Commentary/Contentions..
04 November '12..
(While having generally avoided until now specific posts on the presidential elections, this originally 3 part piece from Jonathan Tobin will be the exception. While there have been times where I disagree with points he makes, I find his pieces to be well thought-out and important to be taken into consideration. The title, What Are the Stakes for Israel?, is the specific focus of this piece. Yosef)
Part 1
If you listen to President Obama’s Jewish surrogates, you hear them tell you that Barack Obama is the best friend Israel ever had in the White House. According to the president’s Jewish detractors, he is one of its worst foes and his re-election could lead to its destruction. Where does the truth lie?
Let’s start with one clear fact. Israel’s survival does not depend on who is elected president of the United States. As important as the U.S.-Israel alliance may be — and it is absolutely vital to the state of Israel’s well-being and security — the Jewish state will not collapse if Barack Obama is re-elected. Nor will it enter a new golden age if Mitt Romney wins. Responsibility for Israel’s defense falls primarily on the shoulders of someone who is not on the ballot on Tuesday: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. If the president of the United States seeks in the next four years to pressure Israel to do something that will undermine its security, Netanyahu — or one of his opponents, should he fail to be re-elected in parliamentary elections that will take place the day after the American president is inaugurated — can say no, just as his predecessors have done. Israel’s leaders have rarely been shy about taking unilateral or pre-emptive action to forestall a threat, and that won’t change. It should also be pointed out that the infrastructure of the U.S.-Israel relationship is so deeply entrenched into America’s political culture that even should the president seek to significantly alter or undermine that alliance, the political price for such a decision would be so costly as to deter all but the most fanatical ideologue.
That said, there would be significant differences between a second Obama administration and a first one for Romney in terms of the impact on Israel.
The first and most obvious difference will be in terms of the tone of the relationship. Though Democrats have spent the last year trying to make the public forget about it, President Obama has spent most of his time in office feuding with the Israeli government about a number of different issues.
Though Obama has not overturned and has, in fact, strengthened the security relationship between the two nations in some respects (something for which he deserves credit but which was nothing more than a continuation of the policies of his predecessors, as his defenders claim), Obama came into office determined to reverse what he thought was his predecessor’s mistake in being seen as too close to Israel. He succeeded in putting more daylight between the two allies, but that was about all he accomplished. His foolish decision to push hard for another round of talks with the Palestinians just at the time that the latter had signaled their inability to negotiate a peace deal on any terms was his first misjudgment. He compounded that error by pushing the Israelis to make unilateral concessions on settlements that did nothing to appease Arab demands, but ironically put the Palestinian Authority in the position of having to sound as tough on Israel as the Americans. Even when Netanyahu agreed to a settlement freeze, the Palestinians balked at talking.
Even worse, the president established a position on the status of Jerusalem in 2010 that did more to undermine Israel’s claim on its capital than that of any previous American administration. That led to unnecessary and quite bitter fights with Netanyahu that strengthened the Israeli at home and convinced the majority of his people that Obama wasn’t their friend.
Then in 2011, Obama tried to push hard on Israel to agree to the 1967 lines as the starting point for future negotiations. This was a slight, though significant, alteration of previous American positions that was made worse by Obama’s repudiation of Bush’s promises to respect the changes on the ground since 1967 (i.e. the major settlement blocs and new Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem).
Even the Iranian nuclear threat, an issue on which Obama has always paid lip service to Israeli concerns, the president managed to turn agreement into dispute by refusing to agree to Netanyahu’s request for “red lines” that would put some limits on the time allowed for diplomacy before action was contemplated. While there are genuine differences between the two allies on Iran, this was one point that could have been finessed had Obama wished to do so. But even after nearly a year of an election-year charm offensive, the president refused to meet with Netanyahu and produce even a limited consensus on the issue.
The irony is that Obama’s spats with Israel were completely unnecessary, as the Palestinians took no advantage of his attempts to tilt the diplomatic playing field in their direction. Nor have the Iranians used the time Obama has granted them, first by his engagement policy and then by a belated sanctions regime that has allowed them to get closer to a nuclear weapon, to come to an agreement that would remove the possibility of a conflict.
Since Netanyahu is the odds-on favorite to be re-elected in January and, barring an unforeseen development, be in office for all of the next four years, should Obama win, the one thing we can be certain of is that relations between the two countries will not be smooth. The variables involve how much Obama has learned from the failures of his policies over the past four years and how much they would differ from what Romney would do.
On the first point, there is room for debate.
It is entirely possible that Obama has learned his lesson, at least as far as the Palestinians are concerned. Anyone who believes that Mahmoud Abbas has the will or the ability to actually negotiate or sign a peace accord hasn’t been paying attention to anything he’s done during the eight years of his four-year term as president of the Palestinian Authority. There is even less reason to believe Abbas’s Hamas rivals will be willing to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. Would Obama really be so foolish as to risk another bruising battle with a re-elected Netanyahu for the sake of a peace process that even he must know is doomed?
Maybe. Given Obama’s loathing for Netanyahu and his lack of general sympathy for Israel (as Aaron David Miller memorably put it, he’s the only U.S. president in a generation “not in love with the idea of Israel”), it’s a certainty that he will be picking more fights with the Israeli if he is re-elected.
While, as we have seen, the alliance can survive even four years of near-constant tension, one shouldn’t underestimate the damage these battles do to Israel. They encourage, as they have in the past four years, Israel’s Palestinian antagonists to be even more intransigent. They also help isolate Israel at a time when a rising tide of anti-Semitism is causing Europe to be even more hostile to the Jewish state.
There is little doubt that, despite the ardent defense of his pro-Israel bona fides by Democrats, a re-elected Obama will be inclined to be even more intolerant of Netanyahu and Israel’s insistence on standing up for its rights in the peace process and on the question of the Iran threat. Though Romney’s relationship with Netanyahu is probably not as close as some Republicans imply, it is a given that there will, at least for a time, be more cooperation and a lot more trust between the two governments, even if the vital security relationship won’t be altered all that much.
In part two of this post, I’ll discuss the impact of a second Obama administration on the question of Iran. In part three, I’ll go into more detail about whether a President Romney might be any different.
Part 2
As I discussed in part one of this post, the discussion of the impact of the U.S. presidential election on Israel tends to be exaggerated. Just as it is absurd to speak of a man who clearly has little genuine sympathy for the Jewish state as its best friend ever to sit in the White House (as Democrats falsely assert), it is equally foolish to claim that Israel’s survival hangs on the outcome, since the alliance between the two countries is so entrenched in our political culture that severing it is probably beyond the capacity of even a re-elected president. However, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that four more years of Barack Obama will mean more tension between the U.S. and Israel that will undermine the relationship and encourage the Jewish state’s foes, to no purpose. Yet the inevitable spats over the peace process with the Palestinians pale in significance when compared to what may be Israel’s greatest current security challenge: a nuclear Iran.
Any account of the last four years of U.S. policy toward Iran must begin with the fact that President Obama has left himself very little room to maneuver out of a commitment to stop Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. The president has been consistent in stating that he will not allow this to happen on his watch since he was first running for president in 2008. Since then, he has repeated this mantra and significantly elaborated on it while running for re-election. He has acknowledged that a nuclear Iran is a danger to U.S. security, rather than just an existential threat to Israel. This past March, the president specifically repudiated the possibility of “containing” a nuclear Iran but said that it must be stopped from attaining such a weapon. During the third presidential debate, he said the only deal he will accept with Iran is one that precludes their having a “nuclear program,” something that would preclude the sort of compromise favored by America’s European allies that would allow Tehran to keep its reactors and fuel–leaving open the possibility of a North Korea-style evasion of international diplomatic efforts.
Yet the question remains what will a re-elected President Obama do if the belated sanctions he imposed on Iran (and whose loose enforcement is itself an issue) do not convince them to give in to his demands? Will he keep the “window for diplomacy” open to allow the Iranians to go on delaying until they reach their nuclear goal? That’s something no one can know for sure, but which must haunt friends of Israel.
The worries about Obama and Iran center on doubts about whether he will keep his word about containment and no nukes for Iran. Given the president’s “hot mic” promise to Russia that he will be “more flexible” with the Putin regime if he is re-elected, it is reasonable to ask whether he will show just as much flexibility on this issue and either punt or craft some compromise that will leave the door open to a nuclear Iran some time in the future.
Obama’s defenders insist that he means what he says about stopping the Iranians. But critics ask why a president who has always shown a greater inclination to talk about the danger than to do anything about it would ever move on Iran. Obama’s instincts have always inclined him toward pursuing the sort of diplomatic activity that allows the Iranians to keep spinning their centrifuges. The president insists that he will not allow himself to be played for a fool by a series of talks whose only purpose is to let the Iranians run out the clock until their program becomes unstoppable. Yet he has specifically refused to agree to the sort of “red lines” that Iran would not be allowed to cross without risking U.S. action. The president’s palpable anger at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for making such a request reminded observers that throughout his presidency he has always seemed a lot more anxious about preventing the Jewish state from acting on its own against Iran than in stopping the ayatollahs.
Even if one takes Obama at his word on Iran in terms of his intentions, the idea that he has another year or two or three that he can use to wait out the ayatollahs while sanctions weaken them may be mistaken. The staying power of the Islamist regime should not be underestimated. Nor should we assume that there are years rather than months before the Iranian stockpile of enriched uranium safely stored in underground bunkers is so great that force will no longer be an option.
Lack of faith in Obama’s willingness to act on Iran is not just the product of the fact that he seems an unlikely candidate for launching a limited war on Iran over its nuclear program, though that is certainly true. The bigger problem is that the president is so in love with the United Nations and the idea of negotiations that it is hard to imagine that he will ever come to a moment where he will be willing to accept that diplomacy is no longer an option.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that if Obama cannot be trusted to do the right thing on Iran — even if that means the use of force — that this will have a tremendous impact on Israel’s security as well as that of the United States. Should Israel ever conclude that Obama has no intention of doing more than talk about Iran it may decide to act on its own, a course that brings with it a host of military and diplomatic problems that are almost too great to contemplate.
While there is no way of knowing for sure what Obama will do, the reasonable doubts about him are part of the reason why the Iranians have been so confident about their ability to outwait the West.
In part three of this series of posts, I will discuss whether it is fair to assert that Mitt Romney will be different than Obama on Iran and other aspects of the U.S.-Israel alliance.
Part 3
In parts one and two of this series, I discussed President Obama’s often problematic relationship with Israel. While noting his decision not to interfere with the existing security relationship between the two countries, there is no doubt that the alliance has suffered from his lack of empathy for Israel, his active hostility toward Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and doubts about his willingness to do more than talk about the threat from a nuclear Iran. But the other side of the question facing pro-Israel voters is whether Mitt Romney provides a clear alternative to Obama on Israel-related issues.
Romney would come into office with a lot of good will from Israelis, whom polls show prefer him to Obama. He also has a better relationship with Netanyahu (though it is hard to imagine anyone having a worse one). But arguments for Romney on Israel-related issues have a lot more to do with the fact that he is not Barack Obama than with his own virtues. Though there are some fundamental differences between the two that speak well for Romney, Jewish Republicans are in some respects taking a leap of faith about the GOP candidate in much the same way as some Democrats did with Obama.
One clear difference is as much philosophical as it is practical. Though Romney does not have much of a record on foreign policy issues and is generally far less comfortable speaking about foreign affairs than he is about economics and other domestic policies, he is clear about one thing: he doesn’t want there to be much public daylight between the U.S. and Israel. President Obama came into office determined to open up some distance between the two nations, because of either his own inclinations or a belief that too much closeness undermined the peace process. While he did create that distance due to constant fights about settlements, borders and Jerusalem, the peace process didn’t prosper–and that is a lesson that has not been lost on Romney and his advisors.
However, to assume that Romney will never quarrel with Israel or Netanyahu is probably a bit naïve.
First of all, the nature of the relationship will be defined as much by the people Romney chooses to run the State and Defense Departments as well as his national security apparatus. Should Romney succumb to the siren song of James Baker-style “realists” and fill at least some crucial positions with persons who are wedded to the failed patent nostrums of the peace process or who are not serious about stopping Iran’s nuclear threat, then all the good vibes between Mitt and Bibi will not count for as much as some think.
Second, even if Romney does fulfill his vow for Israel to be his first foreign destination while president (and let’s not underestimate the value of the symbolism of such a trip, after Obama’s refusal to go to Israel, in terms of demonstrating to Israel’s foes the strength of the alliance), anyone who thinks Romney will act on Iran rather than just talk about the threat–as Obama has–is operating on faith, not tangible proof. The problem with having no real track record on foreign policy is not just that we don’t know for sure what Romney will do but that this weakness could make him vulnerable to listening to the foreign policy establishment, and that would not be good for Israel.
It is worth pointing out that even George W. Bush, who enjoyed a justified reputation as an ardent friend of Israel, did many things during his eight years in office that disappointed the Jewish state. In his second term, he virtually handed over the relationship to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose policies were little different from those of President Clinton and diverged from those of Obama only in tone rather than substance. Bush didn’t choose to act on Iran and forbade the Israelis from doing so on their own.
Stating this doesn’t mean that Romney hasn’t stated excellent positions on foreign policy and defense that make good sense as well as being supportive of Israel. His intentions seem good. But running for president and being president are two different things. If Romney is elected, he will have to be judged by the same standard by which many Republicans damn Obama: his actions, not his campaign rhetoric.
The point here is not that Romney isn’t different from Obama on Israel. He does seem to have more innate sympathy and isn’t handicapped by hostility to Netanyahu or the political culture of the country. But to assume that he will stand by it consistently and have the guts to take heat for doing so, or that he would actually do something about Iran if that were what the situation called for, is an act of faith motivated largely by distrust of Obama, not a conclusion that can be supported by his record.
Jewish supporters of both the president and Romney will probably cast their votes based on each candidate’s positions on a host of other issues. Most Democrats acknowledge that the hyperbole about Obama’s love for Israel is bunk but think him passable nonetheless. Romney shines more by the comparison to Obama than on the merit of his own record. The issue here is not so much certainty about what either would do in the next four years but whether fears about Obama will overshadow doubts about Romney.
Link: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/11/04/what-are-the-stakes-for-israel-part-three-mitt-romney-obama-iran/
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