Rosner's Mailbox: A reader's response to 'A Walt-Mearsheimer reader: Three writers critique the Israel Lobby book'

This is a letter I received from Anthony Rusonik from Whitby, Ontario in response to my post 'A Walt-Mearsheimer reader: Three writers critique the Israel Lobby book'.

I purchased the November 2006 issue of Commentary because the cover caught my attention. It appeared the journal had published a rebuttal to the "Israel Lobby" thesis of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer.

Gabriel Schonfeld's critique disappointed, however, because it focused on evidence of a latent, albeit unintended, anti-Semitism in the Walt-Mearsheimer piece. Whether real or perceived, such anti-Semitism is not relevant to the real questions at hand:

What neither Schonfeld nor Walt-Mearsheimer provide is a dispassionate framework of analysis that addresses two fundamental questions:

(1) In what ways and to what extent does the United States support Israel?

(2) for what reason(s)?

Instead, Schonefeld squares off with Walt-Mearsheimer in much the same way complex American-Israeli relations have been reduced at the academic level since at least the days of Gerald Ford's 1975 reassessment.

On the one hand, pro-Israeli writers maintain that the U.S regards Israel as a strategic asset and a moral imperative and that the "Israel Lobby" is a critical component that reminds decision-makers of these facts. On the hand, anti-Israel writers maintain that "the Lobby" forces American support for Israel that undercuts U.S. interests in the region and at a substantial cost to U.S. taxpayers.

The ironic point to note is that both pro-Israel and anti-Israel writers like to exaggerate the influence of "the Lobby". This irony bewilders when we consider that because Walt and Mearsheimer don't themselves see Israel's moral and strategic appeal to U.S. statecraft, they fail to illustrate how U.S. statesmen themselves have regarded Israel in historical terms.

As a failed academic (I work in the technology sector now) with a keen interest in American-Israeli relations, the superficial nature of the debate and lack of investigative research fit for academic scholarship disturbs.

The ironic twist here is that back in the 1991 Gulf War days, when I completed my PhD, I based my theoretical framework work on a young Stephen Walt's dispassionate analysis of the nature of alliances as a feature of the international system.

One of the several drivers towards alliances Walt posited then from a broad and deep discussion of alliance history is that great powers are drawn to small ones so that the former can influence and restrain the behaviour of the latter.

If Walt and Mearsheimer would just look at the historical documentation and declassified archives - if they would research to form an opinion as opposed to the other way around - they would see some clear evidence in favour of Walt's earlier thesis.

This seems apparent if we consider that the United States did not make a make a major arms transfer to Israel until after the 1967 Six-Day War. The scope and speed of Israel's victory with French Mirages and British Centurions may have surprised the U.S., but Israel's strategic doctrine of preemption made a stronger impression. U.S. officials examined Israeli defense policy and concluded that preemption was a strategy favoured for at least three reasons:

* To address a growing arms imbalance with the Soviet-supplied Arabs
* To attempt a quick and decisive victory with a small but well-trained and motivated standing army and thus avoid reserve mobilization
* To address a Holocaust psyche that mandated transfer of battle from Israel's narrow frontiers to Arab territory at the earliest stages of war in the belief that all war was existential, a belief encouraged by Arab rhetoric

In short, Israel's defense policy at the time was predicated on the precise opposite logic of the deterrence policy it has practiced for the last 30 years. In short, such a policy was of grave concern to U.S. interests, and seen as a complication for regional stability and America's prime strategic interest in the Middle East: oil.

In short, the United States moved towards a de facto alliance with Israel with ample transfer of conventional weapons to move Israel to a position of deterrence.

This is illustrated in a pair of case studies for which there is now substantial declassified archival material that leaves little doubt about the objectives of American decision-makers:

1) The 1968 sale of F-4 Phantom jets
2) The 1973 Yom Kippur War airlift

Israel had attempted to purchase the long-range Phantoms from the U.S. for several years, settling for the lesser French Mirages only when it became clear the United States had no intention of arming Israel unless and until Soviet supply of Egypt and Syria did not escalate.

From Israel's perspective, the imbalance had already tilted decisively in the Arabs' favour on the eve of the Six-Day War. Yet, there is some speculation that Israeli planners, uncertain of the outcome of a preemptive strike, waited until their country had an atomic bomb prior to undertaking the risk. What is not speculative but evident is that the Johnson administration made repeated efforts to condition the Phantom sale on Israel's signature of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and U.S. inspections of the Dimona plant. Israel declined on both accounts. However, once the Phantoms arrived in Israel - stripped of their capability to carry nuclear weapons - Israel first voiced its now familiar policy of "deliberate ambiguity," stating that it would not be "the first in the region to introduce nuclear weapons."

By 1973, Israeli air superiority provided by the Phantoms combined with forward deployments in the Syrian Golan, Jordanian West Bank and Egyptian Sinai, meant that its leaders could order the Israel Defense Forces to do what was unthinkable just six years earlier: sit and absorb an imminent Arab first strike to in a bid to win U.S. favour.

Eeven so, Israel fell on a double-edged sword: it underestimated Arab capabilities and overestimated what U.S. support could be derived by a policy of non-preemption. When on October 10 it seemed Syrian tanks would overrun the remnants of Israel's 7th Armored Brigade and pour into the Galilee, American satellites detected unusual activity in Zachariah, south-east of Tel Aviv.

President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger were not certain that the activity meant Israeli preparation to launch the nuclear-capable Jericho missiles stored in bunkers there, but neither did they wait to find out. On October 13, the famous U.S. airlift to Israel began in earnest.

As a convenient cover for Nixon, the Soviets had already initiated resupplies to Egypt and Syria. Somehow, the Israeli 7th Brigade stemmed the Syrian tide and Zachariah again grew quiet.

That Israel performed well with American weapons and remains a solid outpost of pro-Americanism with stable succession mechanisms - as opposed to the Shah's Iran - led to views of Israel as a strategic asset.

The fact is that Israel is of great strategic significance: It is a modest strategic asset to the United States rather than a strategic burden because U.S. diplomatic support and conventional arms transfers have moved Israel's strategic consensus from preemption to deterrence.

The fact that Israel remains a stable democracy with a strong lobby and shared Biblical values with the U.S. cements U.S. support for Israel, but does not underpin it.

One might argue therefore that - on its own terms - U.S. policy has been successful: There has not been a major Arab-Israeli war since 1973. As in 1973, Israel responded positively in 1991 to U.S. entreaties for restraint once U.S. Patriot anti-missile batteries were deployed in Tel Aviv to counter Iraqi SCUDS. As for the Palestinians, the cold fact is that their plight is not strategic, nor is a single Arab state of strategic consequence prepared to act in real terms on their behalf (What folly it would be to encourage the Palestinians to think that the path to their state is blocked by the "Israel Lobby").

As for Lebanon, its sole strategic relevance is as a proxy battleground.

No, Israel's one preemptive act of strategic consequence since 1967 was the attack on Iraq's Orsirak nuclear installation in 1981. Not even Walt and Mearsheimer argue that effort did not serve U.S. interests and save thousands of U.S. servicemen.

In any case, this was just supposed to be a brief letter as opposed to the outline of a research article. My hope here is that qualified scholars free of political agenda will plow through the archives and undertake a fresh examination of U.S.-Israel relations against standard theoretical precepts of international relations and alliance theory.