The Center of Gravity/rev II

Portrait by Wilhelm Wach, c. 1830

‘War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale’ – a physical contest between people,
each using force ‘to compel our enemy to do our will’. [75]

& this

The center of gravity ... 
the "hub of all power and movement, the point against which all energies should be directed"

Clausewitz stressed the multiple interactions of diverse factors in war, noting how unexpected developments unfolding under the "fog of war" (i.e., in the face of incomplete, dubious, and often erroneous information and great fear, doubt, and excitement) call for rapid decisions by alert commanders. 

Sun Tzu

(2) entangling ground;

[The same commentator says: "Net-like country, venturing
into which you become entangled."]

Why the two military operatives? ... 

The word assume applies.

Inside the Trump administration, officials are expressing fears that Iran is in the “advanced stages” of planning attacks against U.S. officials.

More than 6,000 miles away, the Iranians appear convinced that Israel and the United States are preparing to unleash their third major attack in 16 months, a final push to force Iran to surrender to U.S. demands.

The conflict in the Middle East has entered a new phase in which a maelstrom of factors, from the political calendars in the United States and Israel to the potential for all sides to be seeking pretexts for action, are creating heightened levels of tension and risk.

This is how countries can escalate into full-scale war, several diplomats and outside experts noted. If the U.S. intelligence disclosed this week is right that Iran has credible plans to attack Americans at home and abroad, one senior European official said — “and it probably is,” the official added — one gunshot that appears aimed at a U.S. official could touch off a conflagration. So could a stray explosion near a bunker sheltering Iranian leaders, who already survived their predecessors’ deaths in a decapitation strike in the opening hours of the war on Feb. 28.

In the entire NYTimes article, the center of gravity was not discussed. If all out war ensues, the desalinization plants are gone. When that happens, Israel and the gulf states cease to exist.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” - Einstein

In closing ...

The Geometry of Escalation: Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and the Levant

Military planners in Washington and Tel Aviv are operating exactly like hyperscaler tech executives—trying to brute-force thermodynamic chaos with probabilistic assumptions. But war, like quantum mechanics, is bounded by hard, deterministic reality.

Sun Tzu understood that terrain is the ultimate physical boundary. Iran is a mountainous fortress with immense strategic depth and the vast majority of its operational ordnance securely in place. You cannot brute-force that topography without absorbing catastrophic friction.

Clausewitz understood the fatal cost of that friction and the necessity of protecting a nation's "center of gravity." Israel’s center of gravity, as stated befpr. is not its military hardware; it's is highly fragile centralized desalination infrastructure. Shatter the water supply, and the state's internal architecture collapses. When conventional survival is mathematically eliminated, Isreal's Sampson Option looms.

Risking the global energy supply chain, the Levant, and millions of lives on the assumption that you can surgically manage a regional war against an adversary holding the geographic high ground is strategic insanity. The planners are ignoring the physical limits of the board, hoping probabilistic assumptions will override reality. But the geometry of the terrain always wins.

Would Eisenhower allow the US to be the lapdog of Israel in promoting an insane war such as this?

I think not. 

Official portrait, 1959