by Dr. Irving Moskowitz
With Introduction by Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato

INTRODUCTION

 by Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato

 The friendship between the United States and Israel has been anchored in shared values, common strategic interests, and respect for each other’s independence. Israelis have always insisted on fighting their own battles, a position that the U.S., with its own battles to fight elsewhere around (he globe has deeply appreciated.

 Would it be wise to depart from the traditional parameters of the American-Israeli relationship? That is tile question explored in this monograph, in response to recent suggestions that U.S. troops should be stationed in territories to be surrendered by Israel to its Arab neighbors, or that other U.S. “security guarantees” should be provided as a hedge against future Arab aggression against the Jewish State.

 The premises underlying such proposals are troubling. They presume, first of all, that Israeli retention of a few tiny slivers of land is the obstacle to Arab-Israeli peace, when the historical record shows that the Arab world’s refusal to accept a Jewish state of any size has always been the true obstacle. Furthermore, the suggestion that American soldiers are needed to protect Israel from future Arab attack raises serious questions about the trustworthiness of the Arab regimes upon whose good faith Israel is supposed to rely. In other words, if the Arabs really want peace, why does Israel need “protection” against them? And if it is not absolutely certain that the Arabs will live in peace with Israel, how can anybody ask the Israelis to vacate strategically vital territories?

 These issues raise a related question: should Israel and the U.S. commit themselves to treaties that depend on the signatures of Arab dictators who could change their minds — or be overthrown — at any moment? America has had plenty of

 bitter experience with tyrants in that part of the world — from the anti-American shift by Iran after the overthrow of the Shah, to Iraq’s abrogation of its 1963 recognition of Kuwait, leading to the Gulf War. Should American lives depend on the whims of some trigger-happy Arab despot?

 Another critical issue explored in this monograph is the impact of domestic developments on America’s foreign policy commitments. American voters have every right to reassess the national agenda, to elect a president or congressmen who would reverse the policies of their predecessors. At the same time, however, a country such as Israel therefore has no choice but to consider the likelihood of future changes in the American mood before it surrenders territories that would leave it vulnerable in the event such a reordering of U.S. national priorities took place. If some future president should one day decide that keeping American troops in the Middle East is too expensive, or too dangerous, where will that leave our Israeli friends?

 These are issues that require a thorough public debate today, before the signing of any treaties that, despite all good intentions, could ultimately prove detrimental to Israeli and American interests.

 ”One hears a great deal these days, from people whose vision is shorter even than their memories, about the wisdom of international guarantees as a means of assuring Israeli security. I can’t imagine a more misdirected policy than to ask Israel, which has been the model of the self reliant ally, to transform itself into an American dependency … Much of the history of international guarantees is the history of countries who have lost their territory, their freedom and even their sons and daughters … It is a history that the Israelis, for their reasons, and we, for ours, ought to do everything possible to avoid. ”

 –Senator Henry M. Jackson, December 18, 1973

 The United States will consider offering Israel some kind of “security guarantees” in conjunction with an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights, Secretary of State Warren Christopher declared in June.’ Such “guarantees” might include American troops being stationed between the Israeli and Syrian lines, according to Defense Secretary Les Aspin.2 An even more explicit description of this possibility was recently offered by Israeli cabinet minister Moshe Shahal, who said that the Israeli government and the Clinton administration have discussed an arrangement whereby Israel would withdraw from the Golan and American soldiers would be stationed in some parts of the territory for a period of 15 years.3

 Such a commitment on the part of the United States would represent a startling departure from the norms of the traditional American-Israeli relationship. Unlike America’s other allies around the world, Israel has never requested that U.S. soldiers risk their lives to protect Israel from its Arab attackers. The Jewish State has only asked that the U.S., in the framework of a mutually beneficial strategic relationship, provide Israel with the military assistance it needs to fight its own battles. For more than four decades, Israel has stood alone in the Middle East as an outpost of Western values, as a guardian of Western interests in a strategically crucial region, and as anunbending buffer, first against Soviet encroachment,

 I I -

 and now against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. Israel freely shared vital intelligence data with the United States. Israel battle-tested American weapons. Israel took military action at America’s request, as in 1970 when an Israeli show of force prevented Syria’s invasion of Jordan. In return, the U.S. has generously provided Israel with the weapons it has needed to defend itself against Arab invasions and terrorism. But never was there any suggestion that America should send its troops to fight for Israel, as they fought for South Korea, South Vietnam, Grenada or Kuwait. On the contrary, the Israelis have always prided themselves on their independence and self-reliance. It makes no sense for the United States to deviate from the norms of this time-honored, and consistently productive, relationship with Israel.

 ,Perhaps it is not surprising that there are those who assume that a foreign military presence would be necessary to protect the Jewish State, when one considers the vulnerability of the pre-1967 borders to which the Clinton administration apparently expects Israel to retreat. If it surrenders the disputed territories, Israel would be reduced to a Strip of land just nine miles wide. The well-equipped Arab armies that surround it would have little trouble slicing the country in two. What portion of those territories would Israel need to protect itself’? To answer that question, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara asked the U.S. Joint Chief-, of Staff, shortly after the 1967 war, to study Israel’s borders and determine, “without regard to political factors,” what territory Israel needed to retain to defend itself against future Arab aggression. Their conclusions are instructive.

 Regarding the Golan Heights, the Joint Chiefs noted that before 1967, the ‘Syrians had used the Heights to launch “sabotage and terrorist acts,” and also to carry out “shellings of villages from the high ground overlooking the [Galilee].” Therefore, the JoInt Chiefs concluded, “Israel must hold the commanding terrain east of the [pre- 19671 -boundary … To

 provide a defense in-depth, Israel would need a strip of about 15 miles [on the Golan]” –an area even larger than that which Israel currently holds.

 Surveying Israel’s security needs in Judea and Samaria, the Joint Chiefs found that the area had been used for “sabotage and mining activity” by Palestinian Arab terrorists before Israel took over in 1967. Furthermore, “the high ground running north-south through the middle of [Judea and Samaria] overlooks Israel’s narrow midsection and offers a route for a thrust to the sea which would split the country in two parts.” At “a minimum,” the Joint Chiefs concluded, Israel needs to control that high ground — in other words, an area comprising the majority of the Judea-Samaria region.

 With regard to the Gaza Strip, the Joint Chiefs minced no words: Israel needs the entire territory. “By occupying the Gaza Strip, Israel would trade approximately 45 miles of hostile border for eight. Configured as it is, the strip serves as a salient for introduction of Arab subversion and terrorism, and its retention would be to Israel’s military advantage.”4

 The question that must be faced, then, is whether or not the U.S. should urge Israel to put itself in a vulnerable position, surrendering those vital strategic territories and relying on American troops to defend it against future Arab attacks. Would the U.S. be prepared to activate those troops and risk their lives if a Syrian-Israeli crisis develops? Is it possible to be confident that five or ten years from now, U.S. public opinion will support such military action? How will Americans react when U.S. troops in the Golan are attacked by the same fanatical anti-American Hezbollah terrorists who attacked them in nearby Lebanon not so long ago?

 What is at stake is not the sincerity of America’s intentions, but rather the inevitability of America’s evershifting agenda. Political and social circumstances often producer sharp changes in public and Congressional perceptions

 of U.S. military interests abroad. Commitments made with all good intentions by one administration may fall by the wayside when a different administration, with different goals and a different worldview, assumes power. The history of American guarantees to its small allies is not a laundry list of betrayals but rather a manifestation of the simple reality that in a democracy, voters, Congressmen and presidents often change their minds about commitments made by their predecessors,

 U.S. GUARANTEES: THE CASE OF VIETNAM

 Warfare carried out by the Communist forces in northern Vietnam resulted in an agreement, in 1954, by the French colonial authorities to withdraw from the country. Determined “to prevent the loss in northern Vietnam from leading to the extension of communism throughout Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific” (as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles put it), the United States initiated the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty and Protocol, known as SEATO, It was intended to protect the southern portion of Vietnam (the non-Communist region), as well as neighboring Cambodia and Laos, against Communist aggression by promising that any “armed attack” upon those regions would be regarded by the United States as “endanger[ing] its own peace and safety.”5

 The gradual escalation of North Vietnamese attacks upon South Vietnam persuaded the United States to act upon its SEATO pledge. After the North Vietnamese attacked a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964, President Lyndon Johnson for the first time -dispatched. American military forces on an offensive mission against the North. * Pointing to America’s obligation “to assist nations covered by the SEATO treaty,” Johnson sought, and received, overwhelming Congressional approval (466 to 0 in the House, 88-2 in the Senate) for U.S. military action in Vietnam. The Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorized the president “to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom.” It was, Johnson said, “the spirit that motivated us to give our support to the defense of Western Europe in the 1940s [that] led us in the 1950s to make a similar promise to Southeast Asia” — and that promise had to be kept. After all, Johnson once remarked, to surrender Southeast Asia to the Communists meant that “we would say to the world in this case that we don’t live up to our treaties and don’t stand by our friends. This is not my concept.6

 As direct American military involvement in the Vietnamese war increased, so did domestic opposition to the U.S. role. By the time Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, the Vietnam controversy had engulfed American society. Mass demonstrations against U.S. involvement, combined with escalating criticism by Congress and the media of American policy, challenged the Nixon administration’s declared commitment to the protection of South Vietnam, In theory, Nixon felt as strongly about America’s guarantees to the South Vietnamese as had his predecessors. “If we suddenly reneged on our earlier pledges of support, because they had become difficult or costly to carry out, or because they had become unpopular at home, we would not be worthy of the trust of other nations and we certainly would not receive it,” he asserted. But at the same time, Nixon was anxious to extricate the U.S. from that increasingly unpopular war, even if that meant risking South Vietnam’s future. Henry Kissinger, the architect of the 1973 treaty that provided for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, was quoted in 1968 as privately remarking that “the appropriate goal of the U.S. policy was a ‘decent interval’ –two to three years-between the withdrawal of U.S. troops and a Communist takeover in Vietnan.”7

 The terms of the treaty to which Nixon and Kissinger agreed allowed the 120,000 North Vietnamese troops then occupying portions of South Vietnam to remain where they were. The South Vietnamese vehemently protested the treaty, but to no avail. In order to persuade the South Vietnamese to go along with the agreement, Nixon guaranteed them, in writing, that America would return if needed: “You have my absolute assurance,” he wrote to the South Vietnamese leaders on November 14, 1972, “that if Hanoi fails to abide by the terms of this agreement it is my intention to take swift and severe retaliatory action.”s On January 5, 1973, Nixon repeated that pledge, promising that “we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam.”9 Whatever Nixon’s ultimate intentions, his guarantees were soon made moot by Congressional action: all funds for U.S. military action in Southeast Asia were cut off shortly thereafter. 10 Nixon himself was forced to resign the following year as a result of the Watergate scandal, and by the time the North Vietnamese were ready to begin their final conquest of the South, the guarantees of SEATO had given way to the reality of American withdrawal, and the promises offered by Nixon had been obviated by Congress.

 U.S. GUARANTEES: THE CASE OF TAIWAN

 Citizens of Taiwan who were keeping an eye on the American presidential campaign of 1976 must have been impressed by the statements made by the Democratic candidate regarding America’s longstanding pledge to protect their tiny island nation from Com - munist China. “We are bound by a treaty to guarantee the freedom of Formosa, Taiwan, the Republic of China,” Jimmy Carter declared at orie point in the campaign. “I wouldn’t go back on a commitment that we have had to assure that Taiwan is protected from military takeover.”11 During one of the televised debates between the two contenders, Carter reiterated that he “would never let that friendship [with Peking] stand in the way of preservation of the independence and freedom of the people of Taiwan.”12

 Carter’s statements were faithful to longstanding U.S. policy. Following the conquest of mainland China by Communist forces in 1949, the Chinese nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, fled to the neighboring island of Taiwan, where, with American support, they established themselves as the Republic of China. Their Communist rivals, declaring themselves to be the People’s Republic of China, refused to relinquish their claim to Taiwan. Threats by Red China to Quemoy and other small islands off the Taiwan coast in the early 1950s prompted the Eisenhower administration to formalize its commitment to protect Taiwan from Communist aggression by signing a U.S.-Republic of China Mutual Defense Treaty, in December 1954.

 The text of the Defense Treaty committed the U.S. “to resist armed attack and Communist subversive activities” aimed at Taiwan’s “territorial integrity and political stability.” (Article 11). The U.S. pledged (Article V) that it would regard any “armed attack in the west Pacific area directed against the territories of [Taiwan]” to be “dangerous to its own peace and safety,” and “would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes.”13

 Not surprisingly, Red China was furious at America’s commitment to Taiwan. It conditioned the establishment of relations with the U.S. on full American recognition of Communist China as the sole legitimate government of both the mainland and Taiwan; the complete withdrawal of U.S. military forces froth Taiwan, which numbered about 8,500 by the early 1970s; the formal abrogation of the ‘ U.S.-Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty; and a halt to U.S. arms supplies to Taiwan.

 While American military strategists consistently regarded the U.S. defense of Taiwan as integral to the protection of American interests in south Asia, and while public opinion surveys consistently found that a substantial majority of Americans favored maintaining the U.S.Taiwanese alliance, other considerations eventually began to erode America’s commitment. Foremost among these was the foreign policy orientation of President Richard Nixon.

 Although during his vice-presidential years Nixon had distinguished himself as an unbending opponent of Communist China and vociferous defender of Taiwan, the foreign policy theme of detente, which President Nixon shaped together with Henry Kissinger, called for accommodation of Communist regimes. The Vietnam debacle put additional pressure on Nixon to produce a foreign policy triumph that would shore up his domestic support. China, he decided, was the answer.

 Within two weeks of his inauguration, in early 1969, Nixon arranged for secret contacts to be made, in Poland, with the Communist Chinese to help pave the way for a U.S.-Red China rapprochement. That fall, during the United Nations debate over admission of Communist China, there were further signs of a shift in America’s backing for Taiwan. Whereas previously the U.S. had unalterably opposed admitting the Red Chinese, it now changed to a position of opposing admission only if the expulsion of Taiwan was made a precondition for admission, as the Communists insisted. The American shift helped pave the way for the October 1971 expulsion of Taiwan and admission of Red China, over nominal U.S. opposition.

 In February 1972 Nixon made his historic visit to China. The Shanghai Communique, issued jointly by Nixon and his Chinese counterparts at the conclusion of the visit, marked a sharp break with previous American policy. The statement began by asserting that the U.S. “acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain that

 there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. Technically the “one China” position could accurately refer to both the Red Chinese claim that they are the legitimate rulers of both the mainland and Taiwan, as well as Taiwan’s official position that it is the legitimate ruler of the mainland. In practice, however, there was a vast difference between the two claims: whereas for the Taiwanese the concept of one China is a distant dream that they have never taken any steps to advance, for Communist China it is an active policy goal that it pursued during the 1950s by shelling Taiwan’s offshore islands and which it would have pursued further if not for American intervention. (This difference between the theory and reality of the competing claims finds echoes in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Although Israelis are aware that their Biblical and historical rights give them the superior right to considerably more territory than is presently in their possession, they have never made any attempt, except in absolute self-defense, to capture any of those areas. The Arabs, by contrast, have not merely dreamed of conquering all of Israel but have waged active warfare for nearly a century to attain that goal.)

 From the practical point of view, the most significant aspect of the Shanghai Communique was Nixon’s declaration that the U.S. “affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan. In the meantime, it will progressively reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminishes.”14 During Nixon’s term of office, and that of his successor, Gerald Ford, who followed Nixon’s lead on China, American troop strength in Taiwan was reduced from 8,500 to just 1,400. A Republican president had fulfilled the first two conditions laid down by Red China for normalization of relations with the United States.’ A Democratic president would take the final step.

 Jimmy Carter’s plan to reverse American policy regarding Taiwan was not supported by domestic opinion, which polls showed to be consistently sympathetic to

 Taiwan-15 Congressional sentiment was also consistently ProTaiwan, as manifested in the Dole Stone resolution of July 1978 (passed by the Senate by a vote of 94-0), which asked the administration to consult with Congress before changing U.S. policy towards China. yet Carter believed, correctly, that support for Taiwan was wide but not deep; most Americans did not care enough about the issue to impede a presidential policy shift. Thus on December 15, 1978, Carter announced that he was scrapping the U.S.-Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty, ending U.S. arms sales to Taiwan (except for a limited number of defensive weapons) and extending full U.S. recognition to Red China. Shifting perceptions of U.S. strategic needs and the desire to impress domestic constituencies had prompted three American presidents, two Republicans and one Democrat, to reverse a commitment made to an American ally by their predecessors.

 Israelis were shaken by Carter’s shift on Taiwan. In a statement that was forceful despite the requirements of diplomatic protocol, the Israeli government declared: “Israel must give thorough consideration to the U.S. decision about Taiwan and reconsider Washington’s ability to maintain its obligations under its agreements and treaties with other nations.”16 Leading Congressional voices sympathized with Israel’s concern. “Can we now fault Israel for its caution in accepting America’s assurances regarding security?” asked Senator Jake Garn (R-Utah).17 Rep. Norman F. Lent (R-NY) agreed that Carter , s decision “to abandon our staunch ally of thirty years” raises “a most disturbing question: Will Israel be abandoned just as casually?” Lent called on the Carter administration “to assure Israel and our other allies throughout the world that they will not be sold down the river through some new presidential move made in hope of improving the President’s political image.” Without such reassuring action, Lent warned, “Israel and all of our friends in the world will continue to feel the chill winds of doubt and uncertainty.”18

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2001 and is filed under opinion.