It cost Israel more than $1bn to activate its defence systems that intercepted Iran’s massive drone and missile attack overnight, according to a former financial adviser to Israel’s military.
“The defence tonight was on the order of 4-5bn shekels [$1-1.3bn] per night,” estimated Brigadier General Reem Aminoach in an interview with Ynet news.
“If we’re talking about ballistic missiles that need to be brought down with an Arrow system, cruise missiles that need to be brought down with other missiles, and UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], which we actually bring down mainly with fighter jets,” he said.
“Then add up the costs - $3.5m for an Arrow missile, $1m for a David’s Sling, such and such costs for jets. An order of magnitude of 4-5bn shekels.”
That looks like it’s exactly the point. Israel hitting the Iranian embassy wasn’t extreme enough for Iran to seriously escalate, yet you can’t just leave such a thing unanswered or they’ll do it again and again, you also don’t want to draw (additional) ire to yourself, meaning you don’t want to have any casualties, at least not indiscriminate ones, at the most you want to give people a scare. So you shoot a couple of volleys you know Israel can intercept, maximising not for anything getting through but interception costing them a pretty penny. Now, the next time the IDF considers such a strike some politician somewhere is going to say “we don’t have a billion dollars to spare right now for that BS, cut it out”.
The next war will be decided on what it will mean for the economy … not by the danger or death it places on human life.
alwayshasbeen.png
…resources in general, that is. Physical, immaterial, real, imagined, actual gold and timber or actual street cred, heck even peace, but it’s always resources because that’s what politics are about and war is nothing but the continuation of politics by different means.
If you’ll allow me to be extremely cynical, I’ll provide two examples.
Raids and wars were easily started prior to the modern era because human populations still worked according to a Malthusian logic: at some point you were already working the best farming lands or hunting grounds, but you had a still growing population that would become less and less productive, so throwing heads at a newfound enemy became a better option until you didn’t too much people again.
After the industrial revolution, the fertility rate of the most developed countries has been diminishing, so they’ve become less and less interested in direct military conflict, unless it is wars they believe will be fast victories. For one reason or another, some developed countries still have other reasons to initiate wars, such as Russia, so they fight against their own natural tendencies by trying to get women to have more children than they would like.
WW2 was over as soon as Japan struck pearl harbor, as an example, neither Germany nor Japan could win the war against such a robust economy. Some lucky strikes might have created some windows but the deck was stacked in favor of the allies.
Wars have always been determined by resources, in the modern world that’s industrial output but it’s always
Economically, yes, but there’s plenty of other factors. Capacity to cooperate with the USSR was a resource, the capacity to see a Nazi-ruled Europe being way more of a long-term headache than facing them off was one, the US wanting to impress ole daddy stiff upper lip was, etc. Different actors come to different evaluations of those not so hard factors and that’s why they slug it out, to convince the other side that their evaluation is right. And sometimes they’re just plain delusional. And never underestimate the morale boost of an independence war (like Vietnam) or, even more so, an existential one (like Ukraine).
Human capital factors into that evaluation.