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4 Democracy and Israel’s Military Effectiveness
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Chapter
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Israel seems to be a perfect illustration of how democracy helps states wisely select and effectively prosecute wars. Clearly anticipating later triumphalist arguments , Israeli leaders boasted of the military virtues of their political system. For example, Yigal Allon, the commander of the Palmach, maintained that the fact that Israel was a democracy gave it a number of wartime advantages over the Arabs: To be a political and social democracy in the midst of backwards, patriarchal, autocratic or dictatorial regimes was by itself an advantage. . . . The political history of the Middle East has shown that a genuine democracy such as Israel’s could command the loyalty of its citizens as the regimes of the Arab countries had never been able to do. It guaranteed (to begin with) their fullest mobilization, both physical and moral, in times of national crisis; it enabled Israel to give arms to each and everyone of her citizens; and it ensured the qualitative superiority of her fighting forces, expressed in their fighting morale, in the qualities of leadership at all levels, and in the efficient use of military equipment. It was conducive to more stable government, and to a greater sense of unity and common purpose. It ensured a conspicuously higher level of government culture and education, of scienti fic and technological know-how, of basic physical health.1 Some contemporary scholars concur with this assessment. “Israel’s ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lopsided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture” concludes Ruth Wisse.2 c h a p t e r 4 Democracy and Israel’s Military Effectiveness The standard view is that the Jewish state was a small, embattled democracy that repeatedly won its wars in the face of overwhelming odds.3 Moreover, its major ally, the United States, supposedly had no real strategic interest in assisting Israel aside from moral obligation and ideological affinity.4 Finally, of the five wars in the COW/POLITY dataset that seem to indisputably support the triumphalists ’ view of the wartime superiority of democracy, three (1948, 1967, and 1973) involved Israel. Israel, therefore, constitutes a series of “most likely” cases for the triumphalists’ arguments about democracies’ ability to win wars and a hard case for theories that downplay the importance of regime type in explaining military effectiveness. If the triumphalists’ theories do not actually explain the outcome in these Israeli cases, there are serious grounds for doubt about them. In this chapter I first provide an overview of Israel’s wars and its performance in them. Next, I show that the specific mechanisms optimists argue account for democracy’s military advantages—selection effects and wartime effectiveness—in fact do not explain Israel’s military performance in the 1948, 1956, 1967, 1969–70, 1973, and 1982 wars. Finally, I conclude by arguing that alternative explanations, such as the balance of military forces, the nature of the conflict, emulation, nationalism , and the level of development, provide more convincing explanations of Israel’s military performance since 1948. israel’s wars Israel’s wars constitute a significant fraction of the victorious democracies in the triumphalists’ datasets. Israel fought and won its War of Independence in two phases, first against indigenous Palestinians and then against Arabs from neighboring countries between May 1948 and January 1949. Israel joined France and the United Kingdom in the Suez War in October and November 1956, inflicting a significant tactical defeat upon the Egyptians, but was denied a strategic victory when the United States forced it and its allies to withdraw from captured Egyptian territory. In 1967 Israel launched the Six Day War and handily defeated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in short order. Israel and Egypt fought a series of indecisive skirmishes in the occupied Sinai during 1969 and 1970, which collectively are referred to as the War of Attrition. In October 1973 Egypt and Syria surprised the Israelis in the Yom Kippur War and made significant gains in the occupied Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights before being thrown back. Finally, in the summer of 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and inflicted tactical defeats on Syria and PLO forces but was eventually forced to withdraw without achieving its 96 power and military effectiveness [18.207.163.25] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:56 GMT) larger strategic goal of evicting Syria and installing a pro-Israel government in Beirut...