COMMENT Is Israeli smart power for
real? By Sreeram Chaulia
Israel, a state born in controversial
circumstances and challenged on its legitimacy
throughout its lifetime, is a unique example of a
loner in international diplomacy that struggles to
find the required balance between its ends and
means. The country has succeeded in securing
hard-won boundaries in a hostile neighborhood, but
floundered in gaining international acceptance as
a Jewish state.
At the heart of this mixed
bag is the question of how Israel has employed
force to advance its interests. The stigma
attached to its creation and the question marks
surrounding its recognition as an exclusive
homeland for the Jewish people can only be
overcome if Israel uses force in ways that comport
with acceptable global norms. Yet the panoply of
guerrilla movements and unfriendly states abutting
it has meant that Israel has
frequently been brutal and
clumsy in the deployment of its military and
intelligence apparatus.
Taints of "war
crimes", "disproportionate violence", "collective
punishment" etc haunt Israel's security policies
at international forums. While a section of the
country's hardline right-wing opinion believes
that Israel should care two hoots about world
opinion and must persevere with its aggressive
national security measures, the attendant loss of
goodwill and reputation has stymied Israel's entry
into a condition of normal interaction with the
world.
Israel's choice to be harsh, lethal
and extremely militaristic in its dealings with
its foes continues to be justified by hawks within
the country as an option forced upon them by
permanent adversity. But 60 years of coping with
pariah status on the world stage (notwithstanding
the American embrace) is taking its toll. Fresh
thinking is needed in Tel Aviv about attaining
non-negotiable security objectives through smarter
and less damaging methods.
A rethink about
using power smartly is especially occasioned by
three crises confronting Israeli foreign policy
today. The first relates to the breakdown of trust
with the United States, its all-weather ally.
Under President Barack Obama, US relations with
Israel have slumped to the lowest point in the
entire history of this special bilateral
relationship.
No amount of frequent
bilateral meetings and exchanges have sorted out
lingering tensions between Washington, and its
desire for a speedy two-state solution, and Tel
Aviv, which is wary of a genuinely independent
Palestine. A fundamental misalignment of interests
between the US and Israel is emerging, a
development that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
has not nipped in the bud.
The second
threat staring Israel, a state described by its
diehard sympathizers as the only democracy in the
Middle East, is ironically the fire of
democratization that has consumed Arab countries
this year. Israel's preference for accommodative
Arab despots like Hosni Mubarak, the former
president of Egypt, and Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad, has been rocked by rebellions that
portend the rise popular new rulers with
anti-Israeli orientations.
The fall of
Israel's Arab partners with whom it did business
for decades must propel Tel Aviv to devise smart
power alternatives to the old methods of
bulldozing its way with overwhelming violence.
Despite its formidable conflict-ready
military intelligence complex, Israel cannot
simultaneously wage limited or total war against
dozens of state and non-state actors in the
post-Jasmine Revolution era. It will have to find
new allies within democratizing forces in Arab
societies and learn to rely less on muscle.
The third factor that draws Israel towards
rethinking its macho foreign policy is the steady
erosion of the Turkish friendship during the reign
of the ruling Islamist Justice and Development
Party (AKP). Tel Aviv peeved Ankara with the
application of excessive force in the 22-day-war
in Gaza in 2008-2009, followed by the flotilla
raid incident in May 2010 which caused the death
of nine Turkish activists. As the only non-Arab
Muslim state in its environs which recognizes
Israel, Turkey is a vital regional actor that Tel
Aviv cannot afford to antagonize with the
repetition of all-brawn, no-brain acts.
That Israel may be passing through a
learning curve in smart power dynamics is
suggested by recent allegations that its military
intelligence apparatus sabotaged two ships
carrying pro-Palestinian protesters intent on
breaking the siege of Gaza. The Swedish vessel
Juliano, part of a larger flotilla, was
docked in the Greek port of Piraeus late last
month and mysteriously found its propeller broken.
Shortly after this incident, a similar
sabotage operation was conducted in Turkey's
territorial waters against a fellow ship of the
Gaza Flotilla, viz the Irish Saoirse.
Although Israel has kept a telltale silence on
these events, there can be little doubt as to the
provenance of the saboteurs.
In the full
arc lights of the media, Israel is averting open
confrontation at sea with the Gaza siege-breakers
and thereby also avoiding unwanted world attention
on its policies in the occupied territories.
Netanyahu even reversed his own government's
pronouncements in June that media personnel
boarding the subversive ships to cover the Gaza
flotillas would be deported and banned from
entering Israel for 10 years. This style of going
covert, climbing down and softening is
uncharacteristic of Israel, but a sign of a
necessary trend for a state that sees an
unfavorable international environment
deteriorating further.
Even on the core
problem of Iran's nuclear weapons program, Israel
has toned down its earlier belligerence and
war-like maneuvers after it realized that
Washington would not play ball by authorizing
preemptive strikes. The Stuxnet worm which
magically disabled Iran's nuclear centrifuges in
the middle of 2010 has averted real physical war
and steered the conflict into relatively safer
confines of ciphers and digital combat. Albeit
dogged by implausible deniability in this deed,
Israel has solved a mounting danger through a
means much smarter than bombing Iranian nuclear
plants and plunging the whole region into a
devastating war.
Still, the evidence is
mixed on whether Israel has managed to fully
transition from a unconscionably gung-ho foreign
policy to a smarter one that is mindful of
consequences and adopts the course least likely to
harm its international image.
The same
Israel which is cleverly converting impending
public relations disasters into quietly satisfying
blips is also allegedly carrying out ugly
assassinations of guerrilla commanders in high
profile locations via "smoking gun" techniques
such as forged passports and identity theft (as
was the case with the daft killing of the Hamas
leader, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai in early
2010). An overdose of hit squads and widely
publicized deportations of foreigners bring
embarrassment to Israel.
The real test of
whether Israel can switch to a smarter use of
power across the board will come as the
Palestinian statehood resolution comes up in the
United Nations General Assembly in September.
Bumping off targeted individuals or
raining firepower on densely populated localities
is not going to help Israel ward off the
unpleasantness of a unilateral declaration of
independence that secures a two-thirds majority at
the UN. Smart power calls for subtler responses,
including a willingness to come to terms with the
Palestinians before the diplomatic dice gets
loaded even more unfairly against Israel.
Can Israel buy or inveigle enough United
Nations member states into voting against the
unilateral declaration of Palestinian
independence? Will Netanyahu rein in
fundamentalist Jewish settlers as part of this
bargain? Is his government going to reverse the
folly of falling foul with the Obama
administration by setting and implementing
concrete timelines for de facto and de jure
statehood in Palestine? Does Tel Aviv have the
perspicacity to begin cultivating assets among the
rising tide of secular democratic elements of the
Arab Spring?
Answers to these policy
conundrums will reveal whether Israel can
decisively overcome the might-is-right philosophy,
which has become untenable in the context of an
international consensus that rewards smart
diplomacy and penalizes crude behavior.
Sreeram Chaulia is Professor and
Vice Dean of the Jindal School of International
Affairs in Sonipat, India, and the author of the
newly released book, International
Organizations and Civilian Protection: Power,
Ideas and Humanitarian Aid in Conflict Zones (I
B Tauris, London).
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