Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001) 71
ISRAEL’S NATIONAL SECURITY DOCTRINE:
AN INTRODUCTORY OVERVIEW
By David Rodman*
Throughout its history, Israel has faced acute challenges to its national security. Despite this
condition, it has never officially articulated all the elements of its national security doctrine. Yet
Israel’s response to these challenges has not been haphazard. A set of basic security concepts has
informed the state’s conduct with respect to low-intensity conflict, full-scale conflict, and weapons
of mass destruction warfare. The “operationalization” of some of these concepts has been
remarkably stable over time, while it has evolved markedly in others to take account of the state’s
changing internal and external circumstances.
No state in the post-Second World War era
has been more concerned with its national
security than Israel--and it is not hard to
fathom why. In the first half century of its
existence, it fought six full-scale wars with its
Arab neighbors: the 1948-49 War of
Independence; the 1956 Sinai Campaign; the
1967 war; the 1969-70 War of Attrition; the
1973 war; and the 1982 Lebanon war. Israel,
in other words, averaged more than one fullscale
war per decade in its first five decades
of life. Additionally, it participated at least
passively in the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraq
repeatedly bombarded its territory with
ballistic missiles, and may have participated
actively in searching out and destroying these
missiles in western Iraq.(1) Furthermore,
despite Israel’s formal peace treaties with
Egypt and Jordan as well as its present
uncontested superiority in the realm of
conventional warfare, the threat of future fullscale
Arab-Israeli wars remains a real one.
Israel’s national security dilemma,
however, has extended--and still extends--far
beyond the conventional battlefield. At the
low end of the unconventional warfare
spectrum, Israel has been subjected to almost
continuous violence in the form of terrorism
and guerrilla warfare (mainly Palestinian and
Lebanese, but often sponsored by Arab states
and Iran), insurrection (primarily Palestinian),
and border skirmishing (along its frontiers
with Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon).
At the high end of the unconventional
warfare spectrum, Israel has faced the
prospect of chemical warfare since the early
1960s, following Egypt’s use of poison gas in
Yemen, but most ominously during the Gulf
War. Nuclear and biological warfare emerged
as genuine threats in the late 1970s and early
1980s. So seriously did Israel take the threat
of nuclear warfare in the early 1980s that it
sent the Israel Air Force (IAF) to destroy
Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility in spring
1981.(2)
The lack of a formal national security
doctrine notwithstanding, the combined
effects of the state’s environment and
experiences convinced Israeli defense
planners to formulate a set of basic security
concepts.(3) On the one hand, these concepts
have been Israel’s response to the geographic,
diplomatic, and resource environment in
which it has had to survive. On the other
hand, they have also been shaped by the
state’s experiences in both wartime and
peacetime.
Developed at various points in time, and
not integrated into a set of closely linked
propositions that could be called a systematic
and coherent “theory” of national security,
these concepts have nevertheless clearly
driven Israeli thinking and conduct over the
course of the state’s existence. They can be
organized, in no particular order, under eight
distinct headings: geography; manpower;
quantity versus quality; offensive maneuver
David Rodman
Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001)72
warfare; deterrence; conventional versus
unconventional threats; self-reliance; and
great power patronage. The aim of this article
is to describe and analyze these concepts from
a historical perspective--that is, to trace their
evolution and to consider their salience to
Israel’s national security over the years.
But a couple of caveats must be stressed
up front. First, as suggested by the labels of
the headings, this article defines national
security in a rather narrow sense. A state’s
national security doctrine, in its broadest
sense, encompasses the totality of those
military, diplomatic, economic, and social
policies that are explicitly intended to protect
and promote the state’s national security
interests. For the purpose of this article,
however, the concept of national security is
restricted essentially to the domain of national
defense. This article, to put it differently,
focuses chiefly on Israel’s military doctrine.
Second, despite the restricted scope of its
inquiry, this article cannot claim to offer a
comprehensive review of this doctrine. It can
claim only to examine, more modestly, the
basic concepts that have constituted the core
of the doctrine.
GEOGRAPHY
Historically, Israel’s military doctrine has
been heavily influenced by its geographical
situation. Though it had been victorious in the
1948-1949 War of Independence, acquiring
considerably more territory than had
originally been allotted to it under the 1947
United Nations Partition Resolution, Israel
nevertheless emerged from the war with
troublesome borders. Very long and largely
flat on the Israeli side, they could not be
adequately defended, as demonstrated by the
routine ease with which even inexperienced
Arab infiltrators crossed into Israel’s territory
during the early years of statehood. Moreover,
Israel had no strategic depth. The state’s
width varied from just a few miles at its
narrowest to just a few score miles at its
widest. All of its major population centers,
industrial assets, and military facilities were
potentially within easy reach of Arab armies.
This geographical situation early on led
Israeli defense planners to the conclusion that
Israel could not afford to “host” either a fullscale
war or a sustained low-intensity
campaign on its territory. A sustained lowintensity
campaign, they reasoned, would
inevitably result in substantial damage to
Israeli society, while a full-scale war could
undermine the very survival of the state. This
thinking gave birth to the concept that
fighting must be transferred to Arab territory
to the greatest possible extent, certainly in the
case of a full-scale war.
This concept, in turn, had profound
implications for Israel Defense Forces (IDF)
operational and tactical principles (to be
discussed under the heading of Offensive
Maneuver Warfare). Suffice it here to say
that, with respect to full-scale war, Israel’s
territorial situation from 1949 to 1967 forms
part of the explanation for its emphasis on
preventive and preemptive war during these
years. Unlike many other states, which have
either borders that make it possible for them
to prevent attacking armies from penetrating
into their interiors (e.g., Switzerland) or the
territorial depth for their own armies to fall
back, regroup, and drive attacking armies out
of their interiors (e.g., Russia), Israel inside its
pre-1967 borders possessed neither of these
luxuries. Hence, it fought a preventive war in
1956 and a preemptive war in 1967.(4)
With respect to low-intensity conflict,
Israel’s geographical situation from 1949 to
1967 prompted its emphasis on retaliation.
Because the IDF had neither the manpower
nor the material resources to seal the state’s
borders against armed infiltrators, Israeli
defense planners concluded that Israel
required the “cooperation” of the surrounding
Arab states to bring peace to its borders.
Israel, therefore, attempted to compel the
Arab states to stem infiltration by imposing
costs on their societies and armies through
retaliatory raids.
The outcome of the 1967 War radically
altered the territorial status quo in the ArabIsraeli
conflict. Not only had Israel
thoroughly smashed the Egyptian, Jordanian,
and Syrian armies, but it had also captured
significant chunks of Egyptian, Jordanian, and
Syrian territory. It conquered the Sinai and
the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank
from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from
Syria. These territorial acquisitions provided
Israel’s National Security Doctrine: An Introductory Overview
Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001) 73
Israel with some strategic depth. Its major
population centers, industrial assets, and
military facilities no longer remained within
easy reach of either Arab armies or irregular
forces. Furthermore, despite the extent of its
territorial acquisitions, Israel now had
defensible borders. Not only did these borders
follow militarily impressive topographical
obstacles, like the Suez Canal and Jordan
River, and incorporate militarily significant
high ground, like the Judean and Samarian
highlands, but the length of the borders
themselves had been shortened.
While the post-1967 War territorial status
quo did not have a great impact on the IDF’s
operational and tactical principles, it
nevertheless did affect Israel’s military
doctrine. Two of the three full-scale wars that
Israel has fought in the post-1967 era have
been initiated by the Arabs, while Israel
initiated two of the three wars fought in the
pre-1967 era. Indeed, the lone Israeli-initiated
war since the 1967 War occurred across the
only border--the border with Lebanon--where
Israel lacked strategic depth, the only border
where its citizens were routinely exposed to
terrorist incursions and rocket attacks.(5)
Israel’s decisions to initiate (or to refrain from
initiating) war, to be sure, have never been
made solely on the basis of military
considerations; however, it does seem that the
acquisition of defensible borders and strategic
depth in the post-1967 era has curbed, to a
certain extent, Israel’s propensity to engage in
preventive and preemptive war.
Israel’s approach to low-intensity conflict,
on the other hand, does not seem to have
changed noticeably as a consequence of
shifting borders, since retaliation as a means
of influencing enemy conduct has remained a
central tool for dealing with low-intensity
conflict in the post-1967 era. And, with regard
to the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and
chemical warfare threats to Israel over the
past quarter century, strategic depth and
defensible borders do not appear to have
made any tangible difference to the state’s
national security.
The primary contribution of the post-1967
borders to Israel’s national security, then, is
that they have insulated the state against a
catastrophic reversal in a full-scale
conventional war. In the 1973 War, the depth
and defensibility provided by the Sinai and
Golan Heights gave the IDF the room and the
time that it needed to recover from its early
surprise and setbacks. But control of the
Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the
Golan Heights have also created problems of
their own. For starters, Israel’s conquest of
the Sinai and Golan Heights served as the
basis of Arab decisions to initiate both the
War of Attrition and the 1973 war.(6)
Furthermore, mass Palestinian violence from
the late 1980s to the present, as well as
guerrilla warfare and terrorism in the South
Lebanon security zone from 1985 to 2000,
has called into question the degree of strategic
advantage derived by dominating territory
that contains a hostile population.
Consequently, Israeli national security
doctrine has steadily moved in the direction of
exchanging territory for formal peace treaties
(e.g., with Egypt and Jordan) or informal
understandings (e.g., with Lebanon) that are
accompanied by acceptable security
guarantees, including international
monitoring, demilitarized zones, early
warning stations, bilateral security
coordination, and so forth. The decreased
emphasis on control of territory as a national
security asset also means that, should Israel
fight a full-scale war in the future, its aims are
unlikely to include territorial conquest, at
least long-term conquest. Rather, the IDF is
likely to focus on the destruction of Arab
military forces and, perhaps, on the
destruction of the economic and political
infrastructures of Arab states as a more
effective method of ensuring Israel’s national
security.
MANPOWER
In 1948, Israel had a Jewish population of
600,000-650,000 people. Collectively, the
surrounding Arab states had a population that
numbered into the many millions. From a
military perspective, this extreme
demographic imbalance, which even mass
Jewish immigration to Israel would not be
able to redress, meant that the Arab world
could maintain sizable professional armies.
Israel could not hope to do so, for an attempt
to maintain a sizable professional army of its
David Rodman
Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001)74
own would drastically inhibit the state’s
ability to build a healthy economy.(7)
Israeli defense planners overcame this
demographic obstacle by opting to turn the
IDF into a militia-like army in the wake of the
War of Independence. During peacetime (i.e.,
in the absence of full-scale war), the IDF
would consist of a small number of
professional soldiers, supplemented by a
larger pool of conscripts doing their
mandatory military service. These
professionals and conscripts would be joined
by a limited number of reservists, each of
whom would be liable for one to several
months of military service annually,
depending on his or her specialty.(8) Unless
he or she joined up as a professional soldier,
each Israeli who had been drafted into the IDF
would become a reservist after the completion
of his or her mandatory service. Indeed,
Israelis once fondly quipped that they were a
nation of soldiers on leave for 11 months of
the year. The number of soldiers in the
peacetime IDF, therefore, would be kept to a
minimum so as not to disrupt the state’s
economic progress.
The forces of the peacetime IDF have had
two basic functions. First, they have been in
charge of Israel’s day-to-day security.
Responsibility for day-to-day security, in the
main, has meant dealing with low-intensity
conflict, whether border skirmishing with an
Arab army, counterinsurgency tasks against a
terrorist organization, or mob insurrection.
Second, they have had to prepare for fullscale
war. To this end, they have had to make
sure that reserve units, which have always
formed the bulk of the IDF’s warfighting
potential, could be quickly and smoothly
organized and deployed for battle.
Maintaining an efficient mobilization system
has been crucial to this endeavor. War
readiness has also entailed such tasks as
training conscripts and reservists, maintaining
equipment in usable condition, and updating
operational and tactical plans.
By and large, a militia-like IDF has served
Israel’s national security well. Not only has
the IDF done an admirable job of protecting
the state in both low-intensity conflicts and
full-scale wars, but it has also done so without
causing long-term economic disruption.
Nevertheless, this elegant solution to Israel’s
manpower problem has carried with it a
military and diplomatic price tag. Militarily
speaking, the IDF experienced a near disaster
at the outset of the 1973 war, because its
standing forces were too small to cope
effectively with the Egyptian and Syrian
surprise attack. Diplomatically speaking, once
mobilized for war, the IDF must be either
demobilized or unleashed in short order.
Israel’s economy simply cannot survive an
indefinite mobilization, waiting for the often
slow wheels of diplomacy to turn. Jerusalem,
then, has never had the luxury of time in a
crisis.
While Israel still remains strongly
committed to a militia-like IDF, signs of
change in this regard have been in the air
since at least the early 1990s. Senior officers
have frequently voiced the opinion that they
would like to see the IDF become a “slimmer
and smarter” organization. The precise
meaning of this term with respect to future
manpower requirements is not clear, but it
seems to indicate a desire to rely more on
professional soldiers and less on conscripts
and reservists.(9)
Two major reasons account for the
preference for a more professional army.
First, as a consequence of both natural growth
and mass immigration, Israel’s Jewish
population has passed the five million mark.
The state, according to many officers, now
has a surfeit of military manpower, suggesting
that the IDF may eventually be able to do
without mass conscription.(10) Second, as
warfare has become an increasingly hightechnology
affair, it has also become more
difficult for part-time soldiers to operate and
maintain state-of-the-art hardware and
software. Several branches of the IDF,
particularly the air force, the navy, and
military intelligence, though they retain
significant reservist elements, have long
relied principally on professional soldiers,
precisely because of the ultra-sophisticated
nature of the hardware and software with
which they fight. Likewise, the IDF’s special
operations units are more professional than in
the past, reflecting the more demanding and
politically delicate role that they now play in
Israel’s defense.
Israel’s National Security Doctrine: An Introductory Overview
Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001) 75
The IDF, unquestionably, is going to retain
and rely upon a large cadre of reservists for
the foreseeable future--it would still need
them if a full-scale war were to erupt.(11)
But, as high technology “force multipliers,”
including advanced electronic systems and
precision-guided munitions (PGMs), continue
to proliferate on the battlefield, the reservist
component of the IDF is likely to shrink as
conscription becomes somewhat more
selective and as more professional soldiers
join the ranks.
QUANTITY VERSUS QUALITY
The Arab-Israeli conflict has traditionally
been characterized by an imbalance of
military resources, certainly in the realm of
conventional warfare. Simply put, Israel has
had--and will continue to have--fewer soldiers
and arms than the Arab world. In response to
its quantitative inferiority, the IDF has
consistently sought to achieve qualitative
superiority with regard to both soldiers and
arms.
Israeli manpower has always been more
physically fit, more highly educated, and
more strongly motivated than its Arab
counterparts. Israeli defense planners, who
recognized this fact from day one, have
consistently sought to cultivate Israel’s
manpower asset.(12) The IDF has capitalized
on this superiority in several ways. First, the
IDF has always been known for its very
rigorous and realistic training, particularly of
combat troops. The training of pilots in the
IAF, to cite just one example, is known to be
more demanding than the training of pilots in
any other air force in the world, not to
mention any Arab air force. Second, the IDF
has always placed great emphasis on the
careful selection and training of combat
officers. The meticulousness of the selection
process and training of these officers probably
exceeds that of any other army in the world.
Third, the IDF early on adopted a mode of
warfare at the operational and tactical levels
(to be discussed under the heading of
Offensive Maneuver Warfare) specifically
intended to maximize its manpower
advantage.
Arms superiority, on the other hand, is a
more recent phenomenon. The ultrasophisticated
arms with which the IDF is
currently equipped frequently obscures the
fact that, before the 1967 War, Israeli arms
were generally not superior to--and were often
inferior to--those in Arab hands. While the
Arabs received rather up-to-date Soviet arms,
Israel usually had to make do with
secondhand Western weapons. Only in the
quality of its air force, tank, and intelligence
units could the IDF’s arsenal really be said to
match that of the Arab states in qualitative
terms. The IDF achieved technological
superiority in the air only after the 1967 War,
when the United States began to supply the
IAF with America’s frontline combat aircraft.
Similarly, the IDF gained technological
superiority on the water only after the 1967
War, when the Israel Navy (IN) incorporated
the then novel fast missile boat, equipped
with an indigenously developed ship-to-ship
missile, into its order of battle. In the realm of
land warfare, technological superiority would
only be achieved in the wake of the 1973
War, largely through local production of arms
(to be discussed under the heading of Self-
Reliance).
The result of Israel’s persistent quest to
achieve and maintain qualitative superiority in
manpower and arms has been readily evident
on the battlefield. Despite suffering reverses
in both full-scale wars and low-intensity
conflicts, the IDF has never been bested by
any Arab military force. It has been the
undisputed battlefield victor in every fullscale
war, with the exception of the War of
Attrition, which ended in a stalemate along
the Suez Canal.(13) It has also performed
well in defending Israel during periods of
low-intensity conflict, even though it has
never been able to deliver knock-out blows to
Arab terrorist organizations or mobs.
Today, the IDF remains absolutely
committed to the concept of qualitative
superiority in manpower and arms.
Arguments to the effect that the quality of its
soldiers has declined over recent decades
notwithstanding, the IDF’s manpower is as
well prepared for war as ever.(14)
Technologically speaking, the IDF is perhaps
more committed than ever to the idea of
maintaining its “qualitative edge” over Arab
armies. This emphasis on quality, however,
David Rodman
Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001)76
should not conceal the fact that the IDF’s
attitude toward quantity changed after the
1973 War. Its traumatic experience in that
war, especially during the early days, when it
incurred heavy losses in men and machines,
convinced the IDF that “quantity has a quality
all its own.” Over the past quarter-century, the
IDF has grown significantly in size, to the
point where its arsenal now contains
approximately 800 combat aircraft, 4,000
tanks, and 2,000 artillery pieces.(15) These
figures make its arsenal among the largest in
the world. Still, the commitment to a slimmer
and smarter IDF should lead to a reduction in
the quantity of arms over time.
OFFENSIVE MANEUVER WARFARE
It may seem paradoxical that Israel, a state
that has never deliberately sought to expand
its territory at the expense of its Arab
neighbors has been committed to offensive
maneuver warfare.(16) But the IDF’s embrace
of this type of warfare at the operational and
tactical levels has been quite sensible.(17) To
understand why, it is necessary to see that
territorial, economic, manpower, diplomatic,
and quantitative versus qualitative
considerations have all blended together to
favor this kind of warfare.(18)
Not only has Israel sought to wage wars on
Arab territory for the aforementioned reasons
(discussed under the heading of Geography),
but it has also sought to wage short wars.
Israel’s preference for short wars, like its
preference for wars on Arab territory, is not
hard to fathom. Short wars, needless to say,
cause less economic disruption than long
wars. Since the Israeli economy has been
particularly sensitive to the dislocating effects
of war, Jerusalem has had a powerful
incentive to terminate wars as quickly as
possible. Moreover, the Jewish people’s tragic
past and Israel’s small population have
provided an equally powerful incentive to end
wars quickly so as to keep their human costs
to a minimum. Finally, Jerusalem has
reasoned that terminating wars sooner rather
than later reduces the prospect of foreign
military and diplomatic intervention on behalf
of the Arab world.
Not only has offensive maneuver warfare
offered an elegant solution to Israel’s
territorial, economic, human, and diplomatic
difficulties, but it has also played to the IDF’s
military strength vis-à-vis Arab armies. This
type of warfare, after all, puts a premium on
quality. Based as it is on rapid movement,
offensive maneuver warfare advantages the
combatant whose forces are better trained,
better motivated, and better led. Numbers, on
the other hand, have much less of an impact
on the outcome of this type of warfare than on
the outcome of attrition warfare.
The IDF’s actual battlefield experience has
repeatedly reinforced its commitment to
offensive maneuver warfare.(19) During the
final stage of the War of Independence, the
IDF routed the Egyptian army, driving it out
of the Negev, in an offensive maneuver
campaign. In its early years, therefore, the
IDF built itself around mechanized infantry
units of the kind that had defeated the
Egyptian army. In the 1956 Sinai Campaign,
during which Israeli forces again routed the
Egyptian army, capturing the whole of the
Sinai in a few days, the IDF’s air and tank
units played a conspicuously impressive part.
Thus, after the war, offensive maneuver
warfare in the IDF became synonymous with
the primacy of aircraft and tanks.
The spectacular victories of its air and
armored units in the 1967 War simply
reinforced the IDF’s commitment to offensive
maneuver warfare at the operational and
tactical levels. Israel’s acquisition of
defensible borders and strategic depth in this
war did little to temper the IDF’s resolute
focus on offensive maneuver warfare.(20) Nor
did the reverses suffered by its air and tank
forces at the hands of Arab anti-aircraft and
anti-tank weapons in the opening days of the
1973 War undermine the IDF’s fundamental
devotion to this type of warfare.
To the present day, the IDF continues to
advocate strongly offensive maneuver
warfare; however, it has modified its
operational and tactical models in the
aftermath of the 1973 War. One of the more
significant changes involves the shift to a
more balanced mix of forces--that is, giving
previously neglected branches of the army,
especially artillery, infantry, and engineers, a
more prominent role in the IDF’s operational
and tactical designs. Another of the more
Israel’s National Security Doctrine: An Introductory Overview
Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001) 77
significant changes involves a considerably
greater reliance on firepower to accomplish
military objectives than in the past. Signs of a
new emphasis on firepower became
unmistakable by the outbreak of the 1982
Lebanon War.(21) But only in the 1990s did
the IDF really begin to acknowledge
explicitly (though rather quietly) that mobility
alone may no longer represent an ideal
solution on the modern Middle Eastern
battlefield.
In light of the “saturated” nature of this
battlefield, where room for maneuver has
been degraded by the vast numbers of
weapons in Middle Eastern arsenals, the next
war--if there would be one--may well see the
IDF defer offensive maneuver warfare until it
has undertaken a brief but very intensive
preparatory bombing campaign, using shortand
long-range air-, sea-, and groundlaunched
PGMs, against Arab military,
political, and industrial targets. Regardless of
who began the war, the IDF might first seek
to weaken its opponent to such an extent that
an offensive maneuver warfare campaign
could be carried out at low cost to itself. If
called upon to fight in the future, in other
words, the IDF may try to re-fight the Gulf
War. It has certainly equipped itself to do so
(see the discussion under the heading of Self-
Reliance).
DETERRENCE
Like most states, Israel has aspired to
defend its national security interests through
peaceful means. It has sought, to put it
differently, to deter its Arab opponents rather
than to fight them. To this end, it has
employed both general and specific
deterrence.(22) Furthermore, it has practiced
deterrence in the realms of both conventional
and unconventional warfare.
Historically, Israeli deterrence has focused
most heavily on the prevention of full-scale
conventional war. Israel’s general deterrent
posture has been built around the concept of
projecting an image of overpowering strength.
Jerusalem has been fond of saying that,
although Arab states can choose to start a war,
Israel will determine the scope and intensity
of any war. This refrain has manifestly been
meant to communicate to the Arab world the
message that it should not initiate war,
because Israel will inflict such a defeat on it
that the costs of going to war will outweigh
any benefits of doing so. Israel’s specific
deterrent posture, on the other hand, has been
fashioned around the concept of laying down
explicit “red lines” that, if crossed, would
draw a firm military response.
Jerusalem has long made it known, to cite
one instance, that the movement of any
foreign army into Jordan would be cause for
war--an idea, incidentally, that now has legal
sanction as a consequence of being
incorporated into the 1994 peace treaty
between Israel and Jordan. Jerusalem has also
long made it known, to cite another instance,
that a maritime blockade of its sea lanes
would trigger war. Indeed, the Arab violation
of both of these red lines in 1967 explains in
part Jerusalem’s decision to launch a
preemptive war.
In contrast to its deterrent posture in regard
to conventional war, Israel’s deterrent posture
in regard to low-intensity conflict as well as
in regard to weapons of mass destruction
warfare has been less clearly formulated.
Perhaps the concept of “massive retaliation”
captures best Israel’s deterrent posture in the
area of unconventional warfare. To deter lowintensity
conflict, Jerusalem has consistently
promised to retaliate disproportionately
against terrorist organizations. To deter the
use of weapons of mass destruction,
Jerusalem has essentially promised to do the
same to any state employing such arms
against Israel.(23) To make its threat of
retaliation more credible here, Jerusalem has
slowly but surely made its capability to wage
nuclear warfare more “transparent.”
Israel’s violence-filled history would
suggest, at first glance, that its deterrent
posture has not deterred its Arab opponents.
Evidence exists to support this contention.
Israeli deterrence, after all, failed before the
1967, 1969-1970, 1973, 1982, and 1991 wars.
Furthermore, Israeli deterrence of lowintensity
conflict, which has included the
execution of prior threats of massive
retaliation, has not provided a long-term cure
for this seemingly chronic irritant. Yet, the
claim that Israel’s deterrence has been a
mirage is too simplistic. Since it is possible
David Rodman
Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001)78
only to discern when deterrence fails--but
never when it succeeds--Israel’s deterrent
posture can easily be made to look like a
grand failure.
But, when the fact that neither Arab states
nor terrorist organizations have ever
expressed any compunctions about using
whatever violence is necessary to advance
their exterminatory agenda is taken into
account, Israel’s deterrence record begins to
look rather better. Though Iraq, for example,
was not deterred from firing ballistic missiles
at Israel during the Gulf War, it did not arm
these missiles with biological or chemical
warheads, despite a capacity to do so. Israel’s
threat of nuclear retaliation, it may safely be
assumed (even if it cannot be proven),
deterred Iraq from using weapons of mass
destruction. Whether its overall record is
judged a success or a failure, however,
Israel’s deterrent posture is unlikely to change
fundamentally any time soon.
CONVENTIONAL VERSUS
UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS
Israel has been plagued by the threat of
both low-intensity conflict and full-scale war
throughout its entire history. It has also faced
the threat of weapons of mass destruction
warfare for much of its lifetime. Nevertheless,
the relative impact of these threats on Israel’s
national security doctrine has changed
significantly over time. The most useful
distinction to make in this connection is
between the pre- and post-1973 War eras.
In the pre-1973 War period, Israel’s
national security doctrine focused
overwhelmingly on the threat of full-scale
war. Israeli defense planners, to be sure,
recognized that low-intensity conflict in the
form of border skirmishes with Arab states
and Palestinian terrorism constituted a chronic
threat, one which the IDF had to be prepared
to counter. Given Egypt’s stock of chemical
weapons, they also took the threat of weapons
of mass destruction warfare seriously enough
in the early 1960s to launch a sabotage
campaign against Cairo’s efforts to build
ballistic missiles.(24) Still, contrary to the
threat posed by conventional war, they did not
view either of these threats as representing
genuine dangers to Israel’s survival.
The allocation of the state’s defense
resources in the pre-1973 War period proves
that Israeli defense planners viewed full-scale
war as the gravest threat to Israel during these
years. True, a small proportion were invested
in “perimeter defense,” in the form of border
outposts, border patrols, anti-terrorist units,
and minefields. And, true, a small proportion
of defense resources were invested in the
development of nuclear arms (as a “weapon
of last resort”) and to equipping the IDF with
anti-chemical warfare gear. But most
resources were invested in the means
necessary to wage conventional (offensive
maneuver) warfare--that is, aircraft, tanks,
armored vehicles, artillery, and so on.
In the post-1973 war era, Israeli defense
planners have continued to view conventional
war as the principal threat to the state’s
survival. That the IDF currently maintains no
less than 12 armored divisions and 4
mechanized divisions is eloquent testimony to
this fact.(25) Since the 1973 War, however,
low-intensity conflict and weapons of mass
destruction warfare have come to be seen as
much more serious threats to the state’s
welfare than in the past.(26) The former’s
upgraded status initially grew out of the
Palestinian intifada of 1987-93 and the rise of
Hizballah in the 1990s. The latter’s upgraded
status derives from the proliferation of
ballistic missiles and weapons of mass
destruction throughout the Middle East over
the past two decades.
The rise of unconventional warfare threats
at both ends of the violence spectrum has
been reflected in Israel’s defense resource
allocations since the 1973 War. While the
state continues to invest the bulk of its
resources in preparations for conventional
war, more and more resources have been sunk
into preparations for unconventional warfare,
particularly from the 1980s onward. With the
outbreak of the intifada in the late 1980s, the
IDF created special operations units
specifically dedicated to low-intensity conflict
tasks.(27) It formed Sayeret Shimshon and
Sayeret Duvdevan, for instance, for the sole
purpose of taking out Palestinian death squads
and terrorist leaders. These mista’arvim (or
Arab-masquerader) units have recently seen
action again in the intifada. Likewise, the IDF
Israel’s National Security Doctrine: An Introductory Overview
Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001) 79
formed Sayeret Egoz specifically to wage a
counterinsurgency battle against Hizballah.
Even more impressive has been Israel’s
answer to the threat of weapons of mass
destruction warfare. To deter Arab states from
using such weapons, Israel appears to have
acquired a large and diverse nuclear arsenal of
its own.(28) This arsenal reportedly
incorporates--but may not be limited to--
bombs that can be dropped from aircraft,
warheads that can be delivered by ballistic
missiles, and warheads that can be delivered
from submarine-launched cruise missiles.(29)
Israel, in other words, now seems to possess a
secure “second strike” capability. With
respect to active defense measures, the state
has developed a whole range of arms and
intelligence-gathering systems to defeat
weapons of mass destruction (to be discussed,
along with its ballistic and cruise missile
production, under the heading of Self-
Reliance).
Moreover, since the late 1990s, if news
reports are credible, the IDF has talked about
building a “Strategic Command,” consisting
of intelligence, air force, and special
operations units, which would undertake
missions far from Israel’s borders, to defend
the state against weapons of mass destruction
(and international terrorism).(30) Finally,
passive defense measures have not been
forgotten. The IDF created a Home Front
Command after the Gulf War to help Israel’s
population protect itself against weapons of
mass destruction. The rise of unconventional
threats, in short, has made the IDF into a very
different army from the one that emerged
from the 1973 War.
SELF-RELIANCE
Partly in response to the anti-Semitic myth
of the Jew as a cowardly weakling and partly
in response to the need to defend the local
Jewish community against hostile Arab
elements, the pre-state Jewish community
consistently put great emphasis on selfreliance
in military affairs. Armed Jews ready
and able to use force to protect their lives and
property materialized at the outset of the
Zionist effort. This emphasis on self-reliance
would be inherited by Israel.
The concept of self-reliance may be
divided into three separate components: selfreliance
in manpower, self-reliance in training
and doctrine, and self-reliance in arms. On
only three occasions has Israel utilized
foreign military manpower, and on only one
of these occasions has this military manpower
proven to be of importance to the state’s
fortunes in war. The first--and consequential--
occasion occurred during the War of
Independence, when Jewish and non-Jewish
volunteers, known collectively as Machal,
served in the fledgling IDF. These foreign
volunteers made up a disproportionate
percentage of the soldiers in branches of the
IDF requiring specialized technical skills, like
the air force and the navy. It may be an
overstatement to argue that Machal members
had a decisive impact on the outcome of the
war, but they certainly contributed more than
their fair share to Israel’s victory.
The second occasion occurred during the
Sinai Campaign, when Jerusalem requested
that France station interceptor aircraft at IAF
airfields to prevent Egyptian bombers from
hitting Israel’s cities, while the third occasion
occurred during the Gulf War, when
Jerusalem requested that American- and
Dutch-manned Patriot anti-aircraft missile
batteries be dispatched to shoot down Iraqi
ballistic missiles aimed at Israel’s cities. The
French aircraft proved to be unnecessary, as
no Egyptian bombers appeared in Israeli
skies, while the Patriot missile batteries
provided little more than psychological
reassurance to the Israeli public. In terms of
manpower, then, Israel has achieved a
tremendous degree of self-reliance.
The same applies in the case of training
and doctrine. A few IDF officers have studied
abroad at Western military academies, and a
few IDF soldiers have trained abroad with
Western armies, primarily in order to learn
how to operate new weapons systems. The
IDF, however, has always justly prided itself
on the fact that, unlike the armies of most
post-Second World War states, it has never
sought foreign guidance in the areas of
training and doctrine. Everything that the IDF
knows about low-intensity conflict,
everything that it knows about full-scale war
at the operational and tactical levels, and
David Rodman
Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001)80
everything that it knows about weapons of
mass destruction warfare, it learned on its
own, often through trial and error.
Self-reliance in arms is a more complex
story, however. Israel has always had its own
arms industry. Indeed, the Jewish community
manufactured a wide range of small arms and
other equipment prior to the birth of the state.
And this arms industry has advanced steadily
to the point where, today, it is as sophisticated
as any in the world.(31) Yet, Israel remains
heavily dependent on foreign--that is, mostly
American--arms to ensure its national
security. The reason why is to be found in
Israel’s evolving industrial strategy.
Israel has been subject to two damaging
arms embargoes in its history: the first during
the War of Independence, when the United
States and Great Britain stopped the flow of
weapons, and the second on the eve of the
1967 War, when France--Israel’s main arms
supplier at the time--cut off further deliveries
to induce Jerusalem to forgo military
action.(32) Psychologically speaking, these
embargoes reinforced Israel’s quest to achieve
as much arms self-reliance as possible.
From 1949 to 1967, Israel’s arms industry,
though small in size, registered some notable
accomplishments--perhaps none more
significant than constructing two nuclear
bombs immediately prior to the 1967
War.(33) In the aftermath of this war, its arms
industry made considerable strides by
manufacturing combat aircraft and naval
vessels, in addition to the wide assortment of
ammunition, small arms, artillery, missiles,
and electronics that it had already developed.
But explosive growth in the size and
sophistication of the state’s arms industry
would really occur after the 1973 War.
In the three decades since this war, Israel’s
arms industry has designed and manufactured
an enormous array of arms--an amazing
accomplishment for a state of its size. In the
area of spaceborne systems, it has produced
reconnaissance satellites and booster
rockets.(34) It has produced intermediaterange
ballistic missiles (the Jericho series)
and long-range cruise missiles, both of which
are apparently capable of carrying
indigenously developed nuclear warheads, as
well as an anti-ballistic missile defense
system (based around the Arrow missile).
Israel’s arms industry produces all kinds of
electronic systems, including radar,
communications gear, intelligence-gathering
instruments, night vision devices, and
targeting pods. A full-range of airborne (e.g.,
Python IV, Derby, Popeye, MSOV, and
Pyramid), shipborne (e.g., Barak and
Gabriel), and landborne (e.g., Lahat and Gill)
PGMs are in production.
Furthermore, Israel’s arms industry is the
acknowledged world leader in the area of
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs),
manufacturing variants for both intelligencegathering
(e.g., Heron, Hermes, and Searcher
Mk II) and attack (e.g., MOAB and Harpy)
missions. It may also be the world’s most
successful industry in developing upgrading
techniques to improve and extend the life of
older weapons’ systems. Finally, the arms
industry produces a full-range of land warfare
systems, including tanks (the Merkava series),
armored fighting vehicles (e.g., Achzarit),
artillery systems (guns, rockets, and mortars),
small arms, ammunition, and so on.(35)
Israel has had the resources to design and
manufacture all of these products because of
its conscious decision, taken in the 1980s, to
rely on other states, mainly the United States,
for aircraft and naval vessels. The Lavi affair
of the mid-1980s, when Israel ultimately
could not come up with the money necessary
to manufacture this locally designed aircraft,
cemented this decision.(36) The industrial
strategy of eschewing the production of air
and naval platforms, of course, is the source
of its heavy dependence on foreign arms.
Though the Israel of the twenty-first century
has the technological knowledge, the
industrial infrastructure, and the money to
produce aircraft and naval vessels, Jerusalem
has shown no inclination to do so. It seems to
have reconciled itself to the notion that, even
if Israel did design and produce aircraft and
naval vessels, the state could never afford to
build the numbers that would free it entirely
of dependence on foreign sources of supply.
GREAT POWER PATRONAGE
Perhaps aware that the state could never be
completely self-sufficient, Israel’s first prime
minister, David Ben-Gurion, set forth what
Israel’s National Security Doctrine: An Introductory Overview
Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001) 81
has become a cardinal principle of
Jerusalem’s national security doctrine: Israel
should always have at least one great power
patron.(37) A small state with limited
resources, he sensibly concluded, simply
could not afford to find itself isolated in the
world community during wartime. To protect
Israel’s national security interests, he
continued, the military, economic, and
diplomatic support of a great power,
preferably the United States, would be
absolutely vital.
Jerusalem has always taken Ben-Gurion’s
dictum to heart. In each of the three ArabIsraeli
wars in which Israel fired the first shot-the
Sinai Campaign, the 1967 War, and the
Lebanon War--Israel first received either the
open or tacit consent of its patron. In 1956,
Israel’s patron at the time, France, actually
joined with it and Great Britain to attack
Egypt. In 1967 and 1982, Jerusalem secured
initial American approval for its military
plans. Indeed, great power support has been
considered so important that, in the 1969-
1970 and 1973 wars, Israel’s military plans
were actually subordinated to American
foreign policy interests. The IDF’s use of
force in wartime, then, has always been
highly sensitive to the wishes of its
patrons.(38) Consequently, it has had the
assistance of a great power patron in each
Arab-Israeli war, except for the War of
Independence.
As a corollary to his dictum about great
power support during wartime, Ben-Gurion
also advised that Israel never engage a great
power in battle. For the most part, Jerusalem
has followed his advice; however, on a few
prominent occasions, it has felt that Israel’s
national security interests dictated a different
course. During the War of Independence, the
IDF clashed with British forces, most notably
near the end of the war, when five Royal Air
Force planes were shot down by Israeli air
and ground forces.(39) In every Arab-Israeli
war from the 1967 War to the Lebanon War,
the IDF engaged Soviet military forces.(40)
What is undoubtedly the most famous SovietIsraeli
encounter occurred near the end of the
War of Attrition, when five Soviet air force
planes were shot down in a brief dogfight
with IAF aircraft. At any rate, though, these
exceptional cases had no long-term strategic
consequences.
In the future, Israel’s fundamental attitude
toward great power patronage is not likely to
undergo a change. Jerusalem will continue to
view a strong patron-client relationship with
Washington as crucial to Israel’s national
security interests. Similarly, Jerusalem’s basic
attitude toward military confrontations with
great powers is not likely to change. It will
seek to avoid such encounters to the extent
possible without threatening Israel’s core
national security interests.
CONTINUITY AND CHANGE
Israel’s national security doctrine, then,
has been marked by both continuity and
change over the state’s lifetime. On the one
hand, Israel has remained steadily committed
to concepts like deterrence through the
promise of massive retaliation, short wars on
Arab territory, qualitative superiority in
personnel and arms, maximum feasible selfreliance
in personnel and arms, and securing
the active support of a great power. But, on
the other hand, Israel’s national security
doctrine has also undergone evolutionary
change over the decades. Although Israel has
always expressed a willingness to trade land
for peace, control of territory has become a
steadily less valuable national security asset
in recent decades, especially as the costs of
low-intensity conflict and the specter of
weapons of mass destruction warfare have
grown apace. To a greater extent than ever
before, therefore, Israel now seeks to achieve
strategic depth and defensible borders through
peace treaties that contain firm security
guarantees rather than through control of
territory.
Similarly, while the IDF is still built
primarily to engage in offensive maneuver
warfare, it has also equipped itself to engage
in alternative modes of combat, as its
acquisition of an extensive range of stand-off
PGMs and ultra-sophisticated electronic
systems attests. Moreover, as the immediate
threat of full-scale conventional war has
receded, it has devoted more and more
resources to countering the threats posed by
low-intensity conflict and weapons’-of-massdestruction
warfare.
David Rodman
Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001)82
Israel in the twenty-first century may have
entered the “post-heroic” phase of its
existence.(41) The same may be said of its
national security doctrine--a doctrine that is
presently striving to come to grips with
domestic and foreign realities that are
substantially different from those of earlier
decades. The threats that this doctrine will be
called upon to address in the future may well
require less glorious and more dispiriting
solutions than in the past. The spectacular air
and armored battles of the past century may
no longer be the defining component of
Israel’s warfare in this century. If the past is
any guide to the future, however, Israel’s
national security doctrine will contain
solutions that prove up to the task of
defending the state’s survival.
* David Rodman has taught courses at the
University of Michigan and written articles
for The Journal of Strategic Studies,
Diplomacy and Statecraft, SAIS Review, the
Journal of intelligence and
Counterintelligence, and Israel Studies.
NOTES
1. For the claim that Israeli troops operated in
western Iraq during the Gulf War in an antiballistic
missile capacity see the web site
dedicated to Israeli special operations units at
<http://www.isayeret.com>. This site,
apparently maintained by past or present
members of the Israeli special operations
community, contains a vast amount of
information on Israeli special operations
units. While this recent report of active Israeli
participation in the Gulf War awaits definitive
confirmation, it certainly has a ring of
plausibility and authenticity about it.
2. For an account of the Israeli raid see Amos
Perlmutter, Michael Handel, and Uri BarJoseph,
Two Minutes Over Baghdad (London:
Vallentine, Mitchell, & Co., 1982).
3. General overviews of Israel’s traditional de
facto national security doctrine include the
following: Yoav Ben-Horin and Barry Posen,
Israel’s Strategic Doctrine (Santa Monica,
CA: The Rand Corporation, 1981); Eliot A.
Cohen, Michael J. Eisenstadt, and Andrew J.
Bacevich, Knives, Tanks, and Missiles:
Israel’s Security Revolution (Washington,
DC: The Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, 1998); Michael Handel, “The
Evolution of Israeli Strategy: The Psychology
of Insecurity and the Quest for Absolute
Security,” in Williamson Murray, MacGregor
Knox, and Alvin Bernstein (eds.), The Making
of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp.
534-578; Bard E. O’Neill, “Israel,” in
Douglas J. Murray and Paul R. Viotti (eds.),
The Defense Policies of Nations (Baltimore,
MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1994), pp. 497-541; Israel Tal, National
Security: The Israeli Experience (Westport,
CT: Praeger, 2000); and Avner Yaniv,
Deterrence Without the Bomb: The Politics of
Israeli Strategy (Lexington, MA: Lexington
Books, 1987).
4. The fundamental distinctions between
preventive and preemptive war are those of
timing and urgency. A preventive war is
undertaken to impede a potential, long-range
military threat from developing into an actual,
immediate military threat. A preemptive war
is undertaken to counteract an actual,
immediate military threat.
Although Israel had multiple reasons for
going to war against Egypt in 1956, the Sinai
Campaign constituted a preventive war in the
sense that Jerusalem sought to impede the
Egyptian army’s ability to upgrade its future
combat potential. Egypt had recently received
large quantities of sophisticated Soviet
weapons from Czechoslovakia, and Israel did
not want these arms to be integrated into the
Egyptian order of battle. The 1967 War, in
contrast, constituted a preemptive war in the
sense that Jerusalem went to war to ward off
an imminent threat to Israel’s very existence.
Jerusalem’s decision to attack rested upon the
Arab world’s mobilization for war, its
intentions to exterminate Israel, and the
failure of international diplomacy to remove
the threat to Israel.
5. The Lebanon War falls into the category of
a preventive war in the sense that at least part
of the rationale behind Jerusalem’s invasion
of Lebanon revolved around terminating
Syrian and PLO hegemony in that country in
an effort to reduce what was perceived to be a
steadily growing threat to Israel’s northern
border.
Israel’s National Security Doctrine: An Introductory Overview
Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001) 83
Admittedly, Israel most likely would have
launched a preemptive strike at the outset of
the 1973 War if not for American diplomatic
pressure against such a move. Still, part of
Israel’s willingness to allow itself to absorb
an Arab attack stemmed from its belief that
the IDF’s control of the Sinai and Golan put
Israel in a strong position to defeat an Arab
onslaught. While the IDF high command
favored a preemptive strike, it had assured
Jerusalem that Israel would not lose the war if
the Arabs struck first. For Jerusalem’s
thinking about whether to launch a
preemptive strike see, for example, Michael
Brecher, Decisions in Crisis: Israel, 1967 and
1973 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1980).
6. This statement is not meant to imply that
Israel bears responsibility for the outbreak of
these wars. Quite the reverse, the Arabs began
them in efforts to regain their lands without
signing peace treaties with Israel, even though
the latter had displayed a clear readiness to
return most, if not all, of the conquered
territories in exchange for formal peace.
Moreover, it is quite possible that, in the
absence of the Israeli conquests, the Arab
world might have seized on some other
pretext(s) to initiate wars.
7. A sizable professional army could also
separate itself from civilian society, as has
happened in other states around the world, a
development that both Israel’s military and
civilian leadership have always sought to
prevent. The IDF, in fact, has always been
called upon to assist in the construction of
civilian society. It has helped, for example, to
absorb new immigrants and to harvest crops.
Over the decades, its role in building civilian
society has diminished somewhat, but it still
exists to this day. To get a taste of the IDF’s
historical contributions to Israeli society see
Tom Bowden, Army in the Service of the State
(Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects,
1976).
8. Unlike most armies around the world, the
IDF has always drafted women. Traditionally,
they have occupied non-combat support roles,
but today female soldiers are permitted to
serve in combat units. To the surprise of
certain skeptical male IDF officers, several
women have already begun to serve in elite
units, making it into the air force as pilots or
navigators in fighter-bomber squadrons or
into the navy as naval commandos.
9. For indications that the IDF does not intend
to rely as heavily on reservists in the future as
it has in the past see Ron Ben-Yishai, “Israel
No Longer Relies Solely on the Reservists,”
Yediot Achronot, 13 January 1999 and Arieh
O’Sullivan, “IDF Plan Calls for Greater
Readiness,” The Jerusalem Post, 3 February
1999. These articles were taken from The
Jerusalem Post <http://www.jpost.com> and
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
<http://www.mfa.gov.il> web sites.
10. The IDF also appears to have resigned
itself to the fact that, as Israel has become a
wealthier and more self-indulgent society,
many Israelis have become less committed to
the communal, self-sacrificing spirit of their
fathers and mothers. Moreover, the IDF has
expressed deep reservations about integrating
what it considers to be problematic groups in
society, especially ultra-Orthodox Jewish
students, into its ranks.
11. Furthermore, despite the general decline
of a communal, self-sacrificing spirit, most
Israelis continue to see military service as an
important right of passage into society;
therefore, social pressure alone would suggest
that the idea of mass conscription is not
currently in danger of being swept aside.
12. For an exhaustive treatment of how the
IDF has cultivated its manpower see Reuven
Gal, A Portrait of the Israeli Soldier
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986). A
more critical view can be found in Stuart A.
Cohen, “Portrait of the New Israeli Soldier,”
MERIA Journal, Vol. 1, No. 4 (December
1997).
13. An interesting attempt to quantify the
superiority of Israeli manpower in the 1967,
1973, and 1982 wars appears in Trevor N.
Dupuy, Understanding War: History and
Theory of Combat (New York: Paragon
House Publishers, 1987).
14. Harsh criticisms of the quality of IDF
troops may be found in Martin van Creveld,
The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History
of the Israeli Defense Forces (New York:
Public Affairs, 1998) and Emanuel Wald, The
Wald Report: The Decline of Israeli National
Security Since 1967 (Boulder, CO: Westview
David Rodman
Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001)84
Press, 1992). To cite just one anecdotal piece
of evidence in support of the claim that the
quality of IDF soldiers remains very high see
Shlomo Aloni, “Israel’s Roving Warriors,”
Air Forces Monthly, Classic Aircraft Series
No. 5 (2001), p. 36. In this article, Aloni
reports that, in recent air combat exercises
against United States Navy pilots, who are
highly trained aviators themselves, IAF pilots
chalked up a “kill ratio” of about 20:1.
15. The numbers and types of arms in Israel’s
conventional warfare arsenal can be found in
Shai Feldman and Yiftah Shapir (eds.), The
Middle East Military Balance 2000-2001
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001).
Israel is also reputed to have a considerable
stock of nuclear weapons and ballistic
missiles, though no reliable information about
numbers is presently to be found in the public
domain.
16. It is possible to distinguish between two
broad types of warfare: maneuver and
attrition. Maneuver warfare is characterized
by a fast-moving campaign in which army A
seeks to penetrate into the rear areas of army
B in order to bring about the collapse, rather
than total destruction, of army B. To the
contrary, attrition warfare is characterized by
a static or slow-moving campaign in which
army A seeks to whittle away army B to the
point of total destruction. For a more detailed
treatment of the distinction between maneuver
and attrition warfare see John J Mearsheimer,
Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1983).
17. The operational level refers to the way an
army arranges and employs its combat
branches, such as its air force. The tactical
level refers to the way an army arranges and
employs its combat units, such as its air force
squadrons. On the distinction between the
operational and tactical levels of warfare see
Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of
War and Peace (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1987).
18. The following is not intended to suggest
that the IDF has never waged anything but
offensive maneuver warfare. Out of necessity,
the IDF has had no choice but to wage
defensive and attrition warfare at times. It
waged both defensive and attrition warfare,
for instance, during the aptly named War of
Attrition.
19. An overview of the Israel’s experience
with offensive maneuver warfare can be
found in Ariel Levite, Offense and Defense in
Israeli Military Doctrine (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1989).
20. The IDF did tinker with the concept of
static defensive warfare, particularly in the
form of the Bar-Lev Line, a string of small
fortresses built along the Suez Canal to
prevent an Egyptian “land grab” and to
provide shelter to troops stationed at the front.
This line, which really had a greater
diplomatic than military purpose, did not
signal a weakening of the IDF’s traditional
commitment to offensive maneuver warfare,
however.
21. This new emphasis on firepower, it should
be noted, has also affected the IDF’s response
to low-intensity conflict. From the 1978
incursion into South Lebanon, through its
battles with Hizballah in the 1980s and 1990s,
down to the recent Palestinian-instigated
violence in Israel, the West Bank, and the
Gaza Strip, the IDF has frequently employed
considerable firepower against guerrilla and
terrorist targets.
22. A nuanced treatment of Israeli deterrence
may be found in Uri Bar-Joseph, “The
Conceptualization of Deterrence in Israeli
Thinking,” Security Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3
(Spring 1998), pp. 145-181.
23. For accounts of Israeli nuclear deterrence
see Louis René Beres (ed.), Security or
Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy
(Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1986);
Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1998); and
Shai Feldman, Israeli Nuclear Deterrence: A
Strategy for the 1980s (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1982).
24. Israel’s foreign intelligence service, the
MOSSAD, assassinated or intimidated a
number of ex-Nazi scientists working for
Cairo and damaged industrial facilities linked
to Egypt’s ballistic missile project.
25. Feldman and Shapir (eds.), The Middle
East Military Balance 2000-2001, p. 173.
26. For this trend in Israeli thinking see, for
example, Cohen, Eisenstadt, and Bacevich,
Knives, Tanks, and Missiles and Stuart A.
Israel’s National Security Doctrine: An Introductory Overview
Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001) 85
Cohen, “Small States and Their Armies:
Restructuring the Militia Framework of the
Israel Defense Force,” The Journal of
Strategic Studies, Vol. 18, No. 4 (December
1995), pp. 78-93.
27. Israel’s special operations units, of course,
have always played a major role in the state’s
counterinsurgency warfare efforts; however,
until recently, Israeli special operations units
were rarely set up for the particular purpose of
engaging in low-intensity conflict. Their role
in counterinsurgency warfare was
traditionally viewed as secondary to their role
in conventional wars. For in-depth
information on many of Israel’s de-classified
special operations units, including their tasks
in both conventional and unconventional
warfare, see the web site at
<http://www.isayeret.com>.
28. Because Israel has never admitted that it
has nuclear arms, all of the information
regarding its arsenal currently in the public
domain must be considered speculative.
29. For this last claim see the newspaper
articles about Israel’s acquisition of Germanbuilt
Dolphin-class submarines at the web site
<http://www.dolphin.org.il>.
30. On the proposed Strategic Command see
Douglas Davis, “Report: Israel Approves
New Plan to Deal with International
Terrorism,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2
February 1999. This article appeared on the
JTA web site <http://www.jta.org>.
31. General treatments of Israel’s arms
industry may be found in Aaron S. Klieman,
Israel’s Global Reach: Arms Sales as
Diplomacy (Washington, DC: PergamonBrassey’s,
1985) and Stewart Reiser, The
Israeli Arms Industry: Foreign Policy, Arms
Transfers, and Military Doctrine of a Small
State (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1989).
See also Sharon Sadeh, “Israel’s Beleaguered
Defense Industry,” MERIA Journal, Vol. 5,
No. 1 (March 2001), pp. 64-77.
32. Israel has also been subjected to shortterm
American embargoes on occasion,
generally at times when Washington has been
upset with Jerusalem’s conduct. But these
short-term embargoes have not been meant to
harm Israel’s national security, and they have
had little, if any, effect on Jerusalem’s foreign
policy.
The French embargo had the opposite
effect of the intended one, as it reinforced
Jerusalem’s decision to opt for war.
33. This claim is advanced in Cohen, Israel
and the Bomb.
34. An overview of Israel’s military and
commercial satellite programs appears in
Gerald Steinberg, “Commercial Observation
Satellites in the Middle East and Persian
Gulf,” in John C. Baker, Kevin M. O’Connell,
and Ray A. Williamson (eds.), Commercial
Observation Satellites: At the Edge of Global
Transparency (Santa Monica, CA: The Rand
Corporation, 2001). A draft of Steinberg’s
chapter may be found at his personal web site
<http://faculty.biu.ac.il/~steing/index.shtml>.
35. To get a sense of the range of products
offered by Israel’s arms industry see Feldman
and Shapir (eds.), The Middle East Military
Balance 2000-2001, pp. 170-171. An
additional testament to the quantity and
quality of products offered by its arms
industry is the fact that, over the last five
years alone, Israel has sold arms to no less
than 46 states, including the United States,
Germany, Great Britain, and China. For a list
of Israel’s clients and their purchases see pp.
165-170.
36. For a thorough review of this affair see
Dov S. Zakheim, Flight of the Lavi: Inside a
U.S.-Israeli Crisis (Washington, DC:
Brassey’s, 1996).
37. Aaron S. Klieman, Israel and the World
after 40 Years (Washington, DC: PergamonBrassey’s,
1990) describes and evaluates the
basic principles of Israel’s foreign policy,
particularly as they relate to its national
security interests.
38.O n the way in which the American-Israeli
patron-client relationship has functioned since
the 1967 War see, for example, David
Rodman, “Patron-Client Dynamics: Mapping
the American-Israeli Relationship,” Israel
Affairs, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Winter 1997), pp. 26-
46.
39. For this British-Israeli clash see Zeev
Tzahor, “The 1949 Air Clash Between the
Israeli Air Force and the RAF,” Journal of
Contemporary History, Vol. 28, No. 1
(January 1993), pp. 75-101.
40. Soviet-Israeli military encounters are
chronicled in David Rodman, “Red Star
David Rodman
Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September 2001)86
versus Star of David: Soviet-Israeli Combat in
the Arab-Israeli Wars,” Midstream
(forthcoming).
41. This phrase belongs to Eliot Cohen. See
Eliot A. Cohen, “Israel after Heroism,”
Foreign Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 6 (NovemberDecember
1998), pp. 112-128.