Israel's national security agenda will remain of the most challenging and the fastest changing among developed countries. Permanent and tenacious adversity will continue to require unmatched resilience, courage and creativity, as well as ongoing and deep transformations of our values, conduct and priorities and therefore also in our institutions.

The rapidly accelerating pace of change in technology, politics and economics makes any prediction its maker's peril. I therefore want to aim to articulate the emerging national security agenda, to capture some of the trends that are shaping our environment and to frame some of the challenges of transformation facing Israel.

But first: what are we trying to achieve? How should we measure the performance of our national security apparatus? The traditional approach focuses on assessing inputs and outputs such as costs or casualties. But history teaches us that nations have thrived in spite of adversity while others collapsed in relative peace. Hence, a more relevant measurement may be the conduct of the resources that are most valuable, mobile, sensitive and elusive: migration, long-term foreign investments and flow of technology. Their vote of confidence in Israel, or lack thereof, would mean success.

A bird's eye view of Israel's national security agenda would indicate that Israel faces four major challenges. They are: to ensure physical survival; to secure political survival; to provide an adequate level of personal security from terrorism; and to strengthen the resilience and vibrancy of the Jewish people.

First, on the challenge of physical survival: For the first time in more than four decades, a foe of Israel, Iran, may soon have the ability to threaten its existence. Hence, naturally, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons or containing it if such weapons are acquired are on the top of our national security agenda. No one can overstate the gravity of this threat. Indeed, Israel's brightest, billions of dollars and the best of our diplomacy are invested in this issue.

However, the challenges of Iran and radical Islam call for a deep transformation of our global outlook. Here, Israel may be a focal point but hardly embodies the problem. These are matters of global concern that Israel cannot address alone. Hence, the relatively simple diplomacy of bipolar Cold War or of American supremacy will have to mature into a global outreach that balances our intimate strategic relations with the United States of America with closer bonds with rising powers such as China, India or Russia and is much more attentive to their concerns and priorities.

Second, on the challenge of political survival: In recent years Israel has been facing a new alignment of enemies, a network of nations and organizations that is guided by fundamental rejection of Israel's right to exist. Frustrated by past failures to physically eliminate Israel by force and inspired by the collapse of nuclear powers such as the Soviet Union and South Africa, this 'resistance network' has embraced a new strategy that is designed to bring about Israel's implosion.

The profound implications of this strategy cannot be overstated. Primarily, it questions the assumption that Palestinians should aspire to end Israeli 'occupation' and implies that the best way to fight Israel may be to actually increase the administrative, political, diplomatic and economic burden of responsibility toward the Palestinian population. Some of them even call for the Palestinians to voluntarily dismantle the Palestinian Authority and are not threatened by a resumption of Israeli control over Gaza.

Key to undermining this strategy is ensuring a significant Jewish majority in the areas under Israel's sovereignty. This would require managing a territorial compromise under increasingly unfavorable circumstances. Until 2001 the framework of such a deal would have been 'land for peace'. Then it became 'land for security'. If present trends persist, Israel may have to leave without adequate security guarantees.

In parallel, Israel must dramatically increase its soft power. The international scene of public diplomacy is a key battleground where we must excel. Hence, we must overhaul the the status, structure, budget and resources of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other outreach mechanisms with the objective of recapturing the moral high ground or at least making a much more compelling case.

A third challenge has to do with the personal safety and security in Israel. We have been effective in meeting this challenge with few and brief exceptions such as during the Second Lebanon War or in 2001-02 during the Second Palestinian uprising. We will have to continue to do so. Unable to eradicate terrorism, our objective must be to keep it at a level that doesn't affect the vast majority of households, businesses, foreign direct investments or tourism. The calibration of expectations here is essential to avoid overreaction that would compromise other vital national security interests.

Finally, there is the issue of the Jewish world. Only in recent decades Israel's aspiration to lead the Jewish world has been backed by demography and political and economic power and standing. Yet, to date, the security and wellbeing of the Jewish world have been relatively marginal on our national security agenda. Now, our challenge is to adopt a historical, systemic and broad view of our role in the Jewish world and vis-à-vis the Jewish Diaspora. For examples: To what extent should Israel continue to try to deplete the Diaspora by encouraging Aliyah or perhaps embrace the idea that a vibrant Diaspora is actually a Zionist imperative? What should be the role of the world Jewry in Israel or what is Israel's contribution to the Jewish Diaspora?

Will this piece have captured Israel's national security agenda for the coming years? The answer is probably not. In a turbulent environment the unexpected is the expected.

Therefore, in such turbulence, what are the capabilities that we must nurture? On the conceptual level, we must learn the art of staying relevant by constantly questioning our working assumptions and responding effectively. On the practical level, in stormy seas it is much more useful to develop in-depth understanding of our vision and to build agile, flexible and resilient capacities to progress rather than prepare detailed plans or prepare for specific scenarios. On the institutional and structural level, we must improve our capacity to take decisions of political significance and implement them by reforming our system of government so that we will have more stable tenures with less fragmentation.

Naturally, pieces that deal with Israel's national security agenda may tend to be read as gloom and doom ones. However, one must remember that Israel has been outperforming many expectations for decades. We can continue to do so if we correct our weaknesses and identify and focus on the secrets of our success: vision, vibrancy, agility, courage and capacity to execute.

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Gidi Grinstein is founder and president of the Reut Institute. The views expressed in this blog are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Reut Institute.

For additional information regarding BloGidi see his original post: A Link in the Chain.