Strategic Assessment

When US Secretary of Defense General James Mattis was the commander of the 1st Marine Division, he remarked that if Alexander the Great found himself on a modern battlefield, he “would not be in the least bit perplexed,” because in spite of the changes in the nature of warfare in modern times, the principles remain the same. In contrast, due to the weakening of military thinking in the IDF, which was unable to cope with the changes that occurred in the battlefield and failed to formulate an updated doctrine, solutions involving standoff fire were preferred over maneuvers. The last time that the IDF operated according to its traditional security concept and took the fighting to the enemy's territory was during Operation Defensive Shield and the series of incursions into the heart of Palestinian towns that followed. The question that needs to be asked today is, therefore, not whether maneuvers are still a central foundation of Israel's security concept, but rather which maneuvers the IDF needs in order to deal with the security challenges before it.