Publications on Military and Strategic Affairs

Table of Contents Preface Introduction Part I: Middle East Strategic Assessment Chapter 1 / The Middle East in Transition: An Overview / Ephraim Kam United States Involvement...

Did Iraq possess weapons of mass destruction on the eve of the war? Can a democratic regime be imposed on Iraq? Might Iraq become a locus of regional instability? What will the international system look like under the world’s only superpower, the United States? How did the media shape public opinion in the course of the war? These and other questions are explored int his book, which dwells primarily with assessing the results of the war in Iraq.

The Israeli reality of fast-changing political and security challenges, the heavy representation of former senior IDF officers in the Israeli political system, and the dominance of the military in Israeli society highlight the issue of civil-military relations on the Israeli agenda. This collection of essays explores the interaction between the civilian and military echelons and the civilian control of the military in Israel.

This study presents and analyzes the findings for 2003 of the annual public opinion survey on national security affairs, and compares them with findings from previous years’ surveys. Results indicate that in 2003, Israeli Jews adopted more conciliatory positions on policy issues relating to the peace process than in the past. Along with a heightened sense of security was a reversal of the sharp downward trend recorded the previous year, as well as both more optimism and a greater willingness for compromise.

Shmuel Gordon’s study provides a model that allows for qualitative aspects of power to be quantified, compared, and integrated with quantitative parameters. The study proposes and then tests the model to examine the balance of power between the Israel Air Force and the combined air forces of an Arab war coalition. The findings show that the IAF enjoys a considerable qualitative advantage in both offensive capabilities and defensive power vis-à-vis such a coalition, notwithstanding its arsenal’s numerical inferiority. Its...

The memorandum summarizes proceedings from a conference on media coverage of the battle in the Jenin refugee camp during Operation Defensive Shield. Because coverage of the Jenin operation was such an outstanding example of Israel’s lack of strategic and operational media planning, the Jaffee Center’s Andrea and Charles Bronfman Program on Information Strategy devoted a full day’s conference to the issue to understand essentially what went wrong and why. This memorandum summarizes key points from the conference...

This study covers a broad range of key issues on defense and economics in Israel, among them: the defense budget and macro-economic policy; the influence of defense expenditures on the national economy; factors influencing force structure; subsidizing security research and development; acquisitions through the defense assistance allocations; and the future of the defense industry in Israel.