Capitulation of the US shows Bibi was right
Israel would be facing a catastrophe if it wasn’t for its new diplomatic alliances in the Gulf
THE CAPITULATION of the US to the Taliban is, as Daniel Finkelstein writes on the facing page, far more than a self-contained decision to end a war for which it no longer had the stomach. The consequences will shape the rest of the century. It is not merely that America has decided to turn its back on its role as the world’s policeman, or even that it has ceded its role as leader of the West. It is that to all intents and purposes there no longer is a ‘West’ — in the sense of a network of alliances based on a broadly shared outlook and a willingness to stand up for that outlook.
Quite apart from anything else, why would anyone — be it Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping or any other leader of a tyrannical regime — pay the least attention to any future demands from the West, let alone fear our wrath? We do not even stand by those who risk their lives for us, leaving them to be decapitated by the Taliban. If I were Ukrainian I would be fearful as to what the near future holds. Which brings us to Benjamin Netanyahu.
It is now fashionable to regard Israel’s longest serving prime minister as yesterday’s man, a busted flush whose aura of invincibility vanished the moment he was ousted from office. That may be true; none of us knows what lies in store.
But the events in Afghanistan over the past month have shown more clearly than ever before the strategic genius of Benjamin Netanyahu — the man who precisely and specifically saw the direction of travel of Israel’s closest ally, the US, and as a consequence laid the foundations for a new and unprecedented diplomatic security path for Israel.
Mr Netanyahu realised that Israel could no longer depend on the US far earlier than many around him grasped what was happening. He did his best to bolster US support, of course, not least in his wooing of the Evangelical Christians who buttress so many Republicans. But he saw where US policy was heading and spent enormous amounts of time and effort seeking to put in place alternative alliances.
It was hardly difficult to spot what was happening in the US, of course. The JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise known as the Iran Nuclear Deal) might as well have been a drawing of two fingers being shown to the Israeli flag. And while the arrival of President Trump scuppered the agreement, President Biden is simply reverting to the position of the foreign policy establishment in his determination to resurrect whatever he can of the deal. And Iran will be as emboldened as any nation by the US’s surrender in Afghanistan.
Right at the start of the moves to negotiate the JCPOA, Mr Netanyahu saw opportunity amid the threat. Israel was far from alone in fearing a nuclear Iran. This gave him, and Israel, the basis for an informal alliance to push the dangers of a deal on the Americans.
It was that informal alliance and the increasing diplomatic and security cooperation it engendered that laid the foundations for the Abraham Accords.
After Israel’s creation in 1948, even closet normalisation of relations with the bulk of the Arab world was impossible — a consequence of history, religion and the influence of the Soviet Union. Relations with India as well as African, Asian and Latin American states in the so-called Non-Aligned Movement were also a non-starter, a combination of the Palestinian issue and those countries’ shared anti-Americanism, with Israel seen as the US’s outpost in the Middle East, preventing any diplomatic moves.
But the collapse of the Soviet Union threw everything into the air. The ideological cement that bound relations in the region was increasingly replaced by transactional diplomacy. In 1992, Israel established formal relations with India and, over time, informal relations emerged with Gulf states, grounded in their shared security concerns and economic interest. Last year’s Abraham Accords were the logical consequence — but while President Trump was the midwife, it was Benjamin Netanyahu who did the groundwork.
While much of the world focussed on the Palestinian issue, Mr Netanyahu saw the unprecedented opportunity to create lasting formal ties with the Arab world which would transform Israel’s security prospects — not to mention the huge economic benefits.
For most of the time, the received wisdom was that his efforts were a distraction. That was expressed with consummate arrogance by John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, in farewell remarks in 2016: “There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world… I’ve heard several prominent politicians in Israel sometimes saying, ‘Well, the Arab world’s in a different place now. We just have to reach out to them and we can work some things with the Arab world and deal with the Palestinians.’
“No. No, no and no…”
The inward focus of the US is a disaster for the West. For Israel, it could have been a catastrophe, had it not been led by a strategic genius for most of the past decade.