Oy, this list is a living time warp. Go back and take a second look. Out of 7 propositions, 5 apply pretty exclusively to the cold war period (1, 2, 4, 5 and 7). Each mentions Israel's usefulness for or against countries and movements that no longer exist: the Soviet Union, Racist South Africa, cold war client regimes and radical leftist nationalism. And secondarily describe useful functions that are no longer in short supply.
With the the cold war over, none of those propositions apply.
That leaves two points:
1) their air force is predominant in the region; and
2) and they assist us with intelligence.
I'd say 2 is pretty two-edged sword, since they are pretty aggressive about manipulating the data. It's also no longer a rarity in the post 9/11 world; it's hard to find a country today who doesn't cooperate with us in supplying security data. And 1 is kind of value neutral. I see how it's to Israel's advantage to have a great air force, but not to the US's. We couldn't even use it the 1991 Gulf War. And so far not even the maddest of the mad has even dreamed of using it in the prospective rematch now being dreamed up for 2003 -- an enterprise whose main problem is a desparate shortage of airfields and air space. If we can't make any use of their air power at times like these -- not even in our dreams -- then what good is it to us? We don't have to pay them to keep down Syria. They do that for free.
In short, this list is as embarassingly padded as a high school book report. What it really testifies to is the dearth of currently valid strategic reasons for continuing the relationship. The people who wrote it had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to come up with anything at all. And these are iron triangle professionals with time on their hands.
Saying that a relationship with Israel made sense during the Cold War is not at all the same as saying it makes sense now. In many cases, it means exactly the opposite.
Personally , I think lists like these are attempts to rationalize a relationship that is actually much less rational than that. Both opponents and supporters of Israel are uncomfortable with the idea that national interests aren't the main thing holding this thing up.
But heck, the same thing is true about imperialism or WWI. Much of that didn't make sense in bottom line terms either. It made sense in terms of a system of competitive nationalism -- a much less rational force.
IMHO, to understand America's Israel fixation you have to understand the recent historical formation of America's national identity. That plus the enduring truth that international entanglements are always very hard to break precisely because they always encrust over time with tenacious interest groups. There is nothing unusual about them outliving the circumstances in which they made sense.
Michael
On Tue, 14 May 2002, Doug Henwood wrote:
> <http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/usisrael.html>
>
> [...]
>
> There is a broad bipartisan consensus among policymakers that Israel
> has advanced U.S. interest in the Middle East and beyond.
>
> 1) Israel has successfully prevented victories by radical nationalist
> movements in Lebanon and Jordan, as well as in Palestine.
> 2) Israel has kept Syria, for many years an ally of the Soviet Union, in
check.
> 3) Israel's air force is predominant throughout the region.
> 4) Israel's frequent wars have provided battlefield testing for
> American arms, often against Soviet weapons.
> 5) 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.
> 6) Israel's intelligence service has assisted the U.S. in intelligence
> gathering and covert operations.
> 7) 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.
>
> [...]
>