Given the Meirsheimer/Walt crowd who continue to maintain that Israel is a liability, this is a welcome affirmation to the contrary. Ted Belman
WASHINGTON – Israel and the United States enjoy a special alliance which has a strong “strategic contribution” to US security, a report by two former high ranking Washington officials says.
Robert D. Blackwill and Walter B. Slocombe, who served under Democratic and Republican administrations, have recently presented the Washington Institute for Near East Policy with a thesis asserting that US aid to Israel is not just a gesture among allied nations, but a move that serves US national interests worldwide and does not take a toll on its relations with its Arab allies.
Slocombe served as the under secretary of defense for policy in the Clinton Administration, while Blackwill served as US ambassador to India the United States national security council deputy for Iraq in the second Bush Administration.
“The United States has taken advantage of access to unique Israeli capabilities in key ‘niche’ areas of military technology… Israeli technology promotes American interests. Increasingly, US homeland security and military agencies are turning to Israeli technology to solve some of their most vexing technical problems,” the report states.
“Through joint training and exercises as well as exchanges on military doctrine, the United States has benefited in the areas of counterterrorism cooperation, tactical intelligence, and experience in urban warfare.
“Counterterrorism and intelligence cooperation is deep and extensive, with the United States and Israel working to advance their common interest in defeating the terrorism of Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda… sharing information, supporting preventive actions, deterring challenges, and coordinating overall strategy.”
‘Unique beneficial relationship’
The US, the two said, is benefiting form Israel’s knowledge on airport security: “In the vital realm of missile defense cooperation, the United States has a broad and multifaceted relationship with Israel, which is its most sophisticated and experienced partner in this field.
“Israel’s national missile defenses… will be an integral part of a larger missile defense architecture spanning Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Persian Gulf that will help protect US forces and allies throughout this vast area.”
Moreover, the report stressed, “Israel’s integrated, multilayered command-and-control network contributes to the US military’s ability to defend against the Iranian missile threat.”
Israel and the US enjoy broad intelligence cooperation, they said, and “This intimate relationship reinforces overall US intelligence efforts by providing Washington with access to Israel’s unique set of capabilities for collection and assessments on key countries and issues in the region, since Israel is able to focus resources and attention on certain targets of central importance to the United States.
“As Israel’s strategic intelligence collection capabilities mature, this cooperation and exchange of intelligence information will increasingly serve US national interests,” the report said.
‘Pros outweigh cons’
“We do not deny that there are costs to the United States, in the Arab world and elsewhere, for its support of Israel… We are, however, convinced that in a net assessment those real costs are markedly outweighed by the many ways in which Israel bolsters US national interests and the benefits that Israel provides to those interests,” the report argues.
“In particular, we believe that the United States can have strong and productive relations with Arab and other Muslim nations while sustaining its intimate collaboration with Israel, and that US support for Israel is not the primary – and probably not even a dominant – reason Islamist terrorists target the United States.
“The long-standing US commitment to Israel has not prevented development of close ties with Arab nations… nor has it made the Arab oil-exporting states any less conscious of their own economic and strategic interest in a reasonably stable flow of oil to world markets, or their eagerness to buy first-class military equipment from the United States or to enjoy.”
“The conclusion of our analysis,” Blackwill and Slocombe wrote, “is that the US-Israel relationship is a significant asset to US national interests and the potential for even greater US benefits from deeper cooperation is substantial.”
You don’t seem very familiar with American politics. 78% mind-numbed American Jews voted for Obama in 2008. Jews like Axelrod and Blumenthal and the Emmanuel brothers, were or are like Obama’s brains since he cannot string together two sentences without what they feed into his teleprompter.
All this is true, but it sounds eerily similar in tone and content to what the Musloids say about their own countries, does it not?
You obviously haven’t met Yamit, and his anti-Christian soul-brothers like Shy Guy and Yonatan.
I just listed a few of the Semites who were and are the brains behind the clueless Obama. There is another long list of Jews who are still supporting him, raising funds for him and advising him.
And you deserved to be called out too for your feeble name calling. You are a moron and a closet-Nazi too, “Semites are the brains behind the current US administration”. Nobody is fooled.
Israel is a Jewish state. It was born a Jewish nation, it was destroyed by the Roman Empire because it was a Jewish nation, and it was reborn to be a Jewish nation, built by and for Jews. The Jews do not object to sharing the land of Israel with anyone who is willing to live side by side peacefully with Jews. There is nothing in their religion about persecuting or shunning or subjugating non-believers.
Semites aren’t the brains behind anything that is not Jewish, believing that is real antisemitism. You aren’t fooling anyone, least of all me.
It doesn’t work that way in a public forum. When someone falsely whines about the EU and US being responsible for decisions made by Israel, or blames anti-Semitism when Semites are the brains behind the current US administration, or writes like a Jewish version of the Islamic radicals, they deserve to be called out.
And all the rest … bandying word definitions “asset”, “ally”. You haven’t got a worthwhile opinion about anything on this topic, or anything else is my guess. Keep it to yourself next time. Stay away from commenting about my posts.
You sound just like the Islamic radicals in the countries surrounding Israel.
I am a Christian supporter of Israel and I have no such beliefs.
Why would anyone who cares about Israel worry about who else benefits as long as Israel does?
Go ahead and also annex Gaza as well as the West Bank which Israel should have done in 1967.
An ally is a strategic asset by definition.
This makes no sense to me. They will have to work hand in glove when Israel decides to re-set Iran, when they will need the US to watch its back at the UNSC and in the region.
I have a strategic alliance with my builder, banker and mutual fund manager, just as the US has a strategic alliance with Israel without owning them, and they have a strategic alliance with the US as well.
Anyone who claims to be an ally of Israel must first uphold Israel as a Jewish state founded by a Jewish people with a Jewish future. Nothing else will do. Too often, people who claim to be friends of Israel have different plans for Israel and the Jewish people. They think the future of Israel is bound up in their own religious beliefs and includes conversion to Christianity. There is nothing “unconditional” about that. What kind of ally would subvert the very beliefs that found a nation? And there isn’t a cent of those BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars that doesn’t go back into the pockets of the private military industrialists after which Israel acts as an operational testing ground for that hardware.
An ally wouldn’t hesitate to encourage Israel to exterminate the terrorists who rain missiles down on innocent civilian communities. Israel may have allies among US citizens, but to say that the US acts as an ally to Israel bears questioning. But we aren’t even talking about Israel as an ally, we are talking about Israel as an asset, a strategic asset. When Israel can protect its citizens on a daily basis and live without fear of its bigoted neighbors, then the US may lean on Israel as a strategic asset. And we shouldn’t we shouldn’t consider ourselves an asset to Israel until they are.
Eagle,
Do you have a “strategic alliance” with your home, your bank accounts and your mutual funds? Or do you own them? Look up the definition of “asset”.
These facile and phony charges of anti-Semitism reminds me of Obama supporters claiming that any criticism of him is racist.
Most Americans who are mostly Christians are Israel’s biggest unconditional supporters. Most American Jews by contrast do not support Israel unconditionally. 78% of them voted for the anti-Semitic Obama.
Israel is a pro-American free-market democracy and major nuclear power in the heart of the totalitarian middle-east. Of course it is a strategic asset to its only ally, the US, which has spent BILLIONS to support Israel over several decades in financial aid, arms and intel agreements, UNSC vetoes and the Bush pledge of support against a nuclear Iran.
No, it doesn’t. It implies that the two countries have a strategic alliance and a special relationship because both are free-market democracies. America is just as much a strategic asset for Israel as Israel is for the US. Israel will need the US when it comes time to re-set Iran.
Calling Israel an “asset” of the US, implies that the US owns Israel; and considering Israel’s kowtowing behavior since 1967, I imagine we do own them. Every country is POTENTIALLY an asset, in that every country has some value: The Saudis have oil, the Africans have diamonds and uranium, and the Chinese have money to lend. What makes them ACTUAL assets, is the degree to which we own them.
Here we go again. How can a tiny little country like Israel that cannot even seem to protect its own citizens from missile attacks or secure the integrity of its own borders possibly be anything like a strategic asset to a country as huge as the United States? This is just nonsense and another face to the anti-Semitic obsession that too many people in the US and the world have with Jews and Israel. People just need to leave Israel and the Jews alone. That they can’t is evidence of an unwholesome preoccupation at best. If the US has any strategic interest in Israel it is to stand up for a small country being unjustly persecuted by its neighbors, because countries that would unjustly persecute a small country like Israel are just as likely to turn its attention to other larger interests. And we’ve seen this before. Persecuting Jews has a historical precedent as a prelude to more unjust persecution and aggression on a global scale.
But is Israel a strategic asset? Israel has served as a handy guinea pig for US progress in military technology. When Israel insists that its military aquisitions from the US function more to its needs, it meets resistance. Further advances in experimenting require Israel to be constantly under some state of threat. As this kind of strategic asset, Israel could hardly see itself as an ally, more like a pigeon in a trap.
When the US dips into Israeli intelligence and internal affairs, nobody questions this influence. When Israelis dip into US intelligence, they are prosecuted as spies. When US Jews stand up for Israel and appeal to their political representatives, they are accused of running everything.
The US should expect Israel to be nothing more than what it is, just a small country for a tiny group of people that has been unjustly persecuted by mass hysteria for nearly two thousand years. That’s plenty to deal with without having to be a strategic asset.