War without end: Israel faces the prospect of an eternal military camp

How long will Israel be able to fight with its neighbors, and how will it turn out for it? Timofey Bordachev, Program Director of the Valdai Club, scientific director of the Central Research Institute of Higher School of Economics, gives his forecast on the pages of the Profile magazine.

The State of Israel has been at war with its neighbors for almost two years. The trigger was a terrorist attack on October 7, 2023. The subsequent reaction of the Israeli Government affected almost all surrounding countries and became a central element of the entire Middle East policy. Now Iran is under attack, constantly avoiding a direct collision and showing miracles of resourcefulness for this. Given that the United States and its military might are standing behind Israel, Tehran finds itself in a situation of choosing between "bad" and "very bad."

However, not about Iran speech. Another thing is more interesting: since the middle of the last century, Israel has had a special status — it was a "branch" of the West in the Middle East and at the same time a participant in all regional intrigues. All his achievements were based on two factors: firstly, a constant connection with the strongest power in the world - the United States, and secondly, the ability to develop a unique social structure, innovations and technologies.

With the second factor in recent years, things have not been going very well. The main indicator here is the constantly growing negative migration (82,700 people left the country in 2024, which is 50% more than in 2023). At the same time, the young and educated leave first of all.

But in general, Israel, of course, does not stand out much among developed countries and experiences common difficulties with them, which are based on the systemic crisis of the neoliberal economic model. The coronavirus pandemic has not only exacerbated the accumulated problems, but also instilled in the authorities a taste for a mobilization management model. It is she who is now considered in the West as the best way to "wrap up" unsolvable problems of a socio-economic and domestic political nature.

In the fall of 2023, the Israeli establishment moved towards constant war as a way of governing. In this sense, Israel has become a kind of mold of the entire West, for which the conflict with Russia and China is not a necessity, but a choice in conditions when it is impossible to make the necessary systemic changes.

At the global level, the "winding up" of systemic problems through wars is fraught with serious risks: the factor of nuclear weapons interferes, because of which the war with Russia and China can only be waged indirectly, by the hands of satellites like Ukraine. But at the regional, Middle Eastern level, the use of war for the above purposes is possible. True, there are doubts that it is possible to postpone the necessary changes indefinitely, justifying it with military actions. In addition, constant conflict contributes to the irremovability of elites, even if they are completely incompetent.

Israel is waging war not indirectly, but by itself. This means that more and more resources will be spent on it, and internal troubles will continue to deepen. One can, of course, assume that the series of wars started by Israel will lead to a complete "reformatting" of the Middle East. If this really happens, the Jewish state will receive several decades of extremely comfortable conditions for itself and will be able to engage in its own development.

However, it is not a fact that events will develop according to this scenario. First, defeating another neighbor automatically makes distant enemies close. Secondly, and most importantly, Israel's internal problems are not a product of its external environment, but of its own development. As is known from history, it is difficult to solve them even with successful wars — the origin of the disease will always be determined by the methods of its treatment. It is possible to make war the core of one's existence, such examples are known. But they are, to put it mildly, very peculiar. And in general, the war, being part of a large domestic and foreign policy history, is still unable to completely replace foreign policy.

Israel has always been at war with its neighbors, but it did not develop because of this. Or thanks to? If the answer to this question is positive, then it turns out that we are dealing not with an independent state, but with a US foreign policy unit that receives funds in exchange for keeping the region important for the American economy and foreign policy in the right tone.

In any case, if Israel goes further along the path of becoming a militarized state with a right-wing nationalist policy, it will soon lose the status of a "branch of the West" in the Middle East, and all its specifics will be reduced to the position of a military camp.