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Jewish World Review August 7, 2009 / 17 Menachem- Av 5769 Israel and the ‘realists’ By Caroline B. Glick
Although Kaplan's piece adds nothing new to the current pile-on against
Israel, it is a relatively concise summary of the so-called "realist" view
of Israel and for that reason it is worth considering his arguments. As
Kaplan sees things, the US's experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan in the
eight years since the Sept. 11 attacks have transformed America's interests
and goals in the Middle East. The frustrations in Afghanistan and the combat
losses in Iraq have rendered "the search for stability, rather than
democracy, paramount, and created a climate in which interests are to be
valued far more than friends."
The notion that friends and interests may actually not be in conflict is
roundly rejected by Kaplan, particularly in the case of Israel. Kaplan gives
three reasons that the US's alliance with Israel no longer serves its
interests. First, he repeats the familiar "realist" claim that the only way
for the US to build good relations with the Muslim world is by distancing
itself from Israel.
Second, he argues that after Sept. 11, the US was wrong to believe that it
shares common interests with Israel. Whereas Israel's interests would be
served by preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, in Kaplan's view,
the US can afford to look on a nuclear-armed Iran with indifference. On the
other hand, an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear installations can place US
forces in Iraq at risk. Hence, as far as Kaplan is concerned, US interests
are best served by allowing Iran to become a nuclear power and preventing
Israel from doing anything to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
The third reason that Kaplan views Israel as a strategic liability to the US
in this new era of "realism" is because it is no longer a strong military
power. As he put it, Israel's failure to defeat Hizbullah and Hamas in its
recent wars in Lebanon and Gaza "reduced its appeal."
Like his anti-Israel colleagues in Washington, Kaplan claims that his is a
"realist" approach to the region. But this is untrue. The realist foreign
policy doctrine assumes that all nations' foreign policies reflect their
national interests rather than their sentiments. That is, in determining
their foreign policies, states are not motivated by their passions, but by
rational choice.
Beginning in the first Bush administration, Arabists like former US
secretary of state James Baker began co-opting the realist label. In so
doing, they sought to obfuscate their sentimental pro-Arab views of Israel
behind the veneer of rational choice. Specifically, they popularized the
anti-realist notion that due to their emotional rejection of Israel, Arab
and Muslim states will not support America unless it puts the screws in
Israel.
The realist foreign policy doctrine rejects this notion out of hand. Given
its assertion that states base their foreign policies on unsentimental
assessments of their national interests, true realists would argue that
there is no rational bar to enemy states sharing the same allies if doing so
advances their national interests. And they would be correct. Indeed,
examples of such behavior abound.
India and Pakistan are enemies and yet they both ardently seek closer ties
with the US. So too, China has massively expanded its ties to the US since
1971 despite US sponsorship of Taiwan.
The same is also the case with the Arabs and Israel. Contrary to the
Arabists' impassioned claims, the waxing and waning of America's relations
with Arab states over the years has borne little to no relation to the state
of America's relations with Israel.
The US and the Saudis have been strategic allies for upwards of seventy
years. These ties have been based on their mutual interest in the free flow
of Saudi oil. US-Saudi ties have been consistently maintained regardless of
the vicissitudes of Washington's views of Jerusalem, or even of Washington's
views of Saudi Arabia.
In 1972, when Egyptian president Anwar Sadat kicked the Soviet military out
of Egypt and began moving Egypt towards the US, the US was rapidly expanding
its strategic ties to Israel. Sadat's decision to switch Cold War camps was
a product of his own assessment of Egypt's national interests.
In December 2003, Libya paved the way to renewing its diplomatic relations
with the US by agreeing to disarm from its illicit nuclear program. Libya's
action came at a time of unprecedentedly warm US-Israel relations. Libyan
dictator Muammar Khadafi made his move because of the US invasion of Iraq,
not because of US ties to Israel.
All of these examples disprove the Arabists' most ardently held conviction.
And the fact that this conviction is so easily refuted raises the question
of why the belief that the US's alliance with Israel harms its ability to
maintain and expand its alliances with Muslim and Arab states holds such
currency today. The fact that US President Barack Obama and his senior
foreign policy advisors are themselves Arabists no doubt is a significant
contributing factor to the increased popularity of fake realism. But their
hostility towards Israel doesn't explain how Israel's adversaries continue
to successfully hide their Arabist ideology behind the "realist" label.
The sad truth is that for the past sixteen years, the greatest champion of
the view that Israel is a strategic liability rather than a strategic asset
for the US and that the US gains more from a weak Israel than a strong
Israel has been Israel itself. Successive governments in Jerusalem from the
Rabin-Peres government to the Barak, Sharon and Olmert governments all
embraced the Arabist view that regional stability and hence Israeli security
is enhanced by a weakened Israel. Ehud Olmert's much-derided 2005 assertion
that "We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are
tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies," was simply a
whiney affirmation of Israel's leaders' embrace of the Arabist worldview.
Kaplan cited Israel's incompetent handling of the war with Hizbullah in 2006
and its bungling of the campaign against Hamas in Gaza this past December
and January as proof of the Arabist claim that it is a strategic burden.
What he failed to recognize was that the Olmert government made a clear
decision not to win those wars. Doing so would have exposed as folly the
government's central assertion that Israel is better off being weak than
strong. In light of this, it is obvious that the Arabist desire to see
Israel weakened is not supported by Israel's performance in Lebanon and
Gaza. Israel's performance in Lebanon and Gaza was a consequence of its
leaders' adoption of the Arabist worldview. Had they rejected it, the
results of those wars would likely have been much different.
So too, Israel's leaders' adoption of the Arabist view caused the
Rabin-Peres government to empower and legitimize terrorists from Fatah and
the PLO in the 1993 Oslo accord. It similarly convinced the Barak government
to surrender of south Lebanon to Hizbullah in 2000, and it persuaded the
Sharon government to surrender of Gaza to Hamas in 2005. In each case,
buying into the Arabist view that stability is enhanced through Israeli
weakness rather than strength, Israel exacerbated regional instability and
imperiled its own citizens by empowering its enemies at its own expense.
Most devastatingly, the Sharon and Olmert governments imperiled Israel's
very survival by deciding from 2003 through 2008 to trust the US, Europe and
the UN to prevent Iran from acquiring the means to destroy the Jewish state.
Today with Iran on the cusp of a nuclear arsenal, Fatah openly calling for a
renewal of the Palestinian jihad against Israel, Hizbullah pointing its
expanded missile arsenal at Tel Aviv and Dimona, and the Obama
administration, with the help of an ever-expanding chorus of foreign policy
"realists" advocating full-blown appeasement of both Iran and the
Palestinians at Israel's expense, it is clear that the time has come for
Israel to end the Arabist charade. The time has come for Israel to stop
being an engine of its own demise.
The Netanyahu government has a clear choice before it. On the one hand, it
has Defense Minister Ehud Barak calling for business as usual. This week
Barak recommended that Israel preemptively surrender to the Obama
administration and accept its demand that Israel capitulate to Fatah. On the
other hand, Ministers Yuli Edelstein and Yisrael Katz pointed out that at
its leadership conclave in Bethlehem, Fatah exposed itself as an implacable
enemy of Israel. Both Edelstein and Katz demanded that the government stop
pretending Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is a moderate who is interested in
peace and expose him for the fraud that he is.
Edelstein and Katz are right. It is vital for Israel to stop catering its
foreign policy rhetoric to the preferences of its Arabist camp. Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu must courageously acknowledge that Fatah remains
a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel's violent demise. But more
important than harsh words about Fatah are actions against Iran. With a
growing international consensus that Iran has passed the point of no return
on its nuclear program and will produce nuclear bombs in the next six to
twelve months if left to its own devices, it is clear that as far as Iran is
concerned, words are of no value today. Only actions count.
Israel's willingness and capacity to effectively strike Iran's nuclear
installations will be the ultimate proof that Arabists like Kaplan are wrong
to castigate Israel as a strategic burden. By freeing itself, the region and
the world from the threat of a nuclear armed Iran, Israel will strike a blow
not only at Iran's ability to wipe it off the map, but at the threefold
contentions of the false realists.
An Israeli strike would prevent a regional nuclear arms race by freeing Arab
states of the need to develop their own nuclear arsenals and so prove that a
strong Israel enhances regional stability. An Israeli strike will rebuild
Israel's eroded deterrent posture and put paid the notion that Israel is no
longer a military power to be reckoned with. And the destruction of Iran's
nuclear capacity will weaken Iran's military posture throughout the region
and so weaken its terror proxies from Iraq to Lebanon to Gaza to
Afghanistan. In short, a successful Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear
installations will demonstrate to real rather than fake realists that a
strong Israel is indispensible to regional stability and international
security.
In 1995, Kaplan published a critical book about the Arabist elite at the
State Department in which he condemned their simplistic foreign policy
outlook. No doubt an Israeli body-blow to the Arabist worldview will compel
Kaplan and other new members of the anti-Israel camp to reconsider their
views.
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JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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