Raymond J. de Souza: Welcome to the new world of David and Goliath warfare
- The article reinterprets the biblical story of David and Goliath as a lesson in changing warfare tactics, highlighting how smaller, more agile forces using projectile weapons can outmatch larger, stronger opponents.
- The 9/11 attacks exemplified this tactical shift by using airplanes as long-range guided projectiles, leading to a new era where asymmetrical warfare favors "Davids" employing innovative remote attacks like drones and improvised explosive devices.
- Despite the might and resources of "Goliath" powers like the U.S., logistical challenges and the rise of advanced projectile technology have complicated conventional military dominance, as seen in conflicts involving Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine.
- The world is increasingly dominated by multiple "Davids" across various regions, making global conflict more complex and dangerous, with critical maritime chokepoints threatened and no clear path to lasting peace.
The Iranian regime’s wartime propaganda leans into the story of David and Goliath, which appears in the Qur’an as well as the Hebrew scriptures. It would be foolish to take theological lessons from a regime that has so lethally perverted authentic religion, but the story of David and Goliath has not only religious significance.
Canadian author Malcolm Gladwell, in his 2013 book David and Goliath, looks at the battlefield encounter not as a tale of divine assistance granted to the tiny faithful against worldly giants, but rather as an account of changing martial techniques.
If David had gone into hand-to-hand combat with the Philistine giant and prevailed, it would be a story of how God chooses the weak to confound the strong. But Goliath never laid a hand on David, for David never got close enough to permit that. Projectile warfare from a distance proved superior to sheer size and strength in close quarters. David, with his slingshot and stones, was actually the more powerful one at a distance. He prevailed because that is where the battle was fought.
The 9/11 attacks were a diabolic expression of that same lesson. Attacking buildings with bombs close at hand had been done before — at the World Trade Center itself in 1993, and more catastrophically by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City in 1995. A bomb requires getting close, Goliath style. The innovation of 9/11 was the use of airplanes as guided projectiles of great explosive force to massively murderous effect.
The American response after 9/11 was to bring the might of Goliath to Afghanistan first and then to Iraq. Goliath was quite good at pulverizing what he could get his hands on. But as American and Canadian and other allied soldiers learned, there were other ways to fight at a distance — the improvised explosive device, for example.
The world now is in an era of the tactical Davids, and not in an inspiring way. Nearly 40 years ago, when Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, Ronald Reagan sent in the navy to escort ships through. Goliath drew near and the strait remained open for decades until President Donald Trump launched his war. The theatre has changed. David’s projectiles can close the strait in a way they could not in 1987. The Americans are still Goliath and, should they wish, could force the strait open — as they are doing partially with naval escorts and as they are not doing, with ground troops.
Goliath is big and heavy and hard to supply. When Iran damaged the American base in Bahrain very early in the war, a veritable Goliath of the seas — the USS Abraham Lincoln — had to be supplied from Diego Garcia, 2,200 miles away, or even Singapore. It takes a lot to feed Goliath and it is cumbersome.
The great powers have projectiles, too. Hence the missiles and anti-missiles, the drones and anti-drones, deployed in great measure to strike Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran from far away. Goliath has stones, too, only much larger ones. Indeed, one of the failures of the Iran War is that America has depleted its storehouse of mighty stones, and they are expensive to replace, in treasure and time.
Earlier this year, Ukraine and its more enthusiastic supporters thought that its mastery of drone warfare might even drive the Russian Goliath out of Crimea. But the war has shifted from a grinding stalemate on the ground, hand-to-hand combat as it were, to an aerial projectile battle. Ukraine takes out refineries and warehouses, and can even hit Siberia, but Russian jet-powered missiles are now landing in Ukrainian neighbourhoods.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Alberta this week was a welcome sign of Canada’s support, even as Trump’s envoys were again parroting Russian talking points on their first (!) visit to Kyiv. Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke of the need to produce “millions of drones” in the next years, one third of which would be for Ukraine.
Does the whole world now want to be David? Even Goliath? China is developing hypersonic missiles that could take out warships thousands of miles away. How vulnerable would an aircraft carrier be to that slingshot across the sea?
Davids abound, both devout and devilish. Heroic Ukrainians will get more drones, some of them from Canada. The Iranians and their Houthi allies — who seized the Yemeni port city of Mokha on Thursday — have managed to compromise two of the three maritime shipping routes off of the Arabian peninsula — Hormuz and the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb at the south end of the Red Sea.
What might it take to close the Suez Canal, at the north end? It was closed for six days in 2021 by an accident when a ship ran aground. It was closed for eight years after the Six Day War in 1967. How hard would it be for a David to compromise the Suez, cutting off the entire Arabian peninsula from the seas?
It is impossible for Goliath to be everywhere that David might go. The David of biblical Israel won a great victory that eventually led to the peace of Jerusalem.
The David-dominated world, inaugurated on 9/11, is more dangerous. There will not be peace, in Jerusalem or elsewhere.
National Post