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Israel has an outsized role in US politics for reasons that have nothing to do with oil. In fact the US ability to maneuver in the Middle East would have been s

by slv77 10y ago

Israel has an outsized role in US politics for reasons that have nothing to do with oil. In fact the US ability to maneuver in the Middle East would have been significantly less constrained with oil producing countries if Israel wasn't an ally. The US was initially a reluctant ally with Israel. The Soviet Union was actively arming Israel's Arab neighbors and fanning the flames of war to win influence with oil producing Arab states. At the same time the US had embargoes on selling arms to Israel because it was reluctant to fan the flames of war and also to antagonize Israel's Arab neighbors. Unbeknownst to the US Israel had developed a nuclear weapons capability and at the start of the Six Day war Israel felt threatened enough to deploy them. In what must have been an interesting phone call Israel informed the US both of their nuclear weapons capability and that they were going to nuke Cairo. In order to dissuade Israel from this course of action the US promised swift delivery of modern anti-tank weapons and depleted their Western European inventory of these weapons. This helped turn the tide of the conflict and reduce potential of a nuclear exhange in the Middle East. The result of the Six Day War was that the US committed to keeping Israel at par with its Arab neighbors conventional military capabilities if Israel would keep its nuclear capability in check. A great writeup of the history is here: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cpc-pubs/farr.htm http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cpc-pubs/farr.htm This still plays an active role in the US and Israeli relationship and was even a factor in the negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program but the nuances are rarely picked up by the US press. Israel also plays an outsized role in US politics because it is an influential issue with Jewish voters and also, oddly, Evangelicals. Evangelicals see the establishment of a Jewish State in Israel as a prerequisite to the rapture and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Great article on how the delicate compromises in the Middle East were almost toppled by a cow: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/readings/forcing.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/rea...

astrodust 10y ago
"...for reasons that have nothing to do with oil" "...win influence with oil producing Arab states..." Yeah, nothing to do with oil. It's all about oil. That whole area is about oil. A case could be made that World War I was about oil, that British naval supremacy depended on it, and everything since then is a mostly direct cascade from that. Also don't forget that the extreme Evangelicals believe that the establishment of and subsequent destruction of Israel is a necessary precursor to the Rapture. What a psychotic viewpoint.
- alnoxs 10y ago
  "...for reasons that have nothing to do with oil" "...win influence with oil producing Arab states..." This is cherry picking sentence fragments to produce a misleading statement. The GP clearly states that US involvement in Israel was to avoid Israel using a nuclear weapon, not because of any interest in oil.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    The US has had an interest in Israel long before nuclear weapons were a factor. Stability is only a concern because of the critical suppliers there. Notice how little interest is paid to places like central Africa where, apart from Nigeria, there's no productive oil fields.
dogma1138 10y ago
If you are going to post so much material read it at least, it wasn't until the after the Six Day war when Israel had even began to build it's nuclear arsenal, by 67 it barely had amassed enough plutonium to build even a single weapon. Also there was no need for Israel to use it's nuclear weapons during the Six Day war, it destroyed the Egyptian Air Force within the first 5 hours of the war. I think you are confusing a lot of "facts" here, your story might fit more with the 1973 war, but during that war if were the soviets who've actively moved theater level nuclear weapons into Egypt and the US had put pressure on Israel to stop it's advancement. Overall if you read slightly better sources you would see that the Six Day war actually pushed the Israeli weapon program back, France have stopped the cooperation with Israel and the knock-out victory that the Israelis have dealt to the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria as as gaining control over the Sinai Peninsula which meant that Egypt can no longer blockade Israel as it lost the controls over the straits of Tiran made the need for a bomb not as urgent. The nuclear program has really stepped up after the 1973 war both because Israel decided that the added geographical depth of the Sinai wasn't sufficient and because the Soviets have actually pushed weapons into the theater which meant that Israel needed a MAD option and quickly.
- slv77 10y ago
  It has been a couple of years since I last read through the material and confused the Six Day War with the Yom Kippur War. Another correction is that while the Soviet Union was supplying Syrian and Egyptian forces it wasn't a war that the Soviet Union instigated (unlike the Six Day War). For those who don't want to wade through the bulk of the material (which is still fascinating) the relevant history begins is Section III of the document and relevant sections condensed below: Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, obviously not at his best at a press briefing, was, according to Time magazine, rattled enough to later tell the prime minister that “this is the end of the third temple,” referring to an impending collapse of the state of Israel. “Temple” was also the code word for nuclear weapons... The Israelis assembled 13 twenty-kiloton atomic bombs. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was notified of the alert several hours later on the morning of 9 October.... Israeli commandos flew to Fort Benning, Georgia to train with the new American TOW anti-tank missiles and return with a C-130 Hercules aircraft full of them in time for the decisive Golan battle. American commanders in Germany depleted their stocks of missiles, at that time only shared with the British and West Germans, and sent them forward to Israel. Thus started the subtle, opaque use of the Israeli bomb to ensure that the United States kept its pledge to maintain Israel's conventional weapons edge over its foes. There is significant anecdotal evidence that Henry Kissinger told President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, that the reason for the U.S. airlift was that the Israelis were close to “going nuclear.”

by slv77 10y ago

astrodust 10y ago

"...for reasons that have nothing to do with oil" "...win influence with oil producing Arab states..." Yeah, nothing to do with oil. It's all about oil. That whole area is about oil. A case could be made that World War I was about oil, that British naval supremacy depended on it, and everything since then is a mostly direct cascade from that. Also don't forget that the extreme Evangelicals believe that the establishment of and subsequent destruction of Israel is a necessary precursor to the Rapture. What a psychotic viewpoint.

alnoxs 10y ago
"...for reasons that have nothing to do with oil" "...win influence with oil producing Arab states..." This is cherry picking sentence fragments to produce a misleading statement. The GP clearly states that US involvement in Israel was to avoid Israel using a nuclear weapon, not because of any interest in oil.
- astrodust 10y ago
  The US has had an interest in Israel long before nuclear weapons were a factor. Stability is only a concern because of the critical suppliers there. Notice how little interest is paid to places like central Africa where, apart from Nigeria, there's no productive oil fields.

dogma1138 10y ago

If you are going to post so much material read it at least, it wasn't until the after the Six Day war when Israel had even began to build it's nuclear arsenal, by 67 it barely had amassed enough plutonium to build even a single weapon. Also there was no need for Israel to use it's nuclear weapons during the Six Day war, it destroyed the Egyptian Air Force within the first 5 hours of the war. I think you are confusing a lot of "facts" here, your story might fit more with the 1973 war, but during that war if were the soviets who've actively moved theater level nuclear weapons into Egypt and the US had put pressure on Israel to stop it's advancement. Overall if you read slightly better sources you would see that the Six Day war actually pushed the Israeli weapon program back, France have stopped the cooperation with Israel and the knock-out victory that the Israelis have dealt to the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria as as gaining control over the Sinai Peninsula which meant that Egypt can no longer blockade Israel as it lost the controls over the straits of Tiran made the need for a bomb not as urgent. The nuclear program has really stepped up after the 1973 war both because Israel decided that the added geographical depth of the Sinai wasn't sufficient and because the Soviets have actually pushed weapons into the theater which meant that Israel needed a MAD option and quickly.

slv77 10y ago
It has been a couple of years since I last read through the material and confused the Six Day War with the Yom Kippur War. Another correction is that while the Soviet Union was supplying Syrian and Egyptian forces it wasn't a war that the Soviet Union instigated (unlike the Six Day War). For those who don't want to wade through the bulk of the material (which is still fascinating) the relevant history begins is Section III of the document and relevant sections condensed below: Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, obviously not at his best at a press briefing, was, according to Time magazine, rattled enough to later tell the prime minister that “this is the end of the third temple,” referring to an impending collapse of the state of Israel. “Temple” was also the code word for nuclear weapons... The Israelis assembled 13 twenty-kiloton atomic bombs. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was notified of the alert several hours later on the morning of 9 October.... Israeli commandos flew to Fort Benning, Georgia to train with the new American TOW anti-tank missiles and return with a C-130 Hercules aircraft full of them in time for the decisive Golan battle. American commanders in Germany depleted their stocks of missiles, at that time only shared with the British and West Germans, and sent them forward to Israel. Thus started the subtle, opaque use of the Israeli bomb to ensure that the United States kept its pledge to maintain Israel's conventional weapons edge over its foes. There is significant anecdotal evidence that Henry Kissinger told President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, that the reason for the U.S. airlift was that the Israelis were close to “going nuclear.”