American neoconservatives and the Israeli right maintain that support from the American patron could become a substitute for peace with the Arabs and fantasize that Muslim terrorism would ignite a Clash of Civilizations–a U.S.-led West vs. the “Caliphate”–with Israel serving as America’s strategic outpost in the Middle East, a Crusader State that for ever will depend on American support for its survival. But Muslim terrorism would only help bolster American isolationism and speed up U.S. disengagement from the Middle East.
In an example of dialectical thinking run amok, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has turned the strategic logic behind the patron-client state relationship on its head. He has “threatened” Washington that unless it supports his radical Zionist agenda, Jerusalem would ally itself with another global player that would supposedly be willing to prop up a militarized anti-Arab Jewish Ghetto in the Middle East.
In fact, two the major victories of the Zionist movement in the twentieth century followed historic transformations in foreign policy orientations in response to changes in the global balance of power. Chaim Weizmann anticipated the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and made a diplomatic bet on Britain, the new power in the Middle East–a policy that resulted in the Balfour Declaration. Thirty years later, Ben-Gurion recognized that the British Empire was crumbling–and that the U.S. and the Soviet Union were the new global powers–and took advantage of the evolving Cold War to win support for the new Jewish State.
Israel cannot exist alone. But as an adherent of realpolitik like Peres recalls from his own experience, interests do change. Peres was, after all, a proponent of a “European orientations” and the main architect of the Israeli alliance with France which served as Israel’s main source of arms in the 1950s and early 1960s and helped it develop its nuclear arsenal. Indeed, Israel’s survival depends on recognizing that international friendships come and go. It doesn’t sound easy, but this is the truth.
