When Ehud Met Rahm

September 21, 2012 § 1 Comment

Ehud Barak showed up in Chicago yesterday to meet with his old friend Rahm Emanuel amidst growing tension between the U.S. and Israel over the issue of red lines on Iran and just weeks before the presidential election. This was clearly not just a social call, and in fact Emanuel’s spokesman said that the meeting was an “official visit.” The question is what exactly Barak is up to, since Emanuel has no formal role in making foreign policy anymore now that he is the mayor of Chicago rather than President Obama’s chief of staff. Furthermore, Israeli national security advisor Yaakov Amidror has been in Washington the past couple of days for previously undisclosed meetings with the White House to smooth out differences between the U.S. and Israel over Iran, so there would be no reason for Barak to be talking national security issues with Emanuel.

According to both Ynet and Ha’aretz, Barak’s mission was to begin healing the rift between Washington and Jerusalem, although the two differed on whether Barak was here on a mission from Bibi Netanyahu or was acting on his own. According to Ynet, “it remains unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was informed” of the meeting, while Ha’aretz reports that “Netanyahu sent a message of appeasement to the Obama campaign in the form of Minister of Defense Ehud Barak. The message: The Israeli leader is not meddling in the elections taking place in the United States.”

So what’s really going on here? Did Bibi dispatch Barak in order to send a message through an Obama confidante, or is Barak doing his own thing? If I had to guess, I’d go with the latter for a few reasons. First, if Netanyahu was trying to reassure Obama that he is not meddling in American presidential politics, he wouldn’t be sending Barak with that message, as the two Israelis have a partnership of strategic convenience but are not close political allies in any significant sense. Barak may be trusted in Washington to a much higher degree than Netanyahu, but the person to deliver a political message of that nature would be someone like Ron Dermer and not Barak. When the president of the United States is angry because he thinks that you are interfering in his country’s internal politics, you send one of your most trusted aides to rebut the assertion rather than send your defense minister who belongs to another party.

Second, I’m not sure that it is actually in Barak’s interests to try and help out Netanyahu with Obama, as opposed to making sure that the U.S.-Israel relationship remains strong. To put it bluntly, Barak’s priority is that Israel get all the defense and security and diplomatic help from the U.S. that it can muster and not whether Netanyahu can schedule meetings with Obama whenever he wants. It seems pretty clear to me that Netanyahu’s amateurish attempt to pressure the White House is an idea that he ginned up all on his own and that the rest of the political and defense establishment wants little part of it, and there is no reason for Barak to help Netanyahu climb down from the limb as long as the administration’s anger is directed at Netanyahu rather than Israel. The story about Barak trying to make sure that the relationship between the two countries remains strong rings truer to me than the version in which he is trying to spin Netanyahu’s public comments and interviews as benign.

Which brings me to the third point, which is that Barak is looking ahead to the next Israeli elections and is trying to set himself up for a resurgence. Barak is nothing if not a smart tactician, and I think he sees the handwriting on the wall at this point, which is that an Israeli strike is unlikely to occur and that makes him expendable to Netanyahu and the governing coalition since Likud hardliners are constantly after his head. Barak is trying to distance himself from Netanyahu so that he can make a credible run with Tzipi Livni or Yair Lapid in a new center-left party, which is why it was leaked that he no longer agrees with Netanyahu on the need for a strike and why he is going to start taking a harder stance on illegal settlement building. Meeting with Emanuel makes perfect sense given Rahm’s status within the Democratic Party and Barak’s position on the center-left of the Israeli political spectrum, since Barak wants to make sure that he maintains good ties with the Democrats and is seen as a credible figure by the U.S. Barak has a reputation for looking out for himself above all else, and I think the meeting with Emanuel fits into this patter. It is about letting the White House know that he does not agree with anything that Netanyahu is doing, and that should he find himself in a stronger political position after the next election he will make the relationship with the U.S. his top priority. There is no reason in the context of Israeli domestic politics for Barak to throw Netanyahu a lifeline; in fact, given outside events, there is every reason for Barak to let him drown.

Talking Past Each Other On Turkey and Israel

September 5, 2012 § Leave a comment

In the midst of a very long day yesterday, the Atlantic Council’s Young Turkey Young America group had a meeting at the American Jewish Committee to talk about the U.S.-Israeli relationship with AJC executive director David Harris and former Israeli deputy permanent representative to the UN Aaron Jacob. I find that there is a general misconception in Turkey about the basis for U.S.-Israel ties along with a perception that the “Jewish lobby” controls U.S. politics (thank you very much Messrs. Walt and Mearsheimer), so to my mind this was a good opportunity for the Turks in the group to hear a different perspective and to separate fact from myth. It was also a great venue to hash out some of the many issues plaguing the Israel-Turkey relationship. One of the last questions asked was about Israel’s general unpopularity in the world, and part of the answer given was an attempt to demonstrate that Israel is not the only country that behaves in certain ways (Northern Cyprus and the fight against the PKK came up) and that both Israel and Turkey feel that they are misunderstood.

This last question and answer generated intense heated discussions throughout the rest of the day. A significant number of the Turks were unsatisfied with, and even angered by, the answer for two reasons. First, they did not feel that the question had been addressed, since the query was about why Israel is unpopular and isolated and this seemed to them like an attempt to avoid the question by changing the subject. Second, and more saliently, they were perturbed that someone would compare Turkish actions to Israeli actions, and some of them insisted that Turkey is not occupying Northern Cyprus and that the PKK is unquestionably a terrorist group whereas Hamas is not.

I took two lessons away from this. First, it never fails to amaze me how people – and my new Turkish friends are not unique in this regard at all, since we are all (myself included) guilty of this – will go to great lengths to distinguish their own country’s behavior from another country’s behavior despite the similarities that exist. Some of my Turkish compatriots were arguing later in the day that Israel must be doing something wrong since it has no friends in the world save the U.S. (and one person made the astute point during the AJC meeting that there is a real difference between friends and partners) and everyone is opposed to Israel’s foreign policy actions, yet in the next breath argued that Turkey was fully justified in its Cyprus policy despite the fact that the only country in the entire world that recognizes Northern Cyprus is Turkey. You can’t have it both ways, and yet many of the Turks were visibly annoyed when it was suggested that Turkey is not behaving any differently than Israel, or that Hamas is just as much a terrorist group as the PKK. It really reinforced just how hard it is to overcome your natural biases no matter where you are from, and how intractably difficult some of these issue are.

Second, it served as a reminder about how different audiences require different messages. Some of the AJC answers were exactly what you’d expect in terms of an aggressive defense of Israeli actions, but some of the Turks were taken aback at just how forceful the answers were, and as I noted were not at all receptive to the argument that Turkey and Israel are similar in their approaches and in both being misunderstood by international actors. The more forceful answers are the type that worked on the American audience to a greater extent and would have been very well received by a Jewish pro-Israel group, but the overall strategy seemed to backfire with the Turkish contingent. Rather than convincing them, it made them defensive and left them somewhat unsatisfied, whereas they appreciated the questions that were answered in a more measured or more reflective way. I don’t generally spend too much time thinking about communications issues, but it was interesting to listen to Turkish reactions to different answers and how interest group messaging strategy affected them. All in all a very interesting meeting, and many thanks to AJC for hosting a wide-ranging and frank discussion on a sensitive topic.

A Small Window Into Declining U.S. Influence

August 13, 2012 § 2 Comments

The big news in the Middle East over the weekend was new Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi’s sacking of the twin leaders of the SCAF, defense minister Hussein Tantawi and chief of staff Sami Anan, and annulling the SCAF’s previous constitutional declaration that gave it wide ranging legislative and executive powers. For some analysis about what all of this might mean, try Marc Lynch or Issandr El Amrani or my friend and fellow Georgetown compatriot Hesham Sallam. I have my own thoughts, but I’d instead like to make a wider point about what this tells us about American influence. One of the most notable aspects of what happened yesterday is that the president of Egypt got rid of the defense minister, chief of staff, and service heads with one fell swoop, yet the U.S. had absolutely no hint that this was coming. To give you a sense of just how much of a surprise this was, remember that last month Hillary Clinton met with Tantawi separate from her meeting with Morsi while in Egypt, and I’d wager that the meeting with Tantawi was the one that contained a more in-depth and far-ranging discussion. A couple of weeks ago Leon Panetta was in Egypt and he met with Tantawi as well and afterward said that “it’s my view, based on what I have seen and the discussions I’ve had, that President Morsi and Field Marshal Tantawi have a very good relationship and are working together towards the same ends.” Doesn’t sound like a guy expecting Tantawi to be forced into early retirement just two weeks later, does it? It also doesn’t sound like a guy particularly eager for such a step to be taken.

I do not mean to suggest that Egypt has any obligation to run its policy by the U.S. before doing anything, since Egypt is a sovereign state and has the right to do whatever it likes in this regard. It is certainly curious though that Egypt receives $1.3 billion annually from the U.S. in military aid, not to mention the fact that the U.S.-Egypt relationship is largely built on military to military ties and security issues, and Morsi did not feel the need to even give the U.S. a heads up that this was coming down the road. I understand the need to keep a move like this quiet before it happens, but there’s no way this was a snap decision; it’s not like Morsi woke up yesterday morning and just felt like replacing Egypt’s entire military leadership. That the administration or DoD did not know about this beforehand – and David Ignatius is clear on the fact that they did not – says a lot about the limits of American influence these days. Clinton and Panetta just wasted a whole lot of time for nothing, and irrespective of whether Morsi did this on his own or whether it was the result of an internal military coup (after all, Tantawi and Anan were both replaced by other SCAF members), the shadow of the U.S. should be long enough that either Morsi or other senior officers would have told someone here what was about to go down. It’s tough to imagine the U.S. having zero inkling of a complete turnover of Egyptian military leadership five or ten years ago, and I think this isn’t just about Morsi but about the Egyptian military as well.

Egypt is not the only place where the limits of U.S. influence are strikingly apparent. Israel is awash in speculation that Bibi Netanyahu and Ehud Barak have made the decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities this fall, despite the fact that the U.S. has sent a parade of officials to Jerusalem – including Panetta on that same trip two weeks ago  – pleading with Israel to give sanctions some more time. Again, as with Egypt, Israel has every right to do what it wants, particularly when it has legitimate fears about Iran, but compare this to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, during which U.S. influence with Israel was so strong that it was able to convince Israel to sit tight as Saddam Hussein launched 42 Scud missiles at Tel Aviv and other Israeli populations centers. Of course, Israel has not yet launched an attack (and I plan on writing later this week about why I remain skeptical that it will), but the fact that it is being so openly contemplated and Israeli officials are saying nasty things to the press about American knowledge and intelligence capabilities demonstrates the depths to which U.S. influence with Israel has fallen. Israel is contemplating a strike despite not having the weaponry to completely eliminate Iran’s nuclear program and despite U.S. public and private assurances that it will not tolerate Iran producing a nuclear weapon, and that tells you all you need to know about waning American sway.

Power can be measured in lots of different ways. From a military/resources standpoint, the U.S. is doing perfectly fine. But power consists of many other things as well, such as persuasion or being kept in the loop. On these other measures, this weekend highlighted pretty clearly that U.S. influence could use some real strengthening.

Ehud Barak Badly Overplays His Hand

August 10, 2012 § 1 Comment

One of the consequences of the disparities in threat perception and capabilities between the U.S. and Israel when it comes to Iran is that Israel has a strong incentive to pressure the U.S. into acting. Israel faces a graver and more imminent threat than the U.S. from an Iranian nuclear weapon given its proximity to Iran, the fact that Iran has repeatedly threatened Israel with violence and annihilation (and noting this does not automatically mean that Israel should strike at Iran, but by the same token pretending that this is not the case makes those who invoke the argument appear to be naively foolish), and the fact that Israel has been a frequent target of Iranian-sponsored terrorism that will only increase once Iran has a measure of nuclear deterrence. This is combined with the fact that by all accounts Israel is not equipped to destroy the Iranian nuclear program in its entirely but only to set it back a year or two, while the U.S. is assumed to have the aerial capability and munitions to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites in their entirety. The obvious result of all this is that Israel is engaged in a delicate dance to portray itself as willing to attack Iran at any time while working to convince the U.S. that Iran presents as large a threat to Israeli interests as it does to U.S. interests and thus is a job for the U.S. to take care of. Lest anyone accuse me of advancing pernicious theories about the Israel lobby (which would be a strange thing coming from me in light of this and this), let me state in the strongest possible terms that Israel’s actions on this front are both entirely understandable and entirely out in the open, and nothing more than run-of-the-mill statecraft.

Israel’s strategy to convince the U.S. to act has been to play up Iran’s willingness to use a bomb should it acquire one, reiterate its view that Iran is so far not being deterred by verbal threats and sanctions from ending its nuclear program, and insist that Iran has made greater progress on developing a weapon than has been realized. This strategy reached its climax yesterday when Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak first claimed that President Obama had received a new National Intelligence Estimate that was in line with Israel’s claim about Iran’s accelerated progress toward reaching nuclear capability, and then backtracked on the N.I.E. claim but said that there was an American intelligence report backing Israel’s view of the situation. John Schindler blogging at The XX Committee highlights how irregular and unprecedented it is for Barak to publicly release information about U.S. intelligence assessments, and Barak’s claims were immediately disputed by the U.S.

It is hard to overstate just how head scratching this move was by Barak. If the recent AP reporting that the CIA considers Israel to be a top counterintelligence threat is accurate, it is simply dumbfounding that Barak would go and publicly trumpet highly classified information coming from the U.S. that Washington clearly does not want getting out. It is also only going to understandably enrage the Obama administration, which has been publicly stating that Iran presents a vital threat to U.S. interests and that it will not tolerate Iran developing a nuclear weapon, all the while providing Israel with extra funds for military expenditures like Iron Dome, but keeping to its own timeline on Iran. Assuming that what Barak said is accurate, the White House is right to feel betrayed that classified intelligence it shared with Israel was blithely repeated to the press by Israel’s defense minister in an effort to pressure the U.S. into acting before it is ready to do so. If what Barak said is not accurate, then it is even worse. No matter what, it is not going to contribute to better U.S-Israeli coordination, and if anything it will make the U.S. think twice before sharing significant information with Jerusalem going forward. Barak’s leak is also not going to successfully pressure the U.S. into attacking Iran before it thinks it is necessary to do so, and one has to wonder what happened to Israel’s most decorated soldier’s penchant for strategic thinking.

On the one hand, it is surprising that Barak would do something like this considering that he appears to have a better relationship with Obama and other administration figures than Bibi Netanyahu does. Barak is the one who is constantly touting the unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation between Israel and the U.S. under Obama, and Obama has hinted that his relationship with Barak is stronger than it is with Netanyahu, telling Jeffrey Goldberg, “I think the prime minister — and certainly the defense minister — would acknowledge that we’ve never had closer military and intelligence cooperation.” If an Israeli official was going to do something boneheaded that damaged the level of trust with the U.S., I would not have guessed that Barak would be the man to do it. On the other hand, there is a reason that Barak, despite being Israel’s most decorated soldier and a former IDF chief of staff and prime minister, is widely distrusted and even reviled in his own country. The knock on Barak is that he has no convictions and is willing to do or say anything to secure his own position, explaining his recent bolting from Labor and forming his own Atzmaut (Independence) Party in order to remain as defense minister once Labor left the government coalition. His political instincts are anything but stellar, and his military instincts have come into question in recent years as well as he has publicly feuded with a succession of IDF chiefs of staff. In many ways, the casual leak of classified American intelligence is classic Barak, as he does anything necessary to further his own goal of pressuring the U.S. to strike Iran irrespective of what relationships get burned in the process. This time, however, Barak has actually undermined his own cause, and one can only hope that he has not caused long term damage to Israel and its relationship with the U.S.

Guest Post: Which Side Is It That Is Actually Politicizing Israel?

June 21, 2012 § 1 Comment

Following my post last week about the GOP turning Israel into a partisan issue, my friend Gabe Scheinmann emailed me to register his disagreement with what I had written. Gabe and I met when we were at Harvard and we both ended up as PhD students in the Government Department at Georgetown, and he is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Gabe is a rising star in conservative foreign policy circles, and I always take his unfailingly intelligent and informed views on security policy very seriously. Gabe has a different take on who is responsible for politicizing Israel as an issue in U.S. elections, and I asked if he would be willing to write a guest post laying out his rebuttal to my argument and he graciously agreed. Here is Gabe on the differences between the Republicans and Democrats on Israel and which side is more responsible for playing politics.

Making “Israel” into a partisan issue football is bad for Israel and bad for America. A true alliance does not bloom and wither based on the party in power, but instead represents long-term interests. By politicizing such an alliance, both political parties, and both countries for that matter, are jeopardizing the crucial trust and commitments needed for a fruitful relationship. Moreover, the current parties’ dispositions on Israel have not always been the same. Prior to the Nixon Administration, it was the Democratic Party that was a great friend of Israel, from immediate political recognition from Truman to the beginning of a military relationship under JFK. In contrast, the greatest crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations to this day occurred during a Republican Administration, when an irate Eisenhower browbeat Israel over its invasion of the Sinai and Suez Canal in 1956. Three decades from now, the parties’ identities may yet again change and it would be a disservice to the U.S, Israel, and the alliance if the parties were to develop diametrically opposed views on the subject.

That said, I think the real culprit is that for the first time in a long time, real differences have emerged between the two parties regarding their policies towards Israel. The Democratic Party’s lurch leftwards on foreign policy—partly a result of Vietnam, partly due to demographics—has also shaken its once solid support for Israel. The Democratic Congressional leadership remains very pro-Israel, way more so than the current president. But if you look at poll after poll of Democrats, especially liberal Democrats, what you find on Israel is very troubling. Whether it’s the J Street crowd (whose leadership is way more right-wing than its supporters, and that’s saying something), or the African-American community, or the environmentalist community, or the gay community, you’ll find some terrible sentiments on Israel. The ritual condemnation of Israel by supposed “human rights” organizations, all left-leaning, are manifestations of this. And while the Democratic leadership is indeed pro-Israel, the ranks of the Democratic party are not. The “Gaza-54” letter, asking Obama to pressure Israel to ease the Gaza blockade in 2010, was signed exclusively by 54 Democratic Congressmen, Rep Jim Moran (D-VA) blamed the Iraq War on AIPAC—earning the rebuke of Rep. Steny Hoyer—and, most recently, the New York Democratic Party establishment has come out against Charles Barron, the former Black Panther running for Congress, for his anti-Israel and anti-Semitic positions, even though he has been endorsed by the retiring Congressman whose seat he’s running for.

Moreover, President Obama himself has politicized Israel policy to a degree unseen in decades. The Obama Campaign put out a glossy, epic-music-leitmotif video on its “exemplary” record on Israel, the White House (note: not the campaign) has a webpage exclusively devoted to the president’s Israel record, longer than the entirety of its foreign policy page, and the president himself declared that he “has done more in terms of security for the state of Israel than any previous administration” and knows more about Judaism than any other American president. The list goes on. Obama has spoken at AIPAC two years in row, a first for a president. The recent spate of national security leaks—authorized or not—have served to make the president look tougher to his electorate, while compromising real national security, such as the disclosure of the joint U.S.-Israeli cyberwarfare campaign against Iran’s nuclear program, which has a direct quote from VP Biden blaming Israel.  In addition, Biden has recently reemphasized the president’s campaign speech of last October, also expounding that “I believe that no president since Harry Truman has done more for Israel’s physical security than Barack Obama”, even managing a small dig at the Bush Administration for supposedly not putting enough pressure on Iran.

Moreover, the President’s Israel policy seems dictated not by U.S. national security, but by his own reelection campaign, as his policies on the peace process and Iran have morphed as the November approaches.

Take the Peres ceremony. To be clear, if the GOP leadership was indeed invited, they should have gone. (However, Kampeas’ blog postings on the subject are far from definitive as to who was actually invited and who was out of town, so I’m not sure there’s solid evidence that the GOP absence was out of spite for Obama’s Israel record.) Notice the glowing and unprecedented reception the White House gave Peres compared to its shabby treatment of Netanyahu, Israel’s actual leader. Notice Obama quoting extensively from Peres’ 1993 Nobel peace prize speech, or the very act of giving Peres the medal, or more importantly, singling him out for a separate ceremony than the rest of the recipients the previous week. For example, when Obama gave Bush 41 the same medal two years ago, not only was it not a black tie event, nor at night, nor a reception, but he was one of fifteen recipients! This was an entire political operation by the president, from the decision to award the medal, to the manner in which it was presented, to the themes hit upon. (Notice how Peres brought up Iran, while Obama didn’t.) Obama’s message to Bibi was “See how I’ll treat you if you believe in what I believe”. It was a no-so-subtle dig.

To conclude, I believe that the core of the Democratic party has moved far leftward on foreign policy and, as a result, it is losing its reliable pro-Israel bent. This has begun to trickle up the ranks of its leadership, but for the moment its Congressional leadership is still solidly pro-Israel, more so than the president himself. So, what should the GOP or, for that matter, pro-Israel Democrats do? In order to keep Israel bipartisan, should they compromise? How should the Republican Party respond when the White House attempts to impose a settlement freeze on Israel, or equates the Holocaust with Palestinian suffering, or denies the existence of Bush era assurances to Israel, or attempts to refund UNESCO in contravention of U.S. law, or opposes the counting of Palestinian “refugees”?

In the past 5 years, substantive differences have emerged between the two parties on Israel, largely a result of a shift in the Democratic party. The emergence of groups like the Emergency Committee for Israel is a consequence, not a cause, of this shift and is merely trying to highlight these differences while ultimately letting voters decide. If the differences between the two parties, or Obama and Romney, were invented, then that would be a different story. However, they are not and therefore ought to be debated.

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