, while all I was commenting on was the great Power thing, because I play strategy games a lot :)