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Antony Blinken's Ahistorical Advice for Israel
(Wall Street Journal) John Spencer and Liam Collins - The Biden administration is keeping the pressure on Israel not to invade Hamas' final stronghold in Rafah. Secretary of State Antony Blinken claims that Israel could defeat Hamas by using "targeted operations with a smaller number of forces." But could it? A strategy dependent on raids and airstrikes alone has never been effective in defeating a large enemy. U.S. thinking about the war is plagued by the mistaken belief that raiding alone can constitute a military strategy. In their new book, Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine, Gen. David Petraeus and historian Andrew Roberts argue that intelligence-driven special-ops raids aren't enough to wage successful counterinsurgency campaigns. There is no historical evidence that commando raids or a series of precision strikes have defeated a deeply entrenched urban defender. Commando raids and precision strikes are a tactic, not a strategy to win a war, no matter how much Washington argues to the contrary. Mr. Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at West Point's Modern War Institute. Mr. Collins is executive director of the Madison Policy forum. They are the co-authors of Understanding Urban Warfare.