Israel Is Not Part Of The United States

Is there something hard to grasp about that fact? Is it impossible to understand that the national interests of Israel as defined by that country's citizens and government might not be in the national interests of the United States?

Up until 1961 the USG and We the People seemed to have no difficulty understanding that Israel was a sovereign state and not part of our Union. Before Kennedy came to the White House no American president appeared to have the slightest problem differentiating between the national interests of the US and those of Israel.

The US was first to recognise the new State of Israel but accompanied recognition with a total embargo on arms sales even though the country was in a desperate struggle for survival. The embargo on arms instituted by Truman continued under Eisenhower. It was a policy both for the present and the future. It allowed the US to act as and, more importantly, be seen as an honest broker by some if not all the Arab states.

The US concern for stability in the region, particularly during the Eisenhower Administration, was driven by a need for oil. Not a need for oil to turn into gasoline powering the monsters of chrome and cast iron on American highways. Not even a need to protect the profit margins of major oil companies.

No. Ike and company were worried about getting enough oil to Europe quickly enough to meet NATO's warfighting needs in the event the Crimson Tide rolled over the Trace. It was all a matter of escort vessels and convoys but the bottom line was clear: oil from the Arabian Peninsula and Persia was key to a successful conventional defense of Europe. The Europeans agreed since the idea of being nuked by "friendly fire" didn't appeal to a single German or Frenchman or Briton.

American even-handedness went so far as to throw down the flag on the play made by our NATO partners France and Great Britain along with their co-conspirator, Israel, during the 1956 Sinai War. For almost the last time in history to date, applause for an American president echoed from Cairo to Damascus to Baghdad and beyond.

The applause was less but still audible a year later when the US fired a warning shot across the bows of the Soviet Union and its local assets by landing Marines in Lebanon to impose and maintain the peace during elections. Arguably the operation was both ill-advised and unnecessary but it did have the redeeming feature of helping give Lebanon another fifteen years of relative peace and prosperity.

All good things come to an end. American even-handedness ended along with the embargo on arms sales to regional countries during the Kennedy years. While the weapons sold were defensive (HAWK surface to air missiles) the nose of the camel was well under the tent flap.

A couple of years later with LBJ in the Presidency the rest of the camel came in and squatted down. LBJ overruled the advice and analyses of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA and at least some elements of the State Department and ordered the sale of M-60 main battle tanks and F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers to Israel.

The JCS had warned that the capabilities of the F-4s and M-60s made them excellent offensive systems. The body recommended that the requested items be denied and replaced by refurbished and upgraded M-48 tanks and new production A-4 strike aircraft. In both cases the limitations of range would render the systems less effective in offensive than in defensive employments.

LBJ was warned the Israeli armed forces would need about two years to integrate the new systems and could be expected to initiate aggressive war at that point. The IDF and IAF beat the estimate by a few months as they opened the expected war in June 1967.

The Kennedy and Johnson decisions were not in the national interests of the US. Neither decision enhanced American national security. Indeed, the sum of the two was a decrease in our national security. Neither decision represented a policy for the future. Unless one wants to describe the tossing aside of a policy that had served our interests well in order to replace it with one which would increasingly harm US security and interests.

So why were the decisions made?

A one word answer fits perfectly: politics.

The processes of politics--raising money, getting elected, cutting deals, log rolling, getting money--are all activities of the now. They all require policy for today and today only. The potency and pervasiveness of both formal and informal lobbying actions of the Israelis and their domestic supporters is right up there with the American Medical Association and the National Rifle folks. In close national elections as well as in a myriad of Senatorial and Congressional races, the stance of the pro-Israel groups can be critical.

Master politicians understand that reality with a vengeance. Not surprisingly Kennedy, who had come to office by the whisker of disputable votes in Illinois and Texas, looked to the electoral future and not the national security needs of the US and abandoned the firewall of neutrality with the HAWK sale. Even less surprising was the decision by LBJ, a supreme politico, to open the American tent all the way and approve the offensive weapons systems sale in the face of universal professional opposition.

The use of US weapons in the Six Day War went a long way in destroying the reputation of the US as a White Hat in the Arab-Muslim countries. Further demonization of the US was facilitated by the spineless reaction of the Johnson Administration to the attempt by the Israelis to sink the ELINT ship Liberty.

It didn't help that American newspaper cartoons, TV comedians and others made fun of the defeated Arabs and made no secret of our admiration for the Israelis. It was as if we were cheering for the home team.

That sort of bubble in the stream wouldn't have mattered if Washington could have influenced Israel to hand back at least some of the occupied territories in the weeks following the Six Day War. The archives show that the Administration did try to jawbone Tel Aviv into making at least symbolic withdrawals. The effort such as it was had no success. No Israeli politician seemed at all willing to look at the downside of victory.

We didn't press them too hard either. After all 1968 would see the next election cycle and the Administration as well as the Democratic Party were in the deep doo-doo of Vietnam to say nothing of schisms developing within the American society.

Fast forward to the most critical year. The year that well and truly saw the Israeli tail start wagging the dog of American foreign policy.

The year was 1973. The pivotal event was the Yom Kippur War of October. The crucial decision was President Nixon's choice to go toe-to-toe with the Soviet Union while airlifting critical replacement supplies to Israel.

There were two results from Nixon's politically motivated decision. One was the oil embargo engineered in OPEC by Saudi Arabia. The second was the apparently permanent tying of Israel to the United States as if it were in fact as well as joke, the Fifty-first State.

Uncle Sam became Samson tied to two posts. One post was Muslim, more to the point, oil from under Muslim sand. The other was Jewish, more to the point nuclear weapon equipped Israel.

We are still tied to those two posts. Still unable, or, to err on the side of accuracy, unwilling to pull down the house.

Temporizing from day to day, lurching from one slight change of policy for today to another, politicians from Nixon on to the current Bush have invoked "Israel's right to exist" while making occasional mumbles concerning the desirability of "energy independence."

Let's look at those two buzz phrases.

What "right to exist?" No nation, no state (including our own) has a "right" to exist. If a nation-state has demarcated borders and if it has the capacity to effectively defend those borders and if it has the capacity to effectively repress or restrain internal centrifugal forces, then it can maintain its existence. If any of these three prerequisites does not exist then the state will go to the dung heap of history. (Ask the city fathers of Carthage after the Third Punic War if this is true or not.)

The United States fought a defensive insurgency lasting nearly a decade as well as a conventional inter-state war lasting three years to establish its capacity to exist independent of Great Britain. The US also fought an internal war lasting four years to maintain its corporate existence.

"Right" had nothing to do with it. Establishing and maintaining the United States took blood, sacrifice, time and resources. Not once but repeatedly.

Israel has no more "right" to exist then the US. So far it has shown the capacity to exist. The Geek hopes it continues to do so. But, he is unwilling to see the US endanger its national security in order to provide reinsurance to Israel.

Politicians and pundits are also fond of telling us that Israel is our "ally." The test for an alliance is simply what is in the relationship for both countries. In the context of the US-Israel dyad there may be a great deal of benefit for the Israel but the upside for the US is hard to see.

Israel has cost us a great deal of money (it is our number one foreign aid recipient.) The relationship has also assured that we have diminished influence in the Arab countries while giving powerful impetus to those amongst the Muslim population of the world who wish us ill.

It has been argued that we must support Israel because it is an island of democracy in an ocean of feudal, authoritarian regimes. Get a grip!

Democracy is a fine thing. We might get it right some day here at home.

The encouragement of democracy by our example is a good thing. We should continue doing it as we have by sheer existence for more than two centuries now.

But, we have no specific national security interest in protecting another democracy simply because it has regular elections and an independent judiciary.

Our relationship with Israel must be evaluated in the stark terms of self-interest. What benefits do we accrue? What risks and liabilities do we shoulder? Weigh the two. If the real, substantial benefits to our national security, our national interest are greater than the liabilities and risks, then the relationship should continue as it has. If not, scale the relationship so that the costs and benefits are in balance.

When our good friends and close (coffee only) drinking buddies the Saudis organised the 1973 oil embargo, a government, an administration with the capacity to make policy for the future rather than temporizing policy for today, would have grabbed the opportunity to mobilize the resources of the US and We the People for genuine energy independence.

There was sufficient oil yet to find and exploit outside of OPEC's sway to buy the time necessary for the development of other energy technologies. To put it bluntly--we blew it. We continued to blow it over the next ten years as the search for new technologies degenerated into a race for the Federal cash cow by businesses great and small.

New emotional attachments of dubious utility to the cause of national security and national interest such as environmentalism and global warming combined with marginal improvements allowing conservation and a generally improving economy so that no real search for independence from the Muslim governed oil fields was politically possible. We stumbled on with one policy for today superseding its predecessor.

Had the US been more independent from Mideast oil would there have been any justification for the Kuwait War of 1990-91? As it was, the genuine relation of that war with any definable American national security need is hazy at best. Without the fear of too much oil falling under the control of one objectionable dictator there would have been zero national security or national interest requirement for the war.

The Kuwait War would have been unnecessary, completely unnecessary, if the US had possessed even a modicum of genuine energy independence. There would have been no need to shuck, jive and lie to the House of Saud so that US troops could enter the Kingdom of the Two Mosques. Osama bin Ladin would have been denied his best card in declaring war on the US a few years later.

History would have been quite different. No doubt about that. Unfortunately the facts remain as they were. We blew it.

We the People and our governments under both parties embraced hazy shifting policies for today. We and our "leaders" didn't think of the future at all. We--and they--assumed that somehow the future would take care of itself as long as we watched out for today.

Worse, we have thrown aside the necessity of defining national security and national interest narrowly in terms of our survival and flourishment. Instead we have rushed off pursuing seductive mirages such as "human rights," "democracy," "pluralism," multi-culturalism.

Like all mirages these lead only to disaster.

Stay tuned.