Abu Rumman writes: The reasons and contexts that prompted the King to send his message to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Written by: Dr. Muhammad Abu Rumman – The message sent by King Abdullah II to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Jordanian Armed Forces, Major General Yousef Al-Hunaiti, carries important and strategic implications on more than one level, and includes messages to the inside and outside alike.
The message called for building a strategy to modernize the Jordanian Armed Forces to be highly flexible, agile, and combat-efficient, and to develop areas related to cyber defensive and offensive operations systems, strengthen the army's reserve force, and involve research and studies centers and military defense industries in the process of modernizing the armed forces.
Perhaps the most important question is what reasons and contexts prompted the King to approve this strategic, military and security orientation. Perhaps we should talk here about two main reasons, which are necessarily related to the new contexts in the global system and in the region and to the lessons learned from the recent wars in the region, especially after the attack of October 7, 2023, then the Israeli war on Gaza and its regional repercussions, including the 12-day war between Israel and Iran.
The first reason is necessarily related to the change in the nature of wars, military wars today, which has become clearly evident in recent wars, especially the great increase in the role of drones and new technologies in wars, and more importantly the great transformation and development in the field of artificial intelligence and its implications for the process of security breaches and espionage, and more dangerous than all of that are psychological and moral wars and the ability to manipulate the emotions and thoughts of peoples and the investment of algorithms and cyber wars more than ever before, which means that the war on Gaza and what came after it is like a new generation and a different era of wars of a hybrid nature; which combines all scientific, research, technological, security, military dimensions, traditional mechanisms, robots, guerrilla wars and drones that have become an essential and deadly part of wars, as also appeared in other wars in Sudan and the Russian-Ukrainian war.
These ideas have always been of great interest to the King, and are an old-new subject in relation to his orientations. He mentioned some of them early on in his book “Our Last Chance: The Quest for Peace in a Time of Peril,” and he spoke about them constantly. If they previously formed part of his political vision of things, today they are a top national priority and a key condition for protecting national security and developing the state’s ability to deal with new military and security challenges.
The second reason, underlying the new strategic direction, is the major strategic transformations surrounding Jordan, whether in the nature of the international system, which is at a transitional and pivotal moment, which is also reflected in international interactions first, and regional ones second. It is known that the process of transformation and transition from one international system to another, for example from a Unipolar System to a Multipolar System, is not an easy or short-term process, but rather a complex one, interspersed with turns and crises here and there, and regional repercussions. This is what pushes large and great countries to try to protect their interests and national security, and small countries are more vulnerable than others to such transformations and violent transitional moments.
The threads of the regional situation are necessarily intertwined with the international system, even though the Middle East is one of the most tense regions in the world today, plagued by crises and problems that often take on a structural and long-term character. Therefore, the new strategic direction carries within it an important implication, which is that the conclusion or conviction reached by the King is that the coming contexts will not bring factors of stability, calm, or regional peace, but will be a turbulent and dangerous phase, and will carry new and future sources of threats that require a transformation process, which the King described as “structural,” in the armed forces. This was revealed in one of the important and key paragraphs in the royal message, in which he says: “Out of our keenness to strengthen the capabilities of our Arab army and develop its capabilities and tools continuously, we direct you to prepare a comprehensive strategy and a clear roadmap to achieve a structural transformation in the armed forces during the next three years, to enable them to confront current and future threats, rapid changes, and emerging challenges imposed by technological developments and the expansion of the operational environment.”
In conclusion, the royal message carries key messages for both domestic and international audiences; the message to the domestic audience is about the importance of trusting the armed forces and the state’s awareness and work on developing military and security capabilities to confront new and dangerous sources of threat and to manage dealing with international and regional transformations and current and future sources of threat.
It is also a message to the outside world that Jordan takes external challenges and threats seriously, that it is capable of dealing with them, and will not accept the imposition of any regional or international agendas or perceptions that conflict with its strategic interests or national security.