Geopolitics: Israel’s lacks Strategic Depth
Israel has a massive geopolitical disadvantage due to it being surrounded by hostile nations, hostile cultures and having a terrorist group in the form of Hamas control of the Gaza Strip as well as the anti-Semitism that is predominant in the region.
If Israel falls, its people will face another Holocaust and humanitarian disaster unprecedented in human history, and added to all these issues, Israel lacks strategic strategic depth. Some prospective United Kingdom is 11 times larger than Israel.
The United Kingdom is approximately 243,610 sq km, while Israel is about 21,937 sq km.
What this means in practical terms is that the Israelis must fight their wars offensively because any invasion of his territory will lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Israelis and its tiny Jewish population.
As of March 2023, Israel’s population stands at approximately 9.73 million. Jews make up the majority at 73.5% (about 7.145 million individuals).
The Arab community, spanning various religions excluding Judaism, accounts for 21% (around 2.048 million).
What is Strategic Depth
Strategic depth is where a nation can trade space; this is giving up its internal territory for its enemies to overextend its supply lines, thereby giving the defending nation opportunities to resupply themselves and shorten their supply lines.
A great example is the Germans and British fighting in northern Africa over control of Libya and Egypt during World War II.
Each side repeatedly overextended their supply lines and gained an advantage, then overextended themselves again, backwards and forwards between the German, Italian, and British forces.
As for the Israelis and the world’s only Jewish state, they don’t have these options: either they win, or they die because they have no territory with which they can trade space for time. After all, if they did do this, they faced the risk of the slaughter of the Jewish population within Israel.
Israelis don’t have the option to conquer more territories and expand their borders to provide more strategic depth and keep the wars outside of the core territories of Israel.
The reasons for this are as follows: one, Israel is a democratic nation, and democratic countries typically don’t conquer the lands. The second reason is that if Israel took on more Arab territories, the Jewish majority would become a minority in the Jewish state and would cease to exist.
In the first place, this was the whole point of Israel: to protect the Jewish faith and people. It is a state founded upon the ethnic, religious, and cultural identity of a Jewish state for Jewish people.
The state itself was founded in the aftermath of World War II in 1945 and had over 6 million Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, so the whole point of a Jewish state is of protection to Jewish peoples and that what happened in Nazi Germany and central Europe should never happen again.
If it does, the Jewish state’s goal is to keep all peoples of the Jewish faith and culture groups safe.
Israel was founded on 14 May 1948.
It may seem from our modern understanding of contemporary politics that Israel exists in such a hostile region. Would it not be better if Israel lived in a nicer neighbourhood and that Israel should be placed somewhere else?
However, unfortunately, history is written in blood, and there are no easy solutions, only trade-offs and the Israelis and the Jewish people, due to the horrors of World War II, needed a home to feel safe.
Historical Examples of Strategic Depth in Action
The Dutch Republic successfully traded space for time using strategic depth by flooding the Dutch waterline during the third Anglo-Dutch War or Franco-Dutch War of 1672 to 1778.
This is where William of Orange, known to history as King William III of England, ordered the flooding in Holland.
The armies of France, numbering over 400,000 strong, conquered the Dutch Republic and were prevented through the order to flood Holland, thereby using strategic depth to deny Louis XIV’s opportunity to conquer the Dutch Republic.
For people interested in geopolitics, the French were very interested in claiming the Netherlands because the territory was a contested territory between the kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire, which, on paper, controlled most of central Europe.
The French reasons and interests in taking the Netherlands were due to securing geopolitical invasion routes into France and securing natural protection of geography, such as the Pyrenees separating France from the kingdom of Spain.
For France, the invasion route from the west was over the Rhine River, and controlling and conquering all territories up to that river would offer France more excellent protection to its west.
These are the same reasons the Russians aimed to conquer and control invasion routes into Russia due to Russia existing on flat territory, perfect for tank divisions passing through and Mongol hordes in the 13th century who tried the Heartland of the Russian people in the landmass we now call present-day Ukraine.
