«Ծայրամասային դոկտրինն» ու Մերձավոր Արևելքի «Հատվածայնացման տեսությունը» Իսրայելի ռազմավարական ընկալումների համատեքստում / The “Periphery Doctrine” and “Theory of Fragmentation” of the Middle East within the context of Israel’s strategic perceptions

Abstract

October 7, 2023, saw the Israeli-Palestinian conflict step up on a new stage of combat operations. Consequently, with local, regional and global actors elucidating or clarifying their position on current military actions that hold the potential to escalate into a regional and large-scale war, importance is attached to the consideration of doctrines, concepts and theories that have become ideologies in the aspect of ensuring Israel’s own security, and its perceptions of regional security as a whole. In this sense, the article discusses the “Periphery Doctrine” (“Strategy of periphery countries”), and the essence of the “Theory of Fragmenta­tion”, stages of their transformation and Israel’s security perceptions stipulating those transformations. The aforementioned doctrine and the theory are considered within the context of Israel’s strategic security principles and its perceptions of the Near and Middle East as somewhat a heterogeneous cultural domain. Тhe axis drawn due to the Israeli-developed “New Doctrine of Periphery”, sometimes called the “Reverse periphery doctrine”, is also comprehensively analyzed, representing Israel’s desire to impose a blockade on the real periphery countries – Iran and Turkey – or to contain them. The article attaches particular interest to the consideration and comparative analysis of the differences between the classical Periphery Doctrine and the “New” one (not only in the sense of the number and motives of actors, the goals facing the new alliance or cooperation, methods of achieving them, but also within the framework of the fact of attaching special importance to their economic component along with common threats uniting all parties). The analysis allows us to sum up that Israel’s first, or “classical” doctrine “on concluding an alliance with periphery countries”, and the theory of fragmentation as a whole, were successful. Besides, owing to this strategy, the thesis on reconciliation with Israel and establishment of diplomatic relations with it was put on the agenda of the Arab States. In its turn, Israel’s “New Periphery Doctrine” is still at the formation stage. However, to some extent it comes from Israeli perceptions of not only military threats, but also economic and energy security.