Why did Deterrence Fail on October 7th?

https://ellilieberman.substack.com/p/2d4c4f0e-db44-4c36-a2e6-c0f5a341c8e6

Why did deterrence fail on October 7^th, 2023, leading to one of Israel’s most disastrous deterrence failures in its history?

Such deterrence failures, when the weak attack the strong, have always puzzled deterrence theorists.

Patrick M. Morgan, expressing the views of many deterrence scholars, observed that despite the great effort scholars have put into understanding deterrence, “We do not completely understand how it works.”

And, on the most fundamental aspect of deterrence, the credibility problem, he said: “We are not clear about how credibility comes to be attached to deterrence threats.”

Israel’s Chief of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi, also argued that deterrence is “an elusive concept subject to the cruel judgment of the time,” wondering if the 2021 Operation Protective Walls would translate into a “strategic and political achievements^” where “whatever was will not be.”

The deterring terrorism literature does not help us much to understand how the credibility and conversion problems are solved.

There are two frameworks in the new literature, the sceptics and the marginalists.

The sceptics argue that deterrence cannot be created against terrorist organizations (TO) and that the weak deter the strong. TO blur the distinction between their military organization and the civilian population within which they are embedded; they disappear from the battlefield, and their warfighting strategy led to large civilian casualties. This in turn, weakens the state’s legitimacy when the state retaliates by using its overwhelming power.

According to Emanuel Adler, in asymmetric deterrence situations, the stronger defender enters a deterrence trap when it uses sits strength, because the use of its power paradoxically increases the resilience, motivation, and organizational appeal of terrorist organizations.

In addition, TO design attrition strategies, creating a fight over the staying power of the state and not the state’s military power, which cause states to become entrapped not only in a deterrence trap but also in an attrition trap, a contest of resolve.

Hans Delbruck, one of the first modern military historian, captured the essence of the asymmetric deterrence relationship between the state and the TO by observing that the weak chooses attrition, leading to exhaustion in many battles and not in one, and it is empowered by this strategy, and the strong is unable to choose annihilation, his preferred strategy, undermining its ability to establish a credible deterrence threat.

Marginalists, on the other hand, have documented some cases of success, but those were found to be tactical, and marginal, at the “fringes” of terrorist behavior, where some TO could be deterred only some of the time.

In this literature the state creates deterrence by using cumulative deterrence strategies. According to Shmuel Bar, acts of denial and punishment through day-to-day actions, accumulate and eventually convince the TO of the futility of itsbehavior.

According to Keith Payne, counterterrorism in the marginalist model “is chiefly about continuously degrading capabilities of terrorist organizations by various means; restricting finances; intercepting weapons; and uncovering and foiling plots.”

However, the process by which terrorists begin to doubt the effectiveness of their tactics, losing confidence that their strategy would succeed, is not specified.

Alex Wilner, in a new line of argument, suggests that that denial has become the cornerstone of deterring terrorism, trumping punishment. He similarly argues that the cumulative result would be deterrence by denial.”

There are many unresolved issues with the current models of deterrence. By not using a longitudinal research design current models fail to find empirical support for cases of strategic deterrence success, they fail to properly identify what solves the credibility problem, they do not specify what leads to a successful conversion from military engagements to deterrence stability, and they fail to offer states a road map describing how to escape the attrition trap--a trap defenders enter as a result of the use cumulative deterrence strategies.

In an earlier study of deterring terrorism, I found that deterrence is achieved through different causal mechanisms. Three elements are critical to the creation of stable deterrence. First, deterrence success, against states and terrorist organizations alike, is achieved once the credibility problem on capability and will is solved through victory in war.

Thomas Schelling supports this observation. Schelling argued that credibility must be demonstrated through defeat. “If the balance is in doubt the stronger state has to first defeat its opponent before it is able to further coerce it.” Successful Coercion occurs after the use of brute force and defeat.

Thus, fundamental teaching about capability and will, strategic learning through war, becomes one mechanism of conversion.

Second, because such wars could lead to overextension and wars of attrition, which is the winning war strategy of the weak, states need to know when to stop or disengage, ensuring that the balance of legitimacy and resolve remains favorable to them.

Clausewitz argued that if war was defined as the use of violence to achieve political goals, actors had to know not only how to win wars but also when to stop, being aware of the culmination point of victory after which further combat could lead to less favorable outcomes.

Frederick the Great also understood the importance of this insight when he argued that in addition to the logistical issues that arise from engagements beyond one’s territory, the resolve of defenders could become a crucial factor that turns victories into defeat. “Would this not be because of a natural sentiment in man, who feels it to be more just to defend himself than to despoil his neighbor?” he asked.

While Fredrick the Great captured the importance of not becoming entangled in wars of attrition, Raymond Aron advised leaders what to do in case they do find themselves in an overextended situation. “Give voluntarily what one finally must concede,” argued Aron. France had to emulate in Algeria the British behavior in India.

Finally, in difficult contests of resolve states escape the attrition trap when they move beyond cumulative deterrence strategies, which target the cost calculus of the TO, to the use of wars of maneuver that serially targets their strategy.

When one side is engaged in a contest of capability and the other in a contest of resolve, the classic Clausewitzian model doesn’t apply, and the degradation of capabilities through cumulative deterrence strategies is no longer a solution to the contest of resolve. The state has to engage in a war of maneuver, targeting the attrition strategy of the TO and changing the nature of the war to a war about capability.

This broader perspective that studies the interactions between victory in war, coercion credibility, the attrition trap, strategy, disengagement and eventually diplomacy, provide the necessary framework for properly understanding the conversion process from battlefield outcomes to deterrence stability.

What light do these theoretical perspectives shed on the deterrence failure in October 2023?

The Israeli-Hamas rivalry contains three main strategic equations, reflecting different structural deterrence dynamics.

The first period from 1978 to 2006, from the time the Israeli authorities’ sanctioned Sheikh Yassin’s organization to the year when Hamas won the election after Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza.

The second period from 2006 to 2023 when Hamas gained control over territory and population and became the governing authority in Gaza.

And the third period from the 2023 deterrence failure until today, a year into the ongoing war caused by the October 7^th deterrence failure.

In the first period Hamas main goals were to cleanse itself from the period of cooperation with Israel during its inception as an independent organization, to compete with the PLO for a leadership position in the Palestinian national struggle and use terror attacks to undermine the PLO’s credibility and to solidify its own while also weakening the Israeli leadership which advocated a peace process with the Palestinians.

The goal was to demonstrate that its strategy of resistance was more likely to achieve an independent Palestinian state.

Hamas used terror, including suicide bombings, within an approach of controlled escalation: going to the brink without going over it. Self-preservation was most important in the early years.

Thus, deterring Hamas during this initial period was difficult. As sceptics predict Israel’s acts of deterrence strengthened Hamas.

Hamas was successful in derailing the Oslo peace negotiations, the Israeli deterrent response only made Hamas more popular, and the Palestinian moderates could not find it politically viable to continue the negotiations process.

During the Rabin administration, for example, Israel followed Ben Gurion’s formulation and continued to negotiate peace as if there was no terror and fought terrorism as if there were no peace negotiations. The use of diplomacy without defeating terrorism first, ended in failure and did not produce deterrence stability.

Netanyahu’s election led to tougher stand on terror, leading to some decline in terrorism but it wasn’t clear if it was due to Netanyahu’s tougher strategy or the fact that Netanyahu opposed a peace process, which was Hamas’ strategy as well.

Between 1999 and 2000, Ehud Barak tried to undermine Hamas’ strategy by attempting to solve the conflict with the Palestinians, an offer of a diplomatic horizon.

The peace process at Camp David in 2000 failed, and its occurrence during Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon that same year encouraged Arafat to work with Hamas to emulate Nasrallah’s successes. In the period leading to the al-Aqsa intifada Israeli deterrence continued to be elusive.

Things changed during the al-Aqsa Intifada. Ariel Sharon realized that a strategy based on cumulative deterrence was not sufficient. Around February-March 2003 Sharon concluded that a major offensive was necessary to target terrorist infrastructure, and this necessitated a reoccupation of PA territory. Operation Defensive Shield was approved, and Israel was able to change the rules of the game, enabling a transformation in the PA’s strategy as well as Hamas’.

Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, ended the violence of the Al-Aqsa Intifada (2000-2005) and the PA abandoned the use of force.

This illustrates a case of strategic success which resulted from a combination of a defensive wall, the targeted killing of leaders and enables and most importantly a ground offensive that resolved many credibility issues Israel suffered on capability and will. Israel demonstrated its capability to fight in crowded cities at low casualties to itself, and it demonstrated its will by entering, among other cities, Jenin, the capital of martyrs.

Hamas also agreed to stop suicide bombings in return for the cessation of targeted assassinations by Israel, and considered discussions of a hudna, a ceasefire. Hamas did not, however, abandon its goals and strategy.

2006-2023

Once Hamas assumed control over territory and population in Gaza in 2006 it used skillfully its advantages as a terrorist organization turning its weaknesses into powerful components of its military capability.

It organized its troops in small military groups that could fight independently, thus depriving Israel of the ability to bring about an easy collapse of Hamas’ centers of gravity.

Hamas also concentrated its troops in built up areas and embedded itself in the civilian population. When Israel targeted those forces, civilian casualties undermined Israel’s standing in the international community, putting pressure on how, and how much force Israel could use.

To compete for Israel superior airpower capabilities, Hamas built a network of tunnels that provided protection from the Israeli attacks. The tunnels also provided opportunities for offensive plans, or to signal a costly defense in case Israeli troops invaded the strip. Hamas asymmetric war strategy was, in case of an Israeli invasion, to use guerrilla warfare to inflict heavy casualties on Israeli forces.

High trajectory weapons such as Kassam missiles served to hold the Israeli population hostage. This component of its capabilities was augmented by special forces that developed the capability to infiltrate into Israel and capture or kill soldiers and civilians. Thus, Hamas adopted a classic strategy of asymmetric warfare where it forced Israel to fight a contest of resolve instead of a contest of capabilities, where Israel had the upper hand. Hamas controlled the nature of the war—an attrition war on the resolve of the state.

While during this period Hamas became stronger militarily, Israel became both stronger on some dimensions but also weaker in others.

In response to the enormous military built up of forces which took place in reaction to the 1973 war, leading to the “lost decade” in the Israeli economy, Israel adjusted its military strategy, placing greater emphasis on intelligence, the air force and high tech. The new Israeli army was moulded into a small, lean and deadly machine which could engage and destroy its adversaries from afar. The ground forces, it was concluded, could safely be cut back.

In addition, and most importantly, the Israeli war strategy shifted from placing high priority on quick decisive offensive victories to the defence, engaging enemy forces from a distance.

These changes were reflected in the outcomes of the strategic deterrence campaigns Israel conducted against Hamas to restore deterrence. Israel tried to undermine Hamas strategy of attrition using deterrence operations in 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021.

The goal of these operations was to restore deterrence by using “cumulative deterrence,” denial and punishment strategies, that hit Hamas forces hard. Israel targeted Hamas’ cost-benefit calculus. The threat of a ground invasion was a threat held in reserves.

Hamas, however, was not deterred by the threat of a ground invasion, a threat which lacked credibility because Israel signaled its sensitivity to high casualties, which were likely to occur if it were to fight in urban areas.

The idea of using limited ground operations, capturing Gaza city or Rafah, was discussed in Israeli military circles. But these plans were never adopted because of the concern with high Israeli casualties and the loss of international legitimacy -- such incursions would have caused high civilian Palestinian casualties.

The effectiveness of large firepower operations, cumulative deterrence, did not resolve the conversion problem and had limited effects on deterrence. The rounds of wars continued.

One of the main reasons for Israel’s inability to solve its credibility problem was, paradoxically, its successful denial capabilities. The Iron Dome missile defense system kept Israeli casualties low, which in turn undermined its resolve to escalate and engage in a costly ground campaign of maneuver. This case reveals the tension that exists between strong denial capabilities and deterrence. We find that denial, which is supposed to trump punishment in the new deterring terrorism literature, undermined deterrence.

The highly advanced technological fence also created a false sense of security. While it prevented an underground attack, it failed to prevent an over-ground attack. Historically, such denial mechanisms are rarely if ever a solution that leads to a stable deterrence. (the Bar-Lev line or the security zone in Lebanon, being just some such examples.)

Politically, the Iron Dome denial capability enabled Netanyahu to create the conception that Hamas was deterred. Netanyahu’s goals were to preserve the status quo regarding the Palestinian cause and avoid making concession that could potentially lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. Thus, for Netanyahu, Hamas became an asset because he could argue that one cannot make concessions to an entity which continued to attack Israel. He hoped that improved economic conditions in Gaza, the combination of enabling the infusion of Qatari money into the strip and allowing Palestinian workers to enter Israel, would eventually influence Hamas to choose legitimacy-through-governing rather than through continued warfare.

The PA on the other hand was a liability because the PA was weak and unable to lead of the Palestinian cause, thus not a true partner for peace. The conception that Hamas was deterrable, and the PA was weak served Netanyahu’s interests as long as Hamas adhered to its limited strategy of rounds of warfare.

The years of reliance on defense and the reluctance to use ground forces created an Israeli army that, even after the October 7^th attack, was unaware if its ground forces could reach Hamas command centers in Gaza, and how to do it. Benjamin Netanyahu, on the eve of the Gaza invasion, worried about thousands of Israeli casualties, and some Israeli generals warned him that the IDF would not be able to complete the mission. Hamas was also surprised by the Israeli ground invasion after being taught for years that Israel was averse to such campaigns.

The absence of a credible deterrence threat and the Israeli reluctance to solve the credibility problem by engaging in a war of maneuver to escape the attrition trap and undermine Hamas’ strategy, led to failure.

In some sense, it was Hamas who solved Israel’s credibility problem on will forcing its hand to embark on a different strategic response. The high costs Hamas inflicted on Israel on October 7^th forced Israel to abandon the strategic equation which lasted until 2023. As a result of the Oct. 7th attack, and due to the tremendous losses Israel suffered on that day, Israel’s resolve to go on the offense went up. Finally engaging in a war of maneuver taught that Israel has the resolve to undermine Hamas’ strategy of attrition by engaging in a war about capability. Hamas’ strategy was finally defeated, and our model would predict that deterrence would finally be established at least in the short term.

In conclusion, our model suggests first, that the conversion problem from military engagements to deterrence stability is not created by using cumulative deterrence strategies, denial and punishment targeting the cost calculus of the challenger, but by using military offensive tactics which target the strategies of the challenger. Cumulative deterrence leads not to deterrence success but to an attrition trap and deterrence failures.

Second, deterrence is not increasingly about practicing denial which in many cases leads not to success but to failure. Rather, the credibility problem on capability and will can be solved only through war. After victory coercive threats become credible and deterrence stability can be established. Strategic deterrence success cannot be obtained on the cheap.

Third, decisive victory in war, however, is not necessarily the most important condition for deterrence success. The resolution of the credibility problem is, and less than decisive defeats which solve the credibility problem could be sufficient. The defender ought to place more emphasis on what it can do to solve its credibility problem than about what it can do to degrade the capabilities of the challenger.

Fourth, the resolution of the credibility problem could lead to over extension and the changing of the nature of the war from a war about capability to a war about resolve. Changing in the nature of the war affect the prospects of success. Decisive victory could lead to failure. Winning war A could lead to the loss of War B, and that is why avoiding over extension is an important deterrence tool. Wars of attrition are the winning strategy of TOs, and states must find ways to avoid being entrapped in them.

Deterrence is, thus, a teaching mechanism, and it is best studied longitudinally in long term conflict interaction where learning and change become the mechanisms that produce stability. The longitudinal perspective enables the study of deterrence successes as well as failures. Strategic deterrence successes can be detected deterrence is studied longitudinally. Strategic deterrence success enables a diplomatic process because the challenger finally learned that the use of force does not lead to a resolution of the conflict.