Israel is a footnote.
The media gives the Israel-Hamas Gaza War and spinoff Hezbollah conflict outsized importance, but in the grand scheme of the future of global military battles, it fades into the background of tensions between giants like the US, China, and Russia.
That is the picture that is painted in the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) annual report on the military balance and defense economics picture worldwide in 2024.
The only mention of Israel in the executive summary of the report is a one sentence thrown on a list of many conflicts, “The IISS Military Balance…shows the deteriorating security environment which is exemplified by a mounting number of conflicts, such as the Hamas–Israel war, Russia’s continued aggression against Ukraine, Azerbaijan’s takeover of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, coups in Niger and Gabon, as well as China’s more assertive maneuvers around Taiwan, in the South China Sea and elsewhere.”
The military world views Hamas as insignificant
What this, and other short sections in the much longer full 554-page report say is that the military world views Hamas as insignificant, and the war between Israel and Hamas is only meaningful to the extent that it has wrapped in other actors impacting global interests.
The number of times that Yemen is mentioned in the report, though it is only a side player in the Israel-Hamas war, dwarfs the number of mentions of Hamas, which is mentioned as many times as Hamas.
Another point related to the Israel-Hamas War, which the report seems not to have fully taken in, is the restoration of Israel’s larger reservist armed forces to more regular duty. The report does mention Israel has both active and reserve duty portions of the military, but IISS may not realize how much the war has blurred some of the lines between the two.
Iran empowering terrorist organizations
Iran is mentioned multiple times in the executive portion of the report, but not directly in relation to Israel, “Iran’s expanding influence on conflict areas manifested itself by the Houthis’ use of Iranian-supplied anti-ship missiles and Russia’s continued employment of Iranian-supplied UAVs.”
Inside the report, it is mentioned that Iran provides weapons to Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis of Yemen, Syrian militias, and others.
But globally speaking, what is significant is the Islamic Republic’s empowering the Houthis to disrupt global shipping, and it is providing Moscow with attack drones once Russian President Vladimir Putin started to run low on offensive long-range weapons.
Even in the longer report, the nuclear threat posed by Iran is barely treated and is mainly mentioned in a vague allusion to the idea that the US might use force against Iran if it crosses the nuclear threshold.
Presumably, the report views this “nuclear threshold” as enriching uranium to the 90% weaponized level and not actually developing nuclear weapons, at which time a US attack on Tehran would presumably be viewed as too late.
What is left unsaid is that most of the world still does not believe there is much chance of Iran deciding to “go nuclear,” and to the extent the world thinks about it at all, it is mostly in denial and preoccupied with other present crises – like Ukraine.
Incidentally, while some have viewed the Ukraine crisis as an opening for Israel to turn the West against Iran due to Tehran’s support for Putin, it should not be forgotten that it has so overloaded Western attention, such as ignoring Iran’s nuclear threat and many of its other malign activities until the Houthis starting to interfere with core aspects of international shipping.
Ukraine-Russian conflict mentioned
The first comment the executive summary makes about Ukraine is that “Russia has lost around as many tanks as it had in its active inventory when it launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.” Inside the report, Russian tank losses are estimated in the 3,000 range.
Next, the summary adds, “While Moscow has traded quality for quantity in its replenishment efforts, Ukraine, so far, has been able to offset equipment losses through Western donations, upgrading quality in the process.”
Maybe most importantly, the summary notes, “Global defense spending grew by 9% to reach a record USD2.2 trillion, driven, in part, by NATO member states boosting budgets in response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Non-US NATO members now spend 32% more on defense since Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea.”
Israel viewed as a solution to sell weapons and defense systems to Europe
Besides multiple small mentions of the Israel-Hamas war, the Jewish state comes up in a significant way in the report as one of a number of solutions to sell weapons and defense systems to European countries who have decided to invest in their defense in a more serious way for the first time in decades.
The report notes that “From January to the end of September, Elbit Systems announced contracts with European countries worth over USD1.9bn. This includes a USD305m contract to supply the PULS multiple rocket launcher system to the Netherlands and a USD252m deal to supply Denmark with PULS and the ATMOS 2000 howitzer. The company announced that Europe was its largest market for Q2 and predicted continuing high demand for munitions.”
It continues, “Israel Aerospace Industries announced that H1 2023 was the most profitable half-year in the company’s history. It did not release specifics on regional markets, but the conclusion of a USD3.5bn deal with Germany for the Arrow 3 missile defence system in September will likely mean that H2 will be even better. The company also secured sales of loitering munitions to four NATO countries, including Estonia.”
Not to leave out the other Israeli defense giant, it says, “Rafael Advanced Defense Systems signed more contracts to export its popular Spike series of anti-tank missiles, including a deal with Greece worth EUR370m (USD402.68m) and a follow-on contract with Poland worth PLN400m (USD96.28m) for Spike-LR missiles to be built by local company MESKO.”
The report did warn that the war with Hamas could force Israeli defense companies to redirect sales internally, but “long-term demand from Europe is expected to remain strong at the same time as Israel seeks to secure new sales in Asia and the Middle East.”
In other portions of the report, it makes reference to negative coverage of the IDF on humanitarian issues in the Hamas-Israel war, also potentially harming Israeli sales.
It does not note Japan’s canceling a deal with Elbit and the Netherlands canceling working with Israel on the F-35 aircraft produced jointly with US defense giant Lockheed Martin, likely because these occurred in early 2024 after the report had closed.
But the earlier line about long-term demand expected to remain strong is probably key in the long-term.
Some countries may temporarily cut back on some Israeli defense products where they have ample choices, but if they need other products where Israel shines for their own defense against Russia, they are likely to get over their qualms eventually.
Conflict between US and China seen as transformative
All of this is in the classic defense and even retro-defense sales arena being pushed forward by the Russia-Ukraine War.
But the war between the US and China, where not a single shot is being fired, is viewed by the report in the long term as even more transformative.
That war is being fought in the cyber, artificial intelligence, and hypersonic weapons and the report appears to concur with multiple US defense agency reports that Beijing remains the true challenge to American military and technological power for the foreseeable future, far more than Russia.
The report does not touch on what the new cold war of sorts between the US and the West versus Russia and China means for Israel, who had tried to walk a tightrope in maintaining relations for both sides.
For now, the Israel-Hamas conflict seems to have shattered whatever remained of positive relations with Russia post the Ukraine War and harmed relations with China.
Nuclear weapons: For its part, the US “is also taking steps to modernize its nuclear weapons production infrastructure. The projects are part of the Biden administration’s
effort to balance strengthening deterrence, as the US prepares to face two major nuclear-power rivals, with trying to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in overall defense policy.”
If there had been a hope to talk China from joining the US and Russia in a special nuclear league above the other club members, America would have abandoned that effort. It is now merely trying to keep up with China’s nuclear modernization efforts while continuing some minor nuclear weapons reductions to maintain the veneer of reducing the proliferation of nuclear weapons globally.
All of this means that cyber-AI and nuclear weapons proliferation issues are likely only to get worse worldwide and to potentially present much greater threats to Israel as well; once Middle Eastern countries or terror groups try to acquire technology to threaten the Jewish state further, the same way they eventually acquired rockets.