Uri Bar-Joseph, Dima Adamsky, ’The Russians are not Coming’: Israel’s Intelligence Failure and the Soviet Military Intervention in the ‘War of Attrition’ in 1970, Intelligence and National Security, 2006, Vol.21, No.1, pp. 1-25 (original) (raw)
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Defending his demand to prevent any discussion regarding the suspicious role of British intelligence agencies and personnel in the leak of notorious "Zinoviev letter," Austen Chamberlain, the Conservative prime minister who won the elections at least in part because of this leak, told a stormy Parliament that it was "in the essence of a Secret Service that it must be secret." 1 In 1924 an argument such as this sufficed to end the opposition's demand for a thorough investigation of the intelligence aspects of the scandal. The same could have been true even forty years later. Today it could not. Since the early 1970s the growing involvement of other actors especially the legislative and judicial branches, and the media in the management of the democratic state's relations with its intelligence community has expropriated the monopoly over this sensitive domain from the hands of the executive branch and has made previously secret intelligence issues a normal subject of a public debate. This has led in most cases to two results: first, intelligence action has become more law-abiding than in the past; second, intelligence action has become more immune than in the past to the influence of parochial political interests.
Armed Forces and Society, 2010
Although Israel constitutes an interesting case for the study of civil—military relations, the role played by its Directory of Military Intelligence (AMAN) has rarely been discussed in this context. This role is of special interest, since Israel is the only liberal democracy today in which a military intelligence service functions as the leading national estimator not only in military but also in civilian affairs. The unique Israeli model is usually justified by Israel’s security concerns—primarily the threat of a sudden conventional attack. To test this model’s validity, this article (1) traces and elucidates its historical development; (2) employs five crucial mini case studies to test its practical success or failure; and (3) explains how, in light of the fact that AMAN failed in four of the five cases, its military characteristics create inherent weaknesses that hamper its ability to serve as a high-quality national intelligence estimator.
The Soviet Union started to penetrate the Middle East in the second half of 1950's. Moscow's attempts to take advantage of anti-imperialist, nationalist, quasisocialist Arab regimes reinforced its influence in the region. Cautious Soviet policy of avoiding involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict and balanced Soviet relations towards revolutionary Arab states and Israel came to an end with the June War. The aftermath of the war necessitated Moscow to revise its Middle Eastern policy vis-à-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict. In this paper, I make an attempt to examine the making of the Soviet Middle East policy vis-à-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict between the June and October wars. My main argument is that Soviets were driven by promoting their interests in developing their foreign policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict and took advantage of regional openings so as to preserve those interests. I also argue that the Soviet Union ended up being a part of the Arab-Israeli conflict as a result of its policies in interwar period.
The Journal of Military History, 2008
During the decade after the 1973 War of Yom Kippur, the consensus was that Israel's military defeat in the war's first stage was caused by the failure of intelligence to provide a warning prior to the Arab attack, but many experts maintained later that it reflected improper preparations for war. Using recently released evidence, this article analyzes Israel's inadequate war deployment when firing commenced and its impact on the failure to repel the attack. It concludes that since this deficient deployment resulted from the absence of a sufficient intelligence warning, the intelligence failure was at the root of the Israeli failure at the war's start.
State-Intelligence Relations in Israel: 1948-1997
The Journal of Conflict Studies, 1997
Defending his demand to prevent any discussion regarding the suspicious role of British intelligence agencies and personnel in the leak of notorious "Zinoviev letter," Austen Chamberlain, the Conservative prime minister who won the elections at least in part because of this leak, told a stormy Parliament that it was "in the essence of a Secret Service that it must be secret." In 1924 an argument such as this sufficed to end the opposition's demand for a thorough investigation of the intelligence aspects of the scandal. The same could have been true even forty years later. Today it could not. Since the early 1970s the growing involvement of other actors especially the legislative and judicial branches, and the media in the management of the democratic state's relations with its intelligence community has expropriated the monopoly over this sensitive domain from the hands of the executive branch and has made previously secret intelligence issues a normal su...