Strategic Empathy Is Missing in Action, in the US and Israel: And the Price is Terrible

By Shlomo Maital  

       Consider ‘sympathy’ and ‘empathy’.   Sympathy — you offer it to those bereaved.  Empathy?  Empathy is shown in how much compassion and understanding we can give to another, in our actions.  

       Empathy is good, right?   The foundation of community and brotherhood.  The glue that binds us together as human beings.  “And you shall love your brothers and sisters as yourself”.  

       Not according to the world’s richest man.  Direct quote from Elon Musk: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy – the empathy exploit.”   He said this on Joe Rogan’s podcast – same podcast that refused to host candidate Kamala Harris. 

       Empathy is Western civilizzation’s fundamental weakness!   And why?  Because the United States, through AID and other organizations, helps those abroad who are poor, ill, uneducated.  This is, by Musk, a weakness.  It invests resources in others, who exploit our compassion, when we could be buying more $100,000 Tesla cars.  This, from the person now dominating US government (and destroying it),  who, as far as I know, was never elected by anyone.

       LACK of empathy causes wars.  Here is the analysis of MIT Professor Barry Posen:  “Vladimir Putin likely viewed Russia’s strategic situation through a preventive war frame. NATO membership for Ukraine would shift the balance of power against Russia, and U.S. and NATO military cooperation with Ukraine intensified during the Joe Biden administration. These developments likely convinced Putin that he did not have much time to forestall Ukraine’s NATO membership.”

        The US lacked what Posen calls “strategic empathy”.  Understanding how foes feel and think.     

         “The United States is an enormously powerful actor in international politics. But U.S. leaders often fail to consider the knock-on effects of their own policies. U.S. foreign policymakers are always alert to how the United States’ behavior affects the confidence of its allies. They are attentive to how U.S. behavior does or does not strengthen deterrence of its potential adversaries. But U.S. leaders are often oblivious that U.S. power and behavior might feel threatening to other states.” [1]

     Posen shows that Russia’s Putin for years, dating to 2014 and before, felt threatened by Ukraine’s avowed desire to be part of NATO.   He felt in February 2023 that if he did not occupy Ukraine now, Ukraine would join NATO – and that would bring, by force of law, the entire military might of NATO on him.  His invasion of Ukraine was predictable – with a bit of strategic empathy. 

      Consider Hamas’ murderous attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.  Hamas leader Yihya Sinwar spent 22 years in Israeli prisons.  Enough time to get inside his head?  And he made no bones about it.  His goal was to destroy Israel.  He attacked on October 7, because he saw Saudi Arabia close to normalizing its relations with Israel – and that would forever marginalize the Palestinian cause and leave the ‘occupation’ permanent.  The October 7 attack led to over 50,000 Palestinians’ death.  But it has delayed, maybe for years, Saudi normalization.  Or maybe forever.   

       And Israeli intelligence?  And government?  That fed Qatari billions into Gaza,  even when it became clear that the money was going to Hamas tunnels and weapons, not to food and water for Gazans.   The total lack of strategic empathy, to understand what Posen calls the ‘preventive war’  (you go to war to keep a worse war or event from happening), was rampant.  Especially in the Netanyahu government, in power since March 2009, with only a short break. 

           The Netanyahu government is culpable, directly, including its head, because it lacked strategic empathy.   And we, the people, paid a terrible price.

         The ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War, wrote this some 2,500 years ago:  “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.  If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.  If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

         On October 7, we learned that Israel neither knew the enemy, nor knew itself.  Despite having imprisoned Yihya Sinwar for over two decades, we failed to learn, understand, and pay attention to his intentions –- even though he declared them openly. 

          And despite some 15 major operations and wars against Gaza since 1948, Israel and IDF did not come to know themselves —  applying strategies that repeatedly failed, while building blindly on assumptions (the enemy is deterred) that were visibly and obviously false.  

        No, Elon Musk.  Strategic empathy is not a weakness.  The total lack of it is.  And the price we pay is truly terrible.

[1] Barry Posen.   Putin’s Preventive War: The 2022 Invasion of Ukraine.  International Security, February 2025.