Enabling Reckless Allies (II)
Greg Scoblete asks how Washington can possibly restrain Israel with respect to Iran’s nuclear program when it cannot even keep the Netanyahu government from pushing ahead with new settlement construction. That’s a fair question, but I think putting the question this way overlooks the enabling effect that the stated “no space” guarantee to Israel has on the behavior of the Israeli government. This relates to the application of the idea of moral hazard to foreign policy that Leon Hadar proposed and I have mentioned before. Many Americans might reasonably assume that by making unconditional, explicit security guarantees to Israel Washington could expect greater flexibility and accommodation from the Israeli government on points of contention, but this is not how it works. The moral hazard of unconditional backing is not only that the ally being supported will engage in reckless behavior, but that it does so knowing that it will pay no real price for this behavior as far as the relationship with the U.S. is concerned. The temptation is to focus criticism on the ally that is taking advantage of this, but the one deserving the most blame is our own government.
If the federal government can be counted on to rescue firms that are “too big to fail,” it can be expected to tolerate just about any allied behavior because of the ostensible strategic value the ally has to offer. Hawks were quick to point out that the administration’s demand for a settlement freeze encouraged Palestinian leaders to be less inclined to compromise, but if this is right imagine how uncompromising and inflexible decades of unconditional support have made Israeli leaders. Indeed, on settlement policy that is exactly what we have seen for over thirty years.
The Georgian government believed that it enjoyed the same sort of unconditional backing, only to discover far too late that it has misinterpreted the signals coming from Washington, but the moral hazard effect is even worse for those allies that can actually count on being bailed out by Washington. Unlike Georgia, Israel does not have to make a leap of faith that Washington will come to its aid, but can take that support for granted. The result is that Israel can ignore Washington when it wants and demand Washington’s help when it needs it. The British have started to appreciate the one-sided nature of their relationship with us. One wonders how long it will be before we understand that our relationship with Israel is much the same.
So long as the benefits from the alliance keep flowing uninterrupted, Israel has no incentive to make concessions that Washington requests. After reducing or halting aid was automatically taken off the table, Washington’s requests fell on deaf ears because the Netanyahu governmen had no reason to listen to them. While the timing of the settlement announcement was probably coincidental, it was a useful reminder that the the benefits of the alliance tend to flow in one direction. Our government has only itself to blame for this. Unless there is at least the possibility of negative consequences for undesired behavior, that behavior will continue. This is not something unique to the U.S.-Israel relationship. It is true of all imbalanced and unhealthy political relationships defined by dependence and unaccountability.
The conduct of U.S. foreign policy is really quite a comedy show. Washington insists on trying to make regimes over which it has no leverage and no influence do things that they are never going to do, and it refuses to use what leverage it has over its allies to achieve its stated goals in their part of the world. A better question might be this: if Washington cannot convince an ally, client state and largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid to halt settlement construction on contested and controversial land, what makes anyone believe that our government can make the Iranian government accede to its demands?
3 Responses to “Enabling Reckless Allies (II)”
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I’m sure moral hazard applies to international relations, Israel included, but there are a couple important things you’re missing here. First, one minor point: the Palestinians’ latching onto Obama’s settlement freeze demand as a new (!) precondition wasn’t an effect of moral hazard. Obama actively if unintentionally encouraged their stance, to say the least. Abbas couldn’t demand less than Obama himself demanded, and then when Obama backed down, Abbas couldn’t.
More importantly, when you “imagine how uncompromising and inflexible decades of unconditional support have made Israeli leaders”, in settlement policy and otherwise, you’re looking at Israeli policy through your own eyes, not Israeli leaders’. Right or wrong, Israeli leaders until the last decade or two did not see settlement as a security threat. Back then, some even saw it as a security benefit.
Even more importantly, for the last decade – since September-October 2000, to be exact – there’s been a near consensus among Israelis and their leaders that what you would call “flexibility” is a severe security danger to Israel. Therefore, if the US were to withdraw security guarantees and other support (which I agree would be in the best interest of the US), the Israelis would as a result become less “flexible”, not more. This is for two reasons: because they’d be “on their own” and therefore less willing to take what they perceive as security risks, and because they’d no longer have any reason to go along with US wishes at all, since they’d have nothing left to lose.
That’s why the “too big to fail” analogy doesn’t work. In a laissez-faire environment, financial firms would behave better (by our standards) because their perception of risks and their understanding of how to reduce those risks is more or less the same as yours and mine, in principle at least. The Israeli position is also rational but (from your viewpoint) fundamentally mistaken. Therefore the only thing that will get Israel to behave in what you’d call a flexible and responsible way is substantial US support, but with serious conditions. A less interventionist approach by the US would lead to worse Israeli behavior by your standards, not better.
By the way, here I’m accepting your frame in which Israeli behavior is imagined as being determined in Jerusalem and Washington, without regard to Ramallah, Teheran, and Gaza. I believe that even if I were wrong above, even if Israel did behave as you’d like, there probably wouldn’t even be a peace agreement, much less peace, because of the reactions from those other sides. But that’s a separate question.
“Therefore the only thing that will get Israel to behave in what you’d call a flexible and responsible way is substantial US support, but with serious conditions.”
You mean, much like the enormous carrot that Israel and Egypt obtained from the U.S. after reaching their peace deal at Camp David? Although were I allowed to choose I would have other priorities for my tax money, I expect that a peace deal will involve many billions of dollars in commitment by the U.S. toward Israel’s defense and aid to the new Palestinian “state”.
Another Aaron writes: You mean, much like the enormous carrot…
No, I mean threatening Israel with a stick: “Unless you start doing what Daniel Larison says is in your own national interest, we [the US] are going to start cutting off all aid in money, arms, and Security Council vetoes.” This could be called a liberal interventionist approach, as opposed to a paleocon approach which would cut off aid unconditionally.
Obviously this scenario is purely hypothetical, for reasons of domestic politics (cf. Walt and Mearsheimer). Within the range of real-world scenarios, there is nothing the US can do in the near future to get Israel to behave “flexibly” and “responsibly” according to what Larison means by those terms.
Larison and Hadar (and others like Stephen Walt) have a beautiful, non-tragic picture of the Israeli-Palestinian war: there can be a solution, we’re just preventing it by our own stupidity. This has got to be the easiest sell in the world to Israelis, right? Israelis would love for this to be true, but for some reason they’re not buying. A good salesman would ask himself why.