"From using a nuke because the IDF had almost collapsed?" Nice try. Didn't happen. There was a severe threat from the Syrian, in the early days, because of the proximity of Golan to Galilee. The Egyptians never got far and weren't in shape to go far. The whole point of holding Sinai was strategic depth and it was effective. What was the Syrian threat? More interesting question. "Or pushing further across the canal? You should recall (a) the IDF across the canal were extremely stretched logistically" This neatly avoids the point that Sharon had the Egyptian 3rd Army surrounded and on the verge of annihilation. There was no logistical issue, here. As for the rest? Tsk, tsk. Review the history of the British North Africa Campaign up to El Alamein for a primer in how these things work. Israel had enough to put an army right up to the suburbs of Cairo. It was, essentially, a matter of what Egypt could do to stop them. And, at the moment of the armistice, the Egyptian military was mostly either a smoking hole in the ground, surrounded, or hysterical. Do you really propose that Egypt would suddenly have come up with a mobile armored force capable of fighting a battle of manuever with the IDF? Not in the best of circumstances, let alone in context of the grand attack having failed, the forces involved having been not just defeated, but destroyed as effective military units, and the Canal having been crossed with the main Egyptian force in the area put on the verge of destruction. "and (b) the Soviets would not permit further advances which is why the US pressed for a ceasefire." The Soviets had a credible nuclear capability. They had no credible conventional military ability to fight Israel on the ground in time to help Egypt or Syria. They really didn't even have a credible ability to move air forces capable of stopping the Israelis to the peripheral region, close enough to fight effectively. No, I'm not saying Israel could have defeated the Soviets in a general war. Obviously not, one on one. I'm saying the Soviets could not have stopped the Israelis from conquering both Egypt and Syria without using nukes. They lacked the capacity to project conventional forces in that context in short order. Now, the *really* interesting question - which I'm not suggesting we would have been better off having answered - is who was bluffing harder: the USSR, the US, or Israel? The Soviets could have wiped Israel off the face of the earth. Odds are fair the Israelis had a retaliation plan. Sampson in the Temple, as the game theory crowd would have it. Israel had nukes. Israel had contacts in the USSR. And, Israel knew that the USSR was a real, potential enemy. And, when Nixon came through with a direct, counter-threat to Moscow...well...a really cold blooded geopolitician would ask if the Soviets would have risked that kind of escalation to help allies who were never reliable in an area of only peripheral interest to them? Just talk. I have a background in geopolitics and strategic warfare, academically, and this is an episode much studied and much discussed over the years....

u see my family jumps from hungarian and various slavic languages and yiddish in their conversations my russian (which i study in school) is totally screwed up. I think i got what you said, and i can understand someone speaking russian to me, but please oh please end the torture, (i know its legal in israel, hehe) Anyway, if soviet troops fought alongside egyptian ones i think the situation wouldnt have been much different. To top it all off, that wasnt meant as "israel pwnzors" rant, it was meant to outline how bad the soviets were.

Achtung- I hope you know I was joking- I grew up in a household that spoke yiddish, russian, polish, rumanian, hebrew and czech. I learned a bit of russian, and had a friend in grad school that was a russian language major, and these were the two choice phrases he taught me - Sui Hui Cha - a Tatar taunt of a chinese overlord across the great wall; since they couldnt cross the wall to attack , they hurled insults instead. This Tatar phrase was similar to the mandarin's names, and roughly translates to "stick your pr**k in a cup of scalding hot tea" The other phrase is said when you get rear-ended in traffic, and the other guy gets out of his car and starts yelling at YOU. You say, What did I do. take a sh*t in the borscht or something? Remember, the Soviet fighter pilots flying air cover in the war of the attrition got their clocks cleaned by the IAF. I agree that having soviets fight alongside egyptians, ONCE the Israelis had gotten over the initial shock and changed their battlefield tactics to true combined arms teams, rather than the pure tank units that got slaughtered, would have made mincemeat of the soviets, as their emphasis on commander initiative at the lower levels, flexibility, and initiative would have gotten inside the soviet decision cycle time, and torn it apart as they did with the egyptians. swhitebull - translation done!

Elusive Victory - Trevor Dupuy. OPINIONS?, CL.

Another partial excerpt but why so snide; and again, the "academic" puffery! I can almost understand how easy it must be academically to compare El Alamein (you don't say which, I presume the final) with the end of Yom Kippur; both were obstacle battles in Egypt amid a lot of sans so they "must be similar". But no, since the ends were quite different - the former would have allowed a wide front break out, the latter would have been on a much narrower and predictable salient even if you wanted to leave an army in the rear. If there is a "lesson" at all, it is that Cairo can be defended. But since the comparison is false this "lesson" is moot. I suggest you visit El Alamein and the west of Suez battlefields for yourself - the Egyptians may even give you a general staff escort if you plan ahead. What Yom Kippur did prove was that the Egyptians were not quite as incompetent as assumed and that Israel is not as invunerable as believed. "the Soviets could have wiped Israel off the face of the earth. Odds are fair the Israelis had a retaliation plan. Sampson in the Temple.." Retaliate against the Soviets? Yeah, right. With what and how exactly if they are "wiped out"? You fall into the common trap of portaying Israel as at once both strikingly vulnerable and invincible. The US would not risk a Soviet engagement simply to allow our client Israel to overrun Egypt; the Soviets did not wish to engage the US over Israel provided their client Egypt was secure. Hence the ceasefire. And the good news is:- (a) it proved the futility of this conflict and allowed Sadat to make a lasting peace so both got to win; (b) it proved that after the 1968 Prague fiasco, the NATO investment in ELINT (especially SIGINT) did work; (c) that western air technology and tactics could defeat Soviet air tactics; and, (d) most important of all, that western armor used by Israel - specifically, British Centurions (the first to carry what had become the NATO standard gun) and the newer Chieftains (the first tank to use laser rangers and gyro stabilized gun platforms) - was still qualitatively superior to Soviet armor. Collectively a big sigh of relief in Brussels where we were still using the kill:loss data from Yom Kippur into the 1980's. Of course this may not be academic enough.

Of course, my own expertise when at Corps headquarters was determining kill:loss in artillery, armored (using Yom Kippur data) and chemical weapon engagements; monitoring unit/formation reorganization and casevac; and, finally, what we euphemistically called "Restricted Outloading" - from clearance, timing the release, transport and deployment of all tac nukes - mines, missiles and free fall. Not very theoretical.

"if soviet troops fought alongside egyptian ones i think the situation wouldnt have been much different." Yes, and if the Germans had moved 20 divisions to North Africa in 1940 or 1941, they would have conquered every British possession between the Libyan and the Persian border. But, they didn't even though they really needed and wanted the Persian Gulf oil. Why not? Lack of logistics. Same issue with respect to the Soviets in the ME in 1973. The USSR had no ability to move large numbers of heavy forces and support them in Egypt or anywhere else in the ME or North Africa.

"why so snide" Not intentionally so. If it comes across as a bit pedantic, it's because I have a background in areas touching this and write as I've been taught.

Now, to the details_ 1)El Alamein vs 1973 Actually, I wrote "North Africa campaign". The point I was making? An example of how mobile campaigns can go. I used an example from the region, and one which illustrated how quickly a mobile force can advance when resistance collapses or the opposing force retreats headlong. Israeli logistics would have been strained by an advance on Cairo, but without Egptian resistance in rear areas, behind the Israeli advance, Israel could have supported a field army on the Nile. In context. I'm speaking of an advance. Not a permanent occupation. And, I'm speaking of the specific context, and haven't addressed the possibility of widening of the war. Where are the forces with which you propose to stop such an advance? And, what about the collapsing morale in the Egyptian military; for that matter, the Egyptian public, which was just starting to hear what was happening? 2)Egyptians incompetent? They proved able to accomplish a moderately sophisticated, set-piece battle, which included one truly original element (the water cannon), and one other good idea; using large numbers of SAMs to support the landings. Against a defending force literally orders of magnitude smaller. Let's not wax poetic about Egyptian military prowess. The details don't back it up. (How much of the planning was Soviet?) Once Israel mobilized and sent out a sizable force, the Egyptian ingenuity seemed to evaporate and they certainly didn't seem to do very well. Faced with military problems they hadn't worked out, in advance, they couldn't keep up. "Retaliate against the Soviets? Yeah, right. With what and how exactly if they are "wiped out"? You fall into the common trap of portaying Israel as at once both strikingly vulnerable and invincible." With the nuclear weapons they had. On aircraft tasked with one-way missions and a few less obvious, if much slower, mechanisms of delivery. "You fall into the common trap of portaying Israel as at once both strikingly vulnerable and invincible." Not a trap. A fact. Worcester, you may not care for what you fancy you hear in my tone of writing, but I do have something of a background touching this general area and I'm not just spouting off random thoughts. The ...how shall we put this?..threat of potential Israeli retaliation to a Soviet first strike was subject to quite a bit of serious discussion in and around both the Kremlin and the White House in those days. "(a) it proved the futility of this conflict...." Ah, then, the subsequent generation of Arab hostility was an illusion? Egypt made a Cold Peace. That's it. And, the Cold Peace has depended on the whim of, essentially, a single man; first, Sadat; now Mubarak. Sadat was killed for the policy, and Mubarak is getting old and beginning to contemplate the succession of his son to power. "Collectively a big sigh of relief in Brussels where we were still using the kill:loss data from Yom Kippur into the 1980's." Yes. I don't know where you've gotten the idea you seem to have that I'm sorry about the lack of nuclear war. Please reread my note.

"Not very theoretical." I must have touched a sore point. I don't recall challenging your credentials. If I had, I might have made a comment about decisions made at that level in the chain of command. But, I won't. I'll even undertake to try to maintain a more civil tone of writing, hereafter.