Unless Israel Rejects Postmodern Strategy, It Won’t Be Able to Win

First, I want to thank the respondents for their replies to my essay on the postmodern military. I have learned from all of them, both here and in their other writings. I believe we largely agree on the general, unfortunate state of military strategy and operational art. Yet some differences of opinion remain, particularly on more practical and concrete security issues.

My most significant dispute is with Edward Luttwak’s reply. He seems to imply that I overstate, to a great degree, my critique of the IDF high command’s poor operational capabilities. If I have understood him correctly, he also believes that such serious deficiencies as the unfortunate state of the reserve brigades are attributable to the IDF’s justifiable (in his view) decision to put its priorities elsewhere: missile-interception technologies, the Namer armored personnel carrier, sophisticated warplanes, and so forth. All of these investments were, he maintains, major successes. The main “failure” of the IDF’s chiefs of staff, Luttwak sarcastically remarks, was that they did not “confront the cabinet to obtain permission for all-out offensives against Hamas and Hizballah . . . in a moment of unusual tranquility, regardless of world reactions.”

Most of these claims are misguided. The neglect of ground forces extends far beyond the reserve brigades. Regular ground forces in the IDF were reduced in size, insufficiently trained, and poorly equipped. This is not merely a question of priorities. The IDF’s budget could easily have supported all its ground forces while incorporating the technological innovations Luttwak endorses. The defense budget grew steadily over the past two decades, and the expensive equipment Luttwak refers to accounts for only a fraction of overall expenditures. But the IDF brass simply dismissed ground capabilities because they accepted misguided national-security dogmas and military doctrines, while tolerating massive spending inefficiencies. For instance: roughly half the defense budget is allocated to salaries, many of which are redundant and highly inflated; note that the IDF’s chief of staff earns significantly more than his American counterpart.