The U.S. Does Not Need Israel
In the past week, Tweets by Minnesota’s 5th congressional district representative Ilhan Omar have sparked controversy about the link between antisemitism and criticism of Israel. Particularly Israel’s influence on American lawmakers through lobbyists. Due to the dark history of antisemitism being linked with conspiracy theories about Jewish control over banking and other financial arenas, this is a conversation that requires tact and nuance.
However, those are not the conversations I’m attempting to start here.
What I’m interested in is what the U.S. gains, in a geopolitical sense, from its association with Israel. I’m careful here to say association and not alliance, since there is no formal treaty-based alliance between the U.S. and Israel.
U.S. support for the state of Israel began with some apprehension. It wasn’t until 1922 that the U.S. “acquiesced” to the 1917 Balfour Declaration when congress approved the Lodge-Fish resolution. Early on, much of the U.S. support for the Jewish homeland in Palestine came from dispensationalist evangelical Christians.
After World War 2, many people rightfully had sympathy for the Jewish plight, and the U.S. was no different. This helped prompt Harry Truman to make the U.S. the first country to recognize the state of Israel after it was declared in 1948. But even then, the U.S. remained neutral in the ensuing Arab-Israeli War of 1948. The Soviet Union, however, backed the Israelis in this early conflict.
During the Cold War, Israel declared itself neutral. Stalin’s hopes of having leftists come to power failed, resulting in a falling out between the Soviet bloc and Israel. The Soviet Union quickly pivoted to supporting Muslim countries, like Egypt, upon Stalin’s successors. This, of course, made the U.S. turn to Israel as a partner.
Although the U.S. did not back Israel’s actions in the 1967 Six-Day War, the U.S. continued fostering closer relations with Israel, even despite the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. When the Middle East began monopolizing U.S. foreign policy throughout the eighties and nineties, that relationship only grew stronger. This figured much into Osama bin Laden’s stated motivations for the 9/11 attacks.
This last point is salient for our discussion. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid since World War 2. What does the U.S. get for this aid, aside from the enmity of a great deal of the Middle Eastern Muslim population? Our backing of Israel in the 1982–1984 Lebanon conflict did nothing to further U.S. interests and only fanned the flames of Muslim hatred for the U.S. The Israeli government (and Saudi government) has been urging the U.S. to go to war with Iran for years — even urging U.S. reneging on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (aka Iran Deal) — despite how costly such an adventure would be.
The Middle East itself, strategically speaking, is more of a liability than an asset. U.S. oil production rate is still beneath its consumption rate, which is often considered a reason why the Middle East, and therefore Israel, is of strategic U.S. interest. It’s why the U.S. government cozies up to reprehensible regimes like the Saudi Arabian and Turkmenistan governments, which the U.S. should also discontinue (but that’s a topic for a different time). However, the amount of blood and treasure the U.S. pours into the Middle East may be better spent looking for energy alternatives. And if oil prices increased due to reduced supply, the U.S. public would be more receptive to energy alternatives and those alternatives would be more competitive. Right now, U.S. military and foreign aid presence in the Middle East is a subsidy on oil above what oil corporations already receive, which makes green energy alternatives less competitive in the market.
Another way that Israel is thought to be a useful partner to the U.S. is through its military and intelligence support. The Institute for Policy Studies lists strategic reasons for continuing support of Israel as:
Israel has successfully prevented victories by radical nationalist movements in Lebanon and Jordan, as well as in Palestine.
Israel has kept Syria, for many years an ally of the Soviet Union, in check.
Israel’s air force is predominant throughout the region.
Israel’s frequent wars have provided battlefield testing for American arms, often against Soviet weapons.
It has served as a conduit for U.S. arms to regimes and movements too unpopular in the United States for openly granting direct military assistance, such as apartheid South Africa, the Islamic Republic in Iran, the military junta in Guatemala, and the Nicaraguan Contras. Israeli military advisers have assisted the Contras, the Salvadoran junta, and foreign occupation forces in Namibia and Western Sahara.
Israel’s intelligence service has assisted the U.S. in intelligence gathering and covert operations.
Israel has missiles capable of reaching as far as the former Soviet Union, it possesses a nuclear arsenal of hundreds of weapons, and it has cooperated with the U.S. military-industrial complex with research and development for new jet fighters and anti-missile defense systems.
The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) adds that Israeli equipment is used by the U.S. and that Israel has supported the U.S. in the Gulf War, U.S. operations in Kosovo, and in the Iraq War.
The common denominator in all these things is that they are a result of U.S. interventions in the Middle East. None of it would be necessary if the U.S. didn’t have the military presence in the Middle East that they have, or if they didn’t support the Saudis or oppose to Iranians so hypocritically and belligerently. The wars mentioned by AICE were all wars of choice. The Cold War justifications are no longer relevant. Intelligence gathering is primarily related to Middle Eastern activities that are a response to U.S. interventions and support of regimes like Saudi Arabia.
In my estimation, the U.S. seems to be more of a client state of Israel than the other way around. They get all the benefits of the partnership without having to reciprocate in any meaningful way. And the benefits they receive are inordinate for Israel’s place in U.S. interests (although I subscribe to the unorthodox opinion that the U.S. ought to cut of all foreign aid, but that’s a discussion for another time).
Perhaps U.S. relations with Israel ought to be re-examined?
