On Tuesday, 9 September 2025, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies hosted Rob Geist Pinfold, Lecturer in International Security at King’s College London, who delivered a talk titled “Something Old, Something New: Israeli Strategy before and after 7 October”. The lecture was moderated by Muhanad Seloom, Assistant Professor of Critical Security Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
In his presentation, Pinfold explored Israel’s grand strategy before and after 7 October 2023, arguing that Israel is now a revisionist actor using military force to reorder the region, whilst destabilizing it along the way. This, he stressed, is markedly different from Israel’s grand strategy prior to 7 October, when it largely acted as a status quo power. Rather than focusing on whether Israel can be a hegemon, he underlined the importance of understanding it as a revisionist state.
To illustrate this, he defined grand strategy as a state’s theory for how to create security for itself or as a vision of where it wants to go and how it intends to get there. Grand strategy, he explained, is a long-term pattern of state behaviour and not inherently a “good” thing, often implying problematic policies. He noted that states can be broadly characterized as either status quo powers; seeking to preserve the balance of power and bandwagon with a hegemon, or revisionist powers that reject the balance of power and challenge it.
A central feature of Israel’s grand strategy, according to Pinfold, is its perception of territory as the ultimate antidote to insecurity. Unlike many other states, Israel views recognized borders as a security threat and instead consistently speaks of “defensible borders”. Consequently, Israel has long prioritized strategic depth, buffer zones, occupations, and conquests, reflecting its belief that conflict and war are inevitable.
During its first two decades, Israel acted as a revisionist power, perceiving itself as a regional underdog and seeking strategic depth. Its security was heightened by the absence of a superpower guarantor, leading it to rely on disproportionate retaliation to deter adversaries. However, after 1967, Pinfold argued, Israel underwent a radical shift and became a status quo power. With superpower backing and a fourfold territorial expansion, it sought to entrench the status quo. Military force was employed mainly to “mow the grass”, that is, to compel adversaries to return to an existing balance. He highlighted examples of this shift, including Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982, parts of the West Bank during the Oslo process, and the Gaza Strip in 2005.
Yet, Pinfold argued that 7 October was a turning point just like 11 September. He explained this academically as a “grand strategic shock”, a critical event capable of negating long-standing perceptions and prompting long-term strategic change. Thus, Israel has returned to revisionism, abandoning its “better the devil you know” strategy in favour of more radical measures. In this new phase, Israel has shifted from “mowing the grass” to “uprooting the trees”, reviving the pursuit of strategic depth. It is thus something old yet something new.
The speaker also pointed to doctrinal and operational changes since October 2023, including the mobilization of 4% of the total population and a readiness to fight on multiple fronts. Pinfold emphasized that grand strategic changes are long-term and stubborn, making it unlikely that any new government will alter this trajectory.
He concluded that Israel’s “new normal” is defined by revisionism, with military force prioritized over normalization efforts such as the Abraham Accords. Accordingly, he stressed, no concessions should be expected. However, he cautioned that this does not imply Israel’s previous status quo policy was benign, as it remained highly problematic in its own right.
