================================================= CONTEXT OF "PAX AMERICANA" I have written "Pax Americana" chapters as posts to a particular discussion thread of a Yahoo list. I have initiated the thread and chosen the title which points to the longest period of peace in European history resulting from USA having saved Europe from Nazis and imposed post war measures which made this peace possible. The thread has been started with my following assertions: 1.The world tends necessarily towards mondialisation which implies some form of domination by a single power. 2.Eliminating sad comedies such as the UN and powerless committees such as Europe, the real mondial power options seem to be: Russia, China, Islam and USA. 3.Of these options I have postulated USA, or "Pax Americana" as preferable by orders of magnitude. 5.Best not necessarily meaning "ideal", nor even "good", I endeavored to indicate drawbacks of the USA option which may prevent it from reaching the domination, as well as some of its disadvantages for the eventually dominated world. The worst of them is IMO the "American View", the complex of beliefs, cliches and prejudices governing American social and political reason and behavior. Particular chapters of "Pax Americana" try to illustrate on some important examples how the originally laudable American enterprises may get muddled in detail by the American View, sometimes to the extent of turning into catastrophes and crimes against humanity. The objective of the thread is to foster discussion and investigation which could indicate how the American View could be modified so that Pax Americana may become efficient as well as beneficial to the mankind. ================================================= Pax Americana ISRAEL =============================================== GENERAL EVALUATION ------------------ With their support the USA saved and keeps on saving Israel from extermination which is IMO morally and humanly right. I can see only one error in American attitude which BTW does not concern AFP, but what we have defined in previous chapters as American View (AV): Flatly dogmatic AV confuses Israel with Zionism and Orthodox Judaism and supports Israel via Jewish Fundamentalist lobbies. This results in stimulating the war between Jewish and Muslim Fundamentalists who count points in their safe and comfortable armchairs using Israelis and Palestinians as cannon fodder. With exception of this error USA do the right thing. And for once, intelligent and efficient as well. Israel is the only 100% reliable and faithful ally of the USA. It is the only one who appreciates material support, but fights for herself without asking GI's to come and fight for her even in utmost danger. And she returns more than she gets. Returns it in currency which AV is as yet not fit to convert: as workshop of dealing with Jihad, against which Israel defends herself for 50 years. And if USA want to survive, they better learn to convert this currency, to understand and to use Israeli experience. Describing this experience would take a book. In the rest of this message I will quote just a few of its aspects which seem to me rather pertinent. =============================================== CITIZEN ARMY. Israel has a Citizen Army. Let me juxtapose a few of its characteristics just as they come to my mind, before going to examples showing its surprising efficiency. In a unit I counted 7 Uni Profs, veterans of all preceeding wars, simple privates commanded by a 22 years old captain. Each of them new more and had more war experience than 20 young captains. And the captain has been taught: Start by learning all knowledge, competence and experience you'll find in your unit. When problem arises ask for bottom up initiative and advise. But the decision is yours. Once you find the proper course, fix it and make it execute. With authority. Authority not coming from discipline, but from your being the best in field, from never saying the (illegal) "forward", but "follow me", from everybody knowing that in trouble you will stay behind with a machine gun covering their retreat, that you have five times higher probability to be killed than any of them. No arithmetics in saving a companion. When a wounded soldier risks to fall in the hands of the cruel and inhuman enemy, 10 get killed to save him, and if 10 is not sufficient, 100 go. Gives you a good feeling going on a mission, and I happen to know it from experience, to know that the whole bloody army will go and save you if it's humanly possible. Right and duty to refuse morally wrong orders. I have asked a superior officer to stop beating a Palestinian and he ordered me to go to hell and turned against me. Instead of obeying I knocked him out, was court-martialled and congratulated by the colonel-judge. =============================================== THROUGH SWAMPS -------------- In Yom Kippur war a regiment had to cross in a hurry swamps close to the Great Bitter Lake. They had a lot of heavy material which could easily get lost in swamps. The colonel called the 6 "kablanim" serving as privates in the regiment and asked them to chose the most knowledgeable in re swamps. ("Kablan": an entrepreneur in earth moving, digging and foundations building). Then he delegated the command to the chosen one, making the others his deputies and charged the sergeant major to look that everybody, officer or not, did what the new boss ordered. Than he asked for a job. Can you load tanks on trailers or something of that sort? No, said the colonel and got the stupidest available job of carrying boards, plates and things left behind to the front of the convoy. And the regiment behaved for some time like a bunch of boy scouts building a tent camp or something, with the colonel running up and down and the sergeant major yelling to move his ass a bit faster. The heavy material went through swamps in almost no time without any losses. A traditional West Point or Saint Cyr colonel would keep authority, give such orders as his ignorance of detail would dictate and lose every damn thing in swamps. And, anyway, among his professional soldiers he would not have 40 years old experienced and competent kablanim serving as reserve privates. =============================================== ONE WAR AHEAD ------------- Itzhak, the chief operator of my Computing Center and a tank driver heard on the Yom Kippur his mobilization code in the radio. He took an auto-stop towards his unit on the Golan. Israel was taken by surprise and Syrians were progressing through Golan like through butter. On the hights he was stopped by MP who asked where he was going and told him that his unit was in Syrian hands. "What do I do?". "Go to the maintenance camp and save at least a tank." Maintenance people gave him a freshly overhauled tank and he drove out always in his civil clothes. A hitch-hiker stopped him: "Need a radio?". He contacted another tank with a sergeant who told them to join him. On the way they collected a gunner and in the meeting place found 5 other tanks and two reconnaissance jeeps, all headed now by a lieutenant. Nobody knew anybody else, all belonged to different units and, of course, never worked together. Now, Syrian tanks, advancing by hundreds in perfect order, were fitted with rockets of 10 km hitting range against Israeli guns limited to 800 m. Jeeps had light guns which would not penetrate the armor, but could eventually immobilize a tank by hitting its chain from 200 m distance. An experienced Jeep driver knowing every stone on Golan proposed to approach the Syrian convoy by surprise and to immobilize a tank in a gorge to narrow for overtaking. Due to its mobility and small size a jeep had a chance to succeed and maybe even to escape. The scheme has been executed, the 6 Israeli tanks attacked the immobilized convoy emerging by surprise from behind the hills at a close distance making useless the Syrian firing range superiority. They destroyed 4 tanks, blocking completely the gorge and stopping the Syrian advance with one casualty: the jeep and its crew, who did not escape. Next day they grew to 15 tanks headed by a captain and organized first supplies of gas and munition from behind Golan. In next 2 days they destroyed 40 Syrian tanks and, together with some other similar improvised units, definitely stopped the Syrian advance. They became one of the first units of the "captains' army", an unprecedented phenomenon of an army emerged bottom up from the ruins of a practically lost war, self organized and run by young field officers without contact with the headquarters, on the base of improvised coordination. =============================================== TWO WARS AHEAD -------------- "Captains' Army" was doubtless the necessary condition to return and to win the lost war. But it was not sufficient. Even a citizen army needs eventually a head, especially in the case of Arabs quantitative and technological superiority in the Yom Kippur war. They had superiority over Israel in most areas, but the critical one was that of Egyptian SAM rockets. Israeli plains could not show themselves in the air without being shot down like ducks. And without Air Force Israel would not survive a week. Then Sharon refused Dayan's orders, took over the command and imagined an incredible operation closing the circle of technology race by falling back on the "naked" man: a commando unit went deep into Egypt and by complete surprise took the SAM launching site with knifes. =============================================== IDF is by far not the biggest army in the ME and not always the best equipped. If it is the strongest it's because it is a citizen army. =============================================== If USA want to survive the Jihad war, they better learn to understand and to use Israeli experience. ===============================================