Periphery: Israel's Search for Middle East Allies

Abstract

Should a country have a “grand strategy?” Usually thought of in terms of big power relations, grand strategy refers to the effort to mobilize the state's military, diplomatic, political, and economic capabilities in the service of the national interest. It requires states to consider the full range of tools at their disposal and to correlate judiciously their own and their adversaries' power. In the case of the United States, many presidents have articulated a doctrine—one element of a grand strategy—to define some large purpose of policy; when they haven't done so, as in the case of the Obama administration, academics and analysts have devoted much effort to define the grand strategy for the administration.Smaller states can also have a grand strategy, and sometimes can put that strategy to effective use. For Israel, the idea of grand strategy is no small thing. It requires a sophisticated understanding of regional and global power dynamics, and it rests on a serious appreciation of the capabilities and limitations of Israeli power. Years ago, in his stunning study of the Bar Kochba rebellion, Yehoshafat Harkabi reminded us how challenging it is to make these assessments and to not get carried away by wishful thinking about one's own capabilities.It is this subject that occupies the attention of Yossi Alpher in Periphery. Alpher has done a careful study of Israeli policy—in most respects, the policy of David Ben-Gurion—in the early decades of the state, when the prospects of developing peaceful relations with Arabs were slim. Against the backdrop of daunting challenges, Ben-Gurion developed a grand strategy appropriate for the time, just as he and his colleagues had promoted a grand strategy in the pre-state era.The pre-state Zionist movement had artfully conducted a threefold strategy designed to promote the Zionist agenda. First, it was imperative to populate the area intended for Jewish statehood, and thus the Zionist movement adopted an aggressive approach to Jewish immigration and land purchases throughout the Mandatory period. Second, it was necessary to create the institutional infrastructure of a future state, especially, but not exclusively, in the area of security. Third, special attention was devoted to diplomacy in order to gain international recognition, promote Zionist aims, and create the political space for the nascent political entity to evolve into an independent state.After independence in 1948, the challenges facing Israel were equally formidable. Israel needed to secure the armistice lines and establish those lines as the temporary borders of the state. For this to happen, the Israeli defense establishment had to become the most important and dynamic element of state authority and power. Second, Israel needed to create the economic and social conditions required to absorb immigrants who would more than double the population of the state within five years. Third, Israel required international recognition and legitimization as a state within the international system.During the first decade of Israeli statehood, the country's leadership—especially Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and intelligence chiefs Reuven Shiloah and Isser Harel—developed a multi-pronged strategy for achieving the state's objectives. They understood the importance of aligning with a great power; whatever its own strength, Israel could not stand alone in a region surrounded by enemies. The alliance process with France and later with the United States was designed as a safety net within which Israel could also play a contributory role, particularly as the West tried to develop a regional security system, such as the Baghdad Pact, to thwart Soviet ambitions in the Middle East.Ben-Gurion believed that Israel could market itself as a reliable ally, indeed a lynchpin, in the effort to contain Soviet expansionism and to thwart the ambition of Egypt's president, Gamal ʿAbd al-Nasser, to dominate Arab politics. It was not enough to rely on Arab disunity and the competitive forces within the Arab world, the so-called “Arab cold war” to stop the Soviets and Egyptians. As chronicled by Alpher, Israel embarked on an ambitious, multi-pronged strategy to marshal the collective power of regional, non-Arab states such as Iran, Turkey, and Ethiopia in what became known as the strategy of the “alliance of the periphery.”Israel also began to reach out to minorities, especially disaffected groups within the Arab world—such as the Maronites in Lebanon, the Druze in Syria, and the Kurds in Iraq—to exploit their situations so as to weaken Arab state power. This became known as Israel's strategy of the “alliance of the minorities.”The third component of Ben-Gurion's grand strategy reflected his view that the long-term survival of Israel depended on its sowing Arab disunity. This view contrasted with that of Moshe Sharett, Ben-Gurion's rival for leadership in the Labor Zionist movement, who argued for promoting Arab unity around the idea of peace and mutually beneficial cooperation. Sharett argued, unsuccessfully throughout the 1950s, that Israel required peace as much as military and economic power to survive.As Alpher lays out in this highly readable volume, the strategy of the periphery was only partially successful. It never amounted to a formal alliance with Iran, Turkey, and Ethiopia, each of which treated its relationship with Israel in highly instrumental, rather than strategic, terms. The United States, largely aware of what Israel was trying to do, exhibited little interest in Israel's assuming a central role in American plans for regional security. There were some residual benefits from the relationships developed with the minorities, most notably the Kurds, but there were also some long-term disasters, for example, the folly of Israel's Maronite strategy in 1982.Alpher does not devote attention to what might be termed the second iteration of an Israeli grand strategy under Yitzhak Rabin in the early 1990s. In both public remarks and in private conversations with US leaders after his election as prime minister in 1992, Rabin argued that the time had come to resolve the Arab–Israeli conflict, so as to free up Israeli energy and power to confront the emerging threat of Iran. Rabin's peace process diplomacy, in Oslo and until his assassination in 1995, can be understood as the unfolding of this strategy on the ground—a willingness to engage with Israel's mortal enemy, Yasser Arafat, and an equal willingness to propose a far-reaching solution to the dispute with Syria, with the so-called “deposit” offered to US Secretary of State Warren Christopher in 1993. Rabin did not live long enough to play out his strategy, and none of his successors demonstrated the vision or willpower to see the strategy through. Ironically, perhaps the person who understood Rabin best turned out to be then–Crown Prince ʿAbdallah of Saudi Arabia, who in 2002 unveiled an Arab peace plan that rested on the same strategic foundation as Rabin's thinking.Alpher poses several fundamental questions in this volume that apply not only to the historical review he has undertaken but also to Israel's strategic outlook today. Does a strategy predicated on leapfrogging Israel's Arab neighbors in favor of strategic relations with countries on the periphery of the region help or hinder the prospects of peace between Israel and the Arabs? Does such a strategy have an impact on Israel's deterrence vis-à-vis its enemies? Does nostalgia for a historical period of ties with Iran, for example, blind Israeli policy makers when confronting contemporary challenges? Perhaps most significantly, has Israel assimilated the conclusion of former Mossad director Ephraim Halevy, whom Alpher quotes as saying: “We think we can be king-makers…. This is nonsense” (p. 85)?In a recent article commenting on the nuclear agreement reached between Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, German, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami wrote that Israel has the raw material to backstop a new grand strategy of peace with the Arabs and integration into the region. Israel has a nuclear arsenal to serve as a deterrent, a robust economy, a strong society, and a longstanding strong relationship with the United States, still the world's foremost power. And yet, Ben-Ami laments, Israel's leadership continues to act as though Israel and the Jews still live in a ghetto surrounded by relentless enemies all bent on Israel's destruction; and Israeli leaders have even decided to confront the United States in an epic struggle over the Iran agreement that could have long-term consequences for the relationship between these two countries. Far from being a grand strategy, this has all the makings of a grand strategic train-wreck.So, should Israel have a grand strategy these days? Alpher is not sure, given the failed attempts at normalization with the Arab world in the aftermath of the Madrid peace conference and the Oslo Accords, and in view of the emergence of a ring of Islamic militancy surrounding Israel during the past few years. On the other hand, Israel has been remarkably agile in improving relations with Greece, Cyprus, and Azerbaijan, as well as resuming relations with several states in sub-Saharan Africa. These burgeoning relationships have proven quite beneficial to Israel in strategic and economic terms, most notably in the exploitation of eastern Mediterranean gas resources.But, as useful as these new “relationships of the periphery” are to Israel as regional politics remain in flux, they do not and will not substitute for a strategy of engaging the neighborhood, the Arabs with whom Israel lives and will have to make peace sooner or later. It no longer appears viable for Israel to assume that it can work strategically with anyone but its neighbors while still enjoying a special relationship with the world powers. A truly grand strategy for Israel, it would seem, is one that has peace with the Palestinians and the Arab world as its central element.