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The IDFisundergoingamultidimensionalcrisis
The IDFisundergoingamultidimensionalcrisis
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Shmuel Even
The Brodet Commission to examine the Israeli defense budget was appointed in
November 2006 and presented its recommendations to the Prime Minister in May 2007.
The Commission was set up against a background of ongoing arguments between the
Finance and Defense Ministries over the size of the budget and the government’s
difficulty, given its lack of professional tools, to decide between them. The issue was one
of long standing and came to a head following the Second Lebanon War.
The Committee finds that “the Israel Defense Forces and the entire defense establishment
suffer from a multidimensional crisis: budgetary, management, organizational, cultural
and strategic. It argues that in the years preceding the Second Lebanon War, the army
showed no improvement in efficiency despite cuts in its budget. The Report also finds
that staff work to set the defense budget does not explain to decision makers the
connection between expenditures and benefits and that the debate on the budget
resembles a bazaar. The Commission concludes that the budget has not played its role as
a tool for planning, management and oversight in recent years.
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5. To introduce external control over the defense budget. The Commission suggests
that the National Security Council be given a central role as a staff organ and
sometimes as a control mechanism on behalf of the Prime Minister.
6. To ensure transparency and common language in describing the defense budget
and its component parts to the political leadership.
The Report also emphasizes the fact that “Israel’s defense expenditures are deviant by
any international standard.” That is irrelevant in determining the optimal size of the
budget. A more significant set of data (some of which appear in the Report) reveals that
Israel’s defense burden, i.e., the ratio of defense expenditure to total resources, has
actually been declining quite sharply since the mid-1970s and is now lower than at any
time since the early 1950s.
Year 1 1 1 1 1 2006
956 967 973 982 991
Defense expenditure as % of GDP 14.1 17.4 31.2 20.9 12.7 8.1
Local defense expenditure (excluding 10.2 14.6 14.8 9.4 6.2
imports) as % of GDP
The Report exaggerates the negative impact on the economy of defense expenditures and
underestimates the value contributed by the defense establishment. For example, the
Report claims that “overall defense expenditure” is higher than acknowledged
expenditure because it also includes the alternative cost (loss of output) of conscripts and
the security-related expenditures of other ministries, and that the real defense burden is
therefore higher by 2%. But the Report does not balance these hidden costs against the
uncalculated contributions of the IDF to the economy, such as the injection of
professional manpower and entrepreneurship; some of Israel’s hi-tech companies were set
up by IDF veterans. Moreover, American assistance, which is given as a grant, should be
deducted from the defense burden. The Commission claims that the assistance “obliges
Israel to act in coordination with and full transparency vis-à-vis the United States, which
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means operating according to fiscal norms: non-deviation from expenditure targets,
maintenance of deficit targets, reduction of the national debt, etc.” In fact, U.S.
assistance is not conditional on any of these things.
The Commission briefly mentions the benefits of defense expenditures: “deterrence and
war prevention, reduction of the duration of fighting and the damage, and, of course,
military achievements at the end of the fighting.” However, the Commission does not
help establishment the actual link between expenditures and security benefits. One of the
difficulties in establishing such a link is that military force is intended to provide a
response to a variety of threats, and calculating the cost of building capacity for one
mission (such as defense against Syria) is problematic. The Commission’s
recommendation – to measure the quality and serviceability of force as a multiple of four
factors (force preparation, quality of combat systems, training levels and logistical
endurance) – falls far short of providing a solution for the problem.
The Commission’s findings on decision making in the realm of defense budgets are not
surprising, and the situation in other areas, such as education, is probably no different.
The root causes of flaws in the decision making process are found in the political culture.
One example is the practice of appointing people to government posts based on political
rather than professional considerations. It is doubtful whether the process of defense
budgeting can be substantially improved without a parallel improvement in the level of
national decision making.