American and Israeli Strategic Interests

Charles Hill — diplomat in residence and lecturer in International Studies at Yale University, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and former executive aide to Secretary of State George Shultz — posted a important comment at MESH (Middle East Strategy at Harvard) on “‘The Israel Lobby’ and the American Interest:”  

The Cold War threat to world order has been superseded by an ideologically radical Islamist movement which aims to disrupt, destroy and replace the international state system in the Middle East with Islamic rule — even as it seeks to gain footholds in Europe, Southeast Asia and elsewhere for further phases of its universalist cause, which may be traced at least as far back as the 1924 fall of the Ottoman Caliphate.

This movement is not a centrally-directed monolith, but its parts are nonetheless related in important ways, most notably in rejection of the basic elements of the international system:  the state as the fundamental unit of world order, international law and organization, universal human rights, the requirement to field a professional military, etc.

Today’s overriding strategic necessity for the United States is to defend, shore up, and extend the international state system all across the Middle East.  Israel, as a free, well-governed and good international state citizen is the linchpin of this strategy.

Every major problem in the region can be understood in this context.  The strategy must assist Pakistan to preserve itself from the Islamist challenge; continue to work with Afghanistan to consolidate its recently regained statehood; finish the duty of helping Iraq regain the legitimate statehood which it lost under Saddam Hussein; and act internationally to restore Lebanon to its rightful territorial integrity and independence as a state.  Iran, an Islamic republic that benefits from its membership in the international system even as it acts to defy, undermine, and endanger world order through its drive for nuclear weapons, presents a signal challenge to American strategy. . . .

In this context, Israel’s strategic importance to the United States is greater than it was during the Cold War.  Israel’s economy is a model for the region; its democracy, while probably not attainable any time soon by others in the region, is nonetheless an example of good governance, political transparency, and open intellectual exchange. And Israel’s military capacities, faced as it is with non-state, anti-state Islamist terrorist polities to its north and south, requires America’s utmost understanding and support.

Hill’s comment related to an essay entitled “Testing the ‘Israel Lobby’ Thesis” by Itamar Rabinovich, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States and former president of Tel Aviv University, in the March/April 2008 issue of The American Interest.

Harvey Sicherman, President of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, also posted an important comment:

Professors [such as Walt and Mearsheimer] will never bring [the U.S.-Israeli strategic relationship] down but failure to achieve common goals can injure it.  Today, the United States and Israel face common enemies in the region, so the strategic question is whether their collaboration on a strategic level can make a difference. . . .

During the Cold War, Egypt’s defection from the pro-Soviet coalition added measurably to Israeli and American interests but it did not prevent other mishaps whether in Lebanon or the Gulf. So it was worth doing but had less “bounce” on other conflicts (or even the Arab-Israeli one) than many hoped.

The military dimension may be more significant [than the diplomatic one]. As I noted in an earlier post on the Winograd Commission, both the United States and Israel must find a solution to the Hezbollah-style warfare whereby a well-trained force uses civilians as both targets and shields.  Iran and its allies are counting on this to defeat Western military superiority, just as Tehran is counting on a nuclear deterrent to guarantee that it will remain a sanctuary, no matter its support for terrorism.  On this issue, the strategic allies dare not fail.

All of the links in this post are worth perusing.