Two opposite arguments are heard in political and academic discourse in Israel about the status of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF): One argument is that the IDF possesses too much power and that military thought governs political thought. Others contend that the military is over-supervised by civilian groups such as parents, civil rights groups, and other organizations, thereby limiting its space of operation. Can both these arguments be right at the same time? How can the contradiction between them be reconciled? This is the problematic at the heart of this book.
In Who Governs the Military, Yagil Levy proposes a distinction between two modes of civilian control over military affairs: control of the armed forces – focused on military doctrine, weapons systems, operational performance, recruitment policies and the resources allocated to the military – and control of militarism, which focuses on political culture and the level of legitimation it awards to the use of force. Levy argues that inverse relations have developed since the early years of the state; namely, increase in control of the IDF dovetailed with a decrease in control of militarism. This distinction is useful in analyzing key issues that have attracted scholarly attention in recent years, among them:
- The political implications of changes in the social composition of the IDF.
- The sources and implications of casualty-averse policies.
- The impact of extra-institutional control; namely, the actions taken by social movements and interest groups, in the public and judicial arenas, in an attempt to restrain the military.
- The significance of the military's permeability to the market society.
- The complex role played by the press in controlling the military.