On Sun, 7 Apr 2002, Seth Ackerman wrote:
> "Like Colombia and the Shah's Iran, Israel has since 1967 been regarded
> by the policymaking classes in the United States as an important
> strategic ally in its region. This was not always the case. During the
> 1956 Suez crisis, President Eisenhower ordered Israel and its European
> allies to reverse their attack on Egypt. At that time, Israel was seen
> differently - as a potentially disruptive and troublesome element in the
> Middle East. But after 1967, Israel's image in American eyes underwent a
> profound shift - not only in narrow strategic terms, but in the broader
> American political imagination.
Without questioning the broader argument about political imagination, I would like to make two amendments to the argument about how and when our military strategy actually shifted.
In the first place, local cold war politics probably played the biggest immediate role. The Soviet Union was the main backer of all of Israel's enemies. When Israel spectacularly kicked all their asses at once, this presented a golden opportunity in cold war terms to be on the other side of the Soviets and backing someone already proven to be a winner. In cold war terms, it seemed a no-brainer.
However, this is not the point that which strategy actually changed. That didn't happen until the Yom Kippur war of 1973. In the intervening years, all we did was sell them weapons on loan -- something that certainly aided Israel, but which doesn't exactly count as aid on our part in the sense that we were sacrificing anything. We were making a profit and muscling out the French arms dealers who had been Israel's main suppliers hitherto. All we lost was our inhibitions, which arms dealers never have many of.
1973 was the real turning point where opportunism began to become transformed into a commitment and a strategy. But by this point Nasser had been dead three years, and Sadat was just barely hanging on -- in fact, he launched the war in part to solidify his rule by regaining the canal. And it was a desparate gamble, because the Soviets were refusing to give him the weapons he needed to do it, thanks to detente. In fury (and in a move that increased his popularity), he threw the Soviets out. But that still left him up in a quandary because while we might be more than willing to take their place eventually, it wasn't going to happen immediately and now he had no supplier and he was facing rioting in the street. So his plan was essentially to cause enough trouble that the US and the Soviet Union would be forced to intervene.
It worked, after a string of dumbfoundingly unforeseen events on all sides that could very well have worked out differently. And ironically, considering the role detente had played in the beginning, it brought the Soviet Union and the US closer to direct confrontation than anywhere since the Cuban Missle Crisis. It was very scary. And this is what gave birth to the strategy: to make general war in the middle east (which meant Arab Israel war) impossible by sealing peace between Israel and Egypt. And buying that peace with money. It wasn't a strategy against Egypt. It was rather a strategy of strong alliance with Egypt, of permanently splitting Egypt off from the other frontline states. And Sadat was more than open to this. He was almost soliciting.
So the first real military aid in the sense of gift didn't come to Israel until the very midst of the 1973 war under the immediate impact of what looked at first like it could be a real loss on their part. The first monetary aid started in the aftermath of trying untangle it, just as Sadat had wanted. For retreating under the Sinai I and Sinai II treaties, Israel started getting 1.75 billion a year, (much which consisted of replacements promised in the heat of the war, which is what allowed it to throw in its reserves.) The whole approach was institutionalized in its final form in the Camp David accords in 1978, under which Israel started getting 3 billion a year.
But in some ways, Camp David is a brilliant misdirection of attention. The real point was to give 2 billion a year to Egypt, as well as a liberal visa regime allowing them to earn another half a billion a year from overseas remittances from Egyptians in the states. (New York suddenly at that time became full of of Egyptian chicken places and taxis drivers.) For reasons of domestic politics that by then by then had taken a form now familiar (and which are I'm sure your broader analysis of our political imagination goes far to explain) it wasn't politically possible to give such a huge amount of money to Egypt without giving more to Israel. But that didn't harm the strategic plan. It just reinforced the idea that Egypt shouldn't think about it. And since the rest of the Arab world couldn't think about it without her, that was that.
Because then the military component of America's strategic goals in the middle east were basically satisfied: if general war in the middle east was impossible -- and now it was -- then so was WWIII. And so was the most likely source of general upheaval in a place where we cared about the resources. (Local upheavals which result in a lot of people of suffering don't usually effect the calculations of geostrategists. Just those that change borders and clog sealanes.)
Naturally I'm simplifying. There were a ton of other cross currents at work as well. 1973 was also an enormous turning point is lots of other ways which are often attributed to 1967. And there were unintended effects (arguably Lebanon). But I just wanted to highlight the strategic underpinning that is often missed. During the cold war, avoiding general war in the Middle East was a real interest, and buying off Egypt was a way to stop it forever. And the continual payments to Egypt are what made necessary the parallel continuing payments to Israel. Other payments that were made on top of this were a matter of up and down politics (like the fight over the loan guarantees under Bush I). But this bedrock flow was for better of worse cementing a permanent peace.
Now whether, after the end of the cold war, and after much political evolution in the Middle East (much of which was made possible, for good or ill, by this foreclosing of the military option), this is still a good strategic plan is an open question.
Michael