U.S. President Barack Obama is
making his first visit to Israel as president. The visit comes in the wake of
his re-election and inauguration to a second term and the formation of a new
Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Normally, summits
between Israel and the United States are filled with foreign policy issues on
both sides, and there will be many discussed at this meeting, including Iran,
Syria and Egypt. But this summit takes place in an interesting climate, because
both the Americans and Israelis are less interested in foreign and security
matters than they are in their respective domestic issues.
In the United States, the
political crisis over the federal budget and the struggle to grow the economy
and reduce unemployment has dominated the president's and the country's
attention. The Israeli elections turned on domestic issues, ranging from whether
the ultra-Orthodox would be required to serve in Israel Defense Forces, as
other citizens are, to a growing controversy over economic inequality in
Israel.
Inwardness is a cyclic norm in
most countries. Foreign policy does not always dominate the agenda and
periodically it becomes less important. What is interesting is at this point,
while Israelis continue to express concern about foreign policy, they are most
passionate on divisive internal social issues. Similarly, although there
continues to be a war in Afghanistan, the American public is heavily focused on
economic issues. Under these circumstances the interesting question is not what
Obama and Netanyahu will talk about but whether what they discuss will matter
much.
Washington's New Strategy
For the United States, the
focus on domestic affairs is compounded by an emerging strategic shift in how
the United States deals with the world. After more than a decade of being
focused on the Islamic world and moving aggressively to try to control threats
in the region militarily, the United States is moving toward a different
stance. The bar for military intervention has been raised. Therefore, the
United States has, in spite of recent statements, not militarily committed
itself to the Syrian crisis, and when the French intervened in Mali the United
States played a supporting role. The intervention in Libya, where France and
the United Kingdom drew the United States into the action, was the first
manifestation of Washington's strategic re-evaluation. The desire to reduce
military engagement in the region was not the result of Libya. That desire was
there from the U.S. experience in Iraq and was the realization that the
disposal of an unsavory regime does not necessarily -- or even very often --
result in a better regime. Even the relative success of the intervention in
Libya drove home the point that every intervention has both unintended
consequences and unanticipated costs.
The United States' new stance
ought to frighten the Israelis. In Israel's grand strategy, the United States
is the ultimate guarantor of its national security and underwrites a portion of
its national defense. If the United States becomes less inclined to involve
itself in regional adventures, the question is whether the guarantees implicit
in the relationship still stand. The issue is not whether the United States
would intervene to protect Israel's existence; save from a nuclear-armed Iran,
there is no existential threat to Israel's national interest. Rather, the
question is whether the United States is prepared to continue shaping the
dynamics of the region in areas where Israel lacks political influence and is
not able to exert military control. Israel wants a division of labor in the
region, where it influences its immediate neighbors while the United States
manages more distant issues. To put it differently, the Israelis' understanding
of the American role is to control events that endanger Israel and American
interests under the assumption that Israeli and American interests are
identical. The idea that they are always identical has never been as true as
politicians on both sides have claimed, but more important, the difficulties of
controlling the environment have increased dramatically for both sides.
Israel's Difficulties
The problem for Israel at this
point is that it is not able to do very much in the area that is its
responsibility. For example, after the relationship with the United States, the
second-most important strategic foundation for Israel is its relationship --
and peace treaty -- with Egypt. Following the fall of Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak, the fear was that Egypt might abrogate the peace treaty, reopening at
some distant point the possibility of conventional war. But the most shocking
thing to Israel was how little control it actually had over events in Egypt and
the future of its ties to Egypt. With good relations between Israel and the
Egyptian military and with the military still powerful, the treaty has thus far
survived. But the power of the military will not be the sole factor in the
long-term sustainability of the treaty. Whether it survives or not ultimately
is not a matter that Israel has much control over.
The Israelis have always
assumed that the United States can control areas where they lack control. And
some Israelis have condemned the United States for not doing more to manage
events in Egypt. But the fact is that the United States also has few tools to control
the evolution of Egypt, apart from some aid to Egypt and its own relationship
with the Egyptian military. The first Israeli response is that the United
States should do something about problems confronting Israel. It may or may not
be in the American interest to do something in any particular case, but the
problem in this case is that although a hostile Egypt is not in the Americans'
interest, there is actually little the United States can do to control events
in Egypt.
The Syrian situation is even
more complex, with Israel not even certain what outcome is more desirable.
Syrian President Bashar al Assad is a known quantity to Israel. He is by no
means a friend, but his actions and his father's have always been in the
pursuit of their own interest and therefore have been predictable. The
opposition is an amorphous entity whose ability to govern is questionable and
that is shot through with Islamists who are at least organized and know what
they want. It is not clear that Israel wants al Assad to fall or to survive,
and in any case Israel is limited in what it could do even if it had a
preference. Both outcomes frighten the Israelis. Indeed, the hints of American
weapons shipments to the rebels at some point concern Israel as much as no
weapons shipments.
The Iranian situation is
equally complex. It is clear that the Israelis, despite rhetoric to the
contrary, will not act unilaterally against Iran's nuclear weapons. The risks
of failure are too high, and the consequences of Iranian retaliation against
fundamental American interests, such as the flow of oil through the Strait of
Hormuz, are too substantial. The American view is that an Iranian nuclear
weapon is not imminent and Iran's ultimate ability to build a deliverable
weapon is questionable. Therefore, regardless of what Israel wants, and given
the American doctrine of military involvement as a last resort when it
significantly affects U.S. interests, the Israelis will not be able to move the
United States to play its traditional role of assuming military burdens to
shape the region.
The Changing Relationship
There has therefore been a
very real if somewhat subtle shift in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Israel has
lost the ability, if it ever had it, to shape the behavior of countries on its
frontier. Egypt and Syria will do what they will do. At the same time, the
United States has lost the inclination to intervene militarily in the broader
regional conflict and has limited political tools. Countries like Saudi Arabia,
which might be inclined to align with U.S. strategy, find themselves in a
position of creating their own strategy and assuming the risks.
For the United States, there
are now more important issues than the Middle East, such as the domestic
economy. The United States is looking inward both because it has to and because
it has not done well in trying to shape the Islamic world. From the Israeli
point of view, for the moment, its national security is not at risk, and its
ability to control its security environment is limited, while its ability to
shape American responses in the region has deteriorated due to the shifting
American focus. It will continue to get aid that it no longer needs and will
continue to have military relations with the United States, particularly in
developing military technology. But for reasons having little to do with
Israel, Washington's attention is not focused on the region or at least not as
obsessively as it had been since 2001.
Therefore Israel has turned
inward by default. Frightened by events on its border, it realizes that it has
little control there and lacks clarity on what it wants. In the broader region,
Israel's ability to rely on American control has declined. Like Israel, the
United States has realized the limits and costs of such a strategy, and Israel
will not talk the United States out of it, as the case of Iran shows. In
addition, there is no immediate threat to Israel that it must respond to. It
is, by default, in a position of watching and waiting without being clear as to
what it wants to see. Therefore it should be no surprise that Israel, like the
United States, is focused on domestic affairs.
It also puts Israel in a
reactive position. The question of the Palestinians is always there. Israel's
policy, like most of its strategic policy, is to watch and wait. It has no
inclination to find a political solution because it cannot predict what the
consequences of either a solution or an attempt to find one would be. Its
policy is to cede the initiative to the Palestinians. Last month, there was
speculation that increased demonstrations in the West Bank could spark a third
intifada. There was not one. There might be another surge of rockets from Gaza,
or there might not be. That is a decision that Hamas will make.
Israel has turned politically
inward because its strategic environment has become not so much threatening as
beyond its control. Enemies cannot overwhelm it, nor can it control what its
enemies and potential enemies might do. Israel has lost the initiative and,
more important, it now knows it has lost the initiative. It has looked to the
United States to take the initiative, but on a much broader scale Washington
faces the same reality as Israel with less at stake and therefore less urgency.
Certainly, the Israelis would like to see the United States take more
aggressive stands and more risks, but they fully understand that the price and
dangers of aggressive stands in the region have grown out of control.
Therefore it is interesting to
wonder what Obama and Netanyahu will discuss. Surely Iran will come up and
Obama will say there is no present danger and no need to take risks. Netanyahu
will try to find some way to convince him that the United States should
undertake the burden at a time suitable to Israel. The United States will
decline the invitation.
This is not a strain in the
U.S.-Israeli relationship in the sense of anger and resentment, although those
exist on both sides. Rather it is like a marriage that continues out of habit
but whose foundation has withered. The foundation was the Israeli ability to
control events in its region and the guarantee that where the Israelis fail,
U.S. interests dictate that Washington will take action. Neither one has the
ability, the appetite or the political basis to maintain that relationship on
those terms. Obama has economics to worry about. Netanyahu has the conscription
of the ultra-Orthodox on his mind. National security remains an issue for both,
but their ability to manage it has declined dramatically.
In private I expect a sullen
courtesy and in public an enthusiastic friendship, much as an old, bored
married couple, not near a divorce, but far from where they were when they were
young. Neither party is what it once was; each suspects that it is the other's
fault. In the end, each has its own fate, linked by history to each other but
no longer united.
George Friedman, Stratfor, March 19, 2013
"A New Reality in U.S.- Israeli Relations is republished with permission of Stratfor."
"A New Reality in U.S.- Israeli Relations is republished with permission of Stratfor."
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