National Security Decisionmaking: The Israeli Case by Yehuda Ben Meir

Author:Yehuda Ben Meir [Meir, Yehuda Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Middle Eastern, Social Science, Political Science, World, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9780429709746
Google: S2ClDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 52483619
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Role of the IDF

A recurring theme in so many of the comments on and assessments of Israel’s national security decisionmaking process is criticism of the disproportionate role played by the IDF in shaping Israel’s strategy. Amos Perlmutter writes that “with the exception of the Soviet military, the IDF can be said to be the only military organization in the world that wields almost complete power over strategic and tactical questions….the intelligence, planning and operational branches of the IDF, as well as the Chief of Staff, mold Israel’s security doctrines. Rarely do civilian leaders make inroads into that decisionmaking process.”43 Few observers would argue with this rather extreme diagnosis. Even more interesting and significant, criticism of the IDF’s role in decisionmaking is not limited to civilian circles, but is even more marked among former IDF generals and other high-ranking officers. Yariv states retrospectively that “only the military possessed the staff requisite for strategy development. All the ministers, including the Minister of Defense have had to rely on the military. Therefore, the military viewpoint has inevitably been influential.”44 Avraham Tamir states: “What influences the decisions more than anything else are the papers of the general staff, and they are tailor-made to the needs, the conceptions and the viewpoint of the army.”45

Not only is there general agreement as to the dominant role played by the IDF, but there is no less a consensus that this is a bad thing, and has a very negative effect on the efficacy of the decisionmaking process. For, as Dror so succinctly puts it: “national security is not military security, but relates to overall political-strategic external policy, including, for instance, economics.”46 Yariv, in describing the situation in Israel where “the prime minister and the Cabinet have nobody (except the military and the intelligence services) to rely upon,” writes that “the problem with this is not that the military and intelligence services are narrowminded. However, by definition, they represent a certain sector and are an interested party. They cannot represent an overall point of view objectively, which is of primary importance at the prime ministerial and cabinet levels. It would be the same for a staff unit at the defense minister’s level.”47

Shlomo Gazit claims that the core and focus of Israel’s problem in decisionmaking lies in “the relationship between the defense establishment and the government.” The problem, according to Gazit, is that the defense establishment has the tools for policy planning, policy evaluation, coherent thinking, and systematic presentation of proposals, yet there is no alternative mechanism or factor which can present alternative options based, to the same degree, on systematic analysis and evaluation. Thus, whenever a national security issue arises, one immediately asks: “What does the general staff suggest — what does military intelligence have to say?”

In effect, the government is limited to one of two choices: either approve IDF proposals, in whole or in part, or reject them and do nothing. Since it is difficult — for both foreign and domestic reasons — for the Cabinet simply

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