The US-Israeli partnership & America’s search for strategy in the Middle East, 1945-1974

Abstract

Contrary to popular academic assumption, the story of US Middle East strategy may be summarized by two key characteristics: reaction and incoherence. These descriptors are especially true of Washington’s strategic partnership with Tel Aviv – an arrangement that emerged relatively late in the development of US regional strategy, in response to the stagnation of primary efforts to establish a strategic arrangement centred on US-Arab partnerships. The US-Israeli partnership was therefore not an inevitable evolution of US strategy, but rather a product of the political pragmatism of the Johnson and Nixon administrations (not to mention a highly spurious interpretation of the events of the Jordanian civil war of September 1970). Only in 1973, following yet another round of Arab-Israeli hostilities, did the US begin to revise its arrangement with Israel to redress the balance between US-Israeli and US-Arab relations.