SubscribeThe President regarded his Secretary of State, General of the Army George C. Marshall, as "the greatest living American." Yet the two men were on a collision course over Mideast policy, which, if not resolved, threatened to split and wreck the Administration. British control of Palestine would run out in two days, and when it did, the Jewish Agency intended to announce the creation of a new state, still unnamed, in part of Palestine.Clifford also notes: "Since at the time a significant number of Jewish Americans opposed Zionism, neither the President nor I believed that Palestine was the key to the Jewish vote. As I had written in 1947, the key to the Jewish vote in 1948 would not be the Palestine issue, but a continued commitment to liberal political and economic policies."
Marshall firmly opposed American recognition of the new Jewish state; I did not. Marshall's opposition was shared by almost every member of the brilliant and now-legendary group of men, later referred to as "the Wise Men," who were then in the process of creating a postwar foreign policy that would endure for more than forty years. The opposition included the respected Undersecretary of State, Robert Lovett; his predecessor, Dean Acheson; the number-three man in the State Department, Charles Bohlen; the brilliant chief of the Policy Planning Staff, George F. Kennan; the dynamic and driven Secretary of Defense, James V. Forrestal; and a man with whom I would disagree again twenty years later when we served together in the Cabinet, Dean Rusk, then the Director of the Office of United Nations Affairs.
Some months earlier, during one of our weekly breakfasts at his elegant Georgetown home, Forrestal had spoken emotionally and frankly to me concerning his opposition to helping the Zionists, as advocates of the creation of a Jewish state were called. "You fellows over at the White House are just not facing up to the realities in the Middle East. There are thirty million Arabs on one side and about six hundred thousand Jews on the other. It is clear that in any contest, the Arabs are going to overwhelm the Jews. Why don't you face up to the realities? Just look at the numbers!"
(i) Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;There's a semantic argument about whether "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" means some or all of the occupied territories.
(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
I thought the Iranians weren't Arabs either, but Persians, even if much of the country is Muslim.
There is little doubt but that the Six Day War discredited the incremental Vietnamese policy of the Johnson Administration. Not only soldiers, but generals, too, resented the speedy Israeli victory. The mood of the military was well captured in a Conrad cartoon published in the Los Angeles Times and reprinted in the NYT showing the 4 members of the JCS, their eyes covered with a "Dayan Patch" placing a map of Vietnam covered with bold arrows telling startled LBJ "Now here's our plan..."After the 1967 war, US policy on arms sales shifted, e.g. with Lyndon Johnson's decision in 1968 to sell Phantom jets to Israel. Mitchell Bard:
[The policy of US evenhandedness] was best explained by Peter Solbert, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. In a letter to Senator Len Jordan, Solbert wrote that the [Johnson] Administration refrained from supplying large amounts of arms to either the Arabs or Israel because it wished to remain impartial, but that the United States was willing to make limited sales to both sides to strengthen the ability of Middle Eastern countries to defend themselves. "In no case, however, will the U.S. contribute to providing one state in the area a military advantage against another." This statement is highlighted because it reveals a fundamental difference between U.S. policy prior to the Phantom sale and after. That is, the Phantom sale represented a shift in U.S. policy from maintaining a stance of neutrality to one of providing and maintaining Israel with the arms it needed to build and keep a qualitative advantage over its Arab neighbors.Another key turning point was the Reagan administration. Mitchell Bard:
... Reagan was the first President to see Israel as a potential contributor to the Cold War.Leon Hadar:
Prior to his election, Reagan had written: "Only by full appreciation of the critical role the State of Israel plays in our strategic calculus can we build the foundation for thwarting Moscow's designs on territories and resources vital to our security and our national well-being."
The Israelis wisely played up their capability to deter the Soviet Union, while the Arab states refused to join the "strategic consensus" that Alexander Haig tried to create to oppose Soviet expansionism in the region. The Arabs insisted the greatest threat to them was not Communism, but Zionism. The Israelis never considered the Soviets their principal threat either, but were prepared to say otherwise to win Reagan's favor.
They began to reap the benefits of this approach on November 31, 1981, when the two countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) termed "strategic cooperation." The agreement was diluted by opposition from the Pentagon and State Department and did not provide for joint exercises or a regular means of cooperation. Worse, it was used as a stick to beat Israel with a month later when the MOU was suspended because of American dissatisfaction with Israel's decision to annex the Golan Heights. Still, for the first time, Israel was formally recognized as a strategic ally.
The end of the Cold War should have made the Israel-as-a-strategic-asset paradigm obsolete. But after 9/11 and against the backdrop of the Iraq War, neoconservatives succeeded in marketing the notion that the United States and Israel were now being brought together in a strategic alliance against "Islamo-fascism" and a global intifada. This alliance would operate in the form of an American sheriff and its Israeli deputy--American hegemony in the region with certain military tasks subcontracted to Israel. Israeli-Arab peacemaking was placed on the policy backburner. The neoconservative message has been that the United States needs to adopt more of the Israeli-tough methods in dealing with Middle Eastern terrorists and Bad Guys (since Arabs only understand force, etc.), which the Americans have been trying to do in Iraq with very little success. In the process, the Bush Administration has strengthened Iran--which, of course, runs contrary to both American and Israeli interests.
Iran and Saudi Arabia were described as the 'twin pillars' of US foreign policy in the Middle East.
posted by randomstriker at 10:04 AM on June 6, 2008