Again, it is my pleasure to present another excellent edition, albeit if all editions were excellent, then none truly are, but few should be disappointed. Good writers worked hard so as this mediocre editor had to work less hard.
Regardless of real or imagined mediocrity, going back in 2010 in Volume 1, Issue No. 1 of this publication, then called Infinity Journal, the publisher AE Stahl and I wrote an article titled “Targeted Killings Work.” Much opprobrium was poured upon us from the Political Science community. Yet, here we are today, with Hassan Nasrallah dead, Ismail Haniyeh dead, Yahya Sinwar dead, plus many, many other commanders, and Bashar al-Assad went from being President of Syria to pushing a shopping trolley around a supermarket in Moscow in the space of one bad week. The nearly 500 days since the October 7th, 2023 Hamas-led terror attack in southern Israel have seen that when it matters, much of the academic wisdom received by the universities evaporates when faced with the common sense of the practitioners for whom we write. In 2010, we wrote what we did because there was overwhelming evidence for the statement. In 2024, nothing had changed.
The other pet shibboleth of the Political Science community, withering in the heat of practice, is the oft-heard criticism that Israel lacks a “Strategic vision” for the post-conflict world. Military force only works against other armed forces. As Clausewitz so famously said, “To secure the object, we must render the enemy powerless, and that, in theory, is the true aim of warfare.” Rendering the enemy powerless is a non-discretionary first step, entirely unconnected to the object. War aims to remove the armed objector. Politics presides when the armed objector is defeated. Yes, context is critical, and nothing is simple but the logic of what Clausewitz wrote, still holds. No one who is winning wants a ceasefire or to negotiate. If the enemy wants a ceasefire, they want to stop fighting.
While Israel is not executing any element of strategy perfectly, where is the nation with the expertise or experience to whom they should look? The ugly, brutal and often unpalatable truth is that no nation will go far wrong by seeking out and killing enemy commanders and the forces they command. It is an elegant solution. It clarifies much of the abstract and theoretical verbiage, which pollutes the effective discussion and education necessary for effective strategic practice. That is not to say any dissenting voice should be silenced for asking hard questions or rejecting accepted practice, but Strategy is about using force. Those who say otherwise have joined a baseball team and are trying to get everyone to play soccer (real Football) instead.
William F. Owen
Editor, Military Strategy Magazine
Volume 10, Issue 1
January 2025