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Israeli Fallout
by Eric L. Lewis
SEPT. 13, 2012
It should go without saying,
but apparently does not, that the tragic crisis unfolding in the Middle East calls for sober statesmanship rather than
political posturing. The jihadist murder of the American ambassador to a newly
liberated Libya; the carnage
unleashed by the Assad regime on the Syrian people; the emergence of a Muslim
Brotherhood regime in Egypt;
the conundrum of Iranian nuclear ambitions — the region presents decades worth
of complex challenges telescoped into real time.
Responding to these
challenges, Mitt Romney mixes crude political theater with neocon bromides.
Attacking President Obama for supposedly apologizing to Islamic
radicals, he appears unable or
unwilling to understand the responsibilities of a president trying to deal with
a volatile situation while Americans are in harm’s way.
Romney shows no respect for
diplomacy in general. He declares that “God did not create this country to be a
nation of followers” and maintains that “in an American century, America leads
the free world.” His surrogates repeatedly
mock President Obama’s “apology tour” and his unfortunate “leading from behind”
formulation on Libya.
His principal advisers, John Bolton and Dan Senor, are part of a neocon hard
core that opposes any policy that would diminish American sovereignty or
freedom of action. Yet faced with the vexing issue of whether the Middle East
should be further roiled by an Israeli attack on Iran in an attempt to stop its
nuclear program, Romney is willing to outsource that decision to Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Speaking earlier this week, Netanyahu said that if the Obama administration
was unwilling to set fixed red lines that Iran
could not cross, it “has no ‘moral right’ to restrain Israel from taking military action
of its own.” The fundamental moral and political issue here, however, is
whether it is the sovereign prerogative of the United States to make the decision
of whether to start a regional war, a war that will certainly require American
resources and may well require American troops to finish.
The threat to international
security posed by the Iranian nuclear program should not be underestimated and
the Obama administration takes the threat seriously. It continues to keep all
options on the table, but believes that there is additional time for sanctions
to work. Romney is apparently prepared to delegate to Netanyahu the decision to
start a conflict that the United States military believes is, at best,
premature, that is unlikely to be fully effective, that will send oil prices
skyrocketing, that will further destabilize Lebanon and Syria (and possibly the
shaky governments in Libya and Egypt), and that will be likely to consolidate
domestic support for a deeply unpopular Iranian regime. But the question in the
presidential campaign is not whether attacking Iran now or later is a good idea,
but whether a decision with enormous geo-strategic consequences should be made
by the American president or by the leader of an ally dependent upon American
power.
Strong, even passionate,
supporters of Israel
should be troubled by the prospect of an Israeli government not only ignoring
the policy choices of its powerful ally but also willing to intrude into
American domestic politics in an attempt to influence or override the
president’s foreign policy. Imagine, for example, that South Korea decided it was going to invade North Korea to destroy its nuclear facilities,
potentially triggering a war on the Korean
Peninsula that could bring in China and
possibly other countries in the region. Indeed, South Korea could take its policy
argument directly from Mitt Romney’s Web site:
A nuclear weapons capability
in the hands of an unpredictable dictatorship with unknown leadership and an
unclear chain of command poses a direct threat to U.S. forces on the Korean
Peninsula and elsewhere in East Asia, threatens our close allies South Korea
and Japan, destabilizes the entire Pacific region, and could lead to the
illicit transfer of a nuclear device to another rogue nation or a terrorist
group.
But Mitt Romney is not
suggesting an attack on Pyongyang and he
certainly is not offering carte blanche to Seoul.
Analogous situations would be
equally untenable. If India
decided that, once and for all, it refused to live under the threat of an
unstable and nuclear-armed Pakistan
and intended to invade, we would never tell them it was up to them. If Taiwan had feared an attack from China across the Formosa
Strait during the early 1970s, would Richard Nixon and Henry
Kissinger have told them it was their call rather than ours whether to launch a
surprise attack? Even to put the question shows the absurdity of a superpower’s
acquiescing to allies on critical questions of war and peace in a nuclear age.
To be sure, Israel is a special ally, but that does not
entitle it to make the decision on matters where United States interest and power
are inextricably and centrally engaged. It is inconceivable that the United States
would permit another ally dependent on American funds and American defense
systems to take such a decision unilaterally. It is also inconceivable that we
would permit another foreign government to intervene directly and forcefully in
our political process to garner popular support for its policies over the
objections of the administration.
Yet senior Israeli officials
take the view that the Israeli government believes it can defy American wishes
and bypass the president. According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, “Ehud Barak says that if Israel were to act now against U.S. wishes, the U.S. Congress would still favor
Israel over Iran.”Michael
Oren, Israel’s ambassador to
Washington, who was appointed by Netanyahu,
says “the American people and Congress would support Israel
right now if it were engaged in a war with Iran.” Netanyahu and Obama appear
to recognize that airing their toxic relationship publicly is to neither one’s
advantage and both have been walking back stories that Obama refused to meet before
the approaching United Nations meetings in New York. They have both called attention to the hourlong telephone conversation they
had this week. Attitudes in Israel are fluid, and Defense Minister Barak appears to have moved against an imminent attack (or maybe he hasn’t — as I said, the situation is fluid), but it
is remarkable that senior officials of a foreign government would suggest that
the president’s judgments could be bypassed and foreign policy should be
subject to Congressional or popular choice.
The Romney campaign seems to
think that all of this is just fine. “If Israel
has to take action on its own, in order to stop Iran from developing that
capability, the governor would respect that decision,” says Dan Senor, Romney’s senior national security adviser and
someone widely tapped as a future national security adviser in a Romney
administration. Romney expresses a similar view, stating blandly, “Prime
Minister Netanyahu always has to do what he feels is in the best interests of
his own nation.” In his convention address, he accused President Obama of
threatening to throw Israel
“under the bus.” Apparently, Romney thinks Israel should drive the regional bus, leaving
the United States
to deal with any crashes.
It is American policy to
support Israel’s right to
exist within secure borders, and the United States has supported its
ally with billions of dollars and sophisticated weaponry. That support
should earn reciprocal cooperation and respect for American policy from its
ally, not to mention non-interference in its domestic politics.
Despite all his talk about
American power and sovereignty, Mitt Romney seems willing to let someone else
decide whether to start what may be the first potential regional war of the new
“American century.” That is not real leadership; it is dangerous pandering and
a strong indication of a prospective president without a genuine foreign policy
compass. Once again, we are left with the question of whether Romney means what
he is saying and whether he would govern sensibly. But as we have learned
to our great detriment over the last decade, the Middle
East is no place for loose talk or lazy thinking.
Eric Lewis is
a partner at Lewis Baach PLLC in Washington.
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