Was the Recognition of Israel Contrary to U.S. National Interests?

The infamous working paper of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt is based on the assumption that American policy towards Israel, unlike its policy towards the rest of the world, is subverted by a powerful Jewish Lobby (it was thus capitalized in the London Review of Books which published a short version of the paper) in a manner which is contrary to American national interest. The problem with this assumption is that those who undertake a close study of the facts reach very different conclusions. A close study of the period of the Kennedy presidency led Warren Bass to doubt the effectiveness of the lobby. My study of the 1967 period led me to conclude that not only was the Lobby ineffective in influencing American foreign policy, but that it was used most effectively by Lyndon Johnson to influence Israeli foreign policy. Benny Morris, on whose work Mearsheimer and Walt rely heavily, also suggests examining the facts. But Vincent Ferraro thought he had a winner. In a recent posting the H-Diplo listserv, he wrote:

Dear Colleagues, I would encourage comments from diplomatic historians on the Mearsheimer/Walt paper. I am a political scientist and have always been intrigued by the debate over US recognition of Israel in 1948. I have reviewed the documents in the Truman Library on the matter, but have never fully understood why Secretary of State Marshall was unsuccessful in persuading a clearly ambivalent Truman to hold off American recognition of Israel.

While I have strong reservations about the conclusions in the Mearsheimer/Walt paper, I have no doubts that the issue of how domestic politics influence foreign policy is an important one. This is an issue that would be well served by an informed reading of the historical record. A thread on this topic would be most welcome.

In other words, Ferraro seemed to argue: “I know all there is to know on the subject and Truman’s refusal to listen to Marshall makes no sense to me in terms of American national interests.” To understand better the basis of his conclusion, I wrote:

As I have not read those documents, I would be most grateful if Vincent Ferraro would start the conversation by explaining the reasons he believes Marshall should have been successful in convincing Truman not to recognize Israel.

Vincent Ferraro responded thus:

In response to Professor Klinghoffer's request for information about Secretary of State Marshall's opposition to recognition, one can look to the records of the meeting on 12 May 1948 in the Oval Office. Clark Clifford presented a compelling case for recognition. Marshall responded by indicating that if recognition occurred, then he (Marshall) would not vote for Truman in the next election (this to Truman's face). Marshall's opposition seems to have been based on his appreciation for the growing significance of oil in the region, not merely for the United States (ARAMCO had been created the previous year), but also for American allies. His view, clearly shared by the British, was that recognition of the state of Israel would compromise those concrete interests.

In political science, the conflict seems to have been between ideals and interests, and in this case, ideals seem to have won out. This outcome is not in and of itself unusual, but, given Truman's very high regard for Marshall, it is an outcome that needs to be explained in greater detail. I hasten to add that I do not believe that this outcome is only explained using the Mearsheimer/Walt framework--indeed, in my own mind, the moral case for recognition was sufficient. But whenever a state compromises very real, tangible interests, the decision must be examined carefully.”

Indeed, it must. So I’ll try to do just that in an expanded version of my subsequent H-diplo posting. Luckily, the May 12 oval office meeting is described in great detail in Clark Cliffford’s autobiography, Counsel to the President. In it Clark Clifford, indeed, presented a compelling case for recognition and it had nothing to do with votes. Indeed, I find the short shrift given to his main arguments most surprising as they proved so prescient and the arguments of his opponents so unfounded.

According to Clifford, at the heart of the Marshall, Lovett and Loy opposition was the belief that it would be impossible to establish a viable Jewish state which would be able to withstand the assault of Arabs without American help. Marshall said that if the"Jews got into trouble and 'came running to us for help . . . .They were clearly on notice that there was no warrant to expect help from the United States" (Clifford, p.10). He thought the Jews were wrong to believe they can handle the Arabs by themselves.

In the end, Marshall got his way. The New York Post's Observer wrote on July 8, 1948:

The President said: “It was one of the proudest moments of my life at 6:12 P.M.; Friday, May 14, when I announced the recognition of the new State of Israel by the Government of the United States.” This he wrote a few days ago, in a public message to the Zionist Convention in Pittsburgh.

If President Truman feels that way, he can treat himself to an even greater moment if he will declare, before the sun goes down today, that should the war in Palestine be resumed on Friday he will lift the embargo on arms for the State of Israel. Recognition of Israel is a pious declaration, the value of which depends upon whether or not the President takes the next step: Will he lift the blockade clamped down by the United States on the country invaded by Arab aggressor nations, or will he not?

The British, who keep vast stores of ammunition in the Middle East, have already announced that if fighting in Palestine is resumed they will go on supplying the Arab countries with arms of all descriptions. This, with the American embargo, and British money subsidies of Arab military establishments means simply that the aggressors are furnished arms on free delivery, while the defenders are denied arms even for cash. If this is the policy the President of the United States is inclined to follow, then he will lay himself open to the question whether he has acted in good faith in recognizing Israel.

In what is going to emerge as a common presidential pattern, to get votes Truman professed himself a great friend of Israel, but in reality did very little to aid her. It was Soviet and East European help, especially Czech weapons sales, that helped create the all important facts on the ground, not American recognition. (In fact, while the US was the first country to recognize Israel de facto, the USSR was the first to recognize it de jure).

The second objection Marshall expressed was to what the Secretary of State called the"behind the barn" (Clifford, p.10) deal Golda Meir was in the process of cutting with King Abdallah of Jordan. It would keep the monarch out of the fighting. Why? Possibly because the Saudis have always feared the Hashemites, who have a competing claim to Mecca and Medina.

In addition, between the American UN vote and the recognition, Rusk told me he made a last ditch effort to cut an Israeli-Saudi deal. I believe it took place before the famous oval office meeting. Rusk said that he took over an entire floor in the Waldorf Astoria. He and his team settled in the middle suit while the Jews and Saudis took the suites on either side of the Americans. In the ensuing negotiations, the Israelis agreed to delay creating the state, provided the Saudis agree to let 100,000 Jews enter Israel. These were Holocaust survivors trapped in displacement camps in Europe. No, they could not go back to where they came from: those who tried were attacked by the people who have taken all their possessions and wanted to keep them. As the constant haggling over stolen art demonstrates, they still do.

Rusk said he thought that was a reasonable agreement, but the Saudis turned it down."The Jews," said the Saudis,"will bring into Israel 100,000 pregnant women." Rusk gave up. I am surprised that there is no trace of these negotiations in the archives.

Actually, the first Clifford argument seems to be a reference to the negotiation. Clifford pointed out that the fighting had already begun despite the fact that the Yishuv had not yet declared a state."Dean Rusk stated that a truce could be negotiated within two weeks. But this goal is not in sight" (Clifford, p.11). In other words, the realities on the ground should be acknowledged. I believe this to be a rather realistic argument.

His second argument is just as realistic:

Trusteeship, which State supports, presupposes a single Palestine. That is also unrealistic. Partition into Jewish and Arab sectors has already happened. Jews and Arabs are already fighting each other from territory each side presently controls. (Clifford, p.11)

The third argument had to do with Cold War realities. American vacillation as compared to Soviet steadfastness was a public relations disaster handed to Truman courtesy of Marshall’s State department. The US supported partition only to reverse itself two months later. Truman expressed in his diary sentiments not unfamiliar to other presidents:

The State Dept. pulled the rug from under me today. I didn't expect that would happen. In Key-West or en route there from St. Croix I approved the speech and statement of policy by Sen. Austin to U.N. Meeting. This morning I find that the State Department has reversed my Palestine policy. The first I know about it is what I see in the papers! Isn't that Hell! Now, I am placed in a position of a liar and double-crosser. I never felt so in my life...

There are people on the third and fourth levels of the State Dept. who have always wanted to cut my throat. They've succeeded in doing so. Marshall's in California and Lovett's in Florida...

What is not generally understood is that the Zionists are not the only ones to be considered in the Palestine question. There are other interests that come into play, each with its own agenda. The military is concerned with the problems of defending a newly created small country from attacks by much larger and better trained Arab nations. Others have selfish interests concerning the flow of Arab oil to the U.S. Since they all cannot have their way, it is a perfect example of why I had to remember that 'The Buck Stops Here.'

The Soviets were sure to recognize Israel and by doing so first, the US could regain some of the high ground. This, too, is a point a political scientist would acknowledge as valid. State may have been enamored by Ibn Saud, whom one American ambassador described"as every inch a desert king" (in the documentary"The Secret Files: Washington, Israel and the Gulf.") but it was impossible to tell the world that 200,000 Jewish refugees should languish in European displacement camps just because the Saudis wished it.

Fourth, Clifford said that the Yishuv was about to create a state"which complied with the provision for democratic government outlined in the U.N. resolution of November 29" (Clifford, p.11). Indeed, the Palestinians should have done the same.

Fifth, Clifford noted that Jews have been waiting for 30 years for the fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration and Trusteeship will postpone that promise indefinitely. I would add that while the Declaration did not promise a state. It did promise a homeland and it was the legal basis for the mandate. At the very least, it implied a place to which Jews could go when threatened with annihilation. That promise was broken at the worst of times. Indeed, by breaking that basic promise, the British forfeited their right to the Mandate. Any Trusteeship would face the same problem. Jewish refugees had a right to go to their promised homeland and, in the end, only a Jewish state could secure that right for them.

Sixth, Clifford argued that the US had"a moral obligation to oppose discrimination as that inflicted on the Jewish people. Alarmingly, it is reappearing in the Communist-controlled Eastern Europe. Jews must have their homeland" (Clifford, p.12). It must be recognized that the existence of Jewish displacement camps could not be ignored or set aside. Those opposed to the creation of the Jewish state, Time Magazine for example, argued that the creation of Israel will not solve the problem because there is not enough room for all the Jews. After all, how could 600,000 Jews absorb hundreds of thousands of refugees? In this, as in other things, the opponents were proven wrong. It was not easy, but it was done. It is interesting that Israel does not get any credit for that enormous achievement. Ironically, this debate is taking place in the shadow of Ahmadinejad's call to send Jews back to European displacement camps.

Clifford's final argument is the most impressive:

I fully understand and agree that vital national interests are involved. In an area as unstable as the Middle East, where there is not now and never has been any tradition of democratic government, it is important for the long range security of our country, and indeed the world, that a nation committed to the democratic system be established there, one on which we can rely. The new Jewish state can be such a place. We should strengthen it in its infancy by prompt recognition. (Clifford, p.12)

If Marshall was annoyed, it was in part because Clifford's assessment conflicted with the evaluation of the JCS which in May 1948 indicated that 100,000 American troops would be needed to implement partition. Truman said a number of times that 500,000 men may be needed to create a Jewish state.

In any case, Clifford turned out to have been right and Marshall wrong. The little Truman did to enable the creation of the Jewish state can not be presented as the fruit of a powerful lobby. American Jews did their best but their power was rather limited. Nor did they try to enhance that power by withholding their votes from Truman. Instead, they did what Jewish leaders would do again and again, especially for Democratic presidents: they presented him in the best possible light while doing their utmost to help Israel absorb the enormous waves of refugees that she was busy gathering and resettling.

As the Soviets realized, and Foggy Bottom did not, the American Jewish community was a major American strategic asset when it comes to its relations with Israel. Soviet support and Jewish leftist leanings (for hundreds of years their worse enemies came from the right) should have led to the creation of Soviet ally in the Middle East. But it was not to be. As Soviet diplomats told Nahum Goldmann prior to the partition vote, they anticipated an Israeli turn to the West because the large Jewish communities living there would provide financial support for the Jewish state. Moreover, the Soviets anticipated that their aid to Israel would generate good will towards them in the US (Klinghoffer & Apter, Israel and the Soviet Union, 14).

But what about oil? Here Daniel Yergin’s account in The Prize is most instructive. A few days after Ben Gurion established Israel, Ibn Saud reportedly indicated that “he may be compelled , in certain circumstances, to apply sanctions against American oil concessions . . . not because of his desire to do so but because the pressure upon him of Arab public opinion was so great that he could no longer resist it.” “A hurriedly done State Department study, however,” Yergin goes on, “found that, despite the large reserves, the ME, excluding Iran, provided only 6% of the free world oil supplies and that such a cut in consumption of that oil ‘could be achieved without substantial hardship to any group of consumers'” (p.526). A well conceived American policy would have taken steps to preclude a future in which Saudi kings would develop an ability to hold the West hostage.

Unfortunately, the only real American realists were found in the military. It stopped viewing Israel as a strategic liability, begun seeing it as a strategic asset and recommended a policy commensurate with that notion. As a result it stopped producing papers arguing against American support for Israel and producing papers on “U.S. Strategic Interest in Israel.” The JCS 1684/28 written on March 7, 1949 and quoted in Michael Palmer (Guardians of the Gulf, p. 56) includes the following:

Existing JCS policy on this subject appears now to have been overtaken by events. The power balance in the ME has been radically altered. At the time the State of Israel was forming, numerous indications pointed to its extremely short life in the face of Arab League opposition. However, Israel . . . has demonstrated by force of arms its right to be considered the military power next after Turkey in the Near and ME.

Palmer goes on to describe how JCS reports began to focus on the advantages to the US of having a strategically located base in Israel. In a May 1949 report they recommended that U.S. policy should be directed at securing Israel's Western orientation (which, given US and USSR policies, should have been far from secure), promote reconciliation between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and make sure that Israel would be included in regional defense pacts.

The trouble was that such JCS reports -- informed as they were by strategic American national interests -- did not find favor amongst the Arabists (see Robert Kaplan’s book Arabists for the ideological and religious basis of their policies) who ran Foggy Bottom. They refused to accept the reality of Israel’s existence or do anything to promote the peace by telling Israel’s Arab neighbors that Israel was here to stay. Nor would they do anything to promote in any shape or form the international acceptance of the Jewish state. The opposite was true. This came to the fore in 1966 when Lyndon Johnson pressured Israel to send her flag to Vietnam and it was revealed that South Vietnam had not established diplomatic relations with Israel. To defend themselves, the South Vietnamese revealed that they did not because State told them not to. I am sure they were not the only ones.

Moreover, Foggy Bottom fought tooth and nail any attempt to promote peace in the Middle East. In December 1961 Washington was directly responsible for the defeat of an African-sponsored UN resolution calling for direct peace talks between Arab states and Israel under UN auspices. This happened just months after John Kennedy promised Jewish leaders who helped elect him that he would reverse this virulent State policy. Shortly thereafter the president made an official commitment to Egyptian president Gamal Abd’l Nasser to put the Arab-Israeli dispute “on ice.” The first president to make peace in the ME an American foreign policy objective was Lyndon Johnson and he did so after the Six Day War. Foggy Bottom made sure he did nothing to implement the new policy just as I expect it does its utmost to make sure that George W. Bush’s diplomats would do little to implement his policy of democratization of the Middle East.

Palmer writes:

In September and October 1949, the National Security Council . . . established the basic outlines of American Middle Eastern policy for the next four decades. . . . The US had to engage in 'impartial' but 'constructive leadership' to promote pro-Western ties . . . . Regarding the Palestine problem, the NSC argued that Israel and its neighbors had to reach an accord on their own and that the Arabs were unlikely to welcome Israel into any Middle Eastern defense structure. (560.)

In other words, there was a foreign policy debate was between JCS and State in which the idealists in State won. American Jews supported the JCS policy and at times tried to get around State by appealing directly to Congress and the President. The Arabist American foreign policy elite sought to discredit them by accusing them of dual loyalty and their supporters of putting the Jewish vote above US national interest.

Thus many of the same men who did their best to keep out of the US as many Jews as they could during and after the Holocaust, complained when David Ben Gurion called on American Jews to immigrate to Israel. Consequently, the easily intimidated president of the American Jewish Committee, Jacob Blaustein, asked David Ben Gurion to sign a document affirming that “Jews of the United States, as a community and individuals, have only one political attachment and that is to the United States.” Blaustein asked Israeli PMs to reaffirm the 1950 declaration in 1961, 1963 and 1964 but not between 1952 and 1960 when their friend Dwight Eisenhower was in charge.

Here is an example of the manner in which warnings to American Jews were delivered: In 1966 when Ben Gurion, then a mere Knesset member, called for the “strengthening of the bonds between Diaspora Jewry and the State of Israel,” his call was immediately brought to Blaustein’s attention by none other than McGeorge Bundy. Ben Gurion did not “vitiate” their attached agreement, Blaustein wrote, though he went further than Blaustein would have liked. Bundy agreed and added: “Just the same, if there is a difference between Blaustein and Ben Gurion, I think I would be on the Blaustein side!” (Judith Klinghoffer, Vietnam, Jews and the Middle East, p. 23) I cannot but wonder whether anyone knows of similar exchanges between American officials and citizens of other nationalities or religions. Note, that at the same time the CIA had reportedly organized AFME, an anti-Israeli pro-Arab lobby.

Be that as it may, State also made sure that Truman did not disappoint the Saudis for long. In 1950 Ibn Saud wrote a letter to Truman in which he focused not on the creation of Israel but asked for the US to protect him from the Hashemites. Oil and the Dahran air base, he argued should insure US interest in his kingdom. Harry Truman responded thus (Yergin, The Prize, 427, 28):

I wish to renew to Your Majesty the assurances which have been made to you several times in the past that the United States is interested in the preservation of the independence and territorial integrity of Saudi Arabia. No threat to your kingdom could occur which would not be a matter of immediate concern to the United States.

Interestingly, this guarantee was unknown to the American people, was never ratified by Congress and never leaked. Moreover, world perception to the contrary, similar assurances were not given to Israel. Hence, while American soldiers repeatedly fought and died for Saudi Arabia, they did not do so for Israel. More to the point, it is difficult to argue that the US foreign policy designed by the Arabist foreign policy elite has been successful. The opposite can be argued and is currently being argued. Indeed, Condi Rice announced in Cairo her intention to change the six-decade old US foreign policy. What do her opponents do? They get Mearsheimer and Walt to write a paper accusing Jews of disloyalty. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, if you forgive my French.