Our Separate Ways by Dana H. Allin

Author:Dana H. Allin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781610396424
Publisher: PublicAffairs

Civil Wars

Egypt was at the center of U.S.–Israeli disagreements because it was the most populous Arab country and its peace treaty with Israel had become the anchor of Jerusalem’s strategic confidence and planning. But after the coup ended Egypt’s difficult experiment with democracy, Jerusalem’s disagreements with Washington reverted to the more general problem—as many Israelis saw it—of Obama’s weakness.

These disagreements revealed very different approaches by the United States and Israel to the maintenance and regulation of international order. To put it in crude terms, military force is very often Israel’s solution of first resort, while America is more restrained. That statement may surprise those who consider the United States a kind of imperial bull in the global china shop. But everything is relative, and Obama’s was hardly the first U.S. administration to be at odds with Israel over questions of force.

What was different, and possibly unnerving now for Israel, was that the United States was in the midst of ratcheting back its own use of force because it had given overwhelming military power a very serious tryout, without evident success. Obama was an emblem and agent of that ratcheting back. But he was no pacifist. He had come to prominence, while still a state senator from Illinois, in opposition to the Iraq war, but with the important qualification that he did not oppose all wars, just “dumb” ones.16

At the end of his first year as president, Obama delivered two statements that expressed contending, coexisting traditions in American foreign policy: the American responsibility to use its vast military power on the one hand, and realist restraint on the other. These statements might be labeled, respectively, his Oslo declaration and his West Point declaration. What’s remarkable is that they were delivered within nine days of each other in December 2009. The West Point declaration came first. It had much to do with economic constraints. Obama entered office with a clear conviction that, barely a year after the ruinous financial crisis, domestic economic stability required an acceptance of limits on strategic commitments abroad. Since the primary threat of his early months in office was the possibility of another Great Depression, Obama took many opportunities to draw this connection. When he spoke on December 1, 2009, to U.S. military cadets at West Point, he put it this way: “Over the past few years, [we’ve] failed to appreciate the connection between our national security and our economy.” Obama was announcing an escalation—a “surge”—of 30,000 more troops to fight the war in Afghanistan. But he delivered it at a tricky moment in his relationship with senior military commanders, whom he felt were trying to box him into a more open-ended escalation.17 And so, in announcing the surge, he took great care at the same time to delineate the limits of America’s commitment to that country, dictated by competing interests and limited resources.

As President, I refuse to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, or our interests. And I must weigh all of the challenges that our nation faces.

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