Rabin and Israel's National Security (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Rabin and Israel’s National Security Robert O. Freedman Rabin and Israel’s National Security, by Efraim Inbar. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. 276 pp. $32.00. In this very well written analysis of the military strategy of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Efraim Inbar, Director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University, outlines both the strengths and weaknesses of Rabin’s strategic thinking. In the book, Inbar shows how Rabin, the former General, Chief of [End Page 129] Staff, Defense Minister, and Prime Minister (twice), helped to direct Israeli strategy from the mid-1960s to the Oslo Agreements with the Palestinians. While strong in his praise for Rabin’s leadership at crucial moments in Israel’s history, Inbar, as a good political scientist, is careful not to create a myth about Israel’s assassinated leader as he also points out areas of weakness especially in Rabin’s lack of ability to communicate his peace strategy to the Israeli public. Inbar begins his book with an analysis of Rabin as a “political realist” who believed (p. 193, n. 2) that anarchy was the defining characteristic of world politics, and that therefore states can ultimately rely only on themselves to survive and must attempt to maximize power to ensure survival. In the period during which he was Chief of Staff (1964–1967) Rabin viewed Israel’s relations with the Arabs as “a dormant war” (p. 14) that wakes up every few years and turns into an active war. Consequently, Rabin was a firm believer that peace could be achieved only from a position of strength. Yet Rabin envisioned Israel’s strength in wider terms than a mere enumeration of the numbers of tanks and planes which the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) possessed. He saw the need for a strong economy as well, and as Defense Minister was willing to cut Israel’s defense budget in the mid-1980s to achieve that goal (p. 74). Perhaps even more important, Rabin, who had a dim view of the West Europeans, greatly valued Israel’s ties to the United States, where he served as Israel’s ambassador from 1968 to 1973, and he was willing to tailor Israeli policy to meet U.S. needs when possible (p. 45), even offering to join Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) plan. As Prime Minister in 1976 he saw the U.S. as vital to Israel’s security in five areas: (1) the provision of weapons; (2) financial aid; (3) deterrence of the Soviet Union; (4) prevention of the misuse of the U.N. (through the exercise of the U.S. veto power); and (5) assistance in maintaining contact with Jews in countries with no official Israeli presence. One of Rabin’s major contributions to the IDF occurred early in Israel’s history when he developed a training course for battalion commanders and put heavy emphasis on maintaining very high standards for Israeli reserve forces who would bear the brunt of a future war which he thought could pit the IDF against all the Arab states simultan eously. His meticulous training standards and emphasis on maintenance helped prepare Israel for its greatest victory—the Six Day war in 1967. Following his stint as Prime Minister in the 1974–1977 period, when he was the prime force in achieving two partial peace agreements with Egypt (Sinai I and Sinai II) Rabin returned to the center of Israeli security policymaking in the 1984–1990 period, when he served as Defense Minister in two successive National Unity governments. While reinforcing strategic ties to the United States and restructuring the Israeli army during this period, Rabin was also involved in two developments that, in retrospect, turn out to have been serious mistakes. The first was the release of 1,150 jailed terrorists in 1985 in exchange for three Israeli prisoners held since 1982. The released terrorists, as [End Page 130] Inbar notes, became a major force in the Intifada that was to erupt two years later. The second mistake was encouraging the spying effort of Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. citizen, against the United States. In perhaps the only serious...