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Israel, and its neighbors

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Crafty_Dog:
Woof All:

Well, lets dive right in:

Marc
=====================

Is Israel in America's Interest?
By Martin Kramer
Azure | October 13, 2006


The question of whether Israel is or is not an asset to the United States is
one we rarely bother to ask ourselves. Time and again, we see prominent
Americans -- presidents of the United States at the forefront -- emphasizing
their special relationship with Israel. In polls of American public opinion,
Israel scores very high marks, while sympathy for the Palestinians, never
very high, continues to drop. Why should we even ask ourselves whether
Israel is an asset or a liability to the United States? Isn't the answer
obvious?

Most supporters of Israel, when pressed to go a bit deeper, will give two
prime rationales for why the United States should back Israel. One is a
moral obligation to the Jewish people, grounded in the history of Jewish
persecution and culminating in the Holocaust. Israel, so this thinking goes,
is something the civilized world owes to the Jewish people, having inflicted
an unprecedented genocide upon it. This is a potent rationale, but it is not
clear why that would make Israel an asset to the United States. If
supporting Israel is an obligation, then it could be described as a
liability -- a burden to be borne. And of course, as time passes, that sense
of obligation is bound to diminish.

Another powerful rationale is the fact that Israel is a democracy, even an
outpost of democracy, in a benighted part of the world. But the fact is that
there are many non-democratic states that have been allies of the United
States, and important assets as well. Quite arguably, the Saudi monarchy is
an asset to the United States, because it assures the flow of oil at
reasonable prices, a key American interest. In contrast, the Palestinian
Authority and Iran, which have many more democratic practices than Saudi
Arabia, are headaches to the United States, for having empowered the likes
of Hamas and Ahmadinejad through elections. So the fact that Israel is a
democracy is not proof positive that it is an American asset.

Nevertheless, the Holocaust argument and the democracy argument are more
than sufficient for the vast majority of Americans. On this basis alone,
they would extend to Israel support, even unqualified support. And there is
an important segment of opinion in America, comprising evangelical
Christians, who probably do not even need these arguments. Israel is, for
them, the manifestation of a divine plan, and they support it as a matter of
faith.

But everywhere in the West, there is a sliver of elite opinion that is not
satisfied with these rationales. It includes policymakers and analysts,
journalists, and academics. By habit and by preference, they have a tendency
to view any consensus with skepticism. In their opinion, the American people
cannot possibly be wiser than them -- after all, look whom they elect -- and
so they deliberately take a contrary position on issues around which there
is broad agreement. In this spirit, many of them view U.S. support for
Israel as a prime focal point for skepticism.

In March, two American professors subjected the U.S.-Israel relationship to
a skeptic's examination. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the former from
the University of Chicago, the latter from Harvard, published a paper under
the title "The Israel Lobby: Israel in U.S. Foreign Policy." One version
appeared in the London Review of Books; a longer, footnoted version was
posted on the website of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. The
paper caused a firestorm.

Mearsheimer and Walt are academic oracles of the so-called realist school in
international relations. Realism, in its policy application, is an approach
that seeks to isolate the conduct of foreign affairs from sentimental moral
considerations and special interests like ethnic and commercial lobbies, and
to base it instead on a pure concept of the national interest. Realists are
not interested in historical obligations, or in whether this or that
potential ally respects human rights. They see themselves as coldly weighing
U.S. interests, winnowing out extraneous considerations, and ending up with
policies that look out solely for number one: The United States.

Realist thinkers are not isolationists, but they are extremely reluctant to
see U.S. power expended on projects and allies that do not directly serve
some U.S. interest as they define it -- and they define these interests
quite narrowly. Generally, they oppose visionary ideas of global
transformation, which they see as American empire in disguise. And empire,
they believe, is a drain on American resources. They are particularly
reluctant to commit American troops, preferring that the United States
follow a policy of "offshore balancing" wherever possible -- that is,
playing rivals off one another.

These were the principles that guided Mearsheimer and Walt when they
examined the United States-Israel relationship. And this was their finding:
By any "objective" measure, American support for Israel is a liability. It
causes Arabs and Muslims to hate America, and that hate in turn generates
terrorism. The prime interest of the United States in the Middle East is the
cultivation of cooperation with Arabs and Muslims, many of whom detest
Israel, its policies, or both. The less the United States is identified as a
supporter and friend of Israel's five million Jews, the easier it will be
for it to find local proxies to keep order among the billion or so Muslims.
And the only thing that has prevented the United States from seeing this
clearly is the pro-Israel lobby, operating through fronts as diverse as the
American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Washington Institute
for Near East Policy, and so on.

This "Israel Lobby," with a capital L, has effectively hijacked U.S. policy
in the Middle East so that it serves Israel's, not America's, interests. In
one of their most provocative claims, the authors argue that Israel spurred
its neo-conservative allies in Washington to press for the Iraq war -- a war
that served no identifiable U.S. interest, but which was waged largely for
Israeli security. And, they continue, the growing drumbeat for an attack on
Iran also has its ultimate source in the Lobby. A nuclear Iran would not
constitute a threat to the United States, they argue, and military action
against Iran would not be in America's interest, since it would inflame the
Arab and Muslim worlds yet again, producing a wave of anti-American terror
and damaging the American economy.

The Mearsheimer-Walt thesis is not a new one. What is new is the prestige
that they lent to these ideas. Because their paper appeared on the Kennedy
School website, it soon became know as the "Harvard study" on the Israel
lobby. Harvard is one of the most recognizable names in the world, familiar
to every American from high school on up. Their study could not be ignored,
and the responses came fast and furious.

Many of them took the form of reiterating the two arguments I mentioned
earlier: Israel as a moral obligation of the West, and Israel as a
democracy. These arguments are compelling, or at least they are compelling
when made well. But for argument's sake, let us set aside the claim that
Israel and the United States share democratic values, rooted in a common
Judeo-Christian tradition. Let us set aside the fact that the American
public has a deep regard for Israel, shown in poll after poll. Let us just
ask a simple question: Is Israel a strategic asset or a strategic liability
for the United States, in realist terms?

My answer, to anticipate my conclusion, is this: United States support for
Israel is not primarily the result of Holocaust guilt or shared democratic
values; nor is it produced by the machinations of the "Israel Lobby."
American support for Israel -- indeed, the illusion of its
unconditionality - underpins the pax Americana in the eastern Mediterranean.
It has compelled Israel's key Arab neighbors to reach peace with Israel and
to enter the American orbit. The fact that there has not been a general
Arab-Israeli war since 1973 is proof that this pax Americana, based on the
United States-Israel alliance, has been a success. From a realist point of
view, supporting Israel has been a low-cost way of keeping order in part of
the Middle East, managed by the United States from offshore and without the
commitment of any force. It is, simply, the ideal realist alliance.

In contrast, the problems the United States faces in the Persian Gulf stem
from the fact that it does not have an Israel equivalent there, and so it
must massively deploy its own force at tremendous cost. Since no one in the
Gulf is sure that the United States has the staying power to maintain such a
presence over time, the Gulf keeps producing defiers of America, from
Khomeini to Saddam to Bin Laden to Ahmadinejad. The United States has to
counter them, not in the interests of Israel, but to keep the world's great
reserves of oil out of the grip of the West's sworn enemies.

Allow me to substantiate my conclusion with a brief dash through the history
of Israel's relationship with the United States. Between 1948 and 1967, the
United States largely adhered to a zero-sum concept of Middle Eastern
politics. The United States recognized Israel in 1948, but it did not do
much to help it defend itself for fear of alienating Arab monarchs, oil
sheikhs, and the "Arab street." That was the heyday of the sentimental State
Department Arabists and the profit-driven oil companies. It did not matter
that the memory of the Holocaust was fresh: The United States remained
cautious, and attempted to appear "evenhanded." This meant that the United
States embargoed arms both to Israel and to the Arabs.

So Israel went elsewhere. It bought guns from the Soviet bloc, and fighter
aircraft and a nuclear reactor from France. It even cut a deal with its old
adversary Britain at the time of the Suez adventure in 1956. Israel was not
in the U.S. orbit, and it did not get significant American aid.

Nevertheless, the radical Arab states gravitated toward the Soviet Union for
weapons and aid. Israel felt vulnerable, and the Arab countries still
believed they could eliminate Israel by war. In every decade, this
insecurity indeed produced war: 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973. The United
States was not invested heavily enough to prevent these wars; its diplomacy
simply kicked in to stop them after the initial energy was spent.

Only in June 1967, with Israel's lightning victory over three of its
neighbors, did the United States begin to see Israel differently, as a
military power in its own right. The Arab-Israeli war that erupted in
October 1973 did even more to persuade the United States of Israel's power.
Although Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against Israel, Israel
bounded back to achieve what military analysts have called its greatest
victory, repulsing an enemy that might have overwhelmed a less determined
and resourceful people.

It was then that the United States began to look at Israel as a potential
strategic ally. Israel appeared to be the strongest, most reliable, and most
cost-effective bulwark against Soviet penetration of the Middle East. It
could defeat any combination of Soviet clients on its own, and in so doing,
humiliate the Soviet Union and drive thinking Arabs out of the Soviet camp.

The 1973 war had another impact on American thinking. Until then,
Arab-Israeli wars did not threaten the oil flow, but that war led to an Arab
oil embargo. Another Arab-Israeli war might have the same impact or worse,
so the United States therefore resolved to prevent such wars by creating a
security architecture -- a pax Americana.

One way to build it would have been to squeeze Israel relentlessly. But the
United States understood that making Israel feel less secure would only
increase the likelihood of another war and encourage the Arab states to
prepare for yet another round. Instead, the American solution was to show
such strong support for Israel as to make Arab states despair of defeating
it, and fearful of the cost of trying. To this purpose, the United States
brought Israel entirely into its orbit, making of it a dependent client
through arms and aid.

That strategy worked. Expanded American support for Israel persuaded Egypt
to switch camps and abandon its Soviet alliance, winning the Cold War for
the United States in the Middle East. Egypt thus became an American ally
alongside Israel, and not instead of Israel. The zero-sum theory of the
Arabists -- Israel or the Arabs, but not both -- collapsed. American Middle
East policy underwent its Copernican revolution.

Crafty_Dog:
Part Two

Before 1973, the Arab states thought they might defeat or destroy Israel by
some stroke of luck, and they tried their hand at it repeatedly. Since 1973,
the Arab states have understood not only that Israel is strong, but that the
United States is fully behind it.

As a result, there have been no more general Arab-Israeli wars, and Israel's
Arab neighbors have either made peace with it (Egypt, Jordan), or kept their
border quiet (Syria). The corner of the Middle East along the eastern
Mediterranean has been free of crises requiring direct American military
intervention. This is due to American support for Israel -- a support that
appears so unequivocal to the Arabs that they have despaired of overturning
it.

United States support for Israel has also enhanced its standing in another
way, as the only force, in Arab eyes, that can possibly persuade Israel to
cede territory it has occupied since 1967. In a paradoxical way, the United
States has been a major beneficiary of the Israeli occupation of Arab
territories: Arab leaders who wish to regain lost territory must pass an
American test. When they do, the United States rewards them, and the result
has been a network of American-endorsed agreements based on
American-mediated Israeli concessions.

It is this "peace process" that has turned even revolutionary Arab leaders
into supplicants at the White House door. They would not be there if a
strong Israel did not hold something they want, and if the United States was
not in a position to deliver it.

Compare this to the situation in the Persian Gulf, where American allies are
weak. There, the absence of a strong ally has bedeviled American policy and
forced the United States to intervene repeatedly. The irresolute Iranian
shah, once deemed a United States "pillar," collapsed in the face of an
anti-American upsurge, producing the humiliation of the embassy seizure and
a hostile, entrenched, terror-sponsoring regime still bent on driving the
United States out of the Gulf. Saddam Hussein, for some years America's
ally, launched a bloody eight-year war against Iran that produced waves of
anti-American terror (think Lebanon), only to turn against the United States
by occupying Kuwait and threatening the defenseless Saudi Arabia.

Absent a strong ally in the region, the United States has had to deploy,
deploy, and deploy again. In the Kuwait and Iraq wars, it has put something
like a million sets of boots on the ground in the Gulf, at a cost that
surely exceeds a trillion dollars.

It is precisely because the Gulf does not have an Israel -- a strong,
capable local ally -- that the United States cannot balance from offshore.
If the United States is not perceived to be willing to send troops there -- 
and it will only be perceived as such if it does sometimes send them -- then
big, nationalist states (formerly Iraq, today Iran) will attempt to muscle
Saudi Arabia and the smaller Arab Gulf states, which have the larger
reserves of oil. In the Gulf, the United States has no true allies. It has
only dependencies, and their defense will continue to drain American
resources until the day Americans give up their SUVs.

In Israel, by contrast, the United States is allied to a militarily adept,
economically vibrant state that keeps its part of the Middle East in
balance. The United States has to help maintain that balance with military
aid, peace plans, and diplomatic initiatives. But this is at relatively low
cost, and many of the costs flow back to the United States in the form of
arms sales and useful Israeli technological innovations.

In the overall scheme of the pax Americana, then, American policy toward
Israel and its neighbors over the past thirty years has been a tremendous
success. Has the United States brought about a final
lamb-lies-down-with-lion peace? No; the issues are too complex. Are the
Arabs reconciled to American support for Israel? No; they are highly
critical of it. But according to the realist model, a policy that upholds
American interests without the dispatch of American troops is a success by
definition. American support of Israel has achieved precisely that.

Then there is the argument that American support for Israel is the source of
popular resentment, propelling recruits to al-Qaida. I do not know of any
unbiased terrorism expert who subscribes to this notion. Israel has been
around for almost sixty years, and it has always faced terrorism. Countless
groups are devoted to it. But never has a terror group emerged that is
devoted solely or even primarily to attacking the United States for its
support of Israel. Terrorists devoted to killing Americans emerged only
after the United States began to enlarge its own military footprint in the
Gulf. Al-Qaida emerged from the American deployment in Saudi Arabia. And
even when al-Qaida and its affiliates mention Palestine as a grievance, it
is as one grievance among many, the other grievances being American support
for authoritarian Arab regimes, and now the American presence in Iraq.

And speaking of Iraq, we are left with the argument that the United States
went to war there at the impetus of Israel and the "Israel Lobby." This is
simply a falsehood, and has no foundation in fact. It is not difficult to
show that in the year preceding the Iraq war, Israel time and again
disagreed with the United States, arguing that Iran posed the greater
threat. Israel shed no tears over Saddam's demise, and it gave full support
to the United States once the Bush administration made its choice. But the
assertion that the Iraq war is being waged on behalf of Israel is pure
fiction.

As for the suggestion that only Israel is threatened by an Iranian nuclear
capability, no assumption could be more na?ve. True, Iran has threatened
Israel, and it is a threat Israel cannot afford to ignore. But it is not the
first threat of its kind. In the spring before Saddam Hussein invaded
Kuwait, he declared that "we will make fire eat up half of Israel if it
tries to do anything against Iraq." The threat was meant to win him
Arab-Muslim support, but his real objective was to stand like a colossus
astride the oil-soaked Gulf. And so while he threatened strong Israel, he
actually attacked and invaded weak Kuwait.

This is unquestionably the first ambition of Iran: The wresting of the
Persian Gulf from United States domination. A nuclear Iran -- the
nuclearization of the world's great oil reservoir -- could allow Iran to
foment and manage crises almost at will. Iran, without invading any other
country, or using a nuclear weapon, could fill its coffers to overflowing
simply by rattling a nuclear sabre. Remember that Iran derives more than
eighty percent of its export revenue from oil, and its intensified nuclear
talk has already contributed to windfall revenues. This year Iran will make
$55 billion from oil; it made only a little more than half that in 2004.
Every rise of a dollar in price is a billion dollars in revenue for Iran. A
nuclear Iran could rattle nerves even more convincingly, and drive the price
to $100 a barrel.

So Iran has a structural interest in Gulf volatility; the rest of the
developed and developing world, which depends on oil, has the opposite
interest. The world wants the pax Americana perpetuated, not undermined.
That is why the Europeans have worked so closely with the United States over
Iran -- not for Israel's sake, but for their own.

A nuclear Iran would also be a realist's nightmare, because it could push
the Saudis and other Arabs in the nuclear direction. Israel has a nuclear
deterrent, but Saudi Arabia does not. To prevent it from seeking one, the
United States would have to put it under an American nuclear umbrella. Other
Arab states might demand the same. And so the United States might be
compelled to extend nato-like status to its Arab dependencies, promising to
go to war to defend them. If it did not, the full nuclearization of the Gulf
would be only a matter of time.

In summation, American support for Israel -- again, the illusion of its
unconditionality -- has compelled Israel's Arab neighbors to join the pax
Americana or at least acquiesce in it. I would expect realists, of all
people, to appreciate the success of this policy. After all, the United
States manages the pax Americana in the eastern Mediterranean from offshore,
out of the line of sight. Is this not precisely where realists think the
United States should stand? A true realist, I would think, would recoil from
any policy shift that might threaten to undermine this structure.

Among the many perplexing things in the Mearsheimer-Walt paper, certainly
none is so perplexing as this. After all, if the United States were to adopt
what they call a more "evenhanded" policy, Israeli insecurity would increase
and Arab ambitions would be stoked. Were such a policy to overshoot its
mark, it could raise the likelihood of an Arab-Israeli war that could
endanger access to oil. Why would anyone tempt fate -- and endanger an
absolutely vital American interest -- by embarking on such a policy?

That is why I see the Mearsheimer-Walt paper as a betrayal of the hard-nosed
realism the authors supposedly represent. Sometimes I wonder whether they
are realists after all. Mearsheimer and Walt urge "using American power to
achieve a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians." Is this realism,
or romanticism? After all, "just peace" is purely subjective, and its
definition is contested between and among Palestinians and Israelis. Its
blind pursuit might be destabilizing in ways which damage American
interests. This hardly seems like a cautious and prudent use of American
power. The aim of American policy should be the construction of an American
peace, one that serves American interests, not the unstable claims of
"justice."

The arguments for supporting Israel are many and varied, and no one argument
is decisive. Morality- and values-based arguments are crucial, but a
compelling realist argument can also be made for viewing Israel as an asset
to the West. It does not take a "Lobby" to explain this to the hard-nosed
strategic thinkers in the White House and the Pentagon. Of course, Israel
always welcomes help from friends, but it does not need the whole array of
organizations that claim to work on its behalf. The rationale for keeping
Israel strong is hardwired in the realities of the Middle East. The United
States does not have an alternative ally of comparable power. And if the
institutions of the lobby were to disappear tomorrow, it is quite likely
that American and other Western support would continue unabated.

That Israel looms so large as a valuable ally and asset, in a Middle East of
failed and failing states, is an achievement in which Israel can rightly
take pride. But it must never be taken for granted. Israel has come
perilously close to doing so in recent years, by unilaterally evacuating
occupied territory -- first in Lebanon, but more importantly in Gaza.
Whatever the merits of "disengagement" in its various forms, it effectively
cuts out the United States as a broker, and has created the impression that
Arabs can regain territory by force, outside the framework of the pax
Americana.

The main beneficiaries of this Israeli strategy have been Hezbollah and
Hamas, which are the strike forces of anti-Americanism in the region. It is
true that American democracy promotion has also been responsible for the
rising fortunes of such groups. But Israeli ceding of territory outside the
framework of American mediation has marginalized U.S. diplomacy. Israel has
made Hamas and Hezbollah, which claim to have seized territory through
"resistance," appear stronger than America's Arab clients, who had to sign
American-mediated peace deals to restore their territory. If Israel is to
preserve its value as a client, its territorial concessions must appear to
be made in Washington.

For Israel to remain a strategic asset, it must also win on the battlefield.
If Israel's power and prowess are ever cast into doubt, it will not only
undercut Israel's deterrence vis-?-vis its hostile neighbors. It will
undermine Israel's value to the United States as the dependable stabilizer
of the Levant. Israel's lackluster performance in its battle with Hezbollah
in the summer of 2006 left its many admirers in Washington shaking their
heads in disappointment. The United States, which has seen faceless
insurgents shred its own plans for Iraq, knows what it is to be surprised by
the force of "resistance." But Washington expected more of Israel, battling
a familiar adversary in its own backyard.

If Walt and Mearsheimer were right, the disappointment would hardly matter,
since the legendary Lobby would make up the difference between American
expectations and Israeli performance. But since the professors are wrong,
Israel needs to begin the work of repair. Preserving American support comes
at a price: The highest possible degree of military preparedness and
political resolve, leaving no doubt in Washington that Israel can keep its
neighborhood in line. The United States-Israel relationship rests on Israel's
willingness to pay that price. No lobby, however effective, can mitigate the
damage if the United States ever concludes that Israel suffers from a
systemic, permanent weakness.

While many Arabs have rushed to that conclusion since the summer war,
Americans have not. But a question hangs over Israel, and it will be posed
to Israel again, probably sooner rather than later. When it is, Israel must
replace the question mark with an exclamation point.


"We're all going to die, but three of us are going to do something"--Tom
Burnett, citizen-warrior KIA 9/11/01 engaging the enemy on Flight 93

Bandolero:
At the risk of getting myself in trouble on my first post, nonetheless, there will never be peace for Israel with its nighbors.  Israel's neighbors seek nothing less than the destruction of Israel, if not the outright extermination of all Jews.  The best Israel can ever hope for is a detente, the type that exists with Egypt (bought and paid for by the USA every year).  This detente exists only because of Israel's military prowess demonstrated several times over the past half century.  However, with the recent survival success of Hizballah against the fury of the IDF, the invincibility of Israel had taken a serious shot, and the contenders may start lining up once again.

The fact that Israel is a democracy is of no moment whatsover to its Arab neighbors.  Democracy is not a concept they value or appear to even be capable of valuing when so many have thrown their lot in with a 6th century mindset.  Their basic religion does not tolerate any other religious views whatsoever.  Women, at least in the Islamic dominated cultures, are relegated to the status of a dog.  True democracy (that which gives rise to true individual rights recognition) cannot even start to exist with such an imbalance.  The failure of democracy to take true hold in Iraq speaks volumes.  The closest Islam dominated states in the mid-East will ever come to democracy is the pseudo-democracy that exists in Egypt, which is not much better than the strongman runs the show political system in Syria.

Crafty_Dog:
CWS:

Good to see you here.

Two questions:  Is Turkey a democracy?  Does Iran have the capacity to grow into a democracy?

Bandolero:

--- Quote from: Crafty_Dog on October 14, 2006, 05:54:12 AM ---CWS:

Good to see you here.

Two questions:? Is Turkey a democracy?? Does Iran have the capacity to grow into a democracy?

--- End quote ---

IMHO Iran is for all practical purposes, if not outright so, a theocracy at the present time.  There is little likelihood anytime soon of changing that political situation.  The mere fact that elections were held made these elections no more "muti-opportunity" than elections in the former USSR were.  Back when the Shah was running the show he was one of the middle-East "strongmen", as was Hussein, and as are Assad, Mubarak and the Saudi royal family.  It seems to me that benevolent despots are about as close to democracy as it gets in the mid-east.

Turkey has a significant history of actively pursuing secularism.  I believe the government may even go so far as to control religion.  It would certainly appear that Turkey has a more solid grip on activist religion than in a number of other mid-East countries.  Keeping in mind that Turkey is seeking EU admission, has been a member of NATO for about 50 or so years, and is even geographically located as it is, I think the fairer question could almost be "is Turkey even a part of the mid-East?"

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