Discover more from Blue Blaze
“Who the fuck does he think he is? Who is the fucking superpower here?” President Bill Clinton famously blasphemed in 1996. More than 25 years later, Bill Clinton is a retired vegan recovering from heart problems who occasionally comments on politics while studiously avoiding references to Jeffrey Epstein. The guy who couldn’t identify the superpower, Benjamin Netanyahu, is still the Prime Minister of Israel, whence he is now inspiring his fifth US president to fits of obscenities.
So, it is perhaps worth asking whether Netanyahu or Clinton had the better grasp of the US-Israeli relationship. Clinton had a certain point of course. America has the world’s largest economy, an unparalleled military, and a secure continental homeland. Israel is a tiny little strip of land, precariously perched on the Western edge of the most volatile region on earth and surrounded by people who hate it. With few friends in the world beyond America, Israel is highly dependent on its US partner for its very survival.
In theory, these bald facts would seem to give the United States a lot of leverage in the relationship. In practice, it seems Israel has most of the control. The U.S. president and Secretary of State have been screaming from the rooftops for several months to get Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza. Netanyahu has basically ignored them and seems to have paid little price in terms of US military assistance or political support. The Biden Administration announced in early May that it would stop sending certain types of weapons to Israel, but then just a week later announced it was moving forward with a further $1 billion aid package.
With friends like these …
Israel is in fact only the starkest example of a general phenomenon in US foreign policy. Very dependent US allies from Saudi Arabia to Ukraine to Taiwan often refuse to listen to the US government’s demands and sometimes publicly defy the US president. It is hard to imagine Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko doing that to Vladimir Putin.
In general, America’s allies around the world have a strong influence on US policy choices. They have been able to inspire enormous contributions from America for their priorities, often for in situations in which a more cold-hearted reading of US interests would clearly point toward other policies. It is geopolitically odd, for example, that the US has, pledged to go to war with Russia, a massive nuclear power, if it attacks Latvia a tiny country on Russia’s border that many would argue has no strategic relevance for America. It seems unlikely that famed strategists Metternich or Bismarck would approve. But the US has dozens of such commitments around the world, many of them right on the borders of Russia and China.
This situation is so perplexing that the Russian leadership, for example, does not believe it can be true. As Michael Kimmage and I noted in Foreign Affairs, “Russians cannot imagine that the leaders of countries such as Ukraine have minds of their own. For Moscow, Ukrainian hostility is simply the veiled extension of American hostility”. This would come a big shock to leaders in Washington who have had constant reminders over the last two years that Ukrainians have minds of their own. In a certain way, the entire, tragic war in Ukraine is a dispute over how much control Washington actually exercises over Kyiv. The Russian leadership looks at the material dependence that Ukraine has on the US and assumes that the superpower must be in control of Ukraine; the American leadership looks at their daily experiences and knows that it is not.
Why is this happening to US?
All this begs the question of why America runs its foreign policy this way. It is a puzzle that has launched a thousand research agendas, but I would point to three fundamental reasons: domestic politics, the US will to leadership, and the role of history and credibility.
The main cause seems to be the peculiar nature of domestic politics of the United States. Even for a democracy, the United States governance system provides a lot of access points to its politics, including for foreigners. Various US allies and partners have developed deep contacts and influence in US domestic politics through skillful use of diasporas, Congressional lobbying, thinktanks, propaganda, and of course money. As Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer controversially noted, the Israelis are the master of this technique – even as the war in Gaza inspires massive protests across America, Israel still enjoys overwhelming support in the US Congress. An Israeli aid bill passed the Senate 79-18 in April, and it would have had more support if it hadn’t been tied to more controversial aid to Ukraine. In May, the House of Representatives passed a bill that condemned Biden’s ineffective toughness with Israel and sought to force him to send arms shipments to Israel. But of course, all allies play this game and many of them are nearly as good at it as Israel.
One of the reasons that these domestic political maneuvers often work is because they can play on a specifically American will for global leadership that exists on both the elite and popular level. American elites see themselves as in charge of “the free world” and the best evidence for that is a web of strong, unified alliances and collective approach to international problems. The American public may not care about or be able to locate Ukraine on a map, but they do care that their President projects a sense of control and leadership in the world. The idea of weakness is anathema in US politics. It is therefore important for US leaders’ self-image and domestic standing that they smooth over allied disputes. The need to seem in control weakens US bargaining with allies, who can get concessions simply by threatening to make a stink at a NATO summit.
Finally, the US seems to feel that it must sustain allied commitments because it has them, even if the reasons for initially acquiring them are lost to the mists of time or no longer apply. The US, for example, extended security guarantees to the Baltics states in 2004 largely because it never thought Russia would threaten these states and it felt NATO membership would help them secure their transition to democracy. Twenty years later that commitment has much greater strategic import, but US leaders insist that if they don’t honor all such commitments, no matter how strategically irrational, they would erode US credibility and embolden US adversaries everywhere. The US alliance system is in the parlance of the Pentagon, a self-licking ice cream cone. The credibility proposition is a questionable one given that it is entirely normal that the US or any country would have a different approach to, say, Taiwan than it has toward Ukraine if there are different geopolitical stakes involved. But US leaders deeply believe in credibility arguments and so they also provide leverage for US allies.
Whatever its causes, America’s ally problem was perhaps only of academic interest during the period of overwhelming American power. But in a period of greater geopolitical competition, it is not clear that the United States can any longer afford this policy of allied indulgence. Or put another way, it is not clear that anyone is really a fucking superpower anymore.
Subscribe to Blue Blaze
International relations and US foreign policy, off the main trail
Excellent insights. A big part of the problem is US military culture which for almost a century since WWII has been wedded to the concept that the US must always be in the lead. That conviction went on afterburners, thanks to Goldwater Nichols, which established permanent ‘combatant’ commands for every region of the world.
Great article Jeremy Shapiro - lot's of wisdom and common sense in here. Stuff that "goes without saying" yet too often goes unsaid, and "unprocessed" by the foreign policy pundit and expert class and politicians.
A few comments and nitpicks, not really detracting from the fundamental correctness of your thesis:
"With few friends in the world beyond America, Israel is highly dependent on its US partner for its very survival."
This is quite probably not true now, and only has been true for limited time periods in the past. This isn't to say the U.S. does not provide plenty of "freebies" to Israel, supplies diplomatic cover, aid and subsidies and loan terms that save its taxpayers billions, and resources that make hard choices easier to make or easy to simply avoid. But Israel's survival now isn't dependent on the US, and its survival at creation wasn't dependent on US *intentional government policy action* at least. US intentional government policy action was probably vital for Israeli survival in the very end of the 60s and 1970s and possibly through most of the 1980s, when Israel faced Arab neighbors with large conventional armies provided with real-time regular resupply by the Soviet Union and was likely on Soviet nuclear target lists. During the 1973 Yom Kippur war was probably apogee of Israeli dependence on US support for survival, with *only* the US agreeing to resupply Israel against multi-front, Soviet supplied Arab armies attacking, and *only* Portugal permitted transit of resupply goods while all other western nations, in addition to the third world and eastern bloc buckled to the Arab League/OAPEC oil embargo to deny resupply and transit facilities for resupply to Israel during the war.
Israel today simply faces nothing like this existentially threatening foreign coalition. It faces Hamas and PIJ insurgencies and the Hizballah parastate in Lebanon, but is at peace with Egypt and Jordan. It faces asymmetric threats from Iran and other Iranian-backed groups, but still limited. Syria is formally at war but has wrecked itself the last dozen years. Iraq, one layer behind, has been wrecked the last thirty years. Neither the Soviets and Chinese, whatever their chain of positive ties to Iran or Syria, are committed to an Iranian or Arab existential jihad against Israel. Iran, because of its size and even without nukes could be a large threat, but its threat is attenuated by distance. It would be more threatening if it were located where Egypt or Jordan are.
For the end of US support to Israel to threaten Israel's survival, itself a huge hypothetical, requires a secondary hypothetical to emerge, that after the end of US support, a global diplomatic boycott, globally successful BDS movement, total trade embargo, plus a resumed commitment by Arab neighbors to match and overcome Israel militarily. Now one could argue, I suppose, that the first hypothetical of US disengagement would create the permissive conditions for the second hypothetical, and anti-Israeli global and regional coalescence, to occur, but there is no guarantee that the necessary actors would get their priorities together to do this as efficiently and effectively as would be required to succeed in destroying Israel.
---enough on that one---
“Russians cannot imagine that the leaders of countries such as Ukraine have minds of their own. For Moscow, Ukrainian hostility is simply the veiled extension of American hostility”.
Absolutely - I have found some Latin Americans, like Mexican and Argentine commentators who've only been on the receiving end of American or British power, can't conceive of the Ukrainian war in Ukrainian terms, only in terms of "what Washington has put Ukraine up to". I'm sure many others in the "Global South" feel the same way.
"As Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer controversially noted, the Israelis are the master of this technique"
It really should not be controversial. It is obvious. The controversy is simply manufactured by politically-motivated denial.
"But of course, all allies play this game and many of them are nearly as good at it as Israel."
And some really are not, even if they throw money at it, like Saudi Arabia - I've seen some of their advertising sections and I'm like "oh you'll be so sad at how little that moves the opinion needle".
And you have to be perceived as a needle, it's not a linear relationship of simply spending X money = X support. You need to have a certain historical track record, say flattering things, avoid dissonance.
"The American public may not care about or be able to locate Ukraine on a map, but they do care that their President projects a sense of control and leadership in the world. The idea of weakness is anathema in US politics."
This perverse pride can be used by many a foreigner to manipulate the US against their regional enemy or many an exile against their home government. Lindsay Graham falls for it literally *every time* and never sees a challenge internationally that shouldn't be answered with armed force and regime change. He's an idiot. As was his mentor McCain by the end of his life.
"The US alliance system is in the parlance of the Pentagon, a self-licking ice cream cone."
The foreign policy "blob" and politicians have taken it that far, yes.
"the US seems to feel that it must sustain allied commitments because it has them"
Here is what sometimes makes me think, nuclear proliferation --- to Allies, could actually be a relief. And if Iran finally got their own, what would be the point of the nonproliferation taboo anymore anyway, just to keep our own allies wimpy, pacifistic, and dependent?