Since the 1980s, we have witnessed rapid changes in a world characterized by a neo-liberal economy, increased human migration, and information technologies developing at an unprecedented pace. These transformations are putting stress on modern state structures and have allowed non-state players to enter the heart of global consciousness. These new entities pose new security challenges, including ethnic conflicts, civil wars, the use of robotics-based autonomous weapons, and terrorist attacks both in the physical sphere and cyberspace. The articles in this memorandum, authored by former and present Neubauer research associates at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), assert that the political, economic, and social changes, as well as the challenges to security now faced by the West (including Israel), converge to create a different agenda for analyzing security and strategy issues, forcing us to redefine the very concept of “national security.”This memorandum consists of articles written by young researchers—PhD candidates and others—who were part of the Neubauer Research Fellowship Program at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and participated in the Neubauer Research Project which was carried out at INSS during 2017 .The research fellows who took part in this project studied together various aspects of national security linked to Israel’s domestic, regional, and international strategic environment. The objective of the project was to examine concepts and patterns in present day’s national security and contemporary research in the field, as a basis for an up-to-date analysis of specific issues relevant to Israel’s national security.
The research challenge underlying this Neubauer Research Project was to adapt, define, and structure theoretical approaches and relevant concepts of national security and the global changes rooted in accelerated technological processes and political trends, including the upheavals in the Middle East, waves of terrorism in the international arena, cyberattacks, and the growing use of autonomous weapons. The assumption is that the recognition of theories and their critical exploration will be helpful to better analyze in a reliable manner the present challenges and consequently will enable suitable policy recommendations.
This analytical project represents the core objectives of INSS to continuously examine and analyze the strategic issues relating to Israel’s political and security agenda and to propose policy recommendations based on the results of that analysis, while encouraging the growth of a future generation of national security researchers through theoretical and practical expertise.
The Neubauer Research Project was carried out in four stages. Firstly, academic experts presented diverse updated social science theories in international relations, political science, and sociology, as a basis for further discussion. Secondly, the participating researchers presented their topics, followed by discussions. This led to the third stage, in which the researchers composed, critiqued, and revised their articles in a peer-review process. In the final stage, the studies were presented at a seminar on “National Security 2.0,” held at the INSS in November 2018.
This memorandum consists of eight articles dealing with theoretical and applied aspects of the concept of national security written by former and current Neubauer Fellows. It ends with a concluding article by Prof. Yoram Peri.
“Dangers, Risks, and “Unknown Unknowns”: National Security in the Global Era” by Vera Michlin-Shapir and Carmit Padan is the first article in this volume. It focuses on the connection between sociological concepts and the content of security studies in order to analyze how the characteristics of this era—defined as the “second modernity,” thus adopting the concept of the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman—impact one’s understanding and definition of the term “national security,” thereby hastening the need to redefine it in the contemporary political contexts.
Yaron Schneider’s article “The New Security: Trends in the Study of Security in International Relations in the Post-Cold War Era” discusses the factors that led researchers to reconstruct research methods and theories for deciphering national security phenomena (such as ethnic conflicts and international terrorism) following the Cold War. One main conclusion of the study is that the rise in the influence of non-state players in the international arena was central in the reformulation of new reasoning to national security dilemmas.
In his article “Egypt’s Challenges after the Arab Spring,” Khader Sawaed examines three major policy dilemmas that Egypt has faced since 2011: the state’s monopoly in the context of the use of force, the administrative efficacy of the bureaucracy, and domestic civic consent on the collective identity and the role of the state. Sawaed’s analysis leads to the conclusion that the economic, social, and political success of the Egyptian leadership to address these challenges will impact the internal Egyptian and the regional stability, which might necessarily influence Israel’s security interests.
Liran Antebi’s article deals with “The Proliferation of Autonomous Weapons Systems: Effects on International Relations.” The study examines the possible influence of the widespread use of autonomous weapons on the battlefield of the future and the political, economic, and civil impact these systems are bound to have on the international arena and security studies. The article asserts that such systems have implications that go far beyond the legal and moral contexts currently at the heart of the discourse on the issue.
In his article “The State as a Double Agent: National Security Versus Privacy and the State’s Role in Cyberspace in the United States,” Ido Sivan-Sevilla traces the paradoxically dual role the state plays in the digital age. On the one hand, the state goes to great lengths to promote cybersecurity, protect privacy, and defend national security. At the same time, the state exploits cyberspace to gather data and, in doing so, violates privacy for the sake of attaining national security goals. This state of affairs raises the question of how legislation and regulation in the United States construct the relationship between national security and privacy.
In her article “When the House Is on Fire: Ethnic Diasporas During Flare-ups in Their Countries of Origin,” Gallia Lindenstrauss deals with the way ethnics communities in their new countries relate to conflicts and peacemaking processes in their motherlands and their respective regions. Her case study focuses on the Kurdish community in Germany and its attitudes to the 2015 violent flare-up between Turkey and its Kurdish minority. The article discusses aspects of the community’s identity, such as relations with rival diaspora communities and the meaning of the subsequent arrival of a new wave of refugees from the homeland.
Michal Hatuel-Radoshitzky’s article covers “The Civil Society Component of National Security in an Era of Civil Power: The Case of Israel in the UN Human Rights Council in 2016.” The study examines the role that civil society agents play in diplomatic processes in a period characterized by increased civil influence. The case study explored here is the activity of the UN Human Rights Commission with regard to Israel during 2016. The author’s major contention is that, given the current state of affairs, officials and civil society players share similar patterns of action, and that while engaged in military confrontations, nations are also required to conduct an effort to impact the mindsets of relevant players on the international stage.
In “The Role of Social Media in the Radicalization of Young People in the West,” Yotam Rosner tracks how extreme jihadist movements, such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, exploit the discourse in social networks to recruit young Westerners to their cause and deploy them in their missions. This phenomenon has implications for the national security of democracies, because the nature of the social media discourse encourages polarization, extremism, and violence and therefore threatens the social order in liberal western societies, including their citizens’ sense of identity and personal security.
Yoram Peri’s article, “Conclusion: The Time Has Come for a New Security Paradigm,” completes the volume. Peri surveys some of the transformations that have occurred in the social, state, economic, and political orders and links these global changes to transformations that have occurred in the sphere of warfare. His conclusion reinforces the major claims made in the memorandum: the complexity of the concept of “national security” as a social construct; the need to confront security dilemmas in a proactive and holistic fashion; and, above all, the necessity to examine national security through new analytical tools.
The articles compiled in this volume create a wide-ranging assessment of the challenges Western nations, and to a great extent also Israel, face in this age. These studies propose a unique and updated agenda as a solid theoretical basis for analyzing issues of security and strategy. This is precisely the contribution that the Neubauer Research Project has sought: the mutual enrichment of new ideas, approaches, and studies that is inseparable from academic and strategic research, including the research taking place at the INSS.
We would like to express our profound gratitude to all the writers whose articles appear in this memorandum. A special appreciation goes to the academics who shared their insights with us—Prof. Uriah Shavit, Dr. Limor Samimian-Darash, and Dr. Uriel Abulof—and all those who participated in the discussion that took place at various stages of the project. Special thanks to our project supervisors, Dr. Anat Kurz, the Director of Research at INSS, for her professional assistance, and Dr. Meir Elran, the Neubauer Program Coordinator at the INSS. Special thanks are in order also for the great help of Prof. Stuart Cohen, Prof. Zaki Shalom, and Prof. Gabriel Sheffer in promoting the project as guest scholars.
And finally, special gratitude is in order to the Neubauer Family Fund for its strong support of the PhD Fellows Program and this particular research project. Without their continuous and gracious backing, this effort would not have taken place.
Carmit Padan and Vera Michlin-Shapir, Editors
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