The Geopolitics of Israel

Forerunner, "WorldWatch," November-December 2010

A nation's or region's geography constrains its policy choices, especially in its international relations. This is essentially the definition of geopolitics. Where a nation is located—landlocked or coastal, northern hemisphere or southern, Eastern or Western, high latitude or low, etc.—and what geographical features the land possesses—mountains, rivers, coasts, deserts, forests, etc.—dictate to a great extent how it can and will react to most events and crises that affect it. Other factors, such as mineral wealth, arable land, and natural harbors, also play their parts.

Geopolitics is not an exact science—nations do act "outside the box" on occasion—but it provides a framework for understanding why nations decide to do one thing over another. For instance, a large nation like Russia, which has almost no natural barriers to invasion, will endeavor to create a series of buffer states between itself and its most powerful enemies to forestall aggression against it. Thus, since its rise to great power status, Russia has sought to establish and protect its "near abroad," the quasi-independent republics that line its western and southern perimeter. This fact of geography helps to explain Russia's domination and intervention in nations like Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and the like.

Despite its small size, the land of Israel, on which the Bible's actions center, is not exempt from geographical and therefore geopolitical realities. Its size, shape, topographical features, and climate all shape its rulers' courses of action, as well as its enemies' options in coming against it. A serious student of the Bible will keep these factors in mind, especially when reading through the historical narratives found from Genesis to II Chronicles and beyond.

Israel has been an independent actor in three general periods in history: 1) from the invasion under Joshua until Judah's defeat by Nebuchadnezzar; 2) from the return of the Jewish exiles under Zerubbabel until Titus razed Jerusalem in AD 70; and 3) in its current manifestation as a nation since 1948. In all three periods, Israel has found itself struggling to retain its independence due to external imperial ambitions and internal tensions. This consistent political situation is a result of its unchanging geography.

Generally, Israel has stretched from southern Lebanon and the hill country in the north (often including the Golan Heights) to the Negev in the south—in effect, "from Dan to Beersheba," a Hebrew phrase that implies "all Israel" (Judges 20:1; I Samuel 3:20; II Samuel 24:2). On occasion, Israelites also ruled areas east of the Jordan River, but they never encroached far into Arabia or even into Sinai, for that matter. Only under a strong leader like David or Solomon did the borders venture much beyond the "Dan to Beersheba" rule. This holds true even today.

Deserts protect Israel from three directions, providing fairly deep buffer zones from enemies to the southwest, southeast, and east. The Sinai Desert holds off the Egyptians except when they are particularly strong, as in the days of Thutmose III and Ramses II, for example. The southeastern desert guards the approaches from Eilat/Aqaba at the northern end of the eastern arm of the Red Sea. Thus, it has not had to worry a great deal about an invasion from Arabia. Finally, the eastern desert, along with the Jordan River, makes attacking from that direction a risky proposition, especially if Israel holds both Judea and Samaria. Today, however, air forces considerably lessen the deserts' effectiveness as barriers to invasion.

Israel's greatest vulnerability lies in the north where few natural barriers exist, and history shows that this is the route most of its conquerors—excluding Egypt—have taken when invading the land. The Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans have all marched down the northern trade routes and through the northern valleys to lay waste to Samaria and Jerusalem. The only real check is the chokepoint between Mount Hermon and the Sea of Galilee, a hilly area about 25 miles wide, where either direct confrontation or guerrilla tactics can stymie an approaching army.

Once through this area, to reach the wealthy coastal cities or to turn south toward the heart of Israel, an invading force would have to fight its way through the rich valleys of the northern hills. A decisive victory for the invader here could open the rest of the land to exploitation. This fact explains why Megiddo—Armageddon in Revelation 16:12-16—has been the site of many bloody battles in which imperial powers and determined defenders have contested for possession of the land.

Imperial powers have coveted the land of Israel because it forms part of a land bridge connecting Africa, Asia, and Europe. As geopolitical analyst Dr. George Friedman notes, "Israel therefore occupies what might be called the convergence zone of the Eastern Hemisphere." If this area is successfully gained, it allows for both swift movement of troops and supplies along the eastern Mediterranean coast and secures maritime shipping lanes. As the crossroads of three continents, control of this narrow strip of land is fiercely contested.

Because it is an international magnet (attracting other ethnicities, religions, and commercial/cultural/political influences), and because its own internal geography creates different types of people (coastal, cosmopolitan merchants; northern farmers and warriors; and southern herdsmen and fighters), Israel's leaders must also deal with domestic tensions that threaten to tear the nation into a hundred pieces. When these divisions are minimal, Israel tends to be strong and able to hold off foreign incursions. However, when the nation is deeply divided, its chances of being overrun increase. Even today, Israel's prime ministers must often cobble together coalition governments to provide enough stability to hold its neighbors at bay.

As we read biblical history, these geopolitical factors frequently come into play in understanding why Israel's leaders acted as they did when faced with both internal and external crises. Keeping them in mind may also help us make sense of today's news accounts—and the events of the end time.

Geopolitics: Scope and Limitations

Forerunner, "WorldWatch," July-August 2008

Politics among nations has been occurring since ancient times. Ever since one government needed to interact with another—whether because of a boundary dispute, rival claims to a resource, or fear of a powerful neighbor—some kind of intergovernmental relations have sought means to forge solutions for mutual benefit. These relations take various forms: exchanging diplomats, signing treaties, making alliances, voicing accusations and threats, or perhaps dispatching a hostile army or navy.

Philosophers have been studying such relations for many centuries. For instance, Plato's Republic is his vision of the perfect society and in part deals with how rulers should conduct the affairs of state. Scholars of every major empire and nation have weighed in on the subject, from Sun Tzu's Art of War to Machiavelli's The Prince and Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. Today, a steady stream of books and papers on foreign policy flows from the minds of pundits, politicians, and academics the world over.

While there are many theories of international relations, perhaps the most pragmatic and even scientific is what is known as geopolitics. The central idea of geopolitics is that geography—along with demography and economics—is the determining factor of any nation's relations. In other words, where a nation is, along with the composition of its population and its natural resources, will indicate how it will act and react on the world stage. In some cases, a nation will have no choice but to behave in a certain way simply because of its location on the globe.

Japan is a prime example of geopolitical reality. It is a mountainous island nation with a relatively large, well-educated population and a high standard of living. However, it is resource-poor, especially in mineral resources that form the basis of its high-tech industries. To feed and supply its people, then, it must rely on other nations to provide a great deal of food and resources.

Japan thus has two alternatives: It must either use force to take what it needs or trade peacefully with its neighbors. Imperial Japan tried the former method early in the twentieth century and ultimately failed, seeing two of its large cities evaporated by atomic weapons. Democratic Japan since World War II has been far more successful in employing peaceful trade. While the pendulum could swing back to militarism, it is far more likely that Japan's foreign policy decisions will continue to favor peaceful trade as long as it remains a viable means of prosperity. This is especially true due to its security guarantees with the United States and its formidable navy.

Biblically, the land of Israel is another example of practical geopolitics. In essence, it stands at the center of the world. The great Western civilizations of the past—Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome—ranged about it, and in order to expand their territories, these empires had to cross the narrow land-bridge of the land of Canaan. There, they would encounter the descendants of Israel.

Israel's history is in many ways a record of the rise and fall of these empires and their impact on God's people. When the dominant empire of the time was weak, Israel could strengthen itself and expand, but when the empire was strong, Israel usually suffered humiliating defeat and subjugation. In their carnality, many Israelite kings were trapped by geopolitics to reveal their real loyalties. God used this ebb and flow of international power to great effect in leaving good and bad examples of faithfulness for us.

Geopolitics even constrains a global superpower like the current United States. Despite having an overwhelmingly powerful military by several orders of magnitude, it can only project its power along the lines of its geopolitical advantages. As alluded to earlier, the United States is primarily a sea power—even its vaunted air power is dependent on the reach of its naval strength. This means that long-term military actions far from American shores pose a significant problem for shapers of U.S. foreign policy.

The geopolitical limitations of this became apparent in the Iraq War in 2003. American firepower made quick work of the Iraqi army and air force, but the subsequent Iraqi insurgency revealed the Achilles' heel of U.S. power. It was terribly effective at invasion but embarrassingly unprepared as an occupying force. Ultimately, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lost his job due to miscalculating the geopolitics of invading a turbulent Middle Eastern nation like Iraq from 6,200 miles away.

Such geopolitical constraints help to predict the foreign policies of different administrations. In effect, policy differences will be minor from one President to another because the nation's geography, demography, and economy are either fixed or vary only marginally. In reality, basic American foreign policy has changed little since the Truman administration, no matter which political party happened to control the Oval Office.

Every Chief Executive is forced by geopolitical reality and entrenched State Department policies to protect and expand American power throughout the world against the same rogues' gallery of nations. Hence, only so much leeway to act exists, and it is usually revealed, not in policy, but in a President's resolve, as can be seen in the stark disparity between Jimmy Carter's pacifism and Ronald Reagan's intransigence. As this example indicates, a President's personality can make a huge difference.

Geopolitics, then, gives us a starting template to view the world and to attempt to predict the actions of nations. It is not perfect, and exceptional personalities can arise to shake the assumptions of even the most experienced observers. True Christians await the rise of just such a dominating and paradigm-shifting individual in the Beast (Revelation 13:1-10; 17:9-17). We can be certain that he will turn today's geopolitics on its head.

A World Upside-Down

God thunders in Isaiah 5:20, "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" In this verse, He pronounces a curse on those who judge a matter exactly opposite to reality, and its connection to the surrounding verses suggests that such people do this knowingly to deceive others. The two immediately preceding verses condemn those who sin blatantly and then taunt God to come and punish them, and the following verse censures "those who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight" (verse 21). The subjects of these three "woes" hang together as facets of humanity in rebellion against God: the brazen sinner, the cunning spinmeister, and the self-righteous know-it-all.

Most people have little difficulty spotting the brash sinner and the puffed-up know-it-all, but the crafty spinmeister can easily fool us into thinking along the lines on which he leads us. Millions of Americans and others around the world are still twisted like pretzels after the Clinton administration's eight years of spin—to the point that his sixtieth birthday has been marked here and abroad as a watershed event for the Baby Boomer generation. Perhaps there is no clearer example of turning matters upside-down than Bill Clinton's infamous line of defense during the 1998 Monica Lewinsky scandal: "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." To him, even the meaning of English's most basic word of existence could be manipulated to obfuscate.

We live in a world of spin. From celebrities to corporations to nations, everyone is engaged in a fierce public relations battle for the loyalty and affection of as much of the population as possible. The objective of their efforts is not one of the nobler virtues—peace, truth, freedom, service, and justice, among others, although these words may be used in their rhetoric—but simply allegiance at any cost. A celebrity puts on a public persona to gain fans who will pay for his entertainment offerings, and his "people" ensure his foibles never make the evening news—and if they do, they are paid good money to cast them in a positive light. Companies do this with their operations and products, and nations do this with their policies and practices.

Now even non-state actors—read, terrorist organizations—busily attempt to shape world opinion in their favor by controlling the news. In the case of the recent Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, Hezbollah has managed to convince most of the world that it won the month-long war in total opposition to the facts on the ground. In reality, their stronghold, southern Lebanon, lies in ruins, devastated by weeks of nearly constant bombing and mortar fire, besides the ground actions of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Hundreds of its fighters are dead, its medium-range missile inventory has been destroyed, and much of its physical infrastructure lies as rubble. Because it provoked the Israelis into retaliating, Hezbollah has lost huge numbers of its dwindling supply of supporters both to death in the war and to disaffection; only a few hundred citizens showed up at its most popular victory march in south Beirut. It is desperately trying to win them back with gifts of $12,000 per household to pay for destroyed homes and lives (ironically, they are paying in U.S. dollars, most likely counterfeited in Iran and funneled through militants in Syria).

Hezbollah has been successful in this public-relations coup because it set Israel up under a set of parameters for victory that no nation could accomplish. According to the terrorists and their co-conspirators in the media, victory for Israel was possible only by completely rooting out and destroying every last member of Hezbollah anywhere in the world. If only one member of Hezbollah had been able to wave a flag of victory after the IDF had ground Lebanon to dust, Israel would have been seen as failing in its mission. A terrorist organization would have faced and stood up to the military behemoth of the region and remained viable. And this is what happened.

This has been taken to such an extent that the Israelis themselves believe it! Strategic Forecasting reports today:

About 63 percent of Israelis think Prime Minister Ehud Olmert should resign as a result of failings in Israel's conflict with Hezbollah, according to a poll published Aug. 25 in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot. The poll also revealed that 74 percent want Defense Minister Amir Peretz to step aside and 54 percent want military chief Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz to resign.

Militarily, Israel's action in Lebanon compares favorably with other historic victories since its founding in 1948. Geopolitically, the situation in the Middle East favors its continued dominance over the divided and weak Arab/Muslim states around it. Yet, the perception of matters, framed by both the subtle and the blatant use of deceitful images and opinion in the media, is that Israel is vulnerable, weakened, and ripe for destruction. God prophesies in Zechariah 12:2, "Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem." The Arab/Muslim nations, in saying that up is down and down is up, are behaving in such a drunken, unrealistic manner.

God pronounces a curse upon those who purposefully turn matters inside-out. In this regard, Zechariah 12:3 relates, "And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it." God has a reason for the descendants of Judah being in possession of the Holy Land at the end time, and Israel will not be dislodged until His purposes are fulfilled. No matter what its enemies perceive, the reality is that Israel is considerably stronger than they are, and God promises to look out for the house of Judah in its troubles with its neighbors (verses 4-6).

The truth is that God is on His throne and maneuvering affairs in anticipation of the end of the age. Are we willing to recognize reality?