The Foreign Policy of Shirking
By Angelo M. Codevilla
The “special relationship,” between the US and
Israel has made both countries less secure. Had each managed its foreign
policy to maximize its own security, both would have served themselves and
one another better than they have. That
is because as happens too often, alliances lead both partners to try
shirking security concerns onto the other. American and Israeli policy
makers who are bemoaning loss and embarrassment because their joint “peace
process” has resulted in death and damage, should have heeded Winston
Churchill’s teaching in this regard.
Once upon a time, wrote Churchill, the great democratic
powers pressed a small democracy into a “peace process” with a neighbor
that denied its legitimacy. The
deal amounted to “land for peace.” The small country would give up land
and strategic positions in exchange for the neighbor’s promise of peace.
The small country went along not so much because it trusted its neighbor,
but because it believed that the process would strengthen the great
powers’ commitment to its security. But the great powers were in it
precisely to avoid trouble with the small powers’ troublesome neighbor.
Each side sought to transfer onto the other the cost of peace.
Both ended up reaping war. The great powers were Britain and Franc,
abetted by the US. The small democracy was Czechoslovakia. The threat came
from Germany, the year was 1938, and the “peace process” took place near
Munich.
As a result of this “peace process” Czechoslovakia
gave up the mighty fortress of Teschen and the Sudeten hills in exchange for
a Franco British guarantee of a German promise to recognize the legitimacy
of rump Czechoslovakia. The withdrawals made it easier for Germany to take
the rest of Czechoslovakia. And so Churchill taught that when any small
country so placed weakens itself, it also weakens its ostensible
protectors’ commitment to it.
But the great powers ended up suffering too. The
“peace process” had taught Germany that the great powers would pay any
price, abandon any interest, to avoid trouble. And so Germany pushed them
into a war in which they proved their mettle by not fighting for nearly a
year, until France was overwhelmed, Britain bloodied, and the US excluded
from the Continent.
For Israel the essence of the “Oslo Peace Process”
of 1993 –2000 was “taking risks for peace,” namely giving up the hills
of the West Bank, at least part of its capital city, and likely the mighty
fortress of the Golan Heights, to the PLO and Syria respectively.
Israel had few doubts that the Arabs would try using newly gained
powers and positions in hostile ways. But they had no doubt al all that
America would enforce any bargain it brokered. The cession of land and the
empowering of blood enemies made sense only insofar as the United States
guaranteed any deal, as well as what was left of Israel. For Israel then,
the “Peace Process” amounted to an attempt to shift onto American
shoulders the responsibility for its own existence.
Bad idea.
America’s purposes in the “Peace Process” were
the reverse of the coin. Israel’s defiance of its enemies had troubled
America’s relations with the Arabs. If perhaps Israel could be got to
satisfy what appeared to be the Arabs’ “last demands,” namely the
creation of a Palestinian state, the return to Syria of most of the Golan,
and some symbolic cession of Jerusalem, the Arabs might commit fewer
terrorist acts against America and not drive up oil prices too badly.
Significantly, never, ever, were there discussions within the US government
about enforcing on the Arabs
the terms of any deal. Even
talk of enforcement would have defeated US policy makers’ prime objective,
namely to look good to the American people by avoiding trouble.
Israel’s deadly mistake was not to understand that US
officials believed they could achieve their “core interests,” namely the
avoidance of terrorism and high oil prices simply by creating the appearance
of peace and of a “new Middle East.” For Arab leaders’ politeness
about this fiction, the US government paid some $40 billion per year. It was
not enough.
And then on September 28, 2000 on the eve of Rosh
Hashanah, the Palestinians Authority exploited Israeli weakness by making
war, supported by the entire Arab world.
In their fashion, they bused schoolchildren into the middle of fire
fights, they beat and murdered bystanders, and danced with joy at the sight
of Jewish blood on Arab hands. But the worst that happened to Israel was the
Clinton Administration’s response –“evenhanded” commitment to the
“Peace Process,” symbolized by tacit agreement with a UN resolution
condemning Israel and a summit meeting in which the US treated all sides
alike. Any other course, a US
official told The New York Times, would have brought on terrorism and higher
oil prices, thereby impacting “core interests.” Churchill would have
been surprised had it been otherwise.
Churchill would also have warned that such intense
preoccupation with avoiding trouble would bring onto America something at
least as serious as the disabling of the US Navy warship Cole by suicide
bombers, at the cost of 52 casualties. Nor would he have been surprised that
in the last quarter of 2000 America’s primary preoccupation was how
serious would be the economic downturn caused by higher oil prices.
If Israel had not accepted US offers to guarantee the
results of a “peace Process,” and if the US had not used that process to
curry favor with people as ill disposed to America as they are to Israel, if
both had relied on their own strength for their own safety, both would be
safer than they are. But who
reads Churchill these days?
Angelo M.
Codevilla is director of Strategic Studies at the Institute for Advanced
Strategic and Political Studies, and a professor of International Relations
Boston University
