Israel has reached a definitive “strategic watershed,” necessitating a fundamental redesign of its national mission, according to a policy paper that the Henry Jackson Society recently published.

“Israel 2048: A Blueprint for a Rising Asymmetric Geopolitical Power” lays out a comprehensive vision for Israel’s centennial in the aftermath of Oct. 7 and the resulting wars.

In it, Jackson Society Senior Fellow Barak M. Seener and David Wurmser, founder of the Delphi Global Analysis Group, contend that the traditional security doctrine of containment and “mowing the grass” was shattered by the events of late 2023, forcing the state into a new era of proactive regional intervention.

The report, which according to Seener has been “doing the rounds amongst Israeli and U.S. policymakers,” argues that “the massacre of 7 October 2023 led the State of Israel to confront a fundamentally altered security, diplomatic and civilisational environment in which status-quo management is no longer viable.”

Seener emphasized that Israel has consistently demonstrated a preference to operate on a tactical level while avoiding strategic commitments.

“Israel touts its operational successes as strategic successes, and they’re not the same thing,” Seener told JNS.

Seener and Wurmser suggest that for Israel to consolidate its regional primacy, it must move beyond tactical military success to define a grand strategy that integrates military force with technological and diplomatic statecraft.

The blueprint further emphasizes that “Israel’s primary strategic vulnerability is conceptual rather than kinetic,” arguing that the nation’s survival depends on a coherent identity rooted in its Jewish civilizational heritage. By its 2048 centenary, the report envisions an Israel that functions as a spiritual anchor for the West and a vital industrial partner for the East, fusing military resilience with global technological indispensability.

From defensive to preventive power

The transition from a defensive “fortress” to a “preventative power” forms the strategic core of the report.

Seener and Wurmser argue that the traditional security doctrine, centered on the security triangle of “deterrence, containment and reactive defense,” was optimized for a status quo that the events of 2023 rendered obsolete.

In its place, the blueprint proposes a “Doctrine of Preventive Power Projection” that moves beyond Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s classic “Iron Wall” paradigm. The report suggests that Israel must now “operate on the outside of the wall,” to proactively degrade threats, before they become existential.

This new framework is described by the authors as a phase “defined by projecting power more frequently at a greater range across the region,” intended to deny adversaries the ability to regenerate their military capabilities. A central pillar of this strategy is the pursuit of “strategic autarky” to insulate Israeli decision-making from foreign political pressure. To achieve this, the report highlights a $108 billion plan to expand domestic lines of production for critical munitions and military systems, reducing the vulnerabilities exposed by earlier arms embargoes and diplomatic constraints.

The authors contend that this industrial shift marks “Israel’s evolution from a ‘Start-Up Nation’ to a military ‘Defense-Tech Nation,’” a move that fundamentally alters its relationship with the United States. By providing the West with critical advantages in AI and next-generation warfare, the report envisions Israel transitioning from a “supplicant” dependent on aid to a “peer partner” capable of anchoring Western strategic interests in the Middle East while maintaining strategic independence.

Pax Silica

This military evolution envisioned in the report is underpinned by a broader shift in how global power is measured. The report argues that security in the 21st century is increasingly defined by technological sovereignty rather than territorial defense alone. This shift is epitomized by Pax Silica, a U.S.-led economic security coalition launched in December 2025 to secure global supply chains for semiconductors, AI and advanced manufacturing.

In a recent interview, Jacob Helberg, the U.S. under secretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, contends that the inclusion in the Pax Silica initiative of oil-rich Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in early 2026 signifies a “shift from a hydrocarbon-centric security architecture to one focused on managing critical infrastructure.”

This “silicon statecraft” places Israel at the pivot of what the Jackson Society report calls a “technological golden triangle” linking the United States and the emerging powers of the East. Within this framework, the document envisions Israel as a high-risk R&D node, while larger economies like the U.S. and India serve as the “Super-Scaler” providing the demographic scale and capital required to convert Pax Silica into a global system.

The blueprint argues that “Israel’s R&D centres offer expertise in design, IP [intellectual property], metrology [the scientific study of measurement] and cybersecurity, which is essential added value for U.S. chipmakers,” and that this critical role can in turn be leveraged for “access to deep tech sectors that include AI infrastructure, quantum computing and semiconductor manufacturing.”

The authors argue that deepening Israel’s role in this economic structure will secure Israel’s role as an indispensable industrial partner.

However, Seener also warned that Israel’s “Start-Up” culture needs to be transcended to allow for broad infrastructural investment that would allow the county to transition into a new scale of economic development. “I think that culture is the technological and business equivalent of Israel having prioritized tactical and operational wins, which it confuses with strategy,” he explained.

The geography of trade

Seener and Wurmser explain that this emergent technological framework is mirrored by a potential spike in trade and travel infrastructure, which can also be leveraged to secure Israel’s geopolitical position.

The report suggests that if Pax Silica represents the intellectual and technological promise for Israel’s future, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) serves as its physical backbone. IMEC is a trade and infrastructure network designed to link Indian ports to Europe, serving as a strategic alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. According to the authors, “Israel is set to become a central node and connector of continents” through this network, a development they believe could transform the state into “the Singapore of the entire globe.”

Seener and Wurmser argue that Israel’s geographic position allows it to function as a critical “land bridge,” bypassing volatile maritime chokepoints. The blueprint highlights the operational UAE-Israel land corridor as a primary example of this shift, noting that it already facilitates the transit of goods via Saudi Arabia and Jordan to circumvent threats in the Red Sea.

This corridor is not merely about the movement of goods; the authors contend that energy commerce acts as a supplementary economic incentive to secure Israel’s position on the trade networks. The export of Israeli natural gas to Jordan, Egypt and eventually Europe via the Eastern Mediterranean is framed as a vital component of Western energy security.

By leveraging its natural resources and its role in projects such as the “Great Sea Interconnector” electric power transmission cable, the report envisions Israel as an indispensable maritime and energy hub, capable of translating its geographic proximity to Europe, Asia and Africa into economic power.

Seener explained that Israel’s critical role in the IMEC gives it a powerful source of leverage and also brings it into the arena of great power conflict. “The fact that IMEC can counter the Belt and Road Initiative puts Israel in this geopolitical reality where it gets Turkey and China to back up because it undermines their respective trade routes,” he told JNS.

The rivalries of 2048

While the report emphasizes the immense potential of Israel’s position in the emergent trade networks, the authors warn that these corridors must navigate a region defined by “shifting sands” and competing political visions.

The blueprint identifies a primary challenge in the “Muslim Brotherhood Axis” led by Turkey and Qatar, which the report describes as leveraging pan-Islamic narratives to challenge the Western-led order.

Seener and Wurmser are particularly critical of these states’ dual roles as U.S. security partners and sponsors of Islamist movements. The report cautions that these actors seek to “steer the U.S. toward narrow Qatari and Turkish interests and ultimately to burn down the Western camp and its peace-making efforts.”

This threat extends into the Eastern Mediterranean and Syria, where Turkey’s “neo-Ottoman” impulse is viewed by the authors as a medium-term systemic challenge to Israeli interests, potentially surpassing the threat once posed by the Iranian regime.

The report also highlights the complex role of Saudi Arabia, which is described as pursuing a path of “strategic autonomy.” According to the authors, Riyadh is actively developing a “competing security architecture to the Abraham Accords,” aiming to position itself as the dominant regional leader through a strategic bloc that includes Egypt and a rehabilitated Syrian regime.

To navigate these rivalries, the authors contend that Israel must evolve its diplomacy from a state-to-state focus toward a “nuanced engagement” with sub-state actors. The blueprint argues that as artificial state boundaries of the Middle East continue to fray, Israel must “develop strategies to engage and align with civilisational communities that include tribes, minorities and non-state actors across the Middle East to counter Islamist expansion.”

The report highlights “ancient, pre-Islamic” cultures as promising, such as “Maronite, Coptic, Orthodox Christian, Druze, Berber, Kurdish, Yazidi, Zoroastrian and Bedouin identities.”

The ingathering of exiles

While the report broadly focuses on a litany of external factors that are likely to affect Israel, it simultaneously identifies the domestic population growth and waves of Jewish immigration as a core component of the country’s future power.

Seener and Wurmser anticipate that rising global antisemitism will drive a massive new “ingathering of the exiles,” requiring the state to break the 15 million population mark much faster than previously projected.

The authors contend that “Israel’s military power will offer a safe haven for Jews threatened by antisemitism,” even suggesting that the IDF and Mossad may eventually be tasked with the direct protection and transport of Jewish communities from increasingly hostile environments abroad.

This demographic surge is framed by the report as a critical economic growth multiplier rather than a burden.

The authors argue that “demographic expansion by birthrate is the strongest indication of societal confidence,” and that the pooling of intellectual capital from a global diaspora is what will sustain the nation’s military and civilian R&D ecosystem. According to the blueprint, this influx of human capital is the primary engine behind Israel’s transition from a “Start-up Nation” into a global technology hub.

The report further emphasizes that this population influx can be a valuable tool to solidify Israeli sovereignty in its own borders. The study warns that to successfully compete in the geopolitical arena, Israel must first secure its own borders and internal governance. The authors point to “grey zones” in the Negev and Galilee where they claim state sovereignty has been challenged by “land grabs” and the proliferation of “hundreds of thousands of illegal firearms.”

The blueprint argues that restoring law and order in these regions is essential to prevent internal instability from becoming a “strategic liability” that could undermine the nation’s broader geopolitical ambitions.

Israel’s moral role

This potential internal and geopolitical consolidation would, in the authors’ view, be incomplete and unstable without a foundational ideological shift. The report contends that Israel’s ultimate resilience depends on a “civilisational mission” that moves beyond the secular pragmatism of its founding era.

Seener and Wurmser argue that while the West was built on the “triune foundation” of Athens (ethics), Rome (law), and Jerusalem (moral order), the erosion of these values in Europe and North America has left a vacuum that Israel is uniquely positioned to fill.

The authors suggest that by its centenary, the state must embrace its role as a spiritual and moral anchor for the wider West. As the report states, “By 2048, the Jewish state will not merely be a political framework for its Jewish population, but a civilisational anchor that represents the Jewish people internationally.”

This mission, titled “Zionism 2.0,” they contend, is what will transition Israel toward an enduring central place in the global order. The blueprint concludes by arguing that the Israel of 2048 must represent a synthesis of “Athens and Sparta,” a hub of cultural and technological sophistication protected by an unassailable military.

According to the authors, “It is precisely the combination of the ‘Athens’ and the ‘Sparta’ that can enable Israel to achieve regional primacy and become an international power.”

By projecting a “Judeo-Islamic” and “Judeo-Christian” ethos based on universal moral principles, the report envisions Israel finally transcending its status as a “Western colonial outpost” to become an indispensable pillar of a newly ordered world.

“Israel, it needs to be putting identity and strategy on the same page. One has to inform the other,” Seener observed.

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