ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates the implications of a reduction in the United States' role at the global level, and in the Middle East in particular, on Israel's national security doctrine and strategy. It requires that Israel maintains a conventional military force able to overcome any combination of forces aimed at conquering Israeli territory or destroying the Jewish state. Israeli presence on the Jordan River, and control of the Golan Heights and the Sinai Desert, allowed the Jewish state to abandon its preventive war and pre-emptive strike doctrine that resulted in the 1956 and the 1967 wars. The US-Israeli relationship started gaining momentum after the Six Day war, although its first real test came when the United States moved to nuclear alert during the final stages of the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The Iranian attempt to develop nuclear weapons challenges Israel's nuclear doctrine. The movement from inter-state conflicts toward sub-state conflicts was also a feature of the Cold War.
