Our LORD, you used your mighty power to bring these people out of Egypt. Now don't become angry and destroy them. 12If you do, the Egyptians will say that you brought your people out here into the mountains just to get rid of them. Please don't be angry with your people. Don't destroy them!
Exodus 32:9-12
George Friedman
George Friedman in Chapter 6 of The Next Decade: Where We’ve Been . . . and Where We’re Going (2011), “Redefing Policy: The Case of Israel,” writes that the United States faces no more complex international relationship than the one it maintains with Israel, nor one more poorly understood, Most of all by the Americans and the Israelis. U.S.-Israeli relations would appear to poison U.S.-Islamic relations and the complicate the termination of warfare in the Middle East. In addition, there are some who believe that Israel exercises control over U.S. foreign policy [and undo influence on the members of the US Congress], a view not confined to Islamic fundamentalists. The complex reality, as well as the even more complex perception of the tie that binds the United States and Israel, will continue to be fundametal issue for the United States’ global strategy over the next decade.
U.S.-Israel relationships have been b on the belief that the United States must support regimes similar to itself. Based on this, idelist focus on the kind of regime Isreal has: an island of democracy in a sea of autocrats. But there are those who argue that because of its treatment of the Palestinians, Israel has forfeited any moral claims. The realists argue that Isreal gets in the way of better relations with the Arabs, and those who argue that they are allies in the war against terrorism.
Friedman argues that the moral argument that rages about the rights of Israel, which any American president must deal with is enormously complex. Beyond the substantial displacement of populations that occurred with the creation of modern Israel, the immigration of European Jews did not constitute the destruction of a Paletinian nation, because no such nation had ever existed. The Palestinian national identity in fact emerged only out of resistance to Israeli occupation after 1967. But whatever was the case in the past, there is certainly today a self-aware Palestinian nation, and that is part of what must inform U.S. policy going forward.
For whatever the Israelis’ historical claim, from a twentieth-century perspective, the Jews were settlers from another continent who displaced the natives. Then again, it is difficult thoroughly, to make a moral case against Israel for usurping Palestinian land and mistreating the indigenous people.
Arab Spring?
A more powerful moral argument is the one that Roosevelt made in support of France and England against Nazi Germany: Israel (excluding the West Bank and Gaza) is a democratic country, and the United States is the “arsenal of democracy.” This means that the United States has a special relationship with democratic states, as well as obligations that transcend geopolitics. Therefore, the United States must support democratic Israel exclusive of other moral or even geopolical considerations. Realist would disagree.
Morality rooted in historical claims can be shaped to suit, and is used by all sides. A simple moral judgment doesn’t deal with the realities on the ground, and simply arriving at a coherent moral position is breathtakingly difficult. The question becomes how to frame a relistic foreign policy that will serve the moral purpose and national interest in the decade to come? To find the answer, we need to consider the history of the relationship between Israel and the United States.
THE UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL~A TROUBLING RELATIONSHIP IN THE NEXT DECADE
The United States recognized Israeli independence in 1948, but the two countries were hardly allies in any sense of the term. While the United always recognized Israel’s right to exist, that fact never really drove U.S. policy. The primary American interest in 1948, when Israel came into being, was the containment of the Soviet Union, and the American focus was primarily on Turkey and Greece. Greece had an internal Communist insurgency. Both Greece and Turkey had an external Soviet threat as well. For the United States, Turkey was the key to the region.
Isreal’s victory over its Arab neighbors in the 1967 conflict generated pro-Isreali support in the United States [both from the Neocons and the U.S. government], which was bogged down in Vietnam; the Israelis seemed to provide a model of swift and decisive warfare that revitalized the American spirit. The Israelis captalized on that feeling to aggressively woo the United States.
CONTEMPORARY ISRAEL~SECURED WITHIN ITS OWN BORDERS
The Israel of today is strategically secure. It has become the dominant power among the bordering states by creating a regional balance of power among its neighbors that is based on mutual hostility as well as dependence by some of them on Isreal, both Egypt and Jordan among them.
The primary threat to Israel come from inside its boundaries, from the occupied and hostile Palestinians. But while their primary weapon, terrorism can be painful, terrorism cannot ultimately destroy the Israelis. Even when Hezbollah and other external forces are added, the Sate of Israel is not at risk, partly because the resources those forces can bring to bear are inadeqate, and partly because Syria, fearing Israeli retaliation, limits what these groups can do.
Indeed, Israel’s problems have been lessended by the split among the Palestinians. At the same time, there are numerous regional powers, such as Russia and Europe, that can have enormous impacts on Israel, and Israel cannot afford to be indifferent to their interests. Unless Israel revaluates its own view of terrorism and the Palestinians, it may find itself isolated from many of its traditional allies including the United Sates. This would not destroy Israel but would be a precondition for its destruction.
The Israelis are not going to be overwhelmed by the Palestians, and thus the complex regional balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean will stay in place regardless of what the United States does or doesn’t do. All of which leads to the conclusion that as far as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes, we should let sleeping dogs lie.
MARGINALIZING THE MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT
The best option for the American president is to marginalize the conflict as a concern without actually doing anything to signify a shift. The United States should quietly adopt a policy of disengagement from Israel, which would appear to mean simply accepting the current imbalance of power. Yet in the longer term, its purpose would be to reestablish the balance of power, containing Israel within it framework, without endangering Isreal’s existence. It would, however, compel Israel to reconsider what its national interests are.
Publicly distancing the United States from Israel would not only appear to open opportunities for Syria and Egypt, it would also present domestic political problems within the United States. The Jewish vote is small, but Jewish political influence is outsized because of carefully organized and funded lobbying efforts. And to this mix, Christian conservatives who regard Israel’s interests as theologically important and the president faces a powerful block that he doesn’t want to antagonize. For these reasons the president should continue sending envoys to build road maps for peace, and he should continue to condemn all sides for whatever outrages they commit. He should continue to make speeches supporting Israel, but he must have no ambitions for “lasting peace,” because any effort toward achieving that goal could in fact destabilize the region.
The things the United States needed from Israel in the past no longer exist. The Soviets no longer have influence in the Middle East. Israel is, however, valued for sharing intelligence and for acting as a base for supplies to support U.S. fighting in the region. Israel is not faced with the likelihood of major conventional war anytime soon. It does not need vast and sudden deliveries of tanks or planes, as it did in 1973. Nor does it need the financial assistance the United States has provided since 1974. Israel’s economy [unlike the US economy] is robust and growing.
Israel is quite capable of handling itself financially. What U.S. aid to Israel signifies is that with no formal treaty with the United States is a public commitment by the United States to Israel. Israel uses that as a card both in the region and to comfort Israeli public opinion. What the United States once got in return for that aid was a stable partner in the region, which could not manage without the money. Now the United States has a partner regardless of aid. On the negative side of the ledger, the aid provides grounds for Islamist arguments that the United States is the source of all their problems, including ruthless behavior on the part of the Israelis. Given that the aid is marginal in importance, that price is too high. Giving up this commitment to aid would actually help Israel by eliminating a prime argument of the anti-Israeli lobby in the United States.
Israel does not need foreign aid and is not in strategic danger from conventional forces. There is a mutual need for intelligence sharing and weapons development, but that is by definition a fairly quiet development.
There is no moral challenge here. Israel and the United States are two sovereign nations, which mean that both get to define the relationship. And every relationship has to be viewed in terms of its value to the broadest sense of the national interest. What the United States needed from Israel thirty-five years ago is not what it needs today.
Israel is free to create realities on the ground. As Freidman insists, the balance of power must be the governing principle of the United States. The United States must reshape the regional balance of power partly by moving closer to Arab states, partly by drawing back from Israel. This does not pose an existential threat to Israel, which would pose a moral challenge. Israel is in no danger of falling and does not depend on the United States to survive. That was in the past. It is not the case in the next decade. The United States needs distance. It will take it. There will be domestic political resistance. There will also be domestic political support. This is not an abandonment of Israel, but relations between two nations can’t be frozen in an outdated mode. We need to switch to a broader lens.
BBC WORLD SERVICE
06/02/2011
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Last broadcast on Sun, 6 Feb 2011, 19:15 on BBC Radio 4.
Synopsis
Presidential Doctrine:
Long after U.S. leaders step down, or lose their seats in office, American Presidential doctrines live on. After a week of protests in Egypt, American diplomacy experts Susan Glasser, Editor-in-Chief of Foreign Policy Magazine, George Friedman, founder of the private intelligence agency STRATFOR and journalist David Millar explain the history of America's past Presidents and how they defined their stances on international policy.
Walk the walk and talk the diplomatic talk:
Future American diplomats, aka American University students, demonstrate what it takes to sit down at the negotiating table and get what you want. Cydney Gumann and Derek Tobias demonstrate the skills, strategies and trends in contemporary American negotiation.
Esperanza Spalding
And Esperanza Spalding has negotiated a space for herself at the top of the music scene. The genre-busting, culture-mixing bass player talks about her music and about how she's created a space that invites everyone in to listen.
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Sun 6 Feb 201119:15
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In 1977, the family of retired autoworker John Demjanjuk was astounded when he was accused of having been a guard known as "Ivan the Terrible" at a Nazi death camp in World War II. His case was considered the last of the Nazi war crimes trials, but this week, prosecutors in Germany said they were reopening hundreds of investigations. Host Audie Cornish talks with historian Deborah Lipstadt about how that might play out.
AMERICAN HYPOCRISY~ PROTESTING SYRIAN LACK OF FREEDOM
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