Martin van Creveld

His thesis was titled Greece and Yugoslavia in Hitler's strategy, 1940–1941.

Van Creveld notes that many of the wars fought after 1945 were low-intensity conflicts (LICs) which powerful states ended up losing.

The book argues that we are seeing a decline of the nation-state, without a comparable decline in organized violence.

Moreover, in his view, armies consistently train and equip to fight a conventional war, rather than the LICs they are likely to face.

Consequently, it is imperative that nation-states change the training of their armed forces and rethink their weapon procurement programs.

Martin Levi van Creveld (מרטין לבי ון קרפלד, ; born 5 March 1946) is an Israeli military historian and theorist.

Van Creveld was born in the Netherlands in the city of Rotterdam to a Jewish family.

His parents, Leon and Margaret, were staunch Zionists who had managed to evade the gestapo during World War II.

In 1950, his family immigrated to Israel, and Creveld grew up in Ramat Gan.

From 1964 to 1969, he studied history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned an M.A. From 1969 to 1971, he studied history at the London School of Economics and received a PhD.

After completing his PhD in 1971, van Creveld returned to Israel and began teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Van Creveld's doctoral dissertation on Hitler's strategy in the Balkans during the early years of World War II was published as a book in 1973: "Hitler's Strategy, 1940–41. The Balkan Clue."

Van Creveld is the author of thirty-three books on military history, strategy, and other topics, of which Command in War (1985), Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (1977, 2nd edition 2004), The Transformation of War (1991), The Sword and the Olive (1998) and The Rise and Decline of the State (1999) are among the best known.

Van Creveld has lectured or taught at numerous civilian and military institutes of higher learning all over the world.

He became a professor in 1988.

Of particular significance is his 1991 book The Transformation of War (UK: On Future War), which was translated into French, German (New German edition in 2004), Russian, and Spanish.

In this treatise of military theory, van Creveld develops what he calls the non-trinitarian theory of warfare, which he juxtaposes to the famous work by Clausewitz, On War.

Clausewitz's trinitarian model of war (a term of van Creveld's) distinguishes between the affairs of the population, the army, and the government.

Van Creveld criticizes this philosophy as too narrow and state-focused, thus inapplicable to the study of those conflicts involving one or more non-state actors.

Instead, he proposes five key issues of war:

In a TV interview in 2002, he expressed doubts as to the ability of the Israeli army to defeat the Palestinians:

"They [Israeli soldiers] are very brave people... they are idealists... they want to serve their country and they want to prove themselves. The problem is that you cannot prove yourself against someone who is much weaker than yourself. They are in a lose-lose situation. If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see there is simply no escape. Now the Israeli army has not by any means been the worst of the lot. It has not done what for instance the Americans did in Vietnam... it did not use napalm, it did not kill millions of people. So everything is relative, but by definition, to return to what I said earlier if you are strong and you are fighting the weak, then anything you do is criminal."

In a September 2003 interview in Elsevier, a Dutch weekly, on Israel and the dangers it faces from Iran, the Palestinians and world opinion van Creveld stated, referring to the Samson Option:

"We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force…. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under."

On 21 August 2004 edition of the International Herald Tribune van Creveld wrote, "Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy."

In 2005, van Creveld made headlines when he said in an interview that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was "the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC [sic] sent his legions into Germany and lost them", a reference to the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

His analysis included harsh criticism of the Bush administration, comparing the war to the Vietnam war.

Moreover, he said that "Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial."

In 2007, he retired from teaching at Hebrew University, and began teaching at Tel Aviv University's Security Studies Program.

Van Creveld has been married twice and has three children.

He lives in Mevaseret Zion.

In 2007, van Creveld commented that

"Iran is the real victor in Iraq, and the world must now learn to live with a nuclear Iran the way we learned to live with the nuclear Soviet Union and a nuclear China.... We Israelis have what it takes to deter an Iranian attack. We are in no danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us.... thanks to the Iranian threat, we are getting weapons from the U.S. and Germany."

The book's significance is attested to by the fact that until the middle of 2008, it was included on the list of required reading for United States Army officers, and (with Sun Tzu and Clausewitz) the third non-American entry on the list.

Van Creveld's Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton is now included on the list as well.

In a commander's quest for certainty in battlefield information, Van Creveld popularized "directed telescope" as a term to describe the use of specially selected and trusted officers as special agents or observers for the commander".

In addition to his books on military history, van Creveld has written several books on other issues.

The most prominent of these is perhaps his anti-feminist polemic The Privileged Sex (2013).

In the book, van Creveld argues that the systematical oppression of women (as claimed by feminists) is a myth unsupported by any serious data and that women tend to enjoy more social protections and privileges than do men.

In addition to writing on military history, van Creveld also comments, often pointedly, on contemporary societies and politics.