Four lessons that Netanyahu must learn from his failed strategies
Throughout this past Jewish calendar year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's strategic failures have rendered Israel more isolated in the diplomatic arena and more fragile in terms of deterrence, while the political echelon blames the media for it all.
The year 5775 on the Jewish calendar will go on record as one of the toughest in the annals of the State of Israel, the year in which the world once again abandoned the Jewish nation to its fate. The leaders of the world’s greatest powers, led by the president of the United States, signed an agreement paving the way for an enemy state, one intent on the destruction of the Jewish state, to acquire an arsenal of mass destruction. The underwriter for this sad diagnosis and apocalyptic prognosis is Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The nuclear agreement and the lifting of sanctions against Iran are highly unlikely to enable it to manufacture a nuclear bomb, but the Vienna agreement signed on the 27th day of the Jewish month of Tamuz (July 14) is nonetheless marked on the calendar in bold letters as a black day for Israel’s defense and diplomacy strategy under Netanyahu’s leadership. This was one of the worst years ever for Israeli deterrence and international standing.
Netanyahu, however, looks poised to survive this double setback. After all, his political rivals, Zionist Camp leader Isaac Herzog and Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid, supported his fight against the agreement. Their criticism is limited to the manner in which he chose to try to derail it. The mistakes made on the nuclear issue, and strategic dereliction, cannot be rectified. As the new year dawns, there’s little else that can be done but to send the political leadership a gift basket of the lessons they should have learned so they might avoid the additional pitfalls of a vacuum in strategic thinking.
The first lesson is to never set out for the battlefield without an exit strategy. With that in mind, the diplomatic echelon must think at least two steps ahead, calculate its moves with the help of experts (for example, in the fields of risk management and game theory) and compute the diplomatic, defense and economic costs of defeat.
