ABSTRACT
The shock and trauma of the Yom Kippur War revived the obsession with survival; it produced defensive, instinctive, irrational knee-jerk reactions after the war, and it led, in the final analysis, to enslavement to the moloch of "absolute security." Consequently, the General Staff was prepared to pay any price for "absolute security." The cost of absolute security necessarily becomes the subjective interpretation the General Staff gives to the information it has about the ability, capacity, and intentions of the adversary. Nor did the General Staff understand that trying to purchase an insurance policy promising "100 per cent security" is foolish, Utopian, and leads to a one-way dead-end street. After 1974 tremendous resources were invested in a ceaseless effort to increase military power relative to that of the Arabs. The General Staff began a protracted, exhausting, and frustrating quest for a balance of forces, despite the fact that this effort was doomed to fail from the very outset.
