Today’s complex and challenging operational environment, in which Israel exercises its military and other capabilities, is the product of a host of intertwined technological, military, social, and political developments. These developments, which have unfolded over the past few decades, include deep global changes in the characteristics of war; geostrategic changes in the Middle East – most of which are outcomes of the regional upheaval and related events (including the dispatch of military forces to the region by world powers);...
Israeli society in 2019 was characterized first and foremost by the broad implications of the ongoing political crisis, following two rounds of national elections and preparations for the third round in March 2020. This electoral impasse, unprecedented in Israel, involved not only the inability to form a coalition government, but also restricted the normal performance of government offices and the ability to make decisions on critical issues. Beyond this, the political stalemate exposed a series of profound deficiencies within...
At the core of the strategic assessment for 2020 stands the tension between Israel’s evident strength and its success in various fields, and the possibility that this positive state of affairs will prove temporary and fragile. This tension stems from a series of factors that in the coming year could lead to a large-scale conflict and even to war, and involves Israel’s approach to a series of substantive national security challenges: Iran’s increasing audacity – on the nuclear issue, in its efforts at force buildup in Syria and other...
The Power Gap
As it enters a new decade, the State of Israel possesses impressive military, political, technological, and economic power. However, Israel is hard-pressed to translate these advantages into strategic influence and achieve its key national security objectives: mitigating threats, advancing peace, building alliances, and dictating the terms for the satisfactory conclusion of conflicts. This reality results from the limited benefit that military action can provide Israel against its main adversaries, as well as Israel’s...
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi stated in a recent public speech that “national resilience is…a positive multiplier for the IDF and a negative multiplier, when the IDF is strong and steadfast, for our enemies…When they realize that the people here understand what is expected from them…this has enormous significance…for the IDF…[and as a phenomenon] that will lessen the determination of the enemy.” The question, then, is how the State of Israel ensures that the civilian front continues to function as reasonably as possible...
During the two days of fighting (November 12-13, 2019), Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched 450 projectiles at Israel, some of them toward the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. The damage caused to the home front was minimal, and the military and civilian apparatuses functioned reasonably well. However, casting this recent round as an Israeli success as far as the level of robustness of the home front is misleading. It is liable to cause complacency that might have an adverse effect on the motivation to improve the civil preparedness for a...
Meir Elran | Carmit Padan | Sasson Hadad | Shmuel Even
This collection represents a collaborative effort by the Institute for the Research of the Methodology of Intelligence (IRMI) at the Israeli Intelligence Community Commemoration and Heritage Center and the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). It includes articles on the challenges of the cognitive campaign in the era of modern communications from a variety of perspectives. As such, it is a significant contribution to the public discussion of cognition and to the development of a professional knowledge base among the...
The discharge of men inducted into the IDF from July 2015 began in March 2018, after 32 months of compulsory service (compared with 36 months until then). A law stipulating a further shortening of compulsory service for men is supposed to apply to those drafted from July 2020, such that they will serve 30 months. However, according to media reports, the past year has heard dissenting voices within the military against adopting this shortened service, in view of the increasing security challenges. In contrast, some in the Ministry of...
Since the 1980s, we have witnessed rapid changes in a world characterized by a neo-liberal economy, increased human migration, and information technologies developing at an unprecedented pace. These transformations are putting stress on modern state structures and have allowed non-state players to enter the heart of global consciousness. These new entities pose new security challenges, including ethnic conflicts, civil wars, the use of robotics-based autonomous weapons, and terrorist attacks both in the physical sphere and...
The study of security aspects in the discipline of international relations has grown immensely since the beginning of the development of this academic field, and especially following the end of the Cold War. This article examines the factors that led to its expansion since the 1990s. The key assertion is that with the culmination of the Cold War, the rapid changes within the international arena provided scholars of international relations with new raw material and with research questions that undermined the realist approach, which...
This article seeks to bridge between sociological approaches and security studies in order to analyze how the characteristics of the current era—defined by sociologists as “late modernity”—construct the definition of the term “national security.” The premise of this article is that the concept of national security is steeped in classical modernity; it is an inseparable part of the world order of nation-states; and it is based on the scientific and technological thinking that underpins national security decision making. Yet, since the...
