Feb 062011
Who didn’t see this coming?
ElBaradei: The Israelis Have A Peace Treaty With Mubarak, Not With The Egyptian People
In short El Baradei is hinting to the Israelies that they should start surrendering their territory if they don’t want to be bombed.
15 Responses to “Setting the stage for the next Egypt-Israel war”
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This whole Egyptian affair just shows that ElBaradei was *never* the dispassionate observer that he was supposed to be when he headed up the IAEA. ElBaradei has always been eying a political career back in Egypt and his actions with respect to Iran’s efforts to obtain fissile material bear out that he was always making IAEA decisions in light of his future political ambitions. He was never going to come down hard on Iran because this would ruin his viability as a political figure anywhere in the Middle East. The sad thing is that he was able to pick up a Nobel Peace Prize in the process.
I honestly don’t think there’s much we can do to influence these events in our direction. I believe it is truly a popular uprising of the Middle East, but hatred of Israel is a very popular sentiment in the Middle East. I also fear that, like Western Socialists, those who profess hatred of current Islamist tyranny will nevertheless try to set up at least mildly Islamist governments on the principle that Islamic theocracy has just never been done *right.* And the world is so fixated on the concept of *democracy* as synonymous with *freedom,* even though democracy can easily devolve into merey voting for the tyranny of your choice, that I fear Egypt would have little guidance towards freedom available to it even if it *did* desire genuine political reform.
Israel has dealt with Egypt successfully in the past, and hopefully El Baradei remembers that.
Some things:
1) Israel seems to have slipped militarily in recent years. They’ve gone from being almost magically successfull at kicking Arab ass to, well, getting slapped around by Hamas and Hezbollah.
2) Egypt, in past wars, was armed by the Soviet Union. Now they are armed, at least in part, by the US. Even though their M-1’s are not as well armored as American M-1’s, they still have about a thousand of ’em. This would present a problem for the Israelies.
3)While the US has never intervened directly in any past Israeli-Arab wars, the potential was always there. If nothing else, the Israelies could at least hope for rescue missions in case the Arabs won. Now… well, I would not bet the future of the Jewish state of Israel on Barack Obama.
Yep, the point about the Egyptian army being armed with U.S. hardware is significant. When it was Israelis with U.S. hardware were fighting Egyptians with Soviet hardware the Israelis had a significant advantage just in the hardware alone. Now, that has largely been eliminated. The Israelis have a fine homegrown tank but it’s never been fielded against an M-1 (albeit a downgraded M-1). It might do well but right know it is an unknown quantity. Also, Egypt has a significantly larger army in terms of warm bodies.
What Israel still does have is a much better trained military. Traditionally, in the Arab states, the way to advance in the military (or pretty much anything) is to have the right familial relations and/or to bribe the right people. Competence doesn’t matter so much as cronyism. The Israeli Army is much more of a meritocracy and it shows in the quality of their troops and officer corps. However, at the moment I would say that the deck is stacked against them more than in ’67 and ’73, especially since they can no longer confidently rely even on indirect assistance from the U.S.. I wonder if the current administration would even share fresh satellite photo reconnaissance or signals intelligence with Israel, much less resupply them with munitions and spare parts.
This could turn out very badly indeed. If only Obama could have been as concerned and supportive of the will of the protesters in Iran last year as he is with those in Egypt.
Israel is responding:
“…the IDF will soon call for the establishment of an additional division (a five-year process) to counter any emerging threat from Egypt. What is more, the prospect of a new IDF headquarters being established in the south to manage any potential operations there now seems to be more viable. Military officials also are expected to call for an increase in funding of around 1.5 billion shekels ($404.5 million).”
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?id=news/awst/2011/02/07/AW_02_07_2011_p22-287055.xml&headline=Middle%20East%20Turmoil%20Impacts%20Airlines,%20Defense&channel=awst
Two words: ASWAN DAM.
Eighty million Egyptians live in a narrow valley downstream from a Soviet-built dam. They may talk big but they’ll never attack Israel again.
“1) Israel seems to have slipped militarily in recent years. They’ve gone from being almost magically successfull at kicking Arab ass to, well, getting slapped around by Hamas and Hezbollah.”
Sorry admin but i have to disagree here, the only place where operation “Cast Lead” was not a huge succes was in the western press, yes, the hizzbullies may have won the pressbattle, but that means zilch on the actual battle field.
I like the blog & hope that your health improves soon.
Greetings from Holland.
With respect to operation “Cast Lead”, you also have to consider that we are talking about essentially an urban guerrilla warfare type of fight. Israel’s military went into that operation with severe limitation on the rules of engagement. If Egypt were to attack Israel, it would be much more of a conventional military land/air invasion and the gloves would certainly come off Israel.
However, Egypt does now have modern U.S. supplied equipment and a much larger army. Israel has at least equal equipment in general (and in many cases better), but a smaller but better trained army.
In terms of air forces Israel’s core combat capability is built around the F-15s (A,B,C,D and Strike Eagles) and F16s. Egypt’s air force is built around the F16 and a mix of Mirages, fairly old MiG 21s, and Chinese J-7s. Having such an odd mix of aircraft probably doesn’t server them well and to my knowledge they don’t have an air superiority platform in the F-15 class. In terms of shear numbers of aircraft I think the air forces are roughly equal, but I think you have to give Israel a solid lead for both the quality of aircraft they are fielding and their pilot and ground crew training. I also suspect that the level of operational integration between the IDF air and ground forces are much better than the integration between the Egyptian army and air force. So, I think Israel can definitely win a war with Egypt, but losses on the Israeli side will be much more costly as Egypt can just field such a larger force on the ground if it so chooses.
> I think Israel can definitely win a war with Egypt
A vastly better Egyptian military than last time… with the possibility of Iranian nukes thrown in the mix.
I think it’s time that I once again bust out an Israeli middle eastern exit strategy known as Neuvo Israel.
http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/?p=1566
I agree, the part about the vastly better Egyptian army is definitely a concern. It is not debatable that they have relatively better equipment than they did in ’67 and ’73. The extent to which Egyptian military strategy and troop discipline has improved on the other hand is unknown (the answer could be “quite a lot” or “not much”, I don’t think we’ll know the answer to this one unless battle actually ensues).
I’m somewhat less convinced about the possibility of Iranian nukes entering the mix. I know the people running Iran are about as mad as the proverbial hatter, but if Iran has three or four nukes to put in the kitty they’ve got to know that Israel has something on the order of 30 or more (I’ve heard estimates as high as the 100ish range). And, Israel has taken the prudent provision of putting some of those nukes off their coast in diesel submarines which will survive a first strike. It’s a tough problem, predicting the actions of madmen. Just how bad do the Iranians want to see the 12th Iman?
Anyhow, all that’s why I said that I *think* Israel can win a war with Egypt. Maybe I should have stressed my uncertainty of that assessment a bit more. That said, even if Israel does win, an all out war with Egypt would be *much* more costly to Israel than it would be to Egypt, just looking at the relative sizes of their population alone.
Another wildcard to throw in the mix: What if Israel found itself in a losing proposition with Egypt, and by losing I mean having their major cities being overrun and occupied by Egypt, in other words, the state of Israel ceasing to exit. In such an existential crisis what are the chances that Israel might say “F it all” and go out in a blaze of glory, unleashing its entire nuclear arsenal on choice cities of Egypt and the middle east? I don’t know what that probability is, but it’s probably not zero. And given the crap Israel has had to put up with for the last 50 years, it’s probably not insignificantly small.
I like everything about your Neuvo Israel project except that it would cede a victory to the Islamist. In my experience, you placate bullies at your own peril. On the other hand, it would be a hell of a deal for the U.S. Definitely would resolve all of our illegal immigration issues!
One thing that worries me, is that if Egypt starts something now, there’s no large buffer-zone like the Sinai Peninsula before they hit the Israeli southern border. Unlike the occupied Golan Heights, I don’t think the terrain there will offer much in the way of a defensible perimeter…
> it would cede a victory to the Islamist.
Well… not really. Sometimes the best victories are the ones that look l;ike defeats. In this case, having Israel pack up and move to mexico would look l;ike an Islamist victory, as the forces of islam move in; but once Israel is out of the region… the United States suddenly has no further interest in the region. We certainly would have no good reason to lavish any middle eastern country (like, say, Egypt) with aid… and we’d have no gooed reason to even pretend to give a damn if, say, control of Jerusalem was now being contested by Jordan, Syria, Arabia and Iran. Let ’em fight it out. We can sell second-rate (but still superior to Russian) tactical weapons to all sides.Personally I’d find it funnier’n hell if the Islamist nations waged unceasing war upon *each* *other.* The history of religious nuts has been that the only peopel they hate more than people of other religions are people of their *own* (but slightly different) religion.
As the war consumes them, and their ability to rake in the cash via aid and oil sales plummet, their economies – already precarious – would collapse. Their populations would be left with two options… either crfash back down to what they should be, or invade and colonize Europe, Russia and India. And *that* would be all kinds of entertaining.
So, yeah… let ’em have their little victory.
Should the state of Israel find itself facing military defeat and with nothing to lose, I expect a way will be found to prevent their nuclear inventory from falling into enemy hands.
BTW, was reading up on current estimates of Israel’s nuclear inventory. Apparently the estimate I had been carrying around in my head is way old, probably from sometime in the 1980’s. This is all very speculative of course (Israel neither admits nor denies having nuclear weapons) but current estimates range from 75 to 400 weapons with some number of them being thermonuclear weapons in the 1 MT yield range. I had no idea that Israel was likely packing thermonuclear heat. They have a three legged triad delivery system much like ours on a smaller scale and are thought to have some highly accurate ballistic missiles and nuclear cruise missiles.
Maybe that will keep Egypt from feeling too froggy and adventurous.