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The public debate on redefining US-Israeli relations

By Christos Ziogas, PhD in International Relations, Associate of ELISME

When John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote the article The Israel Lobby (London Review of Books, Vol. 28 No. 6 • 23 March 2006, pp. 3-12) and then published the well-known book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, they caused a storm of reactions in the political and academic establishment of the United States as well as in American-Jewish organizations. The main issue of both texts focused on the role and influence that the Jewish lobby exerts in the formulation and implementation of American foreign policy.

Using in their analysis the theoretical tools of political realism, the dominant theory of International Relations, they concluded that the US's unconditional support for the state of Israel, especially after the end of the Cold War, undermines American interests in the Middle East, and beyond. Their approach was based on the rational behavior that states follow or should follow within the anarchic international system. According to this logic, before any action, states always calculate the potential cost or benefit in order to achieve their objective goal, which is to serve their national interests.

It is a fact that during the Cold War, Israel provided truly valuable geopolitical services to the United States, in its multi-level competition with the Soviet Union, to the extent that it contributed to Washington's pursuit of strategic control of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. Israel's confrontation with the Arab states and the victorious wars strengthened the US position in the region, while simultaneously limiting the role of the Soviet Union, leading to a revision of the alliance choices of important Arab states in the region, as happened with Jordan after 1967 and with Egypt after 1973.

The two leading theorists of International Relations claimed that after the end of the Cold War, the American policy of overt diplomatic, economic and military support for Israel is not justified, because it does not serve the interests of the United States. They consider the continuation of this policy irrational and unfeasible in the long term. After the end of the Cold War, the United States dominated the international system politically, economically, ideologically and militarily, constituting the only country that, even today, can exercise a policy of planetary dimensions.

Israel, due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, was not so necessary in American plans. The influence of Jewish organizations in Washington was intended to cover the deficit of strategic necessity in the process of shaping American foreign policy. Another leader of internationalist thought, Kenneth Waltz -who with his work contributed to the scientific completeness of the cognitive subject, demonstrating the way in which the structure of the international system interacts with state actors- argued that a state for certain reasons may follow an irrational foreign policy, but not in the long term and not without cost.

The United States is currently in a transitional state. Having squandered much of its diplomatic, economic, military, and moral advantage, especially since September 11, 2001, it cannot afford to make irrational choices even on what are, for it, minor strategic issues. Continuing actions and policies whose potential outcomes are not subjected to the pain of cost/benefit calculations are not realistic choices for the United States in its attempt to remain the dominant actor in the anarchic and competitive international system. Within this context, continued American aid to Israel will potentially have an ever-increasing cost for the United States.

The crisis in US-Israeli relations, over the Iranian nuclear program, is a consequence of the challenges that US diplomacy now faces from the other Great Powers. Competition with China and Russia and Iran's objectively significant position in regional relations will probably differentiate to some extent for the State Department de facto and the prioritization of the special relationship with Israel.

Gradually, in the mechanisms of planning and exercising American strategic thinking, Jewish organizations will spend more time, money and connections to continue Washington's support for Tel Aviv, which in the medium term will become an increasingly difficult and intolerable process for the American political system. Prime Minister Netanyahu's recent inelegant visit to America, bypassing President Obama, reflects a new reality.
It was also published in New Politics.