That's why Avner Cohen's new book, The Worst-Kept Secret, is important. Cohen argues that it's time to give up the "opacity" that keeps Israelis and too many Americans from talking and thinking about Israel's nuclear arsenal.
I've been trying to consciously bring Israel's nuclear arsenal into my thinking about Israel's geopolitics lately. A colleague asked the other day,
When in American thinking though did Israel become essential to its overall valuation of the region as being essential to US interests?In 1956, the United States broke up a French, British, and Israeli plot to take control of the Suez Canal away from Egypt. President John Kennedy saw that Israel was building a nuclear capacity at Dimona and tried to keep them from getting nuclear weapons. Israel has not always been a protected favorite of the United States. So it was after that.
Israel's favored position dovetails with its development of nuclear weapons. Kennedy and the Israelis played a game of cat-and-mouse, with Kennedy insisting on US inspections of the Dimona facility and Israel allowing the inspections but dissimulating. Then Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. At that time, there was no Israeli lobby in America as there is today; AIPAC was formed in 1963. President Lyndon Johnson was distracted by the Vietnam war and, in general, seems not to have been as concerned with nonproliferation as Kennedy was. Cohen shows that Israel had nukes by 1967. By the time of Richard Nixon's presidency, the US knew that Israel had a nuclear arsenal, and there wasn't much we could do about it. Nixon and Golda Meir agreed to keep those nukes a secret because of the real Cold War danger of Soviet aid to Arab nations to develop nukes. That made Israel the beachhead of "the free world" in the region.
Oil, of course, was part of it. The US more or less inherited Britain's interest in the Middle East, along with a great appetite for oil. It was largely US companies that developed Saudi Arabia's oilfields. We needed that beachhead.
So the Israelis had the threat of making known, or even using their nuclear weapons, and the US had the threat of removing aid. AIPAC strengthened, and the moral downsides of using nuclear weapons became more apparent. But the nuclear opacity persists, and, with it, something like blackmail on both sides.
I don't see an alternative argument, omitting the nuclear weapons factor, that is quite this strong, or explains why the relationship developed when it did.
It's possible that a solution to Iran's nuclear ambitions might involve inspections of Dimona or a cap to the weapons materials made there. Or we can wonder what the analyses (one example here) of the latest moves in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations would look like if Israel's nuclear weapons were taken into account. Did part of the US deal have to do with preventing an Israeli attack on Iran? Or does opacity reach into the analyses done in the White House and Defense Department?
6 comments:
"Cohen shows that Israel had nukes by 1967. By the time of Richard Nixon's presidency, the US knew that Israel had a nuclear arsenal, and there wasn't much we could do about it. Nixon and Golda Meir agreed to keep those nukes a secret because of the real Cold War danger of Soviet aid to Arab nations to develop nukes. That made Israel the beachhead of "the free world" in the region"
I have not read te Cohen book but here is my two cents re: the Cold War.
1. Khrushchev quite irresponsibly rattled nuclear sabers during Suez, which while a bluff that was aimed primarily at the French and British, was hardly lost on Tel Aviv.
2. Soviet aid was massive to Egypt and the Arab states were then, regardless of the situation now, bent on Israel's destruction as at least an outside possibility. Egypt and Syria in the 50's and 60's only had to win decisively once.
From Nixon's perspective, his preference for building up regional proxies like the Shah under the Nixon Doctrine, Israel would have been a useful counterweight to Soviet domination of the Mideast and prevent Nasser from toppling the al-Saud and friendly Gulf regimes
Zenpundit: I want to be careful not to get into justifications (or not) of Israel's nuclear arsenal, which seems to be what you're doing in your points 1 and 2. The question I was exploring was when Israel became essential, in American thinking.
I'll agree with your last paragraph, which overlaps with some of what I've said. But you're talking about the same time as the Nixon-Meir agreement, so the two are difficult to separate as factors in the US - Israel relationship.
Cheryl,
Thoughtful and interesting. We should all be required to read you.
Ward
At the least, I can understand the "opacity" argument (sovs might fund nuke programs in Egypt and Syria) as being relevant - for the 1970s. But in the 21st century, post-Soviet Union, this argument doesn't carry weight anymore. Shame our IR experts in State can't figure that out.
Hi Cheryl
"But you're talking about the same time as the Nixon-Meir agreement, so the two are difficult to separate as factors in the US - Israel relationship"
Having read a great deal about Richard Nixon in primary, secondary and archival sources, my impression is that for Richard Nixon and Israel:
a) Realpolitik mattered far more as a variable than his personal feelings of anisemitism, which was significant.
b) Israel mattered most to him in the context first of US-Soviet relations and secondarily in terms of US domestic politics where his support for Israel might be a "wedge" to peel away American Jews from the Deomocrats.
c) Israel and the Mideast as a whole was an irritating headache and distraction for Nixon from more important geopolitical problems but Nixon could appreciate Israel's potential utility as a proxy.
d) Meir was a foreign leader Nixon could work with - not idoliozed like DeGaulle but not despised like Indira Gandhi either
Hi Zen -
I don't disagree (much) with anything you're saying. I'm just adding the nuclear weapons factor into the mix; wouldn't claim that it's the only one.
The problem that Cohen is addressing and I'm trying to counter is that we've become conditioned to putting aside Israel's possession of nuclear weapons in our analyses. I'm trying to pull them in.
And I suspect that the factors can be separated, if there are enough of Nixon's papers available. I think that an analysis of all the factors after the Nixon-Meir agreement would be interesting, too. But any agreement, and the notes from the meeting are not available, according to Cohen.
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