Four lessons that Netanyahu must learn from his failed strategies

al-monitor.com

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Excerpt:

The year 5775 on the Jewish calendar will go on record as one of the toughest in the annals of the State of Israel, the year in which the world once again abandoned the Jewish nation to its fate. The leaders of the world’s greatest powers, led by the president of the United States, signed an agreement paving the way for an enemy state, one intent on the destruction of the Jewish state, to acquire an arsenal of mass destruction. The underwriter for this sad diagnosis and apocalyptic prognosis is Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ... 

As the new year dawns, there’s little else that can be done but to send the political leadership a gift basket of the lessons they should have learned so they might avoid the additional pitfalls of a vacuum in strategic thinking. ...

The first lesson is to never set out for the battlefield without an exit strategy. ... 

The second lesson is the need to thoroughly examine the broad implications of every significant diplomatic and defense move in regard to the central goals of the state. ...

The third lesson is the need for the country’s leaders to shake off anachronistic perceptions . ...

The fourth lesson is that the quality of a leader’s decisions is not determined by the amount of time and energy invested in public diplomacy and public relations. Up to the last minute and even after, Netanyahu tried to stave off an agreement with Iran. He traveled as far as New York, where he presented the UN General Assembly with a diagram of an Iranian bomb and drew a red line through it to symbolize halting Iran's nuclear program. The prime minister enlisted the support of the Republican Party in the United States, risking personal conflict with the Democratic president. The grades given to leaders are determined by their success in achieving the central, national tasks that they set for themselves and present to their people. Ovations in the US Congress are inconsequential when a leader fails to thwart a potentially severe blow, when so claimed, to the security of the state. ...