Here is the problem: Israeli strategic studies remain unforgivably mired in unimaginative, low-level and non-theoretic research, a methodological/epistemological quicksand that effectively "drowns" all pertinent thought. Needed immediately as a corrective is substantial refinement of Israeli strategic studies with particular reference to conceptual creativity, dialectical inquiry, and inductive-deductive paradigms of theoretical investigation.

Even a glance at current scholarship in this vitally important genre now reveals little more than methodical inventories of weapon systems, historical accounts of prior successes and failures and neatly-tabulated calculations of "military balance." At the same time, there is usually little or no evidence of complex understanding of critical power configurations and essentially no formal structure of relevant hypotheses. Not surprisingly, Israeli strategic studies describe an intellectually underdeveloped field, one that is largely unable to inform the creation of purposeful security policy for an existentially endangered Jewish State.

To remedy this intolerable deficiency, a small number of dedicated and capable scholars need to fashion themselves into an available "brain trust" - a sophisticated and theory-oriented body of real thinkers who could combine their considerable intellectual resources in a way that would provide Israel with promising policy guidance. This brain trust, operating under the extraordinary imperatives and exigencies of a country in profound jeopardy, would go well beyond the routinely reactive style of extant Israeli strategic studies to an authentically proactive search for optimal security remedies. Unlike existing think tanks and so-called "centers for strategic studies," which are usually unable to provide sustained and serious scholarship and which are routinely beholden to particular parties and agendas, this group would function independently and according to the very highest standards of academic inquiry.

This group of real thinkers would need to operate according to a serious model of investigation. The model would begin with a statement of appropriate Values (e.g., security from unconventional war; security from conventional war; security from unconventional terrorism; security from conventional terrorism); Hypotheses (e.g., propositions linking various policies, such as those associated with Oslo, to various conditions of security); Models (e.g., images of Israel functioning under different conditions of security); and Recommendations (e.g., informed suggestions stemming directly from the structured investigation of stipulated hypotheses). Taken together, these four essential phases of Israeli strategic studies could comprise the start of auspicious new theories of Jewish national survival.

There is nothing more practical than good theory. Contrary to the uninformed conventional wisdom, good theory is necessarily antecedent to good practice. Without good theory, for example, in medicine, in engineering, in architecture, there would be no purposeful healing, no operational aircraft, no stable or cost-efficient buildings. Strategic studies are no exception. They, too, require antecedent investigations based upon creative conceptualization, plausible hypotheses, and a combining of both inductive and deductive modes of inference. (The scientific method is sometimes referred to as the inductive-deductive method).

Science is a method of reaching conclusions. Although those who work on Israeli strategic studies fancy their efforts to be "scientific," they are generally wrong. Science involves more than the allocation of numerical values to different properties and more than assessments of war that arbitrarily allocate different levels of probability. Only days before the Arab attacks in October 1973, Aman, the IDF Intelligence Branch, concluded that war was of "low probability." This erroneous assessment of probability (one of several such assessments in Israel's brief history) led to the deaths of thousands of Israelis.

Why? What went wrong? The answer: the underlying investigations were insufficiently dialectical. Moreover, these investigations were not part of a concerted and coherent development of strategic theory. These same drawbacks are typically characteristic of investigations presently being conducted at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University and at the BESA Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan.

Israel's survival cannot rest upon poor scholarship. Good scholars are needed NOW to examine competing policy claims with reason and method. The alternative would be a continuance of government policies leading directly to despair.