Frum's Case For Israel
I’m afraid it needs a little updating. Let’s take his points one at a time:
First, as the patron of the region’s pre-eminent military power, the United States gains leverage and status. Arab states that cooperate with the United States (e.g. Egypt) get what they want from Israel. Arab states that do not cooperate (e.g. Syria) do not get. The US can deploy Israel’s power to rescue other US clients from enemies (as the Israelis rescued King Hussein of Jordan from the PLO in 1970) or to accomplish strategic missions that the US would rather not dirty its own hands with (the destruction of nuclear facilities in Iraq and Syria, the assassination of terrorist leaders).
The Cold War was a global ideological competition between superpowers. When Egypt switched sides from the Soviet Union to the United States, that was a big deal. If our alliance with Israel helped make that happen (topic for another day), great. But the Cold War is over. What is it we want from Syria today? Apart, that is, from having them make peace with Israel – what other foreign policy objectives do we have vis-a-vis Syria? Because the argument is that by being allies with Israel, we gain leverage over erstwhile hostile states to make them “cooperate.” So: cooperate on what? Against whom?
As for deploying Israeli power to save US clients or do our own dirty work – it feels to me like we’re doing a lot of our own dirty work these days. The only post Cold War scenario Frum comes up with is the 2007 strike on Syria. But it’s not clear to me in what sense an alliance with Israel was important to achieving that objective, assuming it was an American objective at all. And on the other side of the ledger, it is very hard to argue that since 1991 Israel doesn’t complicate our ability to operate freely in the region.
But there’s another point. Implicit in Frum’s point about Egypt is that American was able to deliver Israel. When Egypt flipped, we could make sure Israel gave back the Sinai. Is Frum sure that America could “deliver” the Golan Heights if Syria decided to abandon Iran as a patrion?
Second, Israel is a huge source of information to the US – and the most valuable live-fire test laboratory for US military equipment and doctrine. One of the decisive moments of the Cold War, for example, occurred during the skies over Lebanon in 1982. During the Yom Kippur war of 1973, only 9 years previous, Soviet ground-to-air missiles had wrought havoc upon Israeli aircraft. This time, Syria scrambled its air force to meet Israeli planes: 150 against 150, the largest air battle of the jet age. In just a few minutes, the Israelis downed 86 Syrian craft, suffering no casualties of their own. Microelectronics had triumphed in the test of battle. Soviet histories generally credit this event as the shock that jolted the Soviet elite into realizing that it must try some kind of “perestroika” of its ossifying economic system.
Well, it seems to me that since 1991 we’ve conducted quite a few live-fire exercises ourselves, no? The Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the Afghan War, the Iraq War . . . I kind of feel like we don’t need a proxy so much anymore, you know? And who’s Israel fighting these days? Hezbollah and Hamas, mostly – not groups flying the latest combat aircraft. And, on the assumption that Israel may one day fight against another state, who would that be? There’s no more Soviet Union. Who would Israel be fighting that would be a useful test-run to see if, say, we could defend Taiwan in the unlikely event of a Chinese amphibious assault?
Third: the demonstration effect of the superiority of Western ways in interstate competition. Israel in 1950 had an income per capita not very much higher than that of neighboring Syria. Today, Israel has a GDP per capita comparable to that of most European countries, and higher than that of Saudi Arabia. It has sustained democracy under military onslaught. It is a science and technology leader. The Arab world may not like Israel, but its success sends a powerful “If you can’t beat them, join them” message. And of course part of “joining them” is emulating Israel’s close relationship with the United States.
Hmmm. Again, this feels a little outdated. When we were in ideological competition with the Soviet Union, it was probably a good thing to demonstrate that Western capitalism and friendship with America brought prosperity. But to the extent that we have any “competition” for allies today, it’s economic competition with China. Which Arab country is following the Chinese model to misery? The evidence for capitalism is now far too widely accepted for Israel’s “demonstration effect” to have any consequence. I would imagine Singapore would be – and has been – far more influential in that regard.
The whole list feels like a Cold War relic, almost completely irrelevant to the world today.
The realist case for a strong relationship with Israel today revolves primarily around the claim that we have common enemies: that we’re both fighting against radical Islamic terror groups, and that America’s own Arab allies actually appreciate that Israel is fighting these groups because they are a threat to them as well. And, as Frum surely knows, there is real debate about whether our close relationship with Israel makes this fight easier or more difficult, as well as what exactly countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia “really” want Israel or us to do. This is the Middle East: everyone has at least six contradictory agendas, some so secret even they themselves don’t know them.
In truth, I’m not sure what point is served by debating whether we should be “allied” with Israel. I’m not even sure what “ending” our alliance would mean, given that we don’t have any treaty obligations to them and we are hardly going to stop sharing intelligence or what have you. We’re allied with all sorts of countries with whom we have a variety of disputes – we don’t agree with everything our allies do or want to do, and sometimes we take a very hard line on their behavior. We were extremely forceful in getting the British and the French to withdraw from Suez in 1956. Heck, Pakistan is officially a major non-NATO ally and we’ve been dropping bombs on their territory! The real question is not whether America should continue to be Israel’s ally but whether America should be much tougher on its Israeli ally than it is, whether a tougher line would serve American interests or whether it would backfire.
I think not allying with them would mean stop giving them USAID, and stop giving them diplomatic cover at the UN, at least on the Security Council.
— Jordan Smith · Jul 23, 04:23 PM · #
Extremely well put. In my mind, 1991 marked the turning point in Israel’s strategic utility in a realistic foreign policy. Not just because the Soviet Union fell and all these points about the Cold War Frum mentions became moot, but because of the Gulf War.
Normally, when you go to war in a region, you use your regional ally in the war and come off the better for it. In the case of the Gulf War, when Iraq began launching missiles at Israel, we had to start spending a lot of time and energy convincing it not to join the war, so as to preserve the compliance of other Arab and Gulf states.
At this point, the goal of much of our foreign policy in the Middle East is essentially to restrain Israel so that we can stabilize the region and fight terrorism. US attempts to restrain Israel from attacking Iran are a good example. The value of our alliance with Israel is at this point emotional, based upon either support for shared principles, sympathy for the plight of the country, or affinity for their more Western culture.
“Ending our alliance” would probably entail significantly reducing military aid, for starters…
— DPT · Jul 23, 04:27 PM · #
I admire Frum’s independence on many things, but here he seems to be manufacturing reasons in order to counter what he knows to be true: that since the end of the Cold War Israel has become a strategic liability for the US instead of an asset because we no longer needs a local proxy against outside Soviet Power and our national security interests have quite naturally migrated over into an Arab camp that we need for access to oil and to prevent further attacks against us and our interests. Israel complicates those interests with many of its unilateral actions and claims, especially on the West Bank. Supporters of Israel recognize this and so are reduced to sentimental appeals that we support Israel for historic and cultural reasons as the only “Western” country in the Middle East, which is actually a liability except among Western ethnocentrists.
— Ted Frier · Jul 23, 04:58 PM · #
I agree with this analysis, which I was trying to promote yesterday. All of these reasons have to do with, or imply, military power, which the US no longer needs since our armed forces are knee deep in the Arab world now and probably will be for the rest of our lives. The one military angle whereby Israel remains valuable is as a dumping ground for our military hardware.
Israel is a liability in some sense because they complicate our national interests in the region. However, there’s really nothing we can do to Israel. It’s not as though we give them THAT much money. The alienation towards Israel around the world is not something the US created, or can stop. By the same token, the grass roots alienation in the US — as evidenced on blogs — is also something that the US did not create or can stop.
The key here is that in the opinion of many, including many Jews, Israel’s recent rightwing turn is not in accordance with the original broadly socialist and social justice oriented approach of the Zionist founders: It appears discriminatory, cruel, and hypocritical, as settlers continue to occupy more and more of the land supposedly meant for a Palestinian microstate and as the Israeli government continues to enforce much of the rest (Jordan River valley) with actions that are, to say the least, a PR nightmare.
This isn’t a case of Israel being besieged by anti-Semites. That is only the explanation of those Israel supporters who cannot bear the cognitive dissonance of the fact that Israel is hurting ITSELF: legally, morally, in terms of reputation and in terms of national morale. Diaspora supporters of Israel MUST make that point to the Israelis, behind closed doors if needs be, again and again and again. Israel has to change, for its own good.
— Steve8 · Jul 23, 06:20 PM · #
Agreed that Frum’s analysis reads a bit like a Cold War relic, but “unsinkable aircraft carriers” are hard to build in a pinch, so you don’t de-commission them without careful consideration not just of the current situation, but of potential situations 10, 25, 50 years down the line. In short, there are ample geopolitical reasons to want that strip of land where the Mediterranean and the Middle World overlap, they go back millennia, and they will remain significant even in a world where globalization seems, but only seems, to be replacing old-fashioned maritime and landmass calculations.
At the same time support for Israel functions within ideological commitments that define the post-WW2 international order as we sought to arrange it – and to our benefit: a nation-state for everyone and everyone in a nation-state, adjustments and revisions to be internationally adjudicated via the United Nations, ostracism and war to the violators of this consensus. You can acknowledge contradictions and unfinished business without moving to junk the whole thing, at least in the absence of a replacement. We would already owe Israel at least as much loyalty as we owed, say, Kuwait or South Korea, quite apart from the multi-generational commitment we’ve made to Israel in particular, and quite apart from Israel’s popularity in the U.S.
I’m all in favor of questioning rightwing politically correctness on Israel and its adversaries – in my view, we insist on a lot that’s horribly and deeply counter-productively wrong – but we shouldn’t underestimate what we’re dealing with.
— CK MacLeod · Jul 23, 07:26 PM · #
I don’t think the debate should be about whether Israel should be an “ally” or not. I don’t know anybody who suggests we should break all diplomatic ties with Israel. The question is whether the US should unconditionally back Israeli actions no matter how extreme those actions may be. The US can and should use diplomatic pressure to influence it’s allies. It does so with every other ally, so why not do so, for example, to get Israel to stop building settlements? Obama has taken a public stance on this issue, but nonetheless has not backed it with action. Chas Freedman’s suggestion, that we have some portion of US aid conditional on cessation of settlements, is a good one.
On the issue of whether Israel is a strategic asset or liability: when Israel routinely gets condemned by virtually all of the world except the US, that must have a negative effect on the US’s diplomatic standing with the rest of the world. When even countries with no history of antisemitism (e.g., India, China) are condemning Israel, it seems likely that that condemnation is about the actions of Israel instead of a general prejudice. I personally believe that pressuring Israel to perform less of these condemnable actions IS being a BETTER FRIEND to Israel than what we have been doing. The present course in not sustainable. Israel is a liability not just to the US but to herself.
— Mike Diaz · Jul 23, 07:58 PM · #
CK MacLeod – I share your concern about the return of geopolitics, but I have to say I disagree with you about Israel’s geopolitical merits, if only because our loyalty to it often poisons opportunities for cooperation with states of equal or greater geopolitical value.
Take the example of Turkey – I would argue that Turkey, in world-historical and geopolitical terms, is far more important than Israel in terms of exercising power and influence as a Eurasian bridge or point of overlap. But without a more balanced Middle Eastern policy, we may risk damaging future relations with Turkey, particularly since the common threat of the USSR no longer exists and NATO is becoming increasingly hollow.
As for Israel’s status as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” it has been a mainly hypothetical one. Even conducting combat operations from Israeli bases, let alone flying or fighting directly alongside the IDF, would inflame the Middle East, and in most cases where we wish to engage in Middle Eastern conflict, we will have cooperation from some of the Gulf states, or perhaps Turkey, if we manage to repair that relationship. Again, the challenge of Israeli strategy lately has been how to keep them out of our wars and interests in the Middle East.
I really think there are better examples to hold up in favor of the post-WWII international order – say, Germany, Japan, or Poland and the Central European states, rather than Israel. Israel, as its current borders stand, is not a nation-state, and since 1967 it certainly has not been a shining example of adhering to UN adjudication (though it has faced ostracism and war). In the long run, Israel’s struggle with its internal contradictions will grow worse, not greater, if recent patterns continue. Even if Israel is a fantastic example of post-WWII international order, if that order is in decline, then we are assuming the symbolic value of the alliance will do more to preserve it than readjusting our Middle Eastern grand strategy in line with the changing balance of power.
— DPT · Jul 23, 08:10 PM · #
Mike Diaz – Just a minor quibble here, but being an ally implies de jure or de facto military and diplomatic obligations, I do not think not being a country’s “ally” is a necessary condition of that country being our “friend.” (India is a friend, but not an ally, of the US, since it is mostly responsible for its own security and does not receive unquestioned defense or diplomatic support.)
Treating Israel more like a friend, where defense cooperation is conditional and more specific to US interests, is what’s meant by ending the “alliance,” not breaking off relations.
— DPT · Jul 23, 08:19 PM · #
DPT – the uses of an aircraft carrier aren’t only kinetic: The potential can be more important. Put differently: We don’t know about the world where Israel and our commitments to it don’t exist, but we can presume that it’s not “the current world minus a few sorties by the Israeli air force.”
The question comes down to the American interest, and the American interest is more than raw geopolitics, or it’s not an “American” interest at all. A healthy appreciation for geopolitics is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for defining the right policy. It’s not a question of just having Turkey as an ally or not – it’s also a question of what kind of Turkey to have as an ally.
Israel as aircraft carrier is of course a reductive metaphor, but even the USS Enterprise “stands for something.” America without an American mission in the world – the advancement and protection of American ideals – wouldn’t be America at all.
I’m not suggest at all that American ideals require unquestioning support for Israel, or that American ideals exist in some separate moral realm divorced from our material interests. To the contrary, everything is connected to everything. We have to ask what withdrawing critical support would do for us both morally and materially: To simplify radically, abandoning Israel wouldn’t turn Turkey into our friend, or make Turkey a friend worth having, and ditto for a lot of other relationships in the world, including our relationship to ourselves.
What I’m saying is that a different and better relationship with Israel and its adversaries should derive from a more comprehensive understanding of what we’re after.
— CK MacLeod · Jul 23, 08:51 PM · #
DPT – By your definition of ally, Israel is the only NATO member that is our “ally”. The US does give unconditional diplomatic support to any European country.
As far as being a “friend” to Israel, I was using that in the sense used in DC politics; Any congressman that gives unconditional support to Israel is called a “friend of Israel”. I was just saying they would be a “better friend to Israel” if they pressured Israel to not undermine her own and our security. I good friend sometimes has to tell a friend when they are doing something wrong.
— Mike Diaz · Jul 23, 09:14 PM · #
What do people thnk of Frum’s end to evil book? I like Frum, I read his articles in the National Post but end to evil is a terrible foreign policy book that does not stand up to serious criticism nor time.Is Frum really such a great intellectual on foreign affairs?
— jim · Jul 23, 10:23 PM · #
Do you ever get the feeling that T. Boone Pickens’s case for the Oklahoma St. football team would read pretty much the same? Frum’s attitude toward Israel is pretty similar to Pickens’ attitude toward his alma mater’s football team.
— Steve Sailer · Jul 24, 05:34 AM · #
Mike Diaz – I mean ally in the sense that we have either a legal or a credible commitment to the defense of that state, and in certain cases, they to us. For example, NATO countries are de jure our allies because if we are attacked, or they are attacked, we are legally obligated to defend them. De facto and de jure, so are Japan, ROK, ANZUS, a few Gulf states, etc.
I brought up the friend/ally distinction not because I think allies are states we unquestioningly support, but because formally or informally we have a serious and credible security relationship with them, and when they face major military threats, our interests and obligations compel us to support them.
I don’t think that Israel really meets these criteria, and indeed, I am open to the idea that someday NATO members may not meet this criteria either (though it is useful to preserve the framework so long as there are some states we have a vital interest in, and the ones we do not are keeping out of trouble). But the US does not have a national interest in intervening in Israeli wars, and without the Cold War and with a highly proficient military Israel can probably stand alone in a war of self-defense against its neighbors. Rather than having an interest in Israel participating in our conflicts, we have one in keeping them out of them – just as we would not want Indian troops getting involved in the war in Afghanistan, or Saudi troops in the war in Iraq. These countries are friends, not allies. I think Americans need to be more honest about what an ally means (Georgia proved this can get to be a serious problem), and I mean no malice to Israel in saying they are not an ally, just a good friend.
— DPT · Jul 24, 07:16 AM · #
like it
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