Richard Baehr:The Middle East Realists: Old and New
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=10913
Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago like to call themselves foreign policy realists. Realists are, in their minds, people who can assess international situations without any ideological blinders or bias. Walt and Mearsheimer co-authored “The Israel Lobby,” originally as a lengthy article in the London Review of Books in 2006, and then as a much longer book version in 2007. In both the article and book, the professors argued that America’s very tight relationship with Israel was strategically unsound for the United States. The authors claimed that the closeness between the two countries was a product of the behavior of the Congress of the United States, which they believe had been unduly influenced by the political power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other supporters of the Jewish state, such as evangelical Christians.
In less academic, and blunter terms, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman welcomed Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his address to a joint session of Congress in 2011, writing that the applause for Netanyahu reflected the fact that the Congress was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”
Of course, Friedman had been out ahead of Walt and Mearsheimer, with a similar themed comment in a column in The New York Times in February 5, 2004:
”Israel’s prime minister has had George Bush under house arrest in the Oval Office. Mr. Sharon has Mr. Arafat surrounded by tanks, and Mr. Bush surrounded by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists, by a vice president, Dick Cheney, who’s ready to do whatever Mr. Sharon dictates, and by political handlers telling the president not to put any pressure on Israel in an election year all conspiring to make sure the president does nothing.”
Friedman styles himself as an “eminence grise,” sitting high up in New York Times land, a platform from where he can speak as an equal with the likes of academic intellectuals such as Mearsheimer and Walt, but also foreign leaders too numerous to name, and American presidents, all of whom understand the significance of receiving a favorable column from Tom Friedman. As a presumably great strategic thinker and realist like Walt and Mearsheimer, Friedman has come to the same conclusions as the professors on where America’s strategic interests lie in the Middle East. America must challenge Israel and force a two-state solution with the Palestinians. This is in Israel’s interests as well, of course, since the absence of peace creates so much ill will for both Israel and its ally America among other nations in the region and around the world. Friedman always claims he has Israel’s real interests at heart, while their elected government digs deeper holes. Clearly, if Israel were only to be more forthcoming, the deal with the Palestinians could finally get done this time (next time, some time, whenever…).
America, according to Friedman and the Israel Lobby professors should also ignore Israeli concerns and push forward with a nuclear deal with Iran. A successful negotiation, even one which leaves Iran with nuclear breakout capability in a few months, is certain to change Iran’s pattern of international behavior, as it becomes a regular member of the “community of nations” and gets back to enjoying more robust economic relations with many other nations. Iranian aid to Hezbollah, Hamas, Assad in Syria, Yemeni Shiite rebel groups, Iraqi Shiites, all of these aggressive efforts will soften or go away once Iran becomes America’s latest and greatest strategic partner.
Friedman has been one of the great lap dogs for the Obama administration, and his loyalty cost the president very little. In his case, the president revealed that he reads Friedman’s columns, and then followed it up by inviting Friedman into the Oval Office to offer up his invaluable insights. With all that respect and notoriety, nothing could possibly stop the love coming from the Times columnist for everything Obama. Friedman’s latest service to President Barack Obama was to trash the critics of the president’s Iran policy:
”Never have I seen Israel and America’s core Arab allies working more in concert to stymie a major foreign policy initiative of a sitting U.S. president, and never have I seen more lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans — more willing to take Israel’s side against their own president’s. I’m certain this comes less from any careful consideration of the facts and more from a growing tendency by many American lawmakers to do whatever the Israel lobby asks them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and campaign donations. “
Friedman and Walt and Mearsheimer are locked into an old and predictable thesis that America’s real strategic interest in the region is securing its oil supplies, and cozying up with the oil-rich nations of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. Improving relations with Iran fosters a new climate where American is not so isolated as a result of its support for Israel. And if Israel and the Palestinians make peace, there will be a warm glow everywhere, improving the atmospherics to address other regional issues.
There is however a new realism which has overtaken some of those countries who have been patronized by the American realists for decades. For years, many oil rich nations subsidized the efforts of Islamists in schools, universities, mosques, and in politics. They believed they had bought them off to a large extent in their own countries, but could tip the scales against Israel by aiding Hamas and could satisfy the aggressive demands for Islamist expansion in other places.
The new realism, demonstrated most prominently by Egypt, but also by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all Sunni Arab states, is that Iran, in particular a nuclear Iran, will become more assertive, not less, and represents the biggest threat to their own regimes. Sunni Islamists are also a threat to stability — witness Iraq, Libya, Syria, the Sinai in Egypt. Increasingly, Turkey and Qatar are now grouped with Iran as advancing an agenda that is unhelpful to the Saudis, Egypt, and the UAE. Saudi Arabia and Egypt will not vote with Israel at the United Nations, and they will continue to sign onto the usual collection of resolutions condemning Israeli human rights violations against the Palestinians. But it is Egypt that has gone to war with jihadists in Sinai, and effectively shut its border with Gaza. Egyptian soldiers and civilians are being murdered by Hamas and other allies of the Muslim Brotherhood. Defeating this threat is as important to Egypt, as defeating Hamas is for Israel.
Caroline Glick makes the argument this way:
”But the alliance that emerged this summer between Israel and Egypt, with the participation of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, is also a highly significant strategic development. For the first time, a major regional power is basing its strategic posture on its understanding that the threats against itself and against Israel stem from the same sources and as a consequence, that the war against Israel is a war against it.
“Israelis have argued this case for years to their Arab neighbors as well as to the Americans and other Western states. But for multiple reasons, no one has ever been willing to accept this basic, obvious reality.
“As a consequence, everyone from the Americans to the Europeans to the Saudis long supported policies that empower jihadist forces against Israel.
“[Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah] Sissi is the first major leader to break with this consensus, as a result of actions Hamas took before and since his rise to power. He has brought Saudi Arabia and the UAE along on his intellectual journey.
“Sissi’s reassessment of the relationship between the war against Israel and the war against Egypt has had a profound impact on regional realities generally and on Israel’s strategic posture specifically.
”From Israel’s perspective, this is a watershed event.
“The government must take every possible action, in economic and military spheres, to ensure that Sissi benefits from his actions.”
Of course, the Obama administration seemed enthralled with the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, and both threatened and for a time carried out an aid suspension when Sissi and his supporters engineered the overthrow. There have been rumors, denied of course, that the White House has entertained similar notions for Israel due to its ”unconstructive” policy on settlement construction. More likely, the administration may be trying to intervene in a none too subtle fashion with the upcoming Israeli elections, to signal how much better relations would be between Israel and America if only Netanyahu were gone. If that is the White House strategy, it is not, to use a word, realistic. Most Israelis expect nothing but the back of the hand from Obama at this point, and Obama’s blessing will not enhance the candidates of the Left in the election.
A touch of realism would be welcome in the White House at this point. But it won’t happen because the self-styled realists are wearing the blinkers, and think they know all there is to know.
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