Strategic Depth, Hybrid Warfare, and the Logic of Forward Defense After October 7
Strategic depth is not a slogan. It is a function of time and distance that enhances a nation’s geographic defensibility, and it does so in two concrete ways. It provides adequate reaction time between sensing a threat and acting on it. And it provides sufficient land area to deploy and array friendly forces before committing them to combat. Every serious military planner understands this. Few American politicians do.
October 7, 2023, forced the question back into the open. Without the high ground of Judea, Samaria, and the Golan Heights, Israel is incredibly narrow—too narrow to permit the swift internal deployment of overwhelming combat power against any compelling external threat. This is not a recent insight or an Israeli talking point. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff reached exactly this conclusion in their own analysis in the late 1960s, when modern Israel was barely two decades old. Their judgment has only been reinforced by the technological developments of the intervening half-century. The terrestrial range of the weapons commonly employed today is far greater than it was 20 years ago, let alone 60. Once-adequate strategic depth is no longer adequate.
The Litani Lesson
Consider the area south of the Litani River since the IDF’s unilateral withdrawal in 2000. The river’s furthest point from the Israeli border is less than 30 kilometers. That is not a vast theater. It is a thin strip of land. Yet in the 23 years between withdrawal and the October 7 war, that strip became saturated with Hizbullah missiles, artillery, mortars, anti-tank guided missiles, rockets, and drones. The terrain, combined with modern technology, enabled deeper, more accurate strikes into Israel proper than had been possible previously. Every weapon was emplaced for one purpose: to kill Israeli civilians.
Three conclusions follow, and they are not difficult. First, it is unacceptable that non-combatants should be targeted by these weapons. Second, it is unacceptable that the Lebanese government has been unable to disarm Hizbullah. Third, it is a fantasy to think Hizbullah will disarm itself. Given these realities, re-securing this area as a buffer is therefore imperative—not optional, not negotiable, and not subject to revision by a foreign chancellery whose own borders are not exposed to a single Hizbullah rocket. Similarly, the same logic applies on the Syrian side of the Golan, where the lessons of 2000 in Lebanon and 2005 in Gaza were paid for in Israeli lives and should not have to be paid again.
Why Washington Misses This
American opposition to Israel’s IDF presence in Lebanon and Syria is, at root, ideological, not experiential. Most U.S. politicians lack military experience and do not understand battlefield realities. They are politicians, not colonels. They first weigh every issue in terms of political coin, whether it will gain or cost a vote, and they are uniquely vulnerable to their preferred sources of information on warfighting, because they lack the relevant experience to critically assess what they are told. Lacking relevant experience, they’re vulnerable to their preferred sources, shaped by decades of orchestrated false narratives about the Israeli-Palestinian arena, Iran, and the broader Middle East. The result is that passions masquerade as reason—and they do not or cannot acknowledge it. Advocates of defensible borders face less an analytical challenge than an engagement challenge: figuring out how to reach politicians on the terrain of American interests, where their passions already lie.
Appeal to Self-Interest, Not Mercy
With this in mind, the most effective way to convey to U.S. lawmakers the necessity of military buffer zones and demilitarization on Israel’s exterior borders is not to appeal to American mercy. Instead, it appeals to American self-interest. President Trump’s “America First” framing may be labeled arrogant by his political rivals, but it is eminently rational. The essence of rational behavior is acting in one’s own interest. As unseemly as that may sound in polite company, it is how the world goes round, and it is how alliances are sustained when the rhetoric of shared values runs thin.
A related factor complicates the conversation: isolationist sentiment now occupies much of the Republican coalition and, in the Beltway, inhibits discussion of allies’ security needs. Even isolationists rarely admit they’d want as many strong friends as possible in a fight—not senior citizens, but buddies with the power and will to knock someone out. That is Israel. As General George Marshall said: You don’t want to fight unless you must, but if you do, you don’t want to fight alone or for long.
From an American viewpoint, Israel is on the front lines against global Islamist terror, providing a buffer. Israel’s need to counter threats daily has fostered valuable experience, technology, and intelligence networks. Their lessons benefit U.S. security as well.
The Same Enemy in Our Own Backyard
A similar dynamic plays out in the United States’ own backyard, making the case for defensible borders relevant beyond Israel. The United States faces the same enemy, albeit from a greater distance, conducting distributed operations on non-contiguous terrain in our own hemisphere. Venezuela is the clearest illustration. Until the recent capture of Nicolas Maduro, Iran’s presence there was pervasive and deliberate. Since at least 2010, Tehran has maintained a growing complement of Quds Force and Hizbullah assets on Venezuelan soil. In 2022, Tehran and Caracas began coordinating with Moscow and Beijing to establish an Iranian naval base on the Venezuelan coast. In 2023, the commander of the Iranian Navy publicly announced the regime’s intention to deploy and maintain assets at the Panama Canal. For several years, Iran supplied Venezuela with drone components and assembly lines, eventually opening a dedicated factory producing three variants of the Shahed loitering attack drone—the same family of drones supplied to Venezuelan forces and to other Latin American militant groups. Shortly before Maduro fell, the two regimes had agreed to deepen nuclear cooperation.
The threat in the Western Hemisphere is not isolated. The tri-border area where Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina meet has become a narco-terror hub, and it should surprise no one that Quds Force and Hizbullah operatives are on the ground there to exploit those networks in service of Iranian interests. The same Quds personnel missioned to train, equip, and cadre terror forces in the Middle East are the same personnel missioned to do the same in Latin America, and, almost certainly, inside the United States itself. The enemy employs hybrid capabilities by design, operating in the gray zone between war and peace, between combat and crime. That ambiguity confuses lawmakers and warfighters alike and inhibits effective response. Because Tehran calculates each hybrid action to remain just below the threshold that might trigger a decisive American reply, the temptation in Washington is to deny that this is a new character of war at all.
President Trump is finally doing something about this. Re-invigorating the Monroe Doctrine and toppling Maduro were the first steps. Cuba is likely next. The second- and third-order effects for global adversaries, Iran above all, who have been quietly setting up shop near our southern border while American eyes were closed, will be considerable. Stay tuned.
Tehran Is the Center of Gravity
What happens in Tehran does not stay in Tehran. Modern, global Islamist terrorism was born there in 1979. Islamist terrorism existed before the Islamic Revolution, but the example set by Khomeini’s seizure of power, combined with the regime’s explicit doctrine of exporting jihad, inspired and underwrote campaigns of terror worldwide. Tehran is now the global patron and center of gravity for these movements. Their dependency on that patron is also their vulnerability.
Eliminating the center of gravity makes its operations—including those in Latin America—untenable. Israel’s proximity, will, and capability make it indispensable for any effort to destroy that center. Whenever Americans choose to target Iran’s regime, Israeli participation will be essential. The reverse is also true: a secure Israel within defensible borders is the platform from which this work continues.
The Floor of a Serious Strategy
Defensible borders, buffer zones, and demilitarization on Israel’s northern and southern frontiers are not maximalist demands. They are the minimum required for a small state to survive in a hostile neighborhood, and the precondition for any lasting peace. The military center of gravity in any democracy is almost always the support of its domestic population. If Americans want a willing and capable ally in Israel—and it is increasingly clear that many of our European allies are no longer willing or capable—if we want a partner who can go shoulder-to-shoulder with us and deliver a punch, we need to understand that sufficient strategic depth is necessary to secure the Israeli population. That is not charity. It is American interest, plainly stated.
