Israeli Secret Ops Undermining the United States: Political Realism as Undercutting Allies

On September 14, 2019, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was “giddy with excitement” after U.S. President Trump had communicated “the possibility of moving forward” with a mutual defense pact.[1] This communication was punctuated, however, by “cautious wording.”[2] Trump had recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s state capital and recognized Netanyahu’s annexation of the occupied Golan Heights. What accounts for the caution regarding a defense pact? Moreover, why had Trump been quiet concerning the Israeli election that was coming up in a week or so? Netanyahu was polling behind his contender, so vocal support from Trump, such as on Netanyahu’s campaign pledge to annex the Jordon Valley, would have been valuable to the sitting prime minister. At least part of the answer may have something to do with Israel’s undercutting military action in Iraq. American allies have their own geo-political agendas that can include undercutting the United States militarily.

There is the public relationship, which is all smiles, and there is what is really going on secretly. Which is real? 

First of all, just two days before Trump conveyed a vague interest in moving forward on a defense pack, Politico had broken the story that U.S. Government had determined over the last two years that Israel had been behind the "StingRay" cellphone surveillance units found around the White House.[3] Those machines could act as cell-phone towers and thus obtain cell-phone calls, texts, and data from people in the White House, as well as coming and going. Although Trump publicly claimed that he didn't believe that Israel had been spying on him, his reaction in secret may have been different, as he was known to be lax with his cellphone security and may have had personal information extracted. In public, the U.S. president and the Israeli prime minister denied the story, but in private, their relationship may have been damaged.
Secondly, according to the U.S., Israel had likely been involved in a strike near Baghdad in July, 2019. According to two U.S. officials, the strike complicated America’s relationship with Iraq.[4] It was in Israel’s interest to target militia groups with close ties to Iran. Pentagon spokesman Sean Robertson pointed out that the U.S. military has “repeated spoken out against any potential actions by neighbors that could lead to violence in Iraq.”[5] It is interesting that one of the closest U.S. allies would act so anyway. In an interview, Netanyahu, who also acted at the time as Israel’s defense minister, admitted that he had “given the security forces a free hand and the instruction to do what is needed to thwart” Iran’s plans “in Iran itself, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen.”[6] Whether Netanyahu merely relegated the fallout for the U.S. or had an interest in driving a wedge between the U.S. and Iraq goes beyond my intel. 
Thirdly, Israeli military forces, dressed as Iraqis, had secretly entered Iraq before, using complicit British guns to shoot at American soldiers and thus destabilize the situation in the eyes of the Americans and thus manipulate them to increase their involvement there. Both the British and Israeli states had an interest in keeping the U.S. mired in the Middle East, though I doubt the British interest was principally to weaken the dollar. Israel’s interest is rather obvious in having a powerful ally close by militarily. In any case, special relationships tend to get weakened by undermining actions on the ground.

Perhaps political realism, a theory that maintains that states pursue their respective interests rationally, really does explain how states act in secret. But is such a narrow preoccupation of interest rational? A single-minded privileging of immediate interests is not rational, I submit, because the longer-term benefits from a longer-term interest are discounted or ignored outright. Allies can realize such benefits unless either state puts short-term opportunism (from short-term interests) above the sort of self-restraining motivation that respects as binding the other state's interests. 
In secret, states may indeed be opportunists even in trying to weaken an ally while proffering supportive platitudes in public. After all, the present-value of money, which holds that having money today is worth more than having it tomorrow (hence interest on a savings account is compensation), stems from the importance of instant gratification in human nature. Given this genetic staple, trust simply does not exist between states, even allies. The maxim that a state will only act in concert with an ally when the immediate strategic interests are in line is not rational, I submit, because the benefits from self-constraining immediate interests are given up; such benefits, if allowed, would result in a more optimized state interest being realized. 

Even medium-term benefits may not be realized. Netanyahu, for instance, may find that his desire to be re-elected is not sufficiently supported when a “trusted” ally is more hesitant than usual in offering support. From the American standpoint, it may not even make sense to have a mutual-defense pact with an ally that takes cell-phone data from near the White House and plows ahead militarily at the detriment of the United State's costly work in Iraq. Why would the U.S. agree to spend money and lives to defend Israel unless America were itself attacked? To be in a mutual military pact, both sides must be capable of and willing to recognize and act on obligation even when the immediacy of interest could benefit by acting contrarily even if in secret.

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1. Oren Liebermann, “Trump May No Longer Be the Gift that Keeps on Giving for Netanyahu,” CNN.com, September 16, 2019 (accessed on the same day).

2. Ibid.

3. Daniel Lippman, "Israel Accused of Planting Mysterious Spy Devices Near the White House," Politico, September 12, 2019.
4. Barbara Starr et al, “Israel Likely Had a Role in Iraq Airstrike that Has Roiled US-Iraqi Relations,” CNN.com, August 23, 2019 (accessed on September 16, 2019)

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

The U.S. Military in Iraq: Were Human Rights Ignored?

Philip Alston, a United Nations human rights official, warned the U.S. Government in 2006 that he had received information indicating that Iraqi reports of American troops executing an Iraqi family were true. Five of the victims were children five years old or younger. According to Alston, the troops “entered the house [after a 25 minute gun battle], handcuffed all residents and executed all of them.” He noted that the troops attacked the house in part because they suspected that the family was involved in the killing of two American troops earlier in March, 2006. If this is true, both the vengeful attack and the subsequent investigation by the U.S. military, which concluded that the report of the execution was false, demonstrate what can go wrong when conflicts of interest are ignored.

In his Two Treatises of Government, John Locke writes that government is necessary because victims cannot be trusted to act as judges in meting out sentences in their own cases. At the very least, the aggressors could be expected to receive unduly harsh punishments because of the weight of vengeance on the victims’ judgment. So too, American troops cannot be trusted to take matters into their own hands concerning the shooting of other American troops. Moreover, the U.S. military cannot be expected to judge its own. So too, regarding the massacre of 1,200 prisoners at Abu Salim prison in Tripoli on June 29, 1996, which would prompt the protests that ultimately led to the fall of Qaddafi, the question of an independent investigation even by the rebels themselves should involve making certain that the ex-guards and government officials are not allowed to vitiate an investigation or its verdict. “We want a fair investigation to discover what exactly happened,” Jamal Bashir al-Gorgi said. His brother Faraj was killed. It is the ethical principle of fairness that is so easily discarded from justice when the victims become the victimizers.

Besides the matter of a military, whether African or American, “taking care of its own,” there is a danger, moreover, in having violence itself coming to be tacitly accepted simply because vested interests eviscerate accountability—which itself can foster a culture wherein spontaneous violence is not sufficiently held back from a normative standpoint. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, it could be that the world had become so accustomed to the continued existence of standing armies that violence itself had come to be expected, or at the very least engrained in societal norms. Hence, the U.S. military was thrust into Iraq as a clumsy reaction of vengeance after the terrorist attack in New York City in September, 2001. Incredibly, the military itself was trusted to investigate “its own” while Alston’s letter that was submitted to the U.S. Embassy in Geneva 12 days after the killings in March 2006 was virtually ignored.

It could be that the very existence of a standing army relegates human rights while potential vengeance is given a ready instrument. Indeed, the U.S. is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the American union is one of the most militarized alliances in the world—ready to be engaged by a commander in chief who can de facto declare war on his own in spite of the conflict of interest. Perhaps if human rights were more valued in American society, such large standing armies as those in the U.S. would not be necessary. That is to say, perhaps there would be less hatred around the world directed at the American union.

Sources:

Richard Oppel, Jr., “Cable Implicates Americans in Deaths of Iraqi Civilians,” New York Times, September 2, 2011. 

Kareem Fahim, “Rebels Yank Open Gates of Infamous Libyan Prison, Seeking Clues to a Massacre,” New York Times, September 2, 2011. 

On the Legitimacy of the US Invasion of Iraq

George H.W. Bush had not sent the US military all of the way into Iraq; he decided to go along with the consensus in the coalition of the time that the invasion would go just far enough to remove Iraqi forces from Kwait.  Undoing an invasion is a laudatory military venture.

George W. Bush went all the way in, occupying Iraq ostensively because of WMD and a link between Saddam Hussein and 9-11.  Karl Rove states in his memoirs that the fact that no WMD was found under Bush’s watch critically damaged the Bush Presidency.  In addition, the presumed link between Hussein’s government and 9-11 turned out to be spurious.  Rove claims that the invasion was justified nonetheless as a response to 9-11.  ”Having seen how much carnage four airplanes could cause, Bush was determined to do all he could to prevent the most powerful weapons from falling into the hands of the world’s most dangerous dictators,” Rove notes.  From this criterion, however, at least two problems are evident.

First, presumably other dangerous dictators, like those of Iran and North Korea, would have been subject to American forces.  That is to say, the criterion does not justify singling out one dictator.  It does not, for example, say “…dictators who are thought to have a WMD.”  The criterion is broader, yet George W. Bush applied it dogmatically (i.e., too narrowly, meaning to just one of several cases that would apply).

Second, the criterion does not justify removing a government from power; the goal is to keep WMD from falling into a government’s hands.  It could be argued that because the Bush administration thought that Saddem had a WMD, the only way to reach the goal was to remove him from power, but then the justification of the invasion would be invalid because there is no evidence that he had WMD at the time of the US invasion.  He had had chemical weapons, but then I’m sure Iraq is not the only “dangerous” country that has them.  Again, the criterion would have to be applied to all such cases.  To apply it to one and ignore the rest is dogmatic, or arbitrary, and thus points to an ulterior motive other than acting on the basis of the criterion.

In short, whereas his father restrained himself in keeping with the coalition at the early 1990s, George W. Bush went all the way, and without sufficient justification even by the criterion that his advisor, Karl Rove, provides.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  When there is a rubber-stamp Congress and a President willing to declare war (a Congressional power on account of the structural conflict of interest in having the commander in chief declaring war—meaning declaring that he would be using his power), it is difficult for him to hold back, even when his own father provides an illustration of self-restraint.   Perhaps Congress is too close to the US President’s Office to be vested with declaring war; maybe 2/3 of the governors should be required in lieu of the Congress.  In any case, the imperial presidency is a dangerous thing to have in a republic built on republics (i.e., an empire).  Rome went from being a republic to having an emperor…and then on to ruin.  The US may be following a similar course.  The lessons from the invasion of Iraq can go well beyond foreign and military policy as we search for reforms that pertain to our system of government.

Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/35706823/ns/today-today_books/