Reaching an Agreed-Upon, Formally-Endorsed National Security Concept

A revision of the national security concept is necessary, but the way to revise it is through the approach of introducing essential changes rather than by developing a new conceptRevising Israel's National Security Concept

Reaching an Agreed-Upon, Formally-Endorsed National Security Concept

For a number of decades now, attempts have been made to revise the national security concept of the State of Israel. A former Defense Minister, Ministers of Strategic Affairs (more recently), the National Security Council (NSC) and various organs within the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD) have attempted to conduct processes – which were very serious for the most part – aimed at revising the national security concept. The work teams consisted of experienced, highly qualified individuals from academia, from the private sector and from the government and defense agencies, but to the best of my knowledge none of the conclusive summaries managed to pass the stage of endorsement by the relevant authorities, namely – the government and/or the Knesset.

My personal experience dates back to the days when I served as senior strategic affairs advisor to Defense Minister Itzhak Mordechai. Under my leadership, several work teams were established and we encouraged intriguing and serious brainstorming processes, but when we reached the summation stages, we encountered the basic problem, namely – there is no chance of submitting an allegedly non-political conclusion for decision-making by coalition-based political echelons. A summation that may be endorsed by a coalition should consist of a political compromise everyone could live with, which normally means maintaining the Status Quo and blurring the required changes so that they remain ambiguous.

The practical result of this reality is a situation where the state makes and upholds decisions that pertain to national security on the merits of the matter at hand – cyber warfare, for example. In other words, the need calls for the matter at hand to be addressed, and then the matter at hand will be addressed on its merits, with no reference to or definition of its position in the context of the comprehensive national security concept.

The obvious question here is whether a revision of the national security concept as a comprehensive concept is really necessary, or should the existing concept be augmented by the revisions made on the merits of the matter at hand. In effect, this is often the case – although it is never regulated formally. This question should be the subject of government decision making, followed by the assignment of clearly-defined responsibilities to the various hierarchical echelons dealing with the formal arrangement.

In the meantime, over the last decade the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the National Security Council have been established, and this issue is a part of their jurisdiction and responsibilities. Both agencies have attempted, in their respective ways, to address the problem and in order to avoid complete overlapping they tried to have the comprehensive national security concept assigned to the responsibility of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the narrower, more streamlined security concept assigned to the responsibility of the NSC. In other words, a dilemma arose in this case, too, as to how comprehensive the comprehensive concept should be and to what extent should the streamlined security concept, to be addressed by the NSC, be derived from the comprehensive concept. Consequently, the narrower concept may be addressed only after the comprehensive concept has been endorsed.

Attempts have been and are being made in the academic world to consolidate an independent way of thinking with regard to this issue, but the probability of such projects being granted a formal approval by the government echelons is practically nil.

The major advantage of the discussions and brainstorming conducted by the teams is in the actual thinking, in analyzing the problems, in pin-pointing the dilemmas that indirectly affect the decisions on the merits of the matter at hand and advance them. However, the chances of reaching a national security concept that will be endorsed by all of the formal echelons are small to nonexistent.

The practical conclusion here is that a revision of the national security concept is, indeed, necessary, but the way to revise it is through the approach of introducing essential changes rather than by developing a new concept 'from the ground up'. In this way, the parties involved have to address only the revisions, some of which may be accepted even by a coalition regime of the type we currently have.