Categories: Daniel Serwer

Stevenson’s army, November 11

– NYT has interactive graphic on the Gaza tunnels.

– WOTR writer revisits his article on Israel’s urban warfare

– Prof Hal Brands analyzes Chinese strategies for Taiwan

Politico discusses the Trump plan for Gaza:

LET IT BURN: Trump has a plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: just let it burn.

“You have a war that’s going on and you’re probably going to have to let this play out … because a lot of people are dying,” he also told Univision reporter ENRIQUE ACEVEDO last night. “There is no hatred like the Palestinian hatred of Israel and Jewish people. And probably the other way around also, I don’t know. You know, it’s not as obvious, but probably that’s it too. So sometimes you have to let things play out and you have to see where it ends.”

“Eventually there’s peace, because you’re going to have a winner and a loser,” Trump continued.

It’s as pure a distillation of EDWARD LUTTWAK’s “let it burn” theory as there exists. In his seminal 1999 Foreign Affairs article “Give War a Chance,” Luttwak wrote “an unpleasant truth often overlooked is that although war is a great evil, it does have a great virtue: it can resolve political conflicts and lead to peace … fighting must continue until a resolution is reached.”

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).

Daniel Serwer

Share
Published by
Daniel Serwer

Recent Posts

On the agenda and off for US-Serbia

President Vucic is getting a boost. Transactions are on the agenda. Democracy, rule of law,…

3 days ago

It’s an old game. They’ll play it again

The US will try to get Serbia aligned with US objectives. Serbia will offer half…

5 days ago

How to fix what ails America

If even a handful of retiring Republicans announce that they will caucus with the Democrats,…

5 days ago

Trump and Putin have the same problem

The lesson is that powerful states should hesitate to attack less powerful ones, who will…

1 week ago

Improved, but not as good as could be

With NATO and EU membership, Kosovo won't care much about UN membership, which can't happen…

2 weeks ago

It’s an ailing America, and it won’t recover soon

No, America is no longer the America Europeans, including Kosovars, want it to be. And…

2 weeks ago