What led the Israelis to attack Iran the day before yesterday? It’s simple. Their strategists have assessed the situation so that not attacking is a greater risk than attacking. After all, the same is true of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russian strategists have concluded that if war does not occur, a NATO-integrated Ukraine will become a deadly threat that will be impossible to stop. An invasion of Ukraine was therefore intended to reduce the risk.
In both cases, these are states and peoples fighting for their lives. The Israelis are playing for their bare lives, the Russians for the survival of their empire (the alternative is to divide it into mini-states effectively owned by US corporations and enslave the local population).
Of course, their strategists may be wrong. They may be operating on faulty assumptions. They can fall into groupthink. They may manifest their personal interests, involvement in various deals, etc. However, there is a process underway where different options for the future are defined, compared, threats are assessed, etc.
A generation ago, the West was stronger than anyone else in strategic thinking. But times are changing. Somewhere in the Pentagon offices, similar exercises are probably still being conducted, but they apparently have no impact on policy decisions. And in countries like the Czech Republic, that capability has all but disappeared. Among other things, because all strategic thinking is conditioned by the fact that you admit even those possibilities that you do not like. For example, the possibility that Vladimir Putin is not driven by the idea of expansion, but that he sincerely believes that he is defending Russia within its existing borders. And you must not even think about such things.
What’s worse. We see the same trend among analysts and commentators, including alternative ones. They do not talk about strategic options and scenarios of development. No thought is given to why this or that party has chosen this particular option, what it expects from it, and how the opponent might react. All attention is focused on who is good and who is bad.