Conventional Deterrence

Israeli security policy began to formulate in the early 1950s by its first leader, David Ben-Gurion. The three pillars of the defence doctrine were deterrence of possible threats; detection of impending attacks, and decisive military defeat of the enemy when the deterrence had failed. Up until the 1990s, the major perceived threat was an Arab military invasion into Israel and a war between states. In the early 1990s, Israel started to formulate a new security concept according to which the main threat might not emanate from states but from sub-state organizations such as Hamas and the Hezbollah. Israel is surrounded by non-state actors: Hamas, Hezbollah, rebel organizations in Syria, jihadist elements in the Golan Heights, Sinai and in Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority. Since the mid-2000s, a lot of attention is given to the Iranian nuclear threat and to rocket and missile attacks from Gaza, Lebanon and potentially other hostile areas.

The current situation around the Karabakh conflict leads to pessimism concerning the prospects for a speedy resolution based on mutual compromise. Given the improbability of reaching a compromise solution even in the mid-term, the most important goal in the Karabakh conflict should be exactly this: preservation of stability. The context is reminiscent, at a micro-level, of the Cold War, in which stability served to prevent a war between two superpowers trapped in bipolar confrontation. This stability was made possible by the use of two complementary restraining policies: military deterrence and political containment, both of which can be fully applied to the Karabakh conflict.

Over the last two decades, conventional (non-nuclear) deterrence in Russia's military strategy has changed from being a sub-tactical, sub-strategic warfighting tool to being a separate military-political factor—a self-contained component in Russia's strategic deterrence concept. Soon after Russia revised its military doctrine in 2014, it applied this conventional deterrence concept in its Syria campaign—against the backdrop of being under international pressure vis-à-vis the Ukraine conflict and Russia-NATO tensions. In Syria, Russia fired new types of long-range, precision-guided missiles, showcasing these weapons both as battlefield tools and as geopolitical instruments of deterrence. The " Second Conventional Age " After the era of World Wars and nuclear arms races, a conventional deterrence renaissance took place. This so-called " second conventional age " was marked by the development of modern conventional weapons: long-range, precise ballistic and cruise missiles that use advanced intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance systems. These modern technologies include not only classic strike platforms—ballistic and cruise missiles, artillery systems, other precision-guided munitions (PGMs)—but also weapons based on new physical principles, for example, hypersonic weapons, self-maneuvering reentry vehicles (MaRVs), anti-satellite and space weapons, and new types of non-kinetic, non-nuclear weapons (cyber, radio-electronic, electromagnetic). According to Russian military experts, the technological development of conventional weapons by many countries " has made such progress that the destruction of a single element of infrastructure, communication, and control systems can lead to a catastrophe, able to throw a country back many years in its development. " Conventional weapons have reached such a combination of range, accuracy, and lethality that even leading

The military parade dedicated to the twenty-fifth anniversary of Armenia’s independence has put an end to three years of speculation about whether Armenia is in possession of the Russian-made advanced 9K720 Iskander Short-Range Ballistic Missile System (SRBMS). Starting with the public rehearsal on September 16, 2016, with newly procured equipment, Armenia showcased elements of the system: two transporter-erector-launchers and their transporter-loader vehicles. Subsequently, several Russian media outlets reported that Armenia had purchased at least one division, including a minimum of four launchers of the Iskander system, adding that this acquisition was outside the terms of 2015’s Armenian-Russian arms deal, which was worth $200 million.