Contributor
Dr. Avner Inbar
Head and Co-founder
The Failure of Deterrence
How the addiction to “Painful Blows” Led Israel to October 7 - and Why We Need a New Security Doctrine
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In recent decades, as the conflict management paradigm has become entrenched in the political sphere, the concept of deterrence has become the organizing principle of Israel’s security doctrine. The link between the two is no accident: deterrence is a useful strategy for those who wish to maintain the status quo vis-à-vis their rivals. As Israel moved farther away from a desire for political arrangements and deepened its control of the West Bank, decision-makers concluded that a broad and active reliance on deterrence could provide security in the conditions of an ongoing confrontation. Israeli governments assigned the defense system an impossible mission: getting the hostile states and organizations that surround Israel to acquiesce in the situation that emerged after the Six-Day War by intimidating them. But the Israeli concept of deterrence does not correspond with the strategic purposes of military deterrence and was designed on the basis of mistaken assumptions about the other side’s motives. Even though it is possible to make effective use of deterrence in certain contexts, its broad use in order to prevent escalation does not suit the nature of the conflict. In practice, ‘deterrence’ was enlisted in the service of the failed conception of conflict management as well as of the political agenda of the settler right wing.
In recent decades, as the conflict management paradigm has become entrenched in the political sphere, the concept of deterrence has become the organizing principle of Israel’s security doctrine. The link between the two is no accident: deterrence is a useful strategy for those who wish to maintain the status quo vis-à-vis their rivals. As Israel moved farther away from a desire for political arrangements and deepened its control of the West Bank, decision-makers concluded that a broad and active reliance on deterrence could provide security in the conditions of an ongoing confrontation. Israeli governments assigned the defense system an impossible mission: getting the hostile states and organizations that surround Israel to acquiesce in the situation that emerged after the Six-Day War by intimidating them. But the Israeli concept of deterrence does not correspond with the strategic purposes of military deterrence and was designed on the basis of mistaken assumptions about the other side’s motives. Even though it is possible to make effective use of deterrence in certain contexts, its broad use in order to prevent escalation does not suit the nature of the conflict. In practice, ‘deterrence’ was enlisted in the service of the failed conception of conflict management as well as of the political agenda of the settler right wing.
The present study examines the failures of the Israeli understanding of deterrence, both as a concept and in practice, and endeavors to show that Israel would be better off if it stopped thinking in terms of deterrence. The argument is that Israel did make effective use of deterrence in the past – to the point that it got the Arab world to come to terms with its existence in the 1948 borders. Today, however, Israel is employing deterrence not to deal with an existential threat but in order to get its neighbors to accept the status quo on the Palestinian issue it is trying to impose.
The analysis shows that Israeli policy has been infected by a long-term confusion between deterrence by denial, which seeks to discourage attacks by demonstrating sufficient power to repel them, and deterrence by punishment, which aims to deter aggression by the threat of a harsh response. Deterrence by punishment, it is argued, is not suitable for a situation in which the opponent is determined to modify the status quo, because it is impossible to evaluate what punishment would deter it from attacking. The events of October 7 exemplify that deterrence alone cannot guarantee stability. Accordingly, Israel must now decide between a continued policy of endless warfare or a renewed effort to settle the conflict.
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