Are U.S. Democrats seeking to elevate Ukraine to the status of America’s ‘most-special’ ally over Israel?
The Democratic party’s foreign policy elites seem to be losing both patience and strategic interest in Israel due to its actions and overall policies in recent months.
Many top-ranking Democrats who were once staunch allies of Israel in the not-so-distant past are concerned about the troubling direction Israel is heading in, which could pose deep geopolitical and domestic implications for U.S. policymakers in the long term.
Some of the most notable Democratic Senators, who are known to be more ‘active’ in U.S. foreign policy discussions, have come out against the Netanyahu government, which is comprised of a coalition of right-wing and far-right parties.
The politically weak centrist opposition in Israel, led by Yair Lapid, has tried to downplay the rapidly fracturing relationship between the Democrats and Israel by intermittently joining a chorus of U.S. Democrats in criticizing the Netanyahu government and urging him to correct course or risk losing the ‘special’ relationship that the two countries have had for decades.
Nevertheless, there are many signs that point to an emerging “decoupling of the U.S. from the Israeli politics”.
As the U.S.-Israeli reactions are deterioration at all levels, the U.S.-Ukraine relations are deepening at faster rates than ever before.
Since the closing years of the second Obama administration, the Israelis have been working relentlessly to undermine the foreign policy objectives of the U.S. Democrats in a variety of ways, from lobbying Congress intensely and resorting to controversial methods to stop the Iran Nuclear Deal (a major diplomatic achievement of the Obama administration) to visibly teaming up with Donald Trump, enabling his destructive urges, and aiding him in his quest to undermine U.S. institutions at home and international rules and norms abroad.
On the other hand, the Ukrainians, led by Volodymyr Zelensky, are receiving unprecedented waves of support from Democrats and sometimes even from some top Republicans in Congress, which makes one wonder whether Israel and Ukraine have exchanged places in the ‘special relationship’ category vis-a-vis the U.S.
According to Celeste Wallander, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, the U.S. -Ukraine relationship is rooted in deep strategic implications and is not limited in in scale and scope to the ongoing war with Russia:
“the United States wants a Ukraine that is sovereign, independent and secure. We want the Ukrainian people to be able to live the European life they have chosen. Our support it about the international order that keeps all countries and all populations safe, including Russia.”
There’s a growing trend among progressive Democrats that the ‘special relationship’ with Israel should not continue because it may longer be too relevant in today’s geopolitical developments, both in the Middle East and worldwide, from the perspective of Democratic Party policymakers.
If anything, Israel is now becoming more of a ‘geopolitical liability’ than a special and/or strategic ally in larger U.S. foreign policy, from the perspective of ‘Great Power Politics’
Recent geopolitical trends in both the Middle East and Europe have prompted the U.S., particularly the Democratic Party, to see significant potential in the Eastern European nation of Ukraine. Amid the shift of its strategic focus from the Middle East to other areas of strategic interest, namely Europe and the Indo-Pacific, Ukraine is seen as the next ally with which to develop a ‘special relationship’.
The trend, I argue, is driven by the re-adjustment of the U.S. geopolitical concerns, failures in the Middle-East nation building project, and the rise of the Israeli right which has moving the country toward illiberalism and far-right populism.
Additionally, Ukraine’s numerous appeals and characteristics hold significant strategic value to the Democrats and may, in the near term, prompt them to replace Israel with Ukraine as a new special ally of the U.S., joining the ranks of Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Germany, Australia, and others.
The Cold-War Era Honeymoon between Israel and the U.S.
At one point in the ‘relatively’ recent past, Israel was thought to be a crucial proxy of the U.S. in Middle Eastern geopolitics. During the late 1970s and 1980s, Israel was regarded as an important component of the U.S. containment doctrine. Together with Saudi Arabia (as the two main pro-U.S. states in the region), they were tasked with keeping the rise of Soviet communism in the region in check.
Israel kept the Pan-Arab Socialism and Soviet-backed movements in West Asia in check (with intermittent help from Saudi Arabia and the U.S.).
Saudi Arabia kept Communism in check in Central Asia by helping the so-called “Mujahedeen” fighter (especially in Afghanistan) with the help of Pakistan, and the Reagan administration during the 1980s.
In essence, Israel was seen as an effective bulwark against the rise of communism in the Middle-East geopolitically during the Cold War.
In terms of domestic politics and governance, there were consistent concerns among U.S. elite policymakers (both Republicans and Democrats) regarding Israeli behaviors to the point that even the Reagan administration’s White House, on several occasions, confronted them and halted the shipment of crucial military and security equipment to the Jewish state in 1982. This action followed Israel’s bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactors with U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets during ‘Operation Opera’ on June 7, 1981, without the knowledge of the Reagan administration.
End of the Cold War, the rise of global democratization movements and the growing anxiety of U.S.’ Middle East allies for their future
The end of the Cold War and the great wave of global democratization movements around the world, especially in Eastern Europe and Asia brought shivers down the Israeli national security spines:
Poland (1989)
Hungary (1990–1991)
Czech Republic (1992)
East Germany (1989) and Unification with West Germany (1990)
Ukraine (1992)
The Philippines (1986)
South Korea (1987)
Taiwan (1996)
Thailand (1997)
Indonesia (1998)
A critical point should be mentioned here regarding the democratization trend during the 1980s and 1990s: Almost all of the countries that transitioned to democracy and devised new constitutions guaranteeing equal rights and freedoms for citizens are now close U.S. ‘security’ allies and partners.
Without delving into the technical details of democratic transition mechanics, one should be mindful of the fact that the security component here is of crucial significance, especially in the context of the democratization process. As the U.S. ‘takes care’ of the security costs of country X, which is (or has been for some time) a close U.S. ally/partner, the civil society components (usually but not exclusively in the form of student movements, public intellectuals, educated elites, labor activists, and even some powerful cohorts within the national security apparatus) — to the delight of U.S. national security elites (think in terms of Cold War-era liberal hawks and internationalists) — would ‘push’ for political, economic, and social enfranchisement. And then… voilà! A U.S. ally that is no longer authoritarian and repressive but one that has both a close relationship with the U.S. and democratic governance. That simple!
So, if one takes this framework and applies it to the Middle-East, things become significantly more complicated.
Israel and Saudi Arabia are the closest U.S. allies in the Middle East for decades now. The U.S. maintains large military and security presence inside the two countries’ territories and has been the main arm supplier to these countries for a long time. So, it wouldn’t be such a far-fetched idea to argue that the U.S. has essentially been the provider of security umbrella to these nations for decades now.
Now, here’s the catch: these nations (close U.S. allies), under the security of the U.S., have not really been moving toward political pluralization and democratic enfranchisement. This drives U.S. national security elites and policymakers mad, as they perpetually seek their allies to be more democratic and essentially become more like the U.S. at all times, which, in my opinion, is a bit over the top and hubristic.
This is especially concerning in the case of Israel and its controversial policies toward the Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. There was growing concern among many Middle Eastern leaders about the prospect of incoming waves of democratization in the Middle East, as they believed it would create massive instability and destabilization in the region.
This is however another matter for another time, but I encourage readers to watch this debate carefully to understand the discussions concerning the situation in the Middle East geopolitics during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Imagine how worried and anxious the leaders of these countries had been during the same time period regarding the prospect of democratization and transition from the old-regime to a new-regime.
The leaders of these countries were convinced that if any ‘movement’ were to rise in their societies that would challenge that political, social, and economic status quo, the entire region would become destabilized as a result of its domino-effect.
In the case of Israel, the concern among Likudniks and right-wing hawks was that if there were to be a strong push from the U.S. during the 1990s and 2000s toward democratization, Israel would lose its Jewish majority status and political demographics. Thus, they resisted it by embarking on major securitization of the region.
Note that, based on the theory above, democratization is successful only when security is not affected and remains unchallenged, while at the same time political dynamics would undergo massive change and re-arrangement driven by civil society movements and the ‘enlightened elites’. While this model somewhat ‘worked’ in the cases of Eastern Europe and several East-Asian nations as America set its foreign policy during the Clinton administration toward democratization in those regions, the same could not be said about the Middle East.
Through the ‘securitization’ of the Middle East, the regional actors essentially inhibit the potential for the emergence of significant movements toward democratization (which plausibly from their POV could lead to widespread political instability in the region which happened during the 2011–2014 ‘Arab Spring’ movement) across the Arab world.
This could be seen as a notable reason why there has been ongoing friction between Israelis and U.S. Democrats regarding the geopolitics of the Middle East. If you take a look at recent events in the region’s wars, you would notice how Israel and U.S. Democrats (or liberal internationalists in a broader sense) have often found themselves on opposite sides of the region’s conflicts.
By taking into account the contemporary geopolitical dynamics, I argue that the Democratic Party elites (now in charge of U.S. foreign policy) are disillusioned with Israel (and particularly Bibi Netanyahu’s penchant for encouraging illiberalism in Israel) after decades of unsuccessful attempts at democratization in the Middle East.
Examples include the collapse of the Oslo Accord, the catastrophic failure of the Bush era nation-building wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring ‘de-evolution’ to the ‘Arab-Winter’, and the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt that proved to be destabilizing events in the Middle-East.
The ongoing U.S. withdrawal from the region indicates that they have been forced to downgrade their expectations to the point where they simply desire a Middle East that is stable enough to focus on more ‘strategic’ tasks at hand, namely countering the rise of China in the Indo-Pacific and the revanchist Russia in Europe.
The post-Cold War Democracy Movements and Nuclear Non-Proliferation Efforts
One could imagine the Israeli national security elites asking themselves this question repeatedly during the late 80s and early-to-mid 90s: “Are we the target of next democratization wave?”
In addition to the rise of the worldwide democratization movement from Latin America to Southeast Asia, the deteriorating situation in Apartheid South Africa was a major concern for Israeli leaders. Throughout the Cold War, South Africa had arguably been the closest ideological ally to Israel, alongside Rhodesia until 1979 when it transitioned into present-day Zimbabwe amid the abolition of the racist-colonialist regime there
There was also the question of ‘nukes’ that Israel had managed to develop with the help of the French and its covert nuclear testing cooperation with the South Africa during the 70s and 80s.
During the 1990s amid the U.S.-led international campaign to pressure South Africa to dissolve the Apartheid system there were also parallel efforts to dismantle South African nuclear weapons devices (probably no more than a handful according to reports) spearheaded by the IAEA, a non-governmental watchdog organization within the UN body during the 1990s.
To demonstrate to the global community that the United States, under the leadership of Bill Clinton, meant business — especially concerning the threat of nuclear proliferation in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse — Ukraine became the next target of the global nuclear-weapons disarmament regime. At one point, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic possessed the second-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, but it voluntarily relinquished them all on January 10, 1994, in exchange for security and economic assurances from the international powers.
One could imagine Israelis feeling the incoming international pressures closing in on them from both the UN and the U.S. liberal internationalists.
Another major security concern for the Middle Eastern U.S. ally: “The Two-State Solution”
Their allies, both on the left and right, were transitioning into liberal democracies and adopting political pluralism, while Israeli leaders were still holding on to an Apartheid-style system, which many reputable Israeli-based organizations have described as falling into the Apartheid category.
Moreover, the Clinton administration, the UN, and major European powers, in cooperation with Israeli Labor Party politicians — most notably Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin — were steadily progressing towards the two-state solution with the Oslo Accords.
However, the Israeli right and the Likudniks both in Israel and in the U.S. (as neoconservatives)were firmly opposed to the plan and after a series of dramatic events the Oslo accord ultimately fell apart in the late 1990s, and any attempt to reviving it since then has failed miserably.
The rising Israeli right-wing national security apparatus has traditionally viewed the two-state solution, especially in the broader context of the left-wing Labor’s “Land For Peace” doctrine, as a threat. For decades, it has adopted the “Greater Israel” strategy, particularly in the context of its relations with its neighbors.
In essence, ‘The Greater Israel’ strategy intends to restore the territory of the Israeli state based on ‘biblical descriptions’ that allegedly encompass parts of Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and all of the West Bank and Gaza enclaves.
Is Ukraine’s Appeal Prompting U.S. Policymakers to Replace Israel as the Next ‘Special’ Ally of the U.S. Democrats?
Ukraine has been on the Democratic Party’s radar for some time now. In many ways, the country makes for a better candidate for the title of the ‘special ally’ than Israel. In addition to the geographical appeal of the country with a large population, huge territory, abundance of water and navigable rivers, access to open water via the strategically important Black Sea, plenty of arable land, rich natural resources, and a very educated and hard-working society, Ukraine is also politically important as it neighbors the most advanced and oldest liberal democratic bloc in the world, the European Union.
From both domestic and geopolitical perspectives, Ukraine could be argued to be poised to become a significant liberal democratic ‘ally’ of the U.S., particularly for the Democratic Party, offering a more attractive alternative to Israel in the ‘special relationship’ category. However, the path to becoming a liberal bulwark has proven to be very difficult, bloody, and asymmetric for both Ukrainians and their supporters in the U.S.
However, Russia sees the prospect of Ukraine joining the EU and NATO as a critical national security threat to its existence and has made every effort to prevent this scenario from becoming a reality. Russian leader Vladimir Putin has long warned the West, especially the Democratic internationalists, about Russia’s ‘red line’ concerning the creation of a pro-U.S. bulwark on its western borders.
Before the eruption of the war in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Democrats, along with the neoconservative wing of the Republican party, had been adamant about pursuing the expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe close to the Russian borders. However, the wars in Georgia (in 2008) and Ukraine (2014–2022), launched by Russia, were intended to halt the U.S.-led NATO expansion in Russia’s immediate vicinity.
I argue that three major factors make the Ukraine as a highly attractive alternative to Israel as a strategic ally from the perspective of the Democratic party elites:
1. The U.S. withdrawal from the Middle-East and the strategic failure of nation-building agenda in the region
Over the past two decades, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has been marked by costly failures and a lack of substantial progress toward democratization.
The region has witnessed conflicts, regime changes, and persistent instability. Faced with these challenges, American policymakers have reevaluated their approach. The ambitious nation-building agenda, once championed as a means to foster democracy and stability, has now given way to a more pragmatic strategy.
Moreover, in response to the deepening securitization of the Middle East, particularly driven by major regional allies of the U.S., American foreign policy has undergone a strategic recalibration that no longer includes democracy promotion in the region.
The fear of perpetual instability through intervention has shifted priorities. Instead of solely focusing on democratization efforts, policymakers now emphasize security considerations.
This shift of strategy aims to address immediate threats while positioning the United States for long-term challenges posed by rising powers like China and Russia. By prioritizing security over nation-building, the U.S. hopes to strike a delicate balance between stability and strategic interests in an ever-evolving global landscape.
2. Shifting focus to Russia and China as the peer competitors to the U.S in the rising multipolar world order
From the Democratic party’s POV, just as the security of Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines is crucial for the U.S. strategy vis-a-vis China, the Baltic states, Sweden, Finland, and Ukraine are equally important to U.S. strategists and demand similar attention and strategic ‘democratic’ investment.
In the stated foreign policy doctrine of the Democratic Party, namely ‘democracy vs. autocracy,’ it is crucial for the U.S. not only to help maintain the democratic nature of its close allies against the encroachment of illiberalism but also, from a ‘great power politics’ perspective, to enhance its military power projection when engaged in competition with Russia and China, respectively.
So a special U.S. ally in the form of a democratic Ukraine could be of strategic use to the Democrats.
3. Israel’s Illiberal Shift and U.S. Disengagement
The Israeli government’s recent shift toward illiberal policies has raised deep concerns among Democrats. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s deeply polarizing actions have strained the longstanding and controversial “special relationship” between the U.S. and Israel.
As Israel rejects and ignores the democratic norms and policies that the U.S. has been urging Israel to observe (e.g., the two-state solution, independent judiciary, halting Israeli settlers from seizing Palestinian lands and properties, and the brutal treatment of Gazans), Democrats find themselves increasingly upset with Netanyahu’s leadership.
Moreover, concerning the political influence of the Israeli lobby in the U.S., there is a growing awareness in America that blind support for Israeli actions in the Middle East may not be in the best interests of American domestic politics.
Most Jews in America now identify with the Democratic Party and contribute financially to the party’s causes. Therefore, the national security elites — whom I believe are mostly Democratic or Democratic-leaning in terms of political affiliation — are not concerned about the possibility of a Jewish political revolt in America rebelling against the Democratic party’s geopolitical priorities.
In a broader sense, Israel’s shift toward illiberalism and right-wing authoritarianism has prompted the U.S. to recalibrate its Middle East policies in response to developments in the nation. Israel is not only becoming politically illiberal but also creating obstacles for U.S. policymakers by fostering an ideologically hostile and anti-American environment in the region.
Consequently, Israel is demonstrating itself more as a ‘strategic liability’ that incessantly undermines U.S. foreign policy objectives in the Middle East, rather than working with its ally to ensure a more stable and democratic region.
What’s Next?
In recent years, Ukraine has emerged as a more appealing strategic ally for the United States compared to Israel. While the U.S. has maintained a longstanding special relationship with Israel, concerns over Israel’s illiberal policies and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership have caused friction.
In contrast, Ukraine’s geopolitical significance, democratic aspirations, and role as a buffer against Russian expansion have garnered increased attention. As the U.S. navigates global challenges, including the rise of China, Ukraine’s position as a valuable partner in the region is gaining prominence.
The world order is rapidly changing, evolving into a multipolar structure where the U.S., China, and Russia essentially divide the world into three major blocs.
In recent years, Democrats appear to be increasingly aware of the transformative changes occurring in the world order and are thus inclined to discard politics and policies that are no longer useful to them, such as nation-building in the Middle East.
Judging by this trajectory, it wouldn’t be a shocking development to see Ukraine replacing Israel as America’s next most special ally on the world stage.
Republicans and the MAGA faction are certainly against it and still want the U.S. to blindly support Israeli actions and policies in the region.
But Israel seems does not appear to be flinching, as its behaviors in the Middle East signify that they prefer a ‘pariah status’ to being a special ally of the U.S. in the region.
There’s one thing that Israel wants the most from the U.S.: it is called “the Abraham Accord,” which is the last major ‘favor’ that the U.S. is going to do for Israel before departing the region and bidding farewell to the ‘special relationship’ that it is believed to have had with Israel at heavy costs in both domestic and foreign policy domains for the U.S. over the past few decades.
