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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

The U.S.-Israel Relationship and “Reckless Driving”

Netanyahu seems sure that there will be no real consequences for Israel for his behavior.
helo

Jeffrey Goldberg declares Netanyahu’s speech in March to be a “disaster” for him and Israel. Towards the end of his article he says something rather odd:

It is immaterial whether an Israeli prime minister finds an American president agreeable or not. A sitting president cannot be written off by a small, dependent ally, without terrible consequences [bold mine-DL].

That is the way one would expect things to work between a patron and a client, but I have yet to see any sign that there will be any “terrible consequences” to follow. Netanyahu’s stunt may encourage a few more “pro-Israel” politicians to root for his opponents in the upcoming elections, and it might give his domestic critics an opening to attack him, but he’s operating on a reasonably safe assumption that there won’t be serious consequences for Israel’s relationship with the U.S. no matter what he does. Democrats may dislike him more as a result, but that seems unlikely to translate into any change in the way that they view the relationship with Israel. The client shouldn’t be able to act this way in a normal relationship, which is just more proof of how lopsided and unhealthy the relationship has been for a long time.

This latest episode is a good example of the phenomenon that Barry Posen has described as “reckless driving” by U.S. allies and clients. The U.S. enables some of our allies and clients to behave irresponsibly because they take for granted that the U.S. will always be there to bail them out. In this case, the head of the Israeli government feels confident that he can behave irresponsibly in his dealings with Washington because he seems sure that there will be no real consequences for Israel for his behavior.

Netanyahu can’t be “punished” in any meaningful way without significantly changing the U.S.-Israel relationship, and that is exactly what “pro-Israel” politicians in Congress won’t support. This is what comes of being so reflexively and unconditionally supportive of another state: the people in charge of its government become accustomed that support, and they come to expect the one-sided relationship will continue no matter what happens. Since very few politicians are willing to be seen as anything less than staunchly “pro-Israel,” the other government has every reason to expect that the one-sided relationship will remain the same. Maybe one day that won’t be true anymore, but it probably isn’t something Netanyahu has to worry about.

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