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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29662 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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Good post. A few clarifications for people making points elsewhere in the thread as to whether the analogy holds:

  • The Crusader States were defeated by external armies specifically because the surrounding Muslim states were unified into a single empire (first under Zengi, then under Saladin). Pan-Arabism tried this, but failed largely because of rivalry between Egypt and Syria - basically, this project is infinitely more difficult in the present day, when e.g. Syria can't simply conquer Egypt with a couple thousand cavalry and have Egypt be happy with their new Sultan. The United Arab States lasted three years, and the Arab Federation six months, and that was an easier project in the 50s, so Arab countries would need a better coordination mechanism.
  • On the point of internal Israeli/Crusader disunity, Saladin was given his casus belli for the campaign that captured Jerusalem because Reynald of Chatillion (an eternal loose cannon) violated the truce and raided pilgrim caravans. Contra what some people here are assuming, the Crusader leadership were far more disunified than the Israelis have ever been (also, contra the OP, the Crusaders engaged in extensive diplomacy, they just lacked the control to stop guys like Reynald ruining it). It's very possible that Israeli unity could splinter, but again in the modern world demographic splintering looks very different from personalist feudal politics.
  • The Crusader States did not have to disappear when they did. Hattin was a completely unforced error from Guy de Lusignan (a weak king in power due to dynastic bad luck and the aforesaid noble disunity). Without that, you probably don't get the mass capitulations when Baibars storms in. The Crusader States were only 100% doomed when gunpowder entered the conversation, and it became possible for larger states to systematically destroy castles. The lesson for Israel is to be very wary of technological shifts in warfighting, particularly if they represents shifts in power from demographically smaller states to larger populations - but I don't see any coming down the pike in the 21st Century.

but I don't see any coming down the pike in the 21st Century.

Nice pun.

In any case, what Israel has to fear is a technological revolution that shifts the balance of power away from technologically sophisticated states with small populations and towards backwards societies with big ones. A warfare shift from quality emphasis to quantity emphasis, if you will.

Ukraine provides a possible example, I guess, where drones and artillery replace smart munitions, but that’s after neither side collapsed into maneuver warfare and it turned into a grinding attritional conflict. ‘Superior units but would be up a creek in a grinding attritional war’ might describe Israel, but it also described Prussia. So Israeli strategy needs to be aimed at preventing the kind of hostile power that can sustain an attritional conflict- keep Egypt on its good side, prevent Iraq and Syria from getting their shit together, tamp down Hezbollah, and keep Iran outside of striking distance by backing its rivals. That seems like what we see in the real world.

The lesson for Israel is to be very wary of technological shifts in warfighting, particularly if they represents shifts in power from demographically smaller states to larger populations - but I don't see any coming down the pike in the 21st Century.

Aren't they already here? As we've seen in Ukraine? Drones and intelligence gathering have basically obsoleted maneuver warfare and turned wars into a slugfest number game, you need a strong and wide EW net to advance now without getting picked off which means advancing along a wider front which favors numbers. Though the caveat here is that AI could follow on the heels of this as another technological shift. Feel like this would just make wars about industrial capacity though which is still sort of a numbers game.

AA also now struggles to deal with the saturation attacks possible with cheaply mass produced drones.

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