Double Quote: Destruction vs Construction
Or ‘There Is No Grand Strategy In Israel?’
- Recently, Chet Richards cited Chuck Spinney describing 35 years of Israel’s application of strategic concepts outside the framework of a grand strategy…and the implications of this according to Boyd,
If you think about it, this is Israel’s strategy — as well as its grand strategy — to this day: Divide up its opponents. This becomes clear in the use of settlements and Israeli-only roads to carve up and control the West Bank and in its failing effort to isolate Iran. Of course, strategy is destructive and these ideas work to destroy your adversary, but grand strategy should be constructive, it should end the conflict on favorable terms that do not also sow seeds for future conflict. Applying concepts from strategy, such as these from Gen. Yadin, to shape a grand strategy is a prescription for perpetual conflict and destruction (ultimately your own)! [Emphasis mine]
2. Israeli Brigadier General (Ret) Shimon Naveh introduced one of his talks on the evolution of the operational art by saying,
“The one thing I am not is a strategist. Anyone who will attempt to seek and find a strategist, one living strategist in Israel, he will fail. There is no such thing.”
-LM
