The Israeli Option in Strategy

[Stu-6]

True, but that raises another question: is the traditional American conceptualization of war that sees it as a discrete event with a clear beginning and end applicable in today's world? Or have we entered an age of perpetual war whether we like it or not?

Phrased differently, are we trying to operate in an age of perpetual war with a strategy based on episodic war?

War is a constant of human society however this is not the same a perpetual war. Even wars that appear perpetual can, often with the hindsight of history, be seen more correctly as epochal (such as best articulated in of Philip Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles). Therefore while just accepting war is perpetual may seem like a realist solution, it actuality represents a failure in grad strategy.

[tequila]

The "basic structure" of the world is, I would submit, malleable to change, but not to control. Policymakers by their very nature are inclined to forget this. The Iraq War, for instance, has irrevocably altered the social structure and culture of Iraq and the broader Middle East in ways that would never have occurred without it --- but certainly not in ways that the United States, Iran, Muqtada al-Sadr, al-Qaeda, or the Sunni tribes could really imagine or control.

Perpetual war conjures an image of armies clashing and existential crisis - was the Cold War, by definition then, "perpetual warfare" as well? The world was certainly far bloodier and in far greater danger of destruction back then. We in the U.S. seem to have weathered it fairly well, being the ultimate victors if not necessarily in the usual Roman triumph sense of the word.