Israel as a ‘Force Multiplier’ for the US

 

When Israel was close to declaring its independence, there were many powerful people in Washington, including Secretary of State George Marshall, who opposed the move. They feared the tiny Jewish state would become hopelessly dependent on the U.S. for military support. They also believed that our ties to the Jewish state would make it impossible to maintain friendly relations with the Arab oil states of the Gulf. They were wrong. Instead of being an albatross around the American neck, Israel has proved to be the indispensable ally of the United States. More on how this transformation took place is here: “Israel’s evolution into a US force multiplier,” by Yoram Ettinger, JNS, June 20, 2021:

In 1948, the CIA opposed the reestablishment of the Jewish state, contending that it would be a feeble entity, unable to withstand an all-out Arab war — which would yield a second Holocaust in less than 10 years. Such a state would be fully dependent on US soldiers for its survival, jeopardize US ties with the Arab world, imperil US access to Persian Gulf oil, and probably join the Soviet Bloc.

The State Department and the Pentagon, along with the New York Times and Washington Post, seconded the CIA assessment.

Arrayed against the establishment of the Jewish state were the two most important departments – those of State and Defense – in the government, and the two most powerful members of the media in that pre-television period of our existence, The New York Times and The Washington Post. At the time of declaring its independence, Israel had 716,000 Jews, only a few with any military training. Thanks to an arms embargo, Israel had a very small armory of weapons — rifles, light artillery, a handful of tanks left behind by the British. The Israeli air force consisted of 25 Avia S-199s (purchased from Czechoslovakia, essentially Czechoslovak-built Messerschmitt Bf 109s) and 60 Supermarine Spitfire LF Mk IXEs; at the beginning of the 1948 war, Israel had fewer than a dozen planes in operation. Arrayed against the Israelis, some of whom were fresh off the boats bringing survivors of the death camps, were five Arab armies, those of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. It was reasonable to think that the Jewish state wouldn’t stand a chance.

On the other hand, Clark Clifford, President Harry S Truman’s trusted adviser, who dedicated much time to studying the track record of Jewish sovereignty in Middle Eastern history, impressed upon the president that an independent Jewish state would be a most effective military power, reliable, stable, and inherently pro-American.

Clifford was absolutely right, while the State Department, the Pentagon, the CIA, the New York Times, and the Washington Post were resoundingly wrong.

Following Israel’s impressive military performance in the 1948 War of Independence, Gen. Omar Bradley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recommended that Israel be considered a favored strategic ally, since “the Israeli army would be the most effective force south of Turkey, which could be utilized to delaying action [in the case of a Soviet invasion].”…

The ability of Israel to hold off, and then soundly defeat, five Arab armies in the 1948 war, turned the perception of Israel upside down in Washington. It was now seen as a potential military ally, able to help stave off Soviet incursions in the Middle East. Though without a formal defense treaty with the U.S., Israel was regarded by Washington as a fellow Western democracy, linked to the U.S. by shared political ideals that would not change over time. Israel is the only nation in the Middle East of which that can be said.

The crushing defeat of three Arab armies in the space of six days confirmed the initial lesson of the 1948 war. By 1967, Israel had a formidable army, one more powerful, and better led, with a greater esprit de corps, than any Arab army. No one in Washington any longer regarded Israel as “ hopelessly dependent” on the U.S.

Unlike NATO, South Korea, and Japan, Israel had extended the strategic arm of the United States without the need for US military personnel.

Thus, Israel had been transformed from a misperceived geo-strategic hindrance to a proven geo-strategic force multiplier for the United States….

The European members of NATO, South Korea, and Japan all have U.S. personnel stationed on their territory, to help defend them against potential Russian, Chinese, and North Korean aggression. There are American air, army, and navy bases in Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Spain, Belgium, and Norway, and other American personnel in six other NATO countries. Thirty thousand American troops continue to be stationed in South Korea. There are two dozen small American bases still on Okinawa. But there are not now, and never have been, U.S. military personnel stationed in Israel. The Jewish state defends itself.

Compare Israel’s ability to go it alone, and never to rely on American troops, with the Arab states that have required the intervention of American forces: American forces were rushed by President George H. W. Bush to rescue Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s invaders; American troops and airmen were stationed in Saudi Arabia to protect the Kingdom from a threatening Saddam Hussein, and later, from Iran’s threatened aggression; American marines were sent to Lebanon, first by President Eisenhower in 1954 to protect the country from a feared Communist takeover, and later, from 1982 to 1984, the Marines were sent to Beirut as a peacekeeping force, after the PLO had been expelled from Beirut by the IDF.

In the Six-Day War, Israel’s defeat of Egypt was also a personal one for Nasser, who had promised Cairene crowds in May that Egypt would soon eliminate the Jewish state. With his colossal defeat in June 1967, Nasser lost much of his prestige as the pan-Arab leader. His troops in Yemen, which had been sent there to defeat the Royalists backed by Saudi Arabia, were brought home to help secure the regime. Nasser’s Gulf adventures ended, and American allies among the Gulf Arabs were no longer threatened by Nasser’s adventurism. Nasser, destroyed by his defeat in the Six Day War, died three years later of a heart attack. He was only 52.

Twenty-five US military experts went to Israel for three months to study the lessons of the Six-Day War, as well as captured Soviet military systems, returning to the US with top-heavy information that upgraded the performance of the US armed forces and defense industries.

​As a result of the benefits derived by the United States, a team of 50 experts arrived in Israel for six months following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, collecting thicker volumes of information, which benefited the United States militarily and industrially, and bolstered the US defense of Europe in the face of Soviet threats.

After both the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War, American defense experts went to Israel to learn the lessons of both conflicts, as conveyed to them by the Israelis themselves. They explained how they managed to destroy the entire Egyptian air force on the first day of the Six-Day War, and how they managed to hold a vastly greater force of Syrian tanks at bay near the Golan during the Yom Kippur war, and turned what seemed would be certain defeat into victory in that war. The Israelis also captured large amounts of Soviet military equipment and turned it over to the Americans, along with information about Soviet military tactics that had been employed by the Arabs; this helped the Americans bolster their defense of Europe against the Soviet Union. No other country supplied as much valuable information on Soviet weapons and war-fighting tactics as Israel.

The December 1969 “Operation Rooster 53” — during the War of Attrition between Egypt and Israel — highlighted Israel’s unique intelligence and battle tactic capabilities, which have been shared with the United States. An Israeli commando unit snatched from Egypt a game-changing Soviet P-12 radar system, which was superior to similar US systems and was deployed throughout the world. The Soviet radar was studied by Israel and transferred to the United States, as was the case with additional Soviet military systems, enhancing the capabilities of the US intelligence, armed forces, and defense industries.

The Israelis continued to supply the Americans with Soviet military systems they managed to seize even outside the 1967 and 1973 wars, systems which the Americans could then study and prepare countermeasures against. In one such incident, Israeli commandos in Egypt managed to make off with an entire Soviet P-12 radar system – deployed all over the world by Moscow – and provided it to the Americans who, based on what they learned, could then improve both their own radar system, and ways of foiling the Soviet’s P-12 radar. It was a spectacular achievement by the Israelis.

According to the late Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), who was a chairman of the appropriations and intelligence committees, the value of the Soviet radar to US defense industries and armed forces was around $3 billion. [$21 billion in 2021 dollars].

In 1966 and 1989 Israel acquired Mig-21 and Mig-23 Soviet fighter jets through the defection of Iraqi and Syrian pilots. The planes were shared with the United States, impacting the global balance of power and the performance of the United States Air Force.

When Arab pilots wanted to escape from despotic regimes, Israel was the closest and most obvious choice to find refuge. That’s how Israel managed to acquire both a Mig-21 and a Mig-23, to study them intensively, and then to share them with American airplane experts, who learned secrets from the planes that helped guide the development of our own fleet of fighter jets..

In 1970, Israel manifested its posture of deterrence, when buttressing its military presence on the Syria-Israel-Jordan border (Golan Heights) in response to a pro-Soviet Syrian invasion of the pro-US Jordan. The Israeli deployment convinced Syria to pull back from militarily inferior Jordan. The Israeli show of force spared the US either the loss of an Arab ally (the late King Hussein) or the need to get involved militarily in an intra-Arab war. The potential toppling of the Hashemite regime in Jordan could have triggered ripple effects into the neighboring Arabian Peninsula, threatening the existence of the pro-US Arab oil-producing regimes, handing the USSR a geo-strategic bonanza.

When Syrian forces threatened to enter Jordan on the side of the Palestinians in Black September and overthrow King Hussein, Israel deployed its forces on the west side of the Jordan near the Golan, threatening Syrian troops. That deployment was enough to persuade the Syrians to pull back. Thus did Israel keep the pro-American King Hussein on his throne, and prevent Soviet-allied Syria from becoming the kingmaker in Jordan. And as Yoram Ettinger notes, had Hussein been toppled, that could have led to a domino effect, in which other monarchs – those pro-American rulers in the Gulf Arab states – might have been toppled as well. Israel, and Israel alone, prevented that from happening.