Should Israel be in Bush’s Back Seat?

Ever since Israel’s invasion of Lebanon last summer, I’ve been wondering about the changing nature of the U.S.-Israel relationship — it was plain in that conflict that the Bush Administration actually wanted Israel to go a lot further than Israel was ready to go in terms of committing forces to a battle to eliminate Hizballah. We’d all watched over a couple of years how Ariel Sharon had cynically walked back a hopelessly naive Bush and Rice from most traditional U.S. positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — much to the chagrin of Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft. But still, the expectation was that the U.S. ultimately needed to balance Israeli interests with those of those of its Arab allies (even if, under first Clinton and then Bush, that balance was increasingly, untenably tilted in favor of Israel). Israel’s neophyte leadership plunged into Lebanon, no doubt assuming that the U.S. would soon enough call a halt, allowing Israel to make a symbolic “deterrent” point without getting too mired (or bloodied) in a ground war in Lebanon. Instead, it found the U.S. essentially demanding that it finish the job. Where once the U.S. had acted as a restraint, now it had created a vacuum. And for an Israeli leadership weaned on the principle that the U.S. would always set the limits, this was a disaster.

It’s gotten worse. Now, you have a situation where Israel is actually able to resolve its differences with Syria, but the U.S. is warning it off talking to Damascus. And Washington is trying to engineer Palestinian political outcomes in ways that the Israeli security establishment recognizes as disastrous. Unfortunately for Israel, the game changed when the U.S. invaded Iraq, and became a direct player in a Quixotic bid to remodel the region on its own terms. That effort is doomed to fail, and the refusal of the Bush Administration to recognize the failure of its grand plan is only raising the cost of that failure.

So, while some like to believe that Israel is directing the U.S. Middle East policy, I think something quite different is afoot. Sure, a number of the people driving the agenda in Washington are in many cases neocons with strong roots in Likud, but they’re hardly representative of the Israeli political consensus. On the Israeli spectrum, those driving the policy in Washington are broadly akin to Benjamin “Newt” Netanyahu (and I say “Newt” because like Gingrich, he’s a discredited crank who only gets media attention by tossing out alarmist bon mots that headline writers seem to like — Newt: It’s World War III all over again; Bibi: It’s 1938 all over again…) Bibi can remain on the margins in Israel, because his ideological soul mates are running things in Washington. In other words, the hard-right position in Israel triumphs because it is dominant in Washington. This is not good for America, and nor is it good for Israel.

Hence my new op-ed in Haaretz, “Should Israel be in Bush’s Back Seat?. Extract:

When Ehud Olmert tells the world that President Bush’s invasion of Iraq has made the Middle East safer, at least he can fall back on the excuse that sarcasm is a mainstay of Israeli discourse. But when Olmert says Israel won’t talk to Syria as long as President Bush won’t, Israelis ought to be worried. More worried, still, when Condi Rice comes hawking fantasies about Israel concluding peace with the Palestinians while Hamas is swept away by Mahmoud Abbas (or is it Mohammed Dahlan?) playing a Palestinian Pinochet, while the likes of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt somehow contrive to reverse the train wreck of Iraq and scare Iran back into its shell.

Olmert appears to be outsourcing Israel’s strategic decision-making to a White House that has repeatedly demonstrated a catastrophic failure to grasp the realities of the region. Betting Israel’s security on the ability of the Bush crowd to transform the strategic landscape in the Middle East is rather like leaving a party in the backseat of an SUV whose driver is cradling a bottle of tequila and slurring his words as he rebuffs offers by more sober friends to take the wheel…

…The failure to impose Pax Americana on Iraq or even Afghanistan has therefore had profound consequences throughout the region. The Iraq Study Group recognized that the United States is simply in no position to dictate terms to its rivals and enemies in the region, and instead advocated pursuing a new stability based on recognition of the real balance of power, rather than the fantasy one concocted by the White House. But Bush remains in denial, pressing ahead with short-sighted, aggressive strategies that will only compound and accelerate the demise of U.S. influence in the region. …

To read the whole thing, click here