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The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, by Peter J. Katzenstein, editor
11. Identity and Alliances in the Middle East
Michael N. Barnett
International relations scholarship is nearly unanimous in the view that alliances are driven by expediency rather than principle, that their primary motivation is to enhance state security in the face of some immediate or future external threat, and that ideational and domestic interests are of secondary importance. In this view, states seek alliances primarily to enhance their capabilities through combination with others, which helps to deter a potential aggressor and avoid an unwanted war, to prepare for a successful war in the event that deterrence fails, or more generally to increase one's influence in a high-threat environment or maintain a balance of power in the system. Resting on a foundation of systemic theorizing, alliances can be a product of either balancing or bandwagoning behavior, but in any form they are the result of expedience and an external threat.
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As security scholars identify the dynamics of alliance formation, they generally focus on two features of the state's strategic calculus: (1) the identification of the threat and (2) the determination of whether and with whom to ally in response to that threat. Both steps, according to realists, are parsimoniously and predictably propelled by power politics and systemic pressures; material factors and threats to the state's security generate the definition of the threat, and the decision to construct an external alignment (as opposed to a strategy of internal mobilization) and with whom is dependent on a rational calculation of costs and benefits that derive primarily from material factors and the state's relative military power vis-á-vis potential and immediate threats. 2 In general, the neorealist approach to alliance formation is quite insistent that material factors dominate the definition of, and the adopted response to, that threat.
This essay, in contrast, asserts that state identity offers theoretical leverage over the issue of the construction of the threat and the choice of the alliance partner. It is the politics of identity rather than the logic of anarchy that often provides a better understanding of which states are viewed as a potential or immediate threat to the state's security. Moreover, whereas realists calculate the costs and benefits of additional units of security, defined in terms of the state's relative military power, and emphasize the state's attempt to maneuver between the dual fears of entrapment and abandonment, the variable of identity also signals which states are considered more or less desirable partners. By proposing a direct link between identity and strategic behavior, and investigating that behavior in a central research domain of neorealism, I offer an alternative understanding of security dynamics.
To explore the relationship between identity and alliance formation I examine various episodes of inter-Arab and U.S.-Israeli relations. Inter-Arab relations are frequently characterized as the paragon of realist politics; Arab leaders routinely paid lip service to the ideals of pan-Arabism while engaging in power-seeking behavior. To demonstrate how identity provides theoretical leverage over these central issues surrounding alliance formation, I examine two periods in inter-Arab relations. During the early years of the Arab states system, Arab nationalism guided Arab states to identify both with whom they should "naturally" associate and the threat to Arab states; this common identity and threat, in turn, created the desire for certain normative and institutional arrangements to govern inter-Arab security politics that were reflective of their self-understanding of being Arab states. The 1955 Iraqi-Turkey Treaty, better known as the Baghdad Pact, ignited these very issues and suggests the impact of identity rather than anarchy. I then examine the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC ) and some features of the post-Gulf war security patterns, which also elevate how identity shapes the construction of the threat and signals who is considered a preferred partner.
These two episodes in inter-Arab politics also suggest ways in which changing identities are associated with changing regional security and alliance patterns. Frequently discussed as the "end of pan-Arabism," "the new realism," "the return to geography," and "the fragmentation of the Arab world," the subtext is the decline of Arab national identities and the emergence of statist identities. 3 These changes, in turn, are linked to discursive and behavioral changes in inter-Arab politics. Specifically, if Arab nationalism reminded Arab leaders that as heads of Arab states they shared interests, goals, and security threats and should actively attempt to strengthen that community and to develop close strategic ties (or at least be viewed as doing so), its observed decline and the rise of statist identities has diminished the enthusiasm for all of the above. Consequently, Arab states are exhibiting new behavioral expectations and patterns of interactions that have imprinted their security politics in general and alliance arrangements in particular.
Most analyses of the U.S.-Israeli alliance contend that it is driven by either systemic or U.S. domestic politics. My position, however, is that Israel's collective identity, and the U.S.'s understanding that Israel shares with it certain values, are critical for understanding U.S.-Israel relations. To demonstrate the importance of identity, I examine the "crisis" in U.S.-Israeli relations that began in the late 1980s; while many look to systemic forces and the end of the Cold War, I argue that another source of the crisis resided in Israeli debates and practices that challenged its Western, liberal-democratic, character, and accordingly, the foundation of U.S.-Israeli relations. All three cases, then, are intended to demonstrate how identity, as a relational construct that emerges out of the international and domestic discourse and interactions, helps us better to understand the dynamics of alliance formation.
Identity and Alliance Formation
A mainstay of realist approaches to alliance politics is that states respond to threats from the external environment. Of central importance here is Stephen Walt's The Origins of Alliances. Walt modifies Kenneth Waltz's account of alliance formation by recognizing that states balance not against power but rather against threats. Because anarchy and the distribution of power alone are unable to signal which states will be identified as threats, Walt posits that the threat derives from a combination of geostrategic and military factors and "aggressive intentions." 4 To deter mine who constitutes a threat to the state's physical security and relative power requires a marriage of capabilities and intentions.
Walt's "balance-of-threat" approach represents an important contribution to neorealist thought, and his analytically driven narrative of Middle Eastern politics is quite compelling. Yet to what extent do Walt's theory and narrative of Middle Eastern politics offer a verdict for neorealism and materialism? I want to suggest that his theoretical framework and observations identify not the logic of anarchy but rather the politics of identity; specifically, Walt assembles strong support for ideational rather than materialist forces as driving inter-Arab politics in general and alliance formation in particular.
To begin, consider the variable of "aggressive intentions." Walt elevates this critical variable because of his recognition that the distribution of power alone cannot predict which states will be identified as a threat. Yet how is intent determined? In his theoretical discussion Walt offers various examples of how intent represents an important component of the construction of the threat, yet the concept of intent is left underspecified and undertheorized. By rejecting the proposition that intent is conceptually linked to anarchy or the balance of power and by failing to offer a conceptual tie in its place, Walt leaves the issue unresolved: How is intent determined? What constitutes a threat?
Although Walt's theoretical discussion does not offer any guidance concerning how intent is determined, looming large in his historical narrative is "ideology." Specifically, pan-Arabism represents both a force to be reckoned with and a potential threat to other Arab regimes by challenging their legitimacy, sovereignty, and internal stability. Briefly, pan-Arabism charged that because the West segmented and divided the Arab nation into separate Arab states, Arab states derived their identity, interests, and legitimacy from the entire Arab nation that enveloped their separate borders. A central feature of this drama was that while the Arab states system was nominally organized around sovereignty, pan-Arabism held that Arab states had an obligation to protect Arabs wherever they resided and to work toward political unification, that is, to bring the state and the nation into correspondence. pan-Arabism, in short, represented a potential threat to Arab governments, as it challenged the very territorial basis of their existence.
An Arab leader that wielded the pan-Arab "card," therefore, represented a dual challenge to other Arab governments. First, he challenged them to be viewed as working toward both a deepening of the Arab political com munity and their eventual political unification. By reminding them both that (his own and) their authority and legitimacy derived not from these fictitious territories created by the West but from the Arab nation, and that their duty was, in effect, to deny their own sovereignty and strengthen the bonds of Arab unity, Arab nationalism represented a threat to the Arab states' sovereignty and, hence, to the Arab leaders' external and internal security. This view helps to explain why in the 1940s a militarily powerful Egypt feared a substantially weaker Iraq that was a thousand miles from its border, that offered little military challenge, and that, in fact, offered itself up for political unification. The proposed Syrian-Iraqi federation in the late 1940s and the realized Syrian-Egyptian unification in 1958 threatened the entire region; yet the challenge derived not from the combined aggregate military power of the two states but from their making good on Arabism's pledge and challenging other Arab leaders to do the same.
Second, Arab leaders could lose tremendous legitimacy, and hence suffer a drop in their domestic and regional standing, if they were viewed as not acting to safeguard the interests, as failing to live up to the goals and aspirations, of the Arab nation. The fortunes of Arab leaders were dependent on whether they were viewed as conforming to the norms of the Arab nation; indeed, they could be the target of severe regional and domestic sanctions if they were perceived as violating its norms. The norms associated with Arabism, in other words, instructed Arab leaders how they were to behave, and one Arab leader could potentially undermine another by charging him with behavior that was inconsistent with the norms of the group. That Arab nationalism had this effect dramatizes the point that it was cultural capital, not military capabilities, that was the currency of power in Arab politics and that was deployed to shield oneself from, and to injure, one's rivals. In the game of inter-Arab politics, if you will, sticks and stones had comparatively little effect, but words could really hurt; portraying another Arab leader as acting in ways that were inconsistent with Arabism could potentially unleash domestic challenges and subject him to regional sanctions. In general, pan-Arabism represented a potential threat to the Arab state's domestic and international basis of existence, and an Arab leader who wielded the pan-Arab card could be dangerous indeed. 5 Because Arab nationalism represented a potential threat to the sovereignty and security of Arab states, interstate interactions had a different dynamic than predicted by realist formulations. Simply put, rivalry had a strong normative element that was independent of material power. In fact, Walt recognizes as much. After surveying a series of alliances and balancing episodes in Arab politics, he concludes:
| A different form of balancing has occurred in inter-Arab relations. In the Arab world, the most important source of power has been the ability to manipulate one's own image and the image of one's rivals in the minds of other Arab elites. Regimes have gained power and legitimacy if they have been seen as loyal to accepted Arab goals, and they have lost these assets if they have appeared to stray outside the Arab consensus. As a result, an effective means of countering one's rivals has been to attract as many allies as possible in order to portray oneself as leading (or at least conforming to) the norms of Arab solidarity. In effect, the Arab states have balanced one another not by adding up armies but by adding up votes. Thus militarily insignificant alliances between various Arab states often have had profound political effects. 6 |
This conclusion, by singling out Arabism and ideology as driving inter-Arab interactions and by failing to forward the distribution of power as causally consequential, seems somewhat at odds with a neorealist view as it points to identity and not anarchy.
If Walt concludes that Arabism and ideology drove inter-Arab dynamics, why does he not revise his balance-of-threat model to incorporate more fully ideational factors? If he is suggesting that images, not anarchy, drives inter-Arab politics, then why not direct attention to ideational--not material--forces as primary, independent, and causal? As it stands, Walt's various historical observations are inconsistent with his materialist presuppositions, suggesting the limitations of neorealism for understanding inter-Arab politics. In my view, there are two reasons for the failure to give ideational forces their proper due. The first is a commitment to a materialism that forces Walt to reduce ideational factors to the level of ideology and to see them as parasitic on the material. Rather than consider ing how Arabism might in fact shape the identity, if not the interests, of Arab leaders, Walt reduces its status to that of an instrument used by Arab leaders to further their domestic and regional standing--simply put, as a legitimator of foreign policy. Although in his analytical discussion Walt recognizes that "aggressive intentions" drive the construction of the threat and are autonomous with respect to the distribution of power, he fails to consider what other theoretical field might generate the identification of hostile intent. The need to try to minimize the potential causal force of identity is also evident in his discussion of U.S.-Israeli relations; for instance, he dismisses the possibility of "ideological solidarity" between the U.S. and Israel because the "U.S. is [not] a welfare-state theocracy such as Israel." 7 In general, Walt seems incapable of fully acknowledging just how inconsistent his empirical observations are from his theoretical presuppositions because of his loyalty to materialism.
Perhaps another reason why Walt retreats to anarchy is because of the observation that Arab states, who supposedly shared an identity, have showed quite a flair for conflict and not for cooperation. In other words, because a shared identity is more closely associated with conflict than with cooperation, then it must be a realist world. 8 Yet the observation that the existence of a shared identity is associated with conflict is worth greater reflection. To begin, why assume that a shared identity necessarily generates a pacific structure and cooperation? After all, a community of Saddam Husseins is unlikely to father a secure environment, while a community of Mahatma Gandhis will encourage all to leave their homes unlocked. 9 Perhaps a more reasonable stance is to consider the possibility that conflict can take place among those actors that have a shared identity. 10 Conflict, after all, is part of any social relationship; George Simmel told us this a century ago in his highly insightful, but generally underappreciated, essay "Conflict." 11 In other words, the mere existence of conflict does not in and of itself entail a realist world or derive from anarchy; conflict has many sources, and the challenge is to consider reasons other than anarchy for why actors that have a shared identity might also exhibit conflict and hostility.
Because interstate interactions and alliance formation are better connected conceptually to identity than to anarchy, reducing identity to ideology and assuming that the ideational is parasitic on the material relegates to a residual category what is, in fact, central. 12 Specifically, while anarchy and material factors provide little leverage and are not analytically linked to "aggressive intentions," identity offers a better conceptual handle in two ways. First, assorted literatures conclude that there is an important relationship between identity and the construction of the threat. To begin, identity emerges as a consequence of taking into consideration a relevant "other." While not all states with a shared identity will define threats in the same way, will treat all those outside the group as a threat, or will agree on the means to confront the threat, there is an important connection between identity and threat. 13 In other words, Arabism might affect the identity and interests of, and the socially acceptable policies available to, Arab leaders in ways that fundamentally shape their desired and available security policies. In fact, we readily accept the proposition that there is a relationship between identity and threat when it comes to ethnic, tribal, and religious groups, and there is no reason to dismiss a similar connection in the context of a different corporate actor called the state. 14 For instance, in the current climate, that is absent a clearly identifiable external danger, those that compose the self-selected Western community are elevating domestic characteristics--most notably, markets and democracy--as markers to distinguish between those who represent threats and those who do not. Walt, for instance, recognizes that an Arab identity and Arab nationalism caused Arab states to identify Israel as a threat and enemy. 15 To be sure, this hostility did not overcome collective action problems and free riding, yet it did prescribe what was acceptable and legitimate and suggests an important relationship between identity and the definition of the threat. In general, identity might be better able to "predict whether two states will be friends or foes, will be revisionist or status quo powers, and so on," and a shared identity is likely to generate a shared definition of the threat. 16
Second, a possible source of conflict among actors that share an identity is their constitutive norms. Those states that share a basic identity and organize themselves into a self-constituted group are likely to construct norms that instruct them on how they are to enact their identity. This suggests two possible sources of conflict. First, actors with a shared identity might very well debate and contest their associated norms. After all, while Pat Buchanan and I both identify ourselves as Americans, we have very different understandings of the norms that are associated with that identity, and those understandings are not easily reducible to our material circumstances or interests. What exists for actors in the domestic arena also applies to states in the international system. My argument is that inter-Arab politics largely concerns the debate over the norms that should govern Arab politics that are directly related to issues of identity. In general, that actors who have a shared identity will disagree over what constitutes acceptable behavior for the members of the group represents a potential source of conflict.
The proposition that actors with a shared identity might debate the norms that are to regulate their relations and are tied to conceptions of self generates a second, earlier observation: that actors will vie to present themselves as acting in a manner that is consistent with the group's norms and to portray others as acting in a manner that is inconsistent with those norms and thus potentially threatening to the group. In other words, rivalry is not over military power but rather it is over images and the presentation of self; threats, therefore, derive from a rival's attempt to portray itself as acting in a manner that violates the group's norms. Arab leaders, for instance, have attempted to present themselves as acting to further the interests of the Arab nation and to present others as potentially undermining those interests. Similarly, Arab leaders forged alliances and divisions around different positions concerning the norms that should govern inter-Arab politics; this is to be expected, given that norms, rather than militaries, potentially posed the threat to the regime's domestic and regional standing.
Consequently, portraying a member of the group as violating the group's norms potentially threatens that member's standing, if not its very status in the group. Said otherwise, there is generally some positive relationship between the state's expressed identity, its membership in the group, and its behavior; the behavior cannot be totally inconsistent with the self-proclaimed identity without challenging the state's relationship to the group. Therefore, disregarding these norms that define the group can undermine the state's identity and relationship to that group. For instance, the literature on the "democratic peace" notes the presence of constitutive norms that signify that "civilized" states do not go to war; therefore, going to war with a member of the community challenges the state's membership in the community of democratic states. The case of the Baghdad Pact illustrates the development of and debate over the norms that are intended to define and give meaning to the Arab nation and shows how Iraq's alliance with Turkey represented a challenge to the meaning and future of Arab nationalism and unleashed a debate over the norms to govern Arab politics.
In general, by exploring, first, that actors with a shared identity are likely to have a shared construction of the threat and, second, that actors with a shared identity might clash over the norms that are to govern their behaviors that are a reflection of that shared identity, I contend that identity is linked to the construction of the threat and represents a potential source of alliance formation.
In contrast to the neorealist view that the choice of the alliance partner is largely dependent on a rational calculation of costs and benefits that derive primarily from material factors, I want to consider how identity potentially shapes the choice of the alliance partner, and provides the foundation of the alliance. First, whereas neorealists presume that strate gic calculations exhaust the state's consideration of a potential alliance partner, there is evidence that it frequently employs identity criteria to evaluate a prospective partner's "worthiness." Identity, in short, makes some partners more attractive than others. For instance, it is noteworthy that democratic states generally align with one another and do not ally against each other during times of war. 17 In Arab politics, the West, not to mention Israel, is not usually ranked high on the list of desirable strategic partners. The importance of identity for determining who is considered a worthwhile strategic partner is explored in the case of the Baghdad Pact and the GCC . In general, given the absence of an immediate threat (which is frequently the case), identity will factor into the state's choice of ally.
Second, identity not only provides some leverage over the choice of an alliance partner, but it also suggests that the maintenance of that alliance can be dependent on the parties' mutual identification. Consequently, a shared identity might not help to cement the basis of the alliance, but a change in identity can undermine the alliance's foundation. Because an important basis for the strategic association is not simply shared interests in relationship to an identified threat but rather a shared identity that promotes an affinity and mutual identification, the language of community rather than the contractual language of alliance arguably better captures this type of strategic association. 18 To participate and to be counted as a member of a community requires that the state proclaim oneself as a member of the community, and express and uphold those values and norms that constitute it. To do so, the state must have a stable identity that has the "capacity to keep a particular narrative going." 19 Therefore, being part of an association of like-minded states involves having a dominant historical narrative, an identity, that is consistent with that of the community. "In order to have a sense of who we are," Charles Taylor observes, "we have to have a notion of how we have become, and of where we are going." 20 The community becomes an important source of that identity and that narrative, and those within the community frequently express similar historical roots, a common heritage, and a shared future.
Communities and societies can be understood as engaging in a continuous debate over their collective identity. 21 As Edward Said observes, "We need to regard society as the locale in which a continuous contest between adherents of different ideas about what constitutes the national identity is taking place." 22 In this respect, states can have an "identity conflict," which is likely to emerge under two conditions. 23 First, it may result whenever there are competing definitions of the collective identity that call for contradictory behaviors. Although referring explicitly to the notion of role conflict, (with minimal translation errors), identity conflict might be seen to exist
| when there are contradictory expectations that attach to some position in a social relationship. Such expectations may call for incompatible performances; they may require that one hold two norms or values which logically call for opposing behaviors; or they may demand that one [identity] necessitates the expenditure of time and energy such that it is difficult or impossible to carry out the obligations of another [identity]. 24 |
Identity conflict can also exist whenever definitions of the "collective self are no longer acceptable under new historical conditions." 25 In other words, a crisis might emerge whenever the state's collective identity (or the very debate over that identity) is at odds with the demands and defining characteristics of the broader community (which represents an additional source of the state's identity).
Maintaining a stable identity that is consistent with this larger commu nity may be particularly challenging for some states at some moments because of changed international and domestic factors. At the international level, a change in systemic patterns, caused by transnational, economic, or military politics, can trigger wide-scale domestic change and debates concerning the collective identity and the state's relationship to the wider community. This has been particularly noticeable in recent years, as many states have debated the national identity and its relationship to other international communities, most notably the "West." At the domestic level, changes in territorial boundaries, the political economy, and demography can also enliven the debate over the collective identity. In any event, identity concerns not only the state's external "self" but also its internal one.
Relatedly, constitutive norms can pertain not only to the external behavior of states but also to their domestic behavior and arrangements. That is, being a member in the community is shaped not only by the state's external identity and associated behavior but also by its domestic characteristics and practices. Indeed, states apparently attempt to predict a state's external behavior based on its internal arrangements; this is most obvious in the expectation that democratic states will settle their differences short of war. Therefore, the failure to order the domestic polity in a particular way can potentially undermine the state's status in the group. 26 In general, my concern is how identity conflict undermines both the state's ability to keep a particular narrative going, and, accordingly, the state's membership in the community. This issue is explored in the case of U.S.-Israel relations.
In sum, I am employing the concept of state identity to gain theoretical leverage over strategic behavior in general and alliance formation in particular. Identity, first, provides a better conceptual link to the construction of the threat than do anarchy and other materialist derivations and, second, potentially informs as to who is deemed an attractive ally. The following cases are intended to illustrate these two central points concerning alliance formation.
Identity and Alliances in Arab Politics
From the inception of the Arab states system through the late 1960s, Arab nationalism had a powerful hold over the Arab states. Two points deserve immediate attention. First, there is a relationship between the Arab identity and the definition of the threat. Although before the 1900s the Arab world lived in separate and relatively isolated political communities, soon after that time, the combination of imported ideas of nationalism from the West, changes in social structure because of an expanding world economy, the Ottoman Empire's "Turkification" program of 1908, and primarily the mandate system and Zionism following World War I caused Arab leaders and masses alike to consider their relationship to one another and to develop an Arab political identity and loyalty. 27 The fear generated by these intrusions did not subside after the independence of the Arab states, for the Jewish presence had become the State of Israel, and the West made known its intentions to maintain influence over this important geostrategic ground. A common Arab identity, in short, was linked to a common definition of the threat.
Second, Arab nationalism can be understood as the belief that Arab states have shared identities and interests; the Arab nation envelops and allocates a common Arab identity to the segmented Arab states system. Since the independence of the Arab states in the 1940s, the relationship between Arab nationalism and the sovereign Arab states has been a defining feature of the debates over how Arab states should organize their relations. In short, how were Arab states to enact their identity? What norms were associated with Arab nationalism? Briefly, if Arab states assumed that they had a common Arab identity, they exhibited a range of expectations concerning how that Arab identity should affect inter-Arab strategic cooperation; Arab states forged allegiances depending on the positions they held on these key issues. At one end was the expectation that Arab states should work toward unification. If the West had divided the Arab nation into separate states to keep it weak and vulnerable to Western interests, then the surest and quickest way to restrengthen the Arab nation was to create a single Arab state. In this version, Arab nationalism meant territo rial unification. As reflected by the League of Arab States, however, the Arab states were generally suspicious of any efforts to restrict their sovereignty or to undermine their territorial basis of power. Although this was particularly true of Lebanon (which feared Syria's territorial claims), Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, even Jordan, Syria, and Iraq, which more actively flirted with the idea of unification (no doubt in part because these three states were the most artificial and, accordingly, their populations the most susceptible to the rally of unification), demonstrated tremendous wariness regarding unification.
Although most Arab leaders had little taste for a pan-Arabism that demanded unification, the existence of Arabism encouraged Arab states to organize themselves somewhere between sovereignty and unification; because their security was interdependent, Arab states should act in concert and consultation with other Arab states. The clearest expression of this was the attempt to develop close strategic ties and military integration, and the articulated norm that Arab states should settle their disputes short of war. These principles were embodied in the Treaty of Joint Defence and Economic Cooperation Among the States of the Arab League (better known as the Collective Arab Security Pact), signed April 13, 1950, which pledged them to settle their conflicts through nonviolent means (article 1), to engage in collective defense (article 2), and to integrate their military and foreign policies (article 5). 28 Such noble gestures notwithstanding, the lofty rhetoric and far-reaching treaty had very little practical effect.
Although there was little real movement toward unification or military integration, the history of the period exhibits numerous instances and episodes in which Arab leaders responded to the expectations that they develop (or at least be viewed as supporting the development of) close strategic ties among Arab states and, at the bare minimum, that Arab states not adopt any policies that potentially might harm the security of the Arab nation. 29 The fact of being an Arab state, therefore, generated certain expectations, and defying those expectations could have major conse quences for an Arab leader's domestic and regional standing. In general, Arab leaders had been involved in a continuous debate over the norms to govern inter-Arab relations.
Beginning in the early 1950s, two events intensified the discussion over the norms associated with Arabism. The first was the Egyptian revolution in 1952, which brought about a change not only in regime but in foreign policy orientation. King Faruq's commitment to Arabism did not extend much beyond a desire to rid the British from Egypt and to assert Egypt's role as leader of the Arab world if only to discourage radical Arab demands. At first Nasser and the Free Officers appeared to be loyal to Faruq's policies, as they concentrated their energies on evicting Britain from Egypt. Yet Nasser expressed a greater commitment to Arab unity, a desire born largely of his experiences in the Palestine War of 1948 and his belief that Arab unity was the best method for resuscitating Arab power. It was, then, Nasser's understanding that Egypt's fate and security could not be separated from those of the other Arab states (and that he could gain considerable personal power from this message). 30 As a sign of events to come, on July 4, 1953, Nasser launched the "Voice of the Arabs" to broadcast his message of Arab unity to the Arab world. The second development was that the U.S. and Britain, both perceived threats to the Arab nation, were signaling their determination to become more deeply involved in the region. Both nations were hoping, though for somewhat different reasons, to establish alliances with Arab states. 31 The principal signal that the Cold War had come to the Middle East was the Turkish-Pakistani alliance of April 1954, which created a strategic link to Britain and the U.S. This treaty precipitated a major debate in the region concerning the proper, and ideally collective Arab, response to this renewed surge from the West. Throughout the debate, Arab leaders exhibited approach-avoidance behavior toward each other and the West: while most were highly conservative and suspicious of any actions that might lead to an erosion of their sovereignty or encourage Arabist sentiments, they also desired closer cooperation because, first, it would increase their power vis-á-vis the West and their standing among their populations and, second, the failure to be associated with the group's norms could lead to a decline in popular support.
Similarly, while most Arab states were quite fearful of the West, they also accepted the reality that Britain and the increasingly engaged U.S. were great powers that could provide both arms and badly needed resources for regime maintenance. 32 Iraq seemed the most favorably disposed toward an association with the West. Not only was it fearful of potential encroachment by the Soviets to the north, but Iraq believed that only the West could provide the resources it so desperately required. 33 Nasser, though generally pro-West, more than willing to talk to Dulles, and highly attracted to the capital and arms of the West, was extremely sensitive to any agreement that hinted at Egypt's and the Arab world's subordination to the West. Therefore, the debate between Iraq and Egypt was not about making a deal with the West per se but rather it was about the belief that Arab states should coordinate their security and foreign policies before any deal and that such a deal should not leave the Arab world vulnerable to the West.
After months of dialogue and debate, something of a solution was reached at the Arab Foreign Ministers Conference held in Cairo in December 1954. There the Arab governments crafted two resolutions: (1) "that no alliance should be concluded outside the fold of the Collective Arab Security Pact" and (2) "that cooperation with the West was possible, provided that a just solution was found for Arab problems and provided the Arabs were allowed to build up their strength with gifts of arms." 34 In other words, a strategic relationship with the West was possible after consultation with and consensus among the other Arab states. 35 Arab leaders had seemingly navigated between Arab nationalism and realpolitik, between the two ideas that they must coordinate their policies because they were Arab states and that as sovereign entities they could construct any alliance they desired.
Hence, the January 13, 1955, announcement of a strategic alliance between Iraq and Turkey sent shockwaves through the Arab world. 36 It is important to recognize that Turkey was not just any non-Arab state; rather, it was the successor to the Ottoman Empire that had ruled the region for more than three centuries. Many Arab leaders could remember Ottoman rule; therefore, Iraq's alliance with Turkey not only handed the West a possible port of entry into the Arab world but also represented an alliance with an old antagonist. More disturbing, however, was that it represented a direct challenge to a stripped-down version of Arabism that bound Arab states to coordinate their foreign policies before reaching any formal agreement with the West: if this watered-down Arabism had no force, then it had little meaning. Egyptian minister Sallah Salim captured the mood: "The Arab World is now standing at a crossroads: it will either be an independent and cohesive unit with its own structures and national character or else each country will pursue its own course. The latter would mean the beginning of the downfall of Arab nationhood." 37
Therefore, the challenge offered by the Baghdad Pact was not a shift in military power 38 but rather a move toward Arabism and the belief that Arab states should coordinate their policies because they had common identities and interests. 39 More to the point, the ensuing debate and conflict (1) concerned the norms that should govern Arab states and (2) was waged through presentational politics in general and Nasser's attempt to portray Iraq as having violated the norms of Arabism in particular. For instance, newspaper headlines throughout the Arab world strongly con demned the treaty. In Egypt, a major Arab daily wrote in its headlines: "Iraqi Government Demolishes All Efforts to Strengthen the Arab League and Bolster the Arab Collective Security Pact." 40 The "Voice of the Arabs" beamed:
| While the Arab States are preparing to hold a meeting of their Foreign Ministers to consider and agree on the unification of their foreign policy, the consolidation of the Collective Security Pact, and the strengthening of the Arab League, the Arab World is taken unaware by a communique issued by two countries. . . . How can it be justified that Iraq took part in this communique and indeed did so on her own when the meeting is about to be held? 41 |
Responding to whether Iraq as an independent state had the right to enter into any treaty it wants, Egyptian minister Sallah Salim said: "Although Iraq is an independent sovereign state, she nevertheless has obligations and responsibilities toward the League of Arab States and the Arab Collective Security Pact. Is there any state, in the Atlantic Pact, for example, free to make any decisions it chooses even if it be contrary to that pact?" 42
In response to the treaty, Arab governments met in Cairo from January 22 though February 6. Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Jordan--states with different governmental structures, military capacities, and location in the distribution of power--uniformly condemned the Iraqi action as undermining Arabism and the Collective Arab Defense Treaty. Nasser unveiled his own response the evening of January 25: the "establishment of a unified Arab army under one command along the same lines as the proposed European army." 43 The overall result of the conference must have been somewhat disappointing to Egypt, the most vocal opponent of the pact, and somewhat heartening to Iraq. Although it passed several resolutions condemning Iraq's actions, pledged not to join the treaty, and decided to send a delegation to Iraq to try and persuade Nuri al-Said of the error of his ways, the conference adjourned without reaching any real conclusion or issuing a final statement. The delegation was apparently unsuccessful, for Iraq and Turkey signed the treaty on February 24. 44
Four days later, on February 28, Israel attacked a military installation in Gaza. The combination of Israel's attack on Egypt and Iraq's defection from the Arab fold had a tremendous impact on Nasser and the Arab world. Nasser now found himself riding a tide of popular support across the region. In response to both the treaty and Arab governments' rather tepid opposition, protests against the treaty erupted in Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. King Hussein of Jordan had been attempting to lean on British power as a way of propping up his regime and keeping at bay both regional and domestic rivals. The Baghdad Pact completely undermined his policy, as domestic forces both caused him to desist from for example, free to make any decany consideration of signing it 45 and forced him to dismiss John Glubb as head of Jordan's Arab Legion, a symbol of British presence, in March 1956. 46 King Saud of Saudi Arabia calculated that Iraq was attempting to gather the resources and prestige to launch another challenge for Fertile Crescent unification, which would represent both an external threat and a source of internal instability. 47 Syria was the real battleground for the pact, and the debate over whether to join was both a sign and a cause of its increasingly Arab nationalist and neutralist leanings; 48 that it abstained from joining was counted as a loss for Iraq and a victory for Nasser.
These domestic pressures, unleashed by Iraq's affront to Arabism, caused the other Arab states to become allies. Egypt offered to replace the now moribund Collective Arab Security Pact with its "own security community by a series of treaties with Syria and Saudi Arabia (1955), and eventually, with Jordan and Yemen (in 1956)." 49 In other words, Egypt forged a series of alliances with some Arab states that concurred with Nasser's brand of Arabism (Syria) and others that did not (Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia), and the latter states chose to ally themselves with Nasser's vision of regional life rather than risk a decline in regional standing or a domestic backlash. It was Nasser's normative vision and ability to portray Iraq in a particular manner, not his military, that caused this alliance with Egypt and against Iraq.
The Baghdad Pact would have its most direct and immediate effect on its very Iraqi sigNATOries: in July 1958 the Free Officers' revolution, led by General Qasim and Colonel Aref, overthrew the Iraqi government (Nuri al-Said was killed while trying to escape the city). Although many factors contributed to the revolution, the Baghdad Pact, the Suez War of 1956, and Iraq's subsequent isolation in the Arab world, contributed to the military's and masses' increasing dissatisfaction with the government's policies. 50
| The pact not only perpetuated the undesired connection with the English and guaranteed them the privilege they had hitherto enjoyed, but also entailed a severing of Arab ranks and an open taking of sides in the "cold war." It alienated, in other words, neutralist, nationalist, and pan-Arab opinion. 51 |
Indicative of how the Baghdad Pact and Arabism affected the Free Officers was a directive signed by the party on the eve of the July 14 coup, in which a central point was that the future Iraqi government would henceforth "pursue an independent Arab national policy . . . convert the 'Arab Union' into an authentic union between Iraq and Jordan . . . and unite on a federal basis with the U.A.R." 52 After coming to power, the Free Officers immediately suspended Iraq's participation in future pact security meetings and then, in March 1959, withdrew completely from the treaty. Although not all segments of Iraqi society supported this more radical brand of Arab nationalism, 53 they were unified in their rejection of the Baghdad Pact and its symbolic defection from the Arab fold.
The controversy surrounding the pact highlights a number of key issues concerning the relationship between identity and strategic behavior that run counter to neorealist arguments. First, the Arab nation's definition of the threat was directly linked to the Arab identity; Arab nationalism partially emerged in response to intrusions from the Ottoman Empire and the West. In short, the definition of intent, of who is considered friend and foe, is better determined by the politics of identity than by the logic of anarchy. Second, the Baghdad Pact represented a challenge not to the balance of power per se but to Arab nationalism and its emerging and con tested norms. The pact unleashed a debate among Arab states concerning what behavior was and was not proper for Arab states, that is, how Arab states were to enact their identity. At the core of it was a concern about how Arab states should organize their relations as Arab states, and a conviction that because they had a shared identity and interdependent security they should coordinate their policies. Iraq's alliance with Turkey and the West not only symbolized an alliance with actors who were considered to be hostile to the Arab nation, but the means by which it forged that agreement violated even the most minimal understanding of the norms that were to guide the behavior of Arab states. Simply put, the conflict was about the norms that were to govern their shared identity.
Third, in the ensuing debate Arab states dueled with symbols and images, but not militaries, attempting to portray themselves as expressing and furthering the aspirations of the Arab nation and their rival as potentially injuring those very interests. In short, rivalry was driven by presentational, not military, politics. Arab leaders could either profit or suffer, depending on how they were situated by regional and domestic actors in relation to the group's norms; if Nasser's ascending fortunes represent one side of the coin, Iraq's Nuri al-Said's fate demonstrates the other.
Fourth, the power of these norms is exemplified by the individual and collective response of the Arab states to the pact. Not only was the response shaped by Arabism and not anarchy, but most Arab leaders quickly acknowledged that Iraq's actions posed a threat to any collective spirit; and if they were not visibly exercised over Iraqi actions, then their populations were quick to remind them of their "true" preferences and where their loyalties should reside. 54 Indeed, the transnational identity of Arabism placed very similar demands on Arab leaders and caused them both to reject the pact and to embrace an alliance among themselves.
Finally, the Baghdad Pact deposited two currents of Arab nationalism in inter-Arab politics. The first was the search for Arab unity as advanced by Nasser and other state and societal actors throughout the Arab world. The other, however, did not necessarily encourage Arab unification and close inter-Arab consultation; it encouraged neutralism and anticontainment. 55 That is, the debate over the Baghdad Pact contributed to the development of strong prohibitionary norms that signaled to Arab leaders that certain actions could not be undertaken for fear of estrangement and retribution from the Arab community. The legacies of the Baghdad Pact were both the growing expectation among societal forces that Arab leaders should be seen working toward the cause of Arab nationalism and unification and the constraints that it imposed on their future security policies.
The GCC and Post-Gulf War Security Arrangements
The Gulf Cooperation Council and the post-Gulf war security arrangements illustrate the continuing salience of identity for shaping alliance formation; yet these episodes, in combination with the Baghdad Pact, also suggest how a change in state identities--specifically the declining significance of an Arab national identity and the emergence of statist identities--can shape security and alliance politics. 56
Few paid much heed when Oman, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait signed the GCC charter in Abu Dhabi on May 25, 1981. After years of failed Arab experiments in regional associations and federation, yet another attempt on the periphery of Arab nation alism did not warrant excessive hype. What motivated the Gulf Arab states to form an exclusive club? Shared economic concerns certainly played a role. The GCC states, after all, were all oil-exporting states (with the exception of Oman) and had experienced rapid economic development and industrialization since the 1970s. Alongside these economic factors, however, was a shared identity. Geographic contiguity had left a legacy of cultural, strategic, political, and economic interaction, which, in turn, produced a regional identity (khaliji). For instance, in June 1980, before the Iran-Iraq war, the amir of Bahrain called for tightening Gulf relations among the Arab states because it is an Arab Gulf and those in the region are khaliji. 57 Furthermore, in contrast to most other Arab states (with the exception of Jordan) that had nonmonarchical forms of governance, the GCC states were all monarchies. On this basis alone, Iraq, Iran, and the Yemens were relatively poor candidates for the GCC . 58 These states, moreover, were Sunni Muslim and embraced some type of Islamic polity. Consistent with the view that this was an association of like-minded states, the final statement of the GCC 'sinaugural meeting proclaimed that their common destiny, shared interests and values, and common economic and political systems produced a natural solidarity. 59 The GCC states, in short, were "natural" allies, sharing key biographical features and historical characteristics, and by creating the GCC they aspired to construct a "psychologically satisfying political community." 60
The GCC states also differentiated themselves from the other Arab states. 61 Although the Gulf states identified themselves as Arab--after all, they immediately joined the League of Arab States (Saudi Arabia was a founding member) upon independence and supported core Arab issues such as Palestine--the GCC states also were rather wary of and aloof from the rest of the Arab world. For instance, while the Gulf leaders waved at the GCC 'srole in furthering Arab aspirations, such rhetoric was always quickly followed by aggressive claims that the Gulf Arab states were a separate entity bounded by common culture and interests and, accordingly, were different from the other Arab states. 62 Indeed, the GCC states tended to perceive other Arab states as something of a threat: their traditional fear that close cooperation might trigger memories of and hopes for unification heightened beginning in the 1970s when the Gulf Arab states became the Gulf Arab oil states--leading them to become highly suspicious of the economic motivations underlying any new expressions of fraternal devotion from other Arab states. Therefore, the GCC states hoped to use their new association to isolate the Gulf from the other Arab states. 63 In general, the GCC states expressed the belief that their shared identity made them natural allies, desired to cooperate to further their shared interests, and drew a symbolic boundary between themselves and other Arab states and, therefore, opposed including the other states in their association. Indeed, the GCC , alongside the other subregional organizations that emerged in the 1980s (the Arab Maghrebi Union and the Arab Cooperation Council) suggested a weakening Arab national identity and emerging statism. 64
The shared identity shaped not only the choice of with whom they felt most comfortable but also, relatedly, their common construction of the threat. At the time of the GCC 'sinception there was little thought that it would become a full-fledged security organization; the opinion was that any discussion of this sort was highly premature and unrealistic. 65 However, the GCC states soon began to explore the possibility of security cooperation because of external and internal security threats. Most prominent, though arguably not most alarming, was the Iran-Iraq war, which threatened to involve the GCC states both directly and indirectly--namely, through the possibility of a direct Iranian assault, the closing of the shipping lanes, and the attempt by Iran to destabilize them from within. The Iran-Iraq war, in short, catalyzed the GCC states to take defensive measures. Yet what strategies would they adopt? States have numerous options available to them for increasing their security: they can extract from their societies, or construct alliances, or some combination of the two--but neorealism says very little about the direction or the form of that policy search. 66 To begin, the GCC states decided to construct some type of external alignment since an internal mobilization strategy was highly unattractive, given a sparse manpower base, geostrategic vulnerability, and limited resources. Although there was a wealth of opportunities, for helping hands were being extended from near and far, the Gulf states jettisoned any Arab or superpower involvement, preferring to maintain an exclusive club of like-minded Gulf Arab states.
Why did the Gulf states spurn the offers from other Arab states? A pan-Arab response, the very arrangement vocalized and nominally pursued before 1967, might be attractive for both ideational and strategic considerations. Although the Collective Arab Security Pact still existed and the Arab League still operated, neither these nor any type of collective Arab effort was ever seriously entertained. There were quasi-strategic reasons for shunning an alliance with all other Arab states: Egypt was estranged from the Arab world because of the Camp David Accords; any agreement with Iraq would seem highly offensive to Iran and therefore would threaten to widen the war; and Syria was considered a "rogue" state, a reputation only enhanced by its support of Iran, and its radical rhetoric was particularly offensive to the more conservative Gulf monarchies. That said, an underlying fear was that an Arab alliance might stimulate greater demands for inter-Arab cooperation and perhaps greater sharing of the oil wealth. Such demands were legitimated by the understanding that oil was an "Arab" resource and that they were part of the same Arab nation; therefore, a strategic arrangement might only encourage the view that the Gulf oil states had an obligation to redistribute the wealth among other members of the "family."
If the Gulf states did not favor a pan-Arab response, then what of an alliance with one of the superpowers? After all, such an alliance would provide an immediate increase in external security, and both the Soviets and the Americans were actively courting the Gulf states. Yet the GCC states rebuffed such overtures. 67 In fact, a point of consensus among the GCC states was to keep the superpowers at bay, to establish regional independence, and to resist foreign intervention. 68 Two prominent factors guided this objection to superpower presence. First, the GCC feared that superpower involvement would increase regional instability and expand the severity and boundaries of the war. Although the superpowers were arming the region, to solicit a greater role for one superpower would automatically invite suspicions and intrusions by the other, quickly turning what was ostensibly a regional conflict into an international conflict. Such an escalation would only further imperil the GCC states.
Second, any increase in external security might decrease internal security. Nearly all Arab-Islamic societies (and this was true of the GCC states) were highly sensitive to an explicit alliance with the U.S. and feared that too visible a presence might trigger domestic instability. Consequently, a U.S. alliance might increase external security while unleashing domestic insecurity. In general, the GCC states were wary of any visible relationship with the West or the Soviet Union, because of the fear that their interventions might invite both regional and domestic instability.
That a superpower or a pan-Arab alliance might have negative domestic repercussions--that is, igniting Arab nationalist sentiments in either case--not only highlights the role of identity but also demonstrates that the GCC states were arguably more alarmed by domestic, rather than interstate, threats. "Gulf security in the context of the GCC ," observes Emile Nakhleh, "is directly equated with the continued stable existence of the present regimes and forms of government in the Gulf States." 69 The real impetus for security cooperation, in fact, came not from the Iran-Iraq war per se but from internal instability, namely militant Shi'a activity. 70 The attempted coup in Bahrain in mid-1981, and the string of bombings in Kuwait in December 1983 (rumored to have been fomented by Iran) alarmed the Gulf Arab states and prodded them to cooperate against this security threat and to safeguard their "political security." 71 As Sultan Qabas of Oman commented:
| I firmly believe that the main threat facing the Gulf is the attempt to destabilize it from within--by exporting terrorism across the national borders. We should watch out for destabilization attempts, particularly because domestic instability can blow the door open to foreign intervention. I believe that this the main hazard. 72 |
The GCC saw these internal developments as a threat shared by the Gulf Arab states; therefore, they had no intention of involving other Arab states in their security precautions. As noted by Bahraini interior minister Amir Nayif: "Gulf coordination [to combat terrorism] with other states . . . has not yet materialized." 73 Nor would it. 74
In sum, identity played a role in shaping: the boundaries of the association; the definition of the threat; and who qualified as a desirable alliance partner. First, the common identity of the Gulf Arab states shaped who was a candidate for membership; not only did they identify themselves as sharing key ideational features based on a common history, culture, and government, but other Arab states were viewed as "different" and even as potential threats. Second, their shared identity lent naturally to a shared definition of the threat. This became particularly clear vis-á-vis internal threats; as Sunni monarchies they viewed the threat to their regimes as deriving largely from Shi'ite elements. Third, as the GCC states confronted internal and external threats, they desired to construct some type of external alignment because of their domestic limitations. To be sure, there were strategic rationales for avoiding an alliance with either the superpower or other Arab states, yet also prominent were ideational and normative concerns. Specifically, the underlying fear was that, first, an Arab alliance might stir pan-Arab sentiments if not unleash redistributive claims on the oil wealth by their Arab brethren, and, second, an alliance with the West would violate Arabist norms. In short, while strategic factors were certainly part of the story behind the GCC and the response to these perceived internal and external security threats, identity was a critical factor in shaping the definition of the threat and the alliance response.
Post-Gulf War Security Arrangements
During the Gulf war the GCC acted as the primary conduit for expressing the revulsion by the region's Arab states to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and its "Saudi-controlled skeleton military command structures were . . . mobilized immediately afterwards to integrate Gulf military forces into the Coalition." 75 Moreover, that the Gulf states participated in the Gulf coalition under the GCC flag while the Syrian and Arab states were integrated as individual states in the coalition symbolizes the division between the Gulf Arabs and the rest of the Arab world. 76
Notwithstanding the modest expressions of security cooperation among the Arab states in general and the GCC states in particular, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait--simply put, the sight of one Arab state swallowing another whole--caused Arab leaders to proclaim the end of Arab nationalism, the need for a "new realism," and the view that state interests were not interchangeable with, and took primacy over some conception of, the Arab national interest. 77 I want to discuss briefly four ways in which the weakening hold of Arab national identities and the emerging statist identities imprinted post-Gulf war inter-Arab dynamics and alliance behavior.
To begin, the emerging statism and the decline of Arabism nearly erased the assumption that as Arab states they had shared security threats and should consider pan-Arab security arrangements. As acknowledged by then Egyptian foreign minister Boutros Boutros-Ghali, "The painful realities resulting from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and its usurpation of the territory of a fraternal Arab state include the collapse of the traditional concept of pan-Arab security." 78 The secretary-general of the Arab League nearly pro nounced the last rites of the Collective Arab Security Pact: "It must be clear that the concept of security is the biggest responsibility of each individual state. Each state determines the needs and boundaries of its security on its own, because this concerns its people and its future. We should basically assume that there should be no interference in any country's security. We must acknowledge and proceed from this basic principle." 79 Relatedly, at an Arab League meeting, Arab states agreed for the first time that each could identify its own security threats. 80 These testimonials suggest that the emergence of statist identities and the corresponding decline of Arab national identities enabled Arab leaders to assert that they no longer shared a definition of the threat or should attempt to coordinate their security.
Second, as Arab states recognized that pan-Arab security arrangements were a thing of the past, they also proclaimed that regional order should be premised on sovereignty. Immediately following the Gulf war, the Arab states displayed some security camaraderie through the Damascus Declaration. Announced in March 1991, the Gulf states, Syria, and Egypt pledged further strategic and military cooperation, with an understanding that the last two would be well compensated for their military commitments and troops. 81 The declaration, however, soon became a dead letter, testifying to the very differences between two regions of the Arab world. 82 Indeed, the real importance--and the only surviving principle--of the declaration was not its promise of further military cooperation but its insistence on sovereignty as the basis of inter-Arab politics. Coming on the heels of Iraq's denial of Kuwaiti sovereignty and claim that Gulf oil belonged to the Arabs, the GCC states held sovereignty and security as indistinguishable. Secretary-General Bishara's interpretation of the declaration was that it recognized the legitimacy of the Arab states' borders, the right of each state to arrange its own security, and the exclusive claim to its resources--that is, its sovereignty and exclusivity. 83 Although Arabism once challenged and undermined the sovereignty of the separate Arab states, its decline meant that Arab states were more willing to recognize the norms of sovereignty as the basis of regional order. 84
Third, the rise of statism and the decline of Arabism ushered in a debate over the desired regional order: an all-Arab regional order versus a "Middle Eastern" order. 85 That is, to what extent should regional arrangements be exclusive to Arab states or include non-Arab states? In this respect, perhaps the surest barometer of the emergence of statism and sovereignty was the transformation of the Arab-Israeli conflict from an ideological struggle into an interstate conflict. The decline of the Arab political community, the hardening of the Arab states, and a diminished responsiveness to "core" Arab concerns means that Israel is more fully recognized as a legitimate member of the region. 86 That Israel negotiates bilaterally with the Palestinians and the various Arab states represents a fundamental change in the organization of the Arab-Israeli conflict and reflects the emergence of state-national interests that are linked to a regional order premised on sovereignty. 87
Fourth, the emerging statism also shaped the permissible alliance arrangements: whereas once the Gulf states shunned the West and outside powers for fear of offending Arabist sympathies, the emerging statism meant that each state was responsible for its own security and was now permitted to construct its security arrangements as it saw fit, though still within limits. 88 The U.S., for instance, now found itself openly wined and dined by the GCC states. The same GCC secretary-general who before the Gulf war was quite unbending in his objection to a superpower presence was now advertising that he had "no reservations" concerning a more visible foreign presence: "Every state has an inalienable and legitimate right to defend its sovereignty and territory using the methods and means avail able to it, including inviting foreign forces to that end." 89 Kuwaiti defense minister Shaykh al-Sabah, who previously chastised Oman for its security agreement with the U.S., likened the defense agreement with the U.S. to the Damascus Declaration, thereby equating defense agreements with Arab and Western states. 90 Many Arab states, in effect, were now claiming that the U.S. was preferable to their Arab brothers as a security partner. The emerging statism, in short, erased a prewar security taboo: an explicit alliance with the U.S. In general, although Arabism had been in decline for several years, the Gulf war was the midwife to pronounced statist identities and interests and the decline of any politically meaningful Arab identity in inter-Arab politics. These developments imprinted the region's security patterns.
In sum, while these post-Gulf war security patterns can be partly attributed to the severity of the external threat, namely, the shock of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, that alone is unable to explain why Arab leaders were now able to entertain those very policies that were once prohibited by the transnational norms associated with Arabism. To fully understand these shifts requires incorporating the relationship between changing identities and norms. This can be illustrated by contrasting the post-Gulf war security arrangements and patterns with the Baghdad Pact. Whereas the Baghdad Pact was defined by a contest over images and a conflict over the constitutive norms that should flow from an Arab identity, the post-Gulf war security arrangements are not only absent these very dynamics but, in fact, Arab leaders go out of their way to argue the irrelevance of the Arab national identity for shaping the state's current security policies (thereby providing indirect testimony to the past potency of that identity and its associated norms). Identity politics has defined inter-Arab dynamics and developments over the years, and no understanding of Arab politics is complete without it.
U.S.-Israeli Relations
There are two generalized views concerning what matters for understanding U.S.-Israeli relations, each of which has serious defects for explaining the U.S.'s continuous strategic support of the State of Israel since 1948. The first situates U.S.-Israeli relations within the same systemic forces and strategic logics that envelop other interstate relations. Regardless of the long-standing pledges by U.S. policy makers of their support for Israel's security and sovereignty, the level of support followed the phases of the Cold War. 91 Specifically, it was not until after 1967 that the U.S. began to fully integrate Israel into its containment strategy, and, true to systemic form, it was only then that Israel received tremendous military and economic assistance from the U.S.; conversely, the end of the Cold War caused many to ponder Israel's coming strategic irrelevance. 92
Yet systemic theorists have a difficult time explaining why the U.S. was so quick to extend security guarantees in the late 1940s despite the absence of a strategic rationale and to continue such guarantees when they were perceived as undermining the security goals of the U.S.--as was frequently the case during the Cold War when the U.S. attempted to cultivate strategic alliances with the Arab states and since the end of the Cold War when the continued level of support and commitment betrays any compelling strategic imperative. When all is said and done, U.S. support for Israel has continued against the backdrop of changing security circumstances, distributions in the balance of power, and the place of Israel in U.S. strategic doctrine.
The second view, that of the primacy of domestic politics, attempts to explain a relationship that seemingly defies systemic reasoning. Various mechanisms, most notably electoral politics and interest-group pressures, cause American leaders to adopt consistently a pro-Israel policy even when strategic logic suggests a more "balanced" approach if not a pro-Arab policy. 93 The implication, accordingly, is that these subsystemic pressures "distort" the formulation of U.S. foreign policy as it steers away from "objective" national interests and takes a pro-Israel position. 94 Although this domestic politics view helps to explain the level of U.S. strategic assistance, it does not provide an adequate explanation of its very existence. To begin, the level of aid and strategic support is not correlated with the rumored role of domestic politics. 95 Moreover, the effectiveness of domestic groups is dependent on their ability to provide a sustained justification for U.S. support that is consistent with the beliefs and values of most Americans. 96 Consequently, not only is there little evidence that domestic politics explains the consistent existence and high levels of support for Israel, but the very effectiveness of these interest groups is dependent on an existing cultural and ideational field that resonates with the arguments raised by these groups.
In short, those who put forward the domestic politics position offer convincing critiques of the systemic view, and those who champion a systemic view offer several persuasive arguments against the domestic politics position. Their mutual criticisms are fairly convincing. The result, however, is that the issue of U.S.-Israeli relations defies the expectations of either systemic or domestic politics; there has been a continuity in strategic association that survives changes in systemic politics and exists even in the absence of electoral or domestic pressures. How else might we explain this continuity?
I offer a third view: identity politics matters. Although domestic and systemic pressures affected the level of U.S. support for Israel, it is the existence of a shared identity and transnational values that is the foundation of this relationship. The oft-heard mantras--"the only democracy in the Middle East," and "shares values and principles"--signify something substantial and causal and gives meaning and substance to the term special relationship. 97
Suggesting that shared identities and values are the foundation of U.S.-Israeli relations does not imply that it is impermeable to corrosive forces. A shared identity is based on two factors: the U.S. must view Israel as having a common identity; and Israel's collective identity and associated practices must be consistent with those of the U.S. 98 Here resides the potential hurdle. Israel's identity is not firmly ensconced in the story lines that dominate and define the Western community and embrace the U.S.; indeed, it frequently challenges the dominant narratives that define that community. U.S.-Israeli relations is dependent upon Israel's having a particular identity, though for a variety of reasons Israel has difficulty keeping that identity going. I argue that Israel's identity crisis provoked a crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations in the late 1980s and discuss how this crisis potentially undermined the U.S.-Israeli alliance and how the Israeli polity responded to this crisis.
Israeli Collective Identity
Three strands constitute Israel's collective identity: religion, nationalism, and the Holocaust.
99
Although each has varied in prominence and meaning, all three provide an attenuated link between Israel and the U.S. First, Israel has a Jewish identity--it is a Jewish state.
100
Although its Jewish identity represents an important connection with a West that claims a Judeo-Christian heritage, it also acts as a distancing agent. Specifically,
although the specific meaning of, and practices that are associated with, being a Jewish state have been hotly contested in Israeli politics, the role of religion in guiding everyday life means that Israel contrasts decidedly with other Western states that are secular in character.
101 Suggesting that shared identit
Zionism, a response to the Jewish community's exclusion from and persecution in European Christian society, maintains an ambivalent relationship to the West. 102 Although its main ideological sources--Judaism, socialism, secular nationalism, and liberalism--provide something of a link, it is a weak connection because of Zionism's underlying premise that Jews are unsafe in the Western community. 103 In short, Zionism and the very need for a Jewish State exists because of the Western community and its long and virulent history of anti-Semitism.
The Holocaust is the third strand of Israel's identity. 104 To be sure, the Holocaust represents an important reason for the West's commitment to the Jewish state. Yet one important lesson of the Holocaust is that Jews cannot trust their safety and security to non-Jews, even in so-called progressive and civilized countries. The lessons of the Holocaust not only instruct Israel to be wary of a Western (Christian) community but also challenge the dominant narrative of the Western community that views itself as liberal, democratic, and tolerant. As a living memorial of the Holo caust, Israel represents a constant reminder to the West that its history does not resemble the self-image of enlightenment and tolerance. 105 All three strands, then, provide a tenuous link to the West and the U.S., represent the West as something of a threat (which, ironically, Israel shares with the Arab states), challenge the West's self-understanding of being progressive and civilized, and, finally, provide a justification for a defiant and aggressive self-help posture and foreign policy. 106
If these three strands of Israel's collective identity represent a less-than-firm link to the West and the U.S., a fourth serves both to embed it in the West and to differentiate it from the surrounding Arab states: its status as a liberal democracy. Since Israel's inception in 1948, Israeli leaders and supporters have identified its democratic character as a major justification for its support. Although Israel's status as a democracy generally goes unchallenged--for it does have a relatively free press, a competitive party system, free and fair elections, and so on--there are two potential problems. The first is the Arab minority in the Israeli state, a minority that is viewed by Israeli authorities as having dual loyalties, and therefore as being unable to accept the full benefits, obligations, and markings of Israel citizenship, i.e., military service. The second, more visible and frequently cited concern is Israel's record in and hold over the territories captured in the 1967 war. Israel's democratic character within the "Green Line" contrasts decidedly with that in the occupied territories. Notwithstanding the various justifications used to exculpate Israel's presence and policies in the territories, those who reside there live in tremendous insecurity, without the same civil rights and protections available to Israeli citizens. These issues become more salient when considering the possibility of Israeli sovereignty over these territories. 107
This brief discussion of Israel's collective identity suggests that, while there are strong links to the West and Israelis identify themselves as part of the West, its collective identity is always negotiated and highly vulnerable to counternarratives. This provides the background for the examination of U.S.-Israeli relations since the mid-1980s: to investigate how Israel's identity "crisis" helps to account for the progressive strains in the relationship. In response to this crisis, Israeli leaders and partisans began to accentuate and promote Israel's "Western" and democratic character and identity in order to reproduce the U.S.-Israeli alliance and to distinguish Israel from its neighboring Arab states.
An Alliance Under Duress
U.S.-Israeli relations can be divided into three periods. The pre-1967 period reveals two, almost contradictory, behavioral patterns. On the one hand, there was the unquestioned and unequivocal support of the U.S. for the State of Israel. Whence came this impulse? Shared values and sentiments are nearly always recognized as primary factors in explaining this rush to protect and guarantee Israel's sovereignty. Americans saw something in themselves when they saw Israel:
| Even as [Americans] go their own way, in pursuit of their own national interests, Americans and Israelis are bonded together like no two other sovereign peoples. As the Judaic heritage flowed through the minds of America's early settlers and helped to shape the new American republic, so Israel restored the vision and the values of the American dream. 108 |
Richard Murphy, a former assistant secretary of state for Near and Middle Eastern affairs, observes that the strategic alliance was used for the moral commitment; 109 that is, the strategic is parasitic on the ideational. There are innumerable testimonials to the belief that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is undergirded by shared values rather than shared threats.
These stated commitments, however, cannot erase a legacy of U.S. policies that often represented more of a threat than a support to Israeli security. Truman quickly followed his recognition of the Israeli state with an arms embargo, Eisenhower and Dulles asked Israel whether it might be willing to withdraw from the Negev in return for an alliance between the U.S. and Egypt, and the U.S. refused to sell Israel any weapons until the mid-1960s. In general, the strategic and ideational imperatives of the U.S. produced a nearly schizophrenic attitude toward Israel.
For a variety of reasons, revolving largely around a changing U.S. containment and strategic posture, U.S.-Israeli relations grew by leaps and bounds after 1967. The upturn was particularly noticeable under Reagan, when the conservative tide and the "second cold war" furthered Israel's standing in the eyes of the U.S. government (and this was particularly true when compared to the Carter years). 110 The peaks came in 1984 with the Memorandum of Understanding, which pledged to deepen military and strategic cooperation with Israel, and in 1987 when Israel attained quasi-NATO status (which led some in the U.S. to contemplate the "NATOization of Israel"). Many Israelis interpreted these developments as evidence of Israel's important, nearly indispensable, place in U.S. security strategy, creating tremendous optimism in Israel. 111 Writing in the Israeli paper HaMishmar, Wolf Blitzer exclaimed that with the memorandum, "We are on the threshold of a new era in relations between Washington and Jerusalem." 112
This era, however, was not the one that Blitzer and others imagined. No sooner had the festivities subsided than U.S.-Israeli relations entered a third period, one of difficulties, leading to a genuine concern that the special relationship was not that special. Although some deemed it a clash of personalities, President Bush and Secretary of State Baker against Shamir, many others argued that the crisis was a natural by-product of the end of the Cold War and the loss of Israel's strategic role. I want to propose, however, that three events--the end of the Cold War, the debate over Greater Israel, and the intifada--challenged the foundations of U.S.-Israeli relations by challenging Israel's identity.
The most frequently evoked reason for the crisis was the end of the Cold War. The traditional interpretation is that absent the Cold War Israel became strategically irrelevant; therefore, the crisis was provoked by a change in the international distribution of power. Yet this systemic reading of the Cold War is open to a constructivist twist. The very categories East and West became indistinguishable from the Cold War itself, and this international structure distributed identities and roles to states depending on their place within that structure. That the international system through the structure of the Cold War distributed identities to states is apparent in the myriad debates over the national identity--for instance, in Turkey and the U.S.--that have erupted since the demise of the Cold War. The same can be said of Israel. For two decades Israel had been an integral part of the Western containment network, proudly guarding U.S. military and foreign policy interests and profiting greatly in both status and resources. Yet Israel's place within the containment network was sold on the basis of its identity and its potential strategic utility; it was not just any ally but a "stable and reliable" ally because of its democratic features and Western values. In this respect, Israel's role in the Western community, its very identity as a Western state, derived in part from--or at the very least reinforced by--the Cold War. The decline of the Cold War, then, potentially usurped not just Israel's identification with the Western community but a source of Israel's Western identity as well. 113
A greater challenge to Israel's collective identity emerged in the debate over "Greater Israel." Although this debate preceded Israel's control over the territories as a consequence of the June 1967 war, it has intensified considerably since then. 114 There are two alternative visions of Israel's collective identity with respect to the territories. The first argues for a "State of Israel," an Israel that resides within negotiated pre-1967 borders as the best hope for maintaining Israel's security, and its civic, democratic, and Jewish character. The Labour Party and leftist movements expressed tremendous concern that Israel is endangering its commitment to democracy and its Jewish character by maintaining its hold over the territories. Therefore, those in this camp demand a change in Israeli policies not only on security and humanitarian grounds but also because of a belief that a continuation would threaten Israel's collective identity as a Western, Democratic, Jewish state.
Those who championed a "Greater Israel" hoped to extend Israel's sovereignty to the territories, what they prefer to call by the biblical names Judea and Samaria to symbolize the Jewish people's historical and religious bond to this land. Beginning with Zev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, and carried forward by Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, the champions of Eretz Israel evidenced a willingness to forgo (or at least risk) Israel's democratic character to maintain Jewish control over the territories. Specifically, to extend sovereignty over these territories and its nearly one million Palestinians would automatically change Israel's demographic character and, in time, threaten to turn the Jews of the Jewish state into a minority. 115 In general, this debate over Israel's boundaries and sovereignty had immediate and direct implications for Israel's democratic future; in this important respect, it had immediate and direct implications for Israel's status as a "Western" state.
The third event is the intifada. The Israeli response to the Palestinian uprising not only undermined the portrait of a "benign" occupation but also led many to question Israel's "Western" character. The images of routine beatings, detention, Defense Minister Rabin's "iron fist" policy, and other violations of human rights caused many to mumble that Israel resembled a "Third World" and not a "Western" state.
The images and reports transmitted to the U.S. affected the American government's (and community's) view of Israel. 116 U.S. officials were deeply troubled by Israel's response to the intifada. Assistant Secretary of State for Middle East Affairs Richard Murphy argued that the intifada would not go away and that the U.S. was opposed to many of the policies adopted by Israel to contain it. 117 Noting that some began to question whether Israel was still part of the West, Murphy later reflected that the intifada created a shockingly different context for U.S.-Israeli relations, captured vividly by the cbs film of Israeli soldiers breaking the bones of those accused of throwing stones. Such pictures reverberated throughout the administration and caused many to wonder about its friend. 118
Although U.S. policy had always maintained that Israeli settlements on the occupied territories were both illegal and an obstacle to peace, there were greater urgency and determination by American officials to differentiate U.S. support for Israel from support for Israeli policies in the territories. In other words, support for Israeli sovereignty did not extend to support for Israeli sovereignty over a Greater Israel that had a large Palestinian population absent civil rights. For instance, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a mainstay of U.S. support for Israel, recognized Israel's commitment to democracy, noted the "striking contrast between Israel and the Arab states in this regard," 119 but was troubled that the shared values that joined U.S. and Israel might be eroding:
| America's links with Israel are broad and deep, based on shared values, common interests, and a commitment to democracy, rule of law and freedom. Nevertheless, the subcommittee is troubled by the continuing cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians . . . and evidence of on-going human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza. 120 |
The House, in other words, was troubled that a traditional marker used to separate Israel and the Arab states in the American mind was deteriorating because Israeli behavior more closely resembled that expected from the Arab states. No doubt Israel's presence and policies in the territories were eroding the foundations of the special relationship.
The most visible sign of the changing times was the emerging debate over U.S. assistance to Israel. In response to Israel's post-Gulf war request for a $10 billion loan guarantee, the U.S. made the assistance conditional on Israel's assurance that these funds would not be used for settlement expansion. Shamir vehemently objected to the condition, arguing that it intruded on Israel's domestic affairs and hindered the humanitarian mission of absorbing the Russian and Ethiopian Jews. Tensions rose through fall 1991 and early 1992, with Bush and Baker holding firm and Shamir believing that they were bluffing and that Congress would come to Israel's rescue. Shamir miscalculated. Not only did Bush refrain from bending but Shamir wrongly predicted that a confrontation with the U.S. would not damage his popularity. 121
Because the U.S. was Israel's primary military benefactor, a crisis, particularly one that was potentially avoidable, might conceivably risk Israeli security. The Labour and Likud parties present two different understandings of whether Israel's confrontational tactics risked U.S. support and methods for managing the relationship. Labour politicians have a history of expressing greater deference and are generally more reserved and measured in their criticisms and confrontational rhetoric; Likud, on the other hand, often declared that confrontation would not beget confrontation. Yehoshafat Harkabi contrasts these two styles and hypothesizes how Likud's policies might undermine Israeli security in the following way:
| A widely-held but erroneous belief is that Ben-Gurion's view of world opinion is contained in his remark: "It doesn't matter what the 'goyim' say, it matters what the Jews do." . . . [Yet] he believed that a positive international attitude toward Israel was a precondition for Israeli security. . . . The capacity to achieve goals depends not only on the strength of the local forces that have to be overcome, but also on the support of these goals in the world community. 122 |
Harkabi provided a causal chain to illustrate why certain policies and practices must be changed: such practices will create moral gaps between Israel and the West; these gaps, in turn, will erode U.S. support for Israel; and, finally, they will encourage adventurism among the Arab states. Provoking the U.S. and aggravating the "hand that feeds you" was not only bad manners but also needlessly endangering Israel's security.
These issues culminated in the 1992 Israeli elections, in which Israel's identity crisis was played out, pitting the "two Yitzhaks"--Shamir and Rabin--against each other, with their two alternative visions of Israel's relationship to the territories and collective identity. Since 1967 Israel's debate over the territories has been the primary vehicle for discussing the nation's collective identity. The end of the Cold War, the post-Gulf war peace process, and the confrontation with the U.S. over the loan guarantees combined to focus the Israeli election on its future relationship to the territories and the question of whether it was willing to endure the costs of Shamir's policies. The subtext, then, was Israel's collective identity: Yitzhak Rabin advocated a State of Israel theme, while Yitzhak Shamir championed Greater Israel. By openly campaigning that Israel could not afford the economic, strategic, and psychological costs of maintaining a permanent presence over the territories, Rabin was implicitly arguing that at stake were Israel's collective identity, relationship to the West, and relationship to the U.S. Rabin's victory was interpreted by many as a victory for those championing a State of Israel message.
The debate over Israel's collective identity--or at the very least the recognition that Israeli policies in the territories would shape that identity--carried over from the elections to the peace process. Israel's decision to recognize the plo and sign the Declaration of Principles was profoundly shaped by the visions of its collective identity. In an interview the night of the historic handshake between himself and Yasir Arafat, Prime Minister Rabin explained why Israel had to cede territory to Palestinians:
| I believe . . . annexation will bring . . . racism to Israel, [and] that racism and Judaism are in contradiction by their very essence. Israel that will preach racism will not be a Jewish state by my understanding. . . . Otherwise [Israel will have to give the Palestinians] full civilian rights as we give to every individual who is an Israeli citizen. . . . Every one of them, once inside, can be a full Israeli citizen . . . [and will constitute] 35 percent of the voters to the Knesset. . . . They'll dictate if Israel will be a Jewish state with a destiny to serve the Jewish people all over the world, or we will become another small Jewish country . . . because 35 percent of the voters will be non-Jewish. . . . I don't expect [the Palestinians] to be Zionists. And if Israel will lose the Zionists from its very existence, Israel will be an entirely different country. . . . Therefore, whoever speaks now about the whole land of Israel speaks either of a racist Jewish state which will not be a Jewish or a bi-national state. I prefer Israel to be a Jewish state not all over the land of Israel. 123 |
Acknowledging a direct link between a continuation of certain practices and Israel's collective identity, Rabin was responding to the twenty-five-year-old identity crisis caused by Israel's capture of the territories in the 1967 War and saying that the only way to resolve that crisis in favor of a Western, Democratic, and Jewish Israel was to relinquish Israel's control over the territories. 124
Another way to reinforce Israel's identity as part of the West was to discover a common threat. Earlier I argued that a common threat can reinforce or shape a common identity; it is through the recognition of a shared threat that actors acknowledge that they share not only interests but also values and beliefs. Although U.S.-Israeli relations already had a strong ideational component before Israel's post-1967 strategic role in U.S. containment policy, this role reinforced both Israel's identity as part of the West and the U.S.-Israeli alliance. Therefore, the end of the Cold War stripped Israel of not only its strategic role but also a reinforcing beam of its identity. Although still very much in the making, and by no means approximating the status of the Cold War, many Israeli and Western leaders argue that Islam represents a common threat. 125 It is unknown whether Israeli leaders cynically or sincerely thrust Islam forward as the new threat: while undoubtedly many Israelis feel threatened by radical Islam, Israeli leaders are probably aware of the potential strategic payoff from a threat also identified by the West. 126 In either case, if the U.S. recognized the threat to the West posed by Islamic fundamentalism, then U.S.-Israeli relations might be righted and their shared identities reinforced.
This discussion highlights two key features of the relationship between identity, practices, and membership in the community. First, being part of the community entails not only having a particular identity but also abiding by the community's norms. The constitutive norms, in other words, demanded not that the "average stream" of behavior converge around certain practices and expectations, but rather that it abstain from those practices that were antithetical to the very qualities that define membership in the community. If Israel's membership is dependent on its liberal character and values, then these domestic debates over its future relationship to, and practices in, the territories potentially threatened its collective identity as a "Western" state and, accordingly, the U.S.-Israeli alliance. Therefore, both foreign policy actions and the constitutive norms that define state-society relations are important markers of identity.
Second, the desire to adhere to the norms of the Western community for both instrumental and ideational reasons served to reproduce and (potentially) encourage the development of new identities. If one reason for the interest of Israeli leaders in altering their policies in the territories was to ensure an uninterrupted flow of U.S. assistance, these policy changes, in turn, promoted certain identities and denigrated others. Yet instrumental logic alone does not fully capture the nature of the debate over the territories or the reason for the recent changes, for equally important was the desire by various Israeli constituencies to promote a particular political identity, to adhere to a particular vision of Zionism, and to be part of the liberal, Western community.
In sum, most interpretations of U.S.-Israeli relations view it as a product of either domestic or systemic politics, but thus far most analyses of the crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations refer to the collapse of the Cold War and Israel's strategic relevance. My focus on identity highlights how shared values and common identities are the foundation of U.S.-Israeli relations and how the crisis was nothing less than an "identity" crisis, which challenged Israel's Western, liberal character and, therefore, U.S.-Israeli relations. Because ideational factors represented the source of the crisis, the Israeli polity moved (consciously or not) to redirect its collective identity and to stabilize U.S.-Israeli relations. By conceptualizing the U.S.-Israeli alliance as forged by shared identity and not simply a shared security interest, we are better able to understand how this partnership preceded and outlasted any systemic threat that might have given rise to its existence.
Rather than following the lead of neorealism and reducing nonmaterial forces to the level of ideology and parasites on the material, this essay demonstrates how state identity offers important insights into the dynamics of security cooperation and alliance formation. Although Walt and other neorealists treat Arabism as little more than an ideology that is used to legitimate state interests deriving from anarchy, Arabism shaped the identity, interests, and policies available to Arab leaders in ways that left its mark on inter-Arab security dynamics and alliance politics. To begin, identity provides theoretical leverage over the construction of the threat. While neorealists concede that the construction of the threat cannot be derived from structural factors alone, they have yet to offer an alternative proposition for explaining this elementary feature of alliance formation. If history and a collective memory are obvious factors in producing a definition of the "other" and the threat, many approaches to security politics tend to view them as secondary considerations and as background material rather than as a central feature of what is doing the explaining and what is to be explained.
Similarly, identity provides a handle on who is considered to be a desirable alliance partner. Whether a state is a "natural" security partner cannot be derived from material forces alone, for the degree of naturalness is highly dependent on familiarity and identity. For instance, U.S. officials often claimed that Israel is a preferable strategic partner to the Arab states (despite the latter's advantaged geostrategic condition) because of its democratic character and liberal values. The GCC 'smembership was based on ideational factors, a shared history, and a similar political profile, which meant placing symbolic boundaries between Gulf and non-Gulf Arab states. In short, identity potentially signals whom to balance against and whom to bandwagon with.
Far from suggesting the primacy of identity and the irrelevance of material forces, I recognize that both are important explaNATOry variables, though with different causal weight at different historical moments. Sometimes identity politics will figure centrally; at other times a strategic logic might provide an exhaustive explanation. There is no theoretical or empirical justification, however, for assuming the primacy of one over the other. My sense is that neorealism's insistence on material factors is premised not only on its theoretical presuppositions but also on the mistaken assumption that a shared identity lends naturally and only to cooperation. That is, neorealism observes that because even states that have a shared identity have, at times, conflicting interests if not outright hostility, then it must be a realist world. Yet there are many sources of conflict, and there is no a priori reason to dismiss the possibility of identity. The case of the Baghdad Pact vividly illustrates, first, how inter-Arab politics and alliances were driven by presentational politics and not by military power and, second, an intense debate over which behavioral expectations were and were not consistent with being an Arab state. Arab states positioned themselves, fought, and forged alliances depending on their view of the demands and expectations that Arabism made on Arab states. In general, even actors that have a shared identity and identification of the threat can struggle over the norms that concern how they are to enact their identity.
These cases also demonstrate that identity is not a static construct but rather is socially constructed, and that this social construction process can be used to good effect for understanding alliance dynamics and changes in security patterns. To understand the social construction of state identity, however, requires examining not only interstate interactions but also state-society relations. The discussion of the changing alliance patterns in inter-Arab politics is connected to a weakening of the Arab national identity and the emergence of statist identities, which are a consequence of regional interactions and state formation processes. 127 These ideational shifts are associated with changing patterns of inter-Arab politics, including the definition of the threat and who is considered an acceptable ally. The case of U.S.-Israeli relations suggests how the state's membership in the community and the basis of the association is dependent on mutual identification, that is, shared identities. Yet because identities are socially constructed they are susceptible to change, and such a change can create a "crisis," if not undermine the very basis of the relationship. To understand the source of this crisis, however, requires incorporating changes in the international system structure as well as debates over the national identity.
In sum, the language of identity offers an alternative approach for understanding security politics and security cooperation. All three cases demonstrate how identity, as a relational construct that emerges out of the international and domestic discourse and interactions, imprints security politics and helps us to understand the dynamics of alliance formation.
For their critical reading and helpful suggestions, I would like to thank the members of the project, the participants in the workshops at Stanford and Minnesota, Emanuel Adler, Peter Katzenstein, David Laitin, Martin Sampson, Stephen Walt, and the anonymous reviewers at Columbia University Press.
Note 1: For various realist and neorealist statements, see Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (New York: Penguin Books, 1954); George Liska, Nations in Alliance: The Limits of Interdependence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962); William Langer, European Alliances and Alignments, 1871-1890, 2d ed. (New York: Vintage, 1964); Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987); Edward Gulick, Europe's Classical Balance of Power (New York: Norton, 1955), pp. 58-62; Glenn Snyder, "Alliance Theory: A Neorealist First Cut," in Robert Rothstein, ed., The Evolution of Theory in International Relations, pp. 83-104 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992); Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), chs. 6, 8; and Randall Schweller, "Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In," International Security 19, no. 1 (Summer 1994): 72-107. Back.
Note 2: See, respectively, Walt, The Origins of Alliances, and Snyder, "Alliance Theory." Back.
Note 3: See, respectively, Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Bernard Lewis, "Rethinking the Middle East," Foreign Affairs 71, no. 4 (1992): 99-119; and Martin Kramer, "Arab Nationalism: Mistaken Identity," Daedalus 122 (Summer 1993): 171-206; Ghassam Salame, "Inter-Arab Politics: The Return to Geography," in William Quandt, ed., The Middle East: Ten Years After Camp David, pp. 319-56 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1988); and George Corm, Fragmentation of the Middle East: The Last Thirty Years (London: Hutchinson Books, 1983). For realist-inspired explanations of inter-Arab dynamics, see P. J. Vatikiotis, Conflict in the Middle East (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971), and Arab and Regional Politics in the Middle East (New York: St. Martin's, 1984); Walt, The Origins of Alliances; Shibley Telhami, The Path to Camp David (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); Roger Owen, State, Power, and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 90-92; and Alan Taylor, The Arab Balance of Power (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1982). Back.
Note 4: Walt, The Origins of Alliances, pp. 22-26. Back.
Note 5: This relates to domestic sources of alliance formation. Specifically, there is wide-ranging evidence, particularly in the non-Western context, that states often construct external alliances to counter domestic threats. See Michael Barnett and Jack Levy, "Domestic Sources of Alliances and Alignments: The Case of Egypt," International Organization 45, no. 3 (Summer 1991): 369-96; and Stephen David, "Explaining Third World Alignment," World Politics 43, no. 2 (January 1991): 233-56. Back.
Note 6: Walt, The Origins of Alliances, pp. 22-26. Back.
Note 8: See John J. Mearsheimer, "The False Promise of International Institutions," International Security 19, no. 3 (Winter 1994/95): 37-40, for a similar view. Back.
Note 9: This is consistent with Wendt's observation that "anarchy is what states make of it"; Alexander Wendt, "Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics," International Organization 46, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 391-425. Back.
Note 10: Walt observes that certain ideologies are likely to generate suspicion and fear while others are not; The Origins of Alliances, pp. 36, 267. Specifically, he argues that a Pan-Arabism that is associated with unification and can only have one "leader" is likely to generate fear, suspicion and rivalry, while democracies and monarchies are not likely to generate the same dynamics. Walt, in other words, appears to be suggesting that identity, and not anarchy, drives interstate dynamics in important ways. Back.
Note 11: George Simmel, Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations (New York: Free Press, 1964). Back.
Note 12: Walt's implicit recognition but ultimate rejection of the causal impact of ideational factors, and his subsequent retreat to materialism, are aptly captured by Jeffrey Alexander's observation of what occurs when individualists are confronted by the limitations of their theories for understanding interactions and group behavior: "When unresolved tensions develop in general theories, theorists will resort to ad hoc ways to resolve them. To cope with these tensions they will introduce, in what is usually an ad hoc and unthought-out way, theoretical categories which are residual to, or outside of, the logically developed systemic strands of their argument. . . . While residual categories are the result of theoretical tensions, for the sake of interpretation it is often more useful to move backwards, from one's discovery of the residual categories back to the basic tensions which they have been developed to obscure" (Jeffrey Alexander, Twenty Lectures [New York: Columbia University Press, 1987], pp. 124-25). Back.
Note 13: See William Connolly, Identity/Difference (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), for a general treatment. That the definition and cohesion of the group are shaped by an outside threat or entity is, of course, a central proposition in much sociological thinking and many works on nationalism. See, for instance, Simmel, Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations.
Note 14: For other treatments of the relationship between state identity and threat, see Gerrit Gong, The Standard of "Civilization" in International Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984); Iver Neumann and Jennifer Welsh, "The Other in European Self-Definition: An Addendum to the Literature on International Society," Review of International Society 17 (1991): 327-48; and David Campbell, Writing Security (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992). Back.
Note 15: Walt, The Origins of Alliances, p. 204. Back.
Note 16: Wendt, "Anarchy Is What States Make of It," p. 398. Back.
Note 17: Jack Levy, "Domestic Politics and War," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 3 (1988): 653-73. Also see Thomas Risse-Kappen's contribution to this volume, essay 10. Back.
Note 18: This is related to the concept of security communities. See Karl W. Deutsch, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957); Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, "Pluralistic Security Communities: Past, Present, and Future" (Working Paper Series on Regional Security, no. 1, Global Studies Research Program, University of Wisconsin- Madison, 1994). Back.
Note 19: Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991),
p. 54, emphasis in original. Back.
Note 20: Quoted from Giddens, ibid. Back.
Note 21: Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. 204; and Samuel Kim and Lowell Dittmer, "Whither China's Quest for National Identity?" in L. Dittmer and S. Kim, eds., China's Quest for National Identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 241. Back.
Note 22: Edward Said, "The Phony Islamic Threat," New York Times Magazine, November 21, 1993,
p. 62. Back.
Note 23: Lowell Dittmer and Samuel Kim, "In Search of a Theory of National Identity," in Dittmer and Kim, China's Quest for National Identity, pp. 6-7. Back.
Note 24: Sheldon Stryker, Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural Perspective (Reading, Mass.: Benjamin/Cummings, 1980), p. 73. Back.
Note 25: Dittmer and Kim, "In Search of a Theory of National Identity," p. 7. Back.
Note 26: Relatedly, identity shapes the boundaries of the community. Whereas structuralists argue that the boundaries of any security association are determined along systemic lines, namely those that ally against the identified external threat, the language of identity suggests that boundaries are shaped by identity considerations. This raises the possibility that some states are probational members of the community--that is, they are not full-fledged members. Because of the state's domestic configurations, its foreign policy behavior, or the way the community constructs the state, the membership of some states is less "natural," less taken for granted. Accordingly, probational members will have their behavior more fully scrutinized and monitored. The probational status of some states suggests that they might be "liminal" states. Liminal actors can be thought of as " 'betwixt and between' existing orders. Liminars, whether their rites of passage are ritual or revolutionary, are between identities. In politics, they are between allegiances. This state is marked by ambiguity, ambivalence, and contradiction, yet it is from this disorder that new orders arise. In reflecting on the differences that mark out the liminal, people give meaning to their nationalities" (Anne Norton, Reflections on Political Identity [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988], p. 53.) Back.
Note 27: For good overviews of Arab nationalism, see A. A. Duri, The Historical Formation of the Arab Nation (New York: Croom Helm, 1987); Bassam Tibi, Arab Nationalism, 2d ed. (New York: St. Martin's, 1990); Rashid Khalidi, "Arab Nationalism: Historical Problems in the Literature," American Historical Review 96 (December 1991): 1363-73; Rashid Khalidi et al., eds., The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); and Martin Kramer, "Arab Nationalism." Back.
Note 28: See Patrick Seale, The Struggle for Syria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 90-91, for a discussion of the events leading to the treaty. See Taylor, The Arab Balance of Power, pp. 125-27, for the text. Back.
Note 29: See Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, The Crystallization of the Arab State System (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993), and Seale, The Struggle for Syria, for excellent treatments of the politics of the pre-1955 period. Back.
Note 30: Gamal Abd' Nasser, The Philosophy of the Revolution (New York: Buffalo, Smith, Keyze, Marshall, 1959); Seale, The Struggle for Syria, pp. 193-94; and Taylor, The Arab Balance of Power, p. 30. Back.
Note 31: Eisenhower and Dulles intended to build a fire wall of alliances to contain the Soviet Union. A critical section of this wall would be the "Northern Tier" in the Middle East; with its geostrategic proximity to the Soviet Union and its incredible oil reserves, the Arab states were viewed as a major prize in the Cold War contest. Britain was engaged in its own strategic search, attempting to establish alliances where it once had mandate rights; the Middle East was Britain's remaining souvenir of the empire, and it was determined to retain a presence for both symbolic and geostrategic reasons. See Seale, The Struggle for Syria, pp. 186-92. Back.
Note 32: Many Arab-Islamic states were not wary of the Soviet Union because it was an unknown quantity and communist. Still, the Soviet Union was an immediate beneficiary of these intrusions by the West; incensed by Iraq's defection, concerned with Israeli military operations, and unable to locate a Western arms supplier, Egypt and Syria concluded arms deals with the Soviets in 1955. Back.
Note 33: Seale, The Struggle for Syria, p. 200. Back.
Note 36: Iraq's decision to sign the treaty apparently derived from the belief that Arab unity offered little protection and security from the Soviet Union, that other Arab countries would follow its lead, and that it needed cooperation with Turkey on the Kurdish issue to maintain Iraq's internal cohesion. See Albert Hourani, History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 363; and Seale, The Struggle for Syria, pp. 199-201. Back.
Note 37: Quoted from Seale, The Struggle for Syria, p. 217. Back.
Note 38: Walt, The Origins of Alliances, pp. 58-60. Although Walt initially characterizes the events surrounding the Baghdad Pact as related to the balance of power, his narrative recognizes the importance of ideational forces in causing the alliances. Back.
Note 39: "The [Arab] League's policy, assiduously promoted by Egypt, of noncooperation with the West until Arab national objectives had been realized has frequently found Iraq and Egypt in opposite camps. The controversy over the Baghdad Pact is, of course, an outstanding illustration" (Robert McDonald, The League of Arab States [Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1965], p. 77). Also see Elie Podeh, The Quest for Hegemony in the Arab World: The Struggle over the Baghdad Pact (New York: Brill, 1995). Back.
Note 40: Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report, FBIS, January 14, 1955, pp. A1-2. Back.
Note 42: Ibid., January 17, 1955, pp. A7. Back.
Note 43: Ibid., January 26, 1955, pp. A1. Back.
Note 44: Although Nuri al-Said was highly defensive of the pact and felt highly susceptible to Nasser's charges; Waldemar Gallman, Iraq Under General Nuri: My Recollections of Nuri al-Said, 1954-1958 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964), p. 72. Back.
Note 45: Peter Mansfield, The Ottoman Empire and Its Successors (New York: St. Martin's, 1973), p. 119. Back.
Note 46: Hourani, History of the Arab Peoples, p. 363; J. C. Hurewitz, Middle East Politics: The Military Dimension (Boulder: Westview, 1982), pp. 318-19. Back.
Note 47: Nadav Safran, Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 78-79. Back.
Note 48: Seale, The Struggle for Syria, ch. 17. Back.
Note 49: McDonald, The League of Arab States, pp. 233-34; also Hurewitz, Middle East Politics, p. 463. Back.
Note 50: Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958 (London: Taurus, 1990), pp. 43-44, 47. Back.
Note 51: Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 679. Back.
Note 53: Ibid., p. 817; Majid Khadduri, Independent Iraq, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 307-9. Back.
Note 54: Writing at the time of the post-June 1967 soul-searching in the Arab world, Mohammed Haykal wrote in the Egyptian paper Al-Ahram that he hoped that masses would act at present as they had during the Baghdad Pact: "Our past experience is still within our memory. In a situation less dangerous than the one we are facing now, the Arab national force destroyed the Baghdad Pact in Baghdad itself without a single shot from outside Iraq and before the winds of social revolution had begun to blow" (cited from BBC World Broadcasts, ME/2548/A/3, August 21, 1967). Back.
Note 55: Boutros-Ghali reflected: "The controversy between Iraq and the other Arab states over the formation of the Baghdad Pact . . . is interesting from a historical viewpoint inasmuch as it was the starting point of a nonalignment policy adopted by the Arab states. . . . The revolution of July 14, 1958, in Baghdad sanctioned the victory of the nonaligned states" ("Arab Diplomacy: Failures and Successes," in George Atiyeh, ed., Arab and American Cultures, p. 232 [Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 1969]). Back.
Note 56: See Michael Barnett, "Sovereignty, Nationalism, and Regional Order in the Arab States System," International Organization 49, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 479-510, for an explanation for the shift in these state identities. Back.
Note 57: FBIS-Near and Middle East, June 18, 1980, pp. C1-5. Back.
Note 58: Joseph Twinam, "Reflections on Gulf Cooperation, with Focus on Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman," in John Sandwick, ed., The Gulf Cooperation Council, p. 30 (Boulder: Westview, 1987); author interview with Abdalla Bishara. Back.
Note 59: See Abu Dhabi Domestic Service, May 26, 1981. Cited from FBIS-NES, May 27, 1981, pp. A1-2; and Gulf News Agency, May 26, 1981. Cited in FBIS-NES, June 4, 1981, pp. A10-11. Back.
Note 60: Twinam, "Reflections on Gulf Cooperation," p. 23. Twinam later notes: "The main goals were both a more secure environment for the GCC states and meeting the aspirations of their citizens for a closer Gulf identity" (p. 29). Also see Emile Nakhleh, Gulf Cooperation Council: Policies, Problems, and Prospects (New York: Praeger, 1986), p. 57; and author interview with Abdalla Bishara. Back.
Note 61: See Michael Morony, "The Arabisation of the Gulf," in B. R. Pridham, ed., The Arab Gulf and the Arab World, pp. 3-28 (New York: Croom Helm, 1988); and Robert Landen, "The Changing Pattern of Political Relations Between the Arab Gulf and the Arab Provinences of the Ottoman Empire," in Pridham, The Arab Gulf and the Arab World, pp. 41-64, for brief overviews of the relationship between the Gulf and other Arab regions. Abdalla Bishara, the first secretary-general of the GCC , added that the Gulf states had been the "butt of Arab jokes," considered something of a backwater of the Arab world; author interview. Back.
Note 62: Ralph Braibanti, "The Gulf Cooperation Council: A Comparative Note," in John Sadwick, The Gulf Cooperation Council, p. 206 (Boulder: Westview, 1988). Back.
Note 63: Ghassam Saleme, "Inter-Arab Politics," pp. 239, 249-50. Back.
Note 64: Salame, "Inter-Arab Politics," p. 239; and Tibi, Arab Nationalism, p. 24. Back.
Note 65: Author interview with Abdalla Bishara. Separated from the rest of the Arab world because of the British protectorate over much of the Gulf region, the rapid independence of many of the Trucial states after 1960 caused many to contemplate security cooperation and some form of association to replace the British presence; see Riad El-Rayyas, "Arab Nationalism and the Gulf," in Pridham, The Arab World and the Gulf, pp. 87-90. Still, little happened on this front until these security threats. Back.
Note 66: Michael Barnett, Confronting the Costs of War: Military Power, State, and Society in Egypt and Israel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). Back.
Note 67: While Oman had a low-level, but highly controversial, strategic agreement with the U.S., the other Gulf states condemned its actions and actively discouraged any greater U.S. (or Soviet) presence in the region. In 1985 Kuwait both received a shipment of weapons from the Soviet Union and allowed the U.S. to reflag its oil tankers following the "tanker wars." Back.
Note 68: FBIS-NES, September 20, 1984, 5, 184, p. C1. Back.
Note 69: Nakhleh, Gulf Cooperation Council, p. 44. Back.
Note 70: See Joseph Kechichian, "The GCC and the West," Journal of American-Arab Affairs 29 (Summer 1989): 28; Nakleh, Gulf Cooperation Council, p. 39; and Ursula Braun, "The Gulf Cooperation Council's Security Role," in Pridham, The Arab World and the Gulf, p. 255. The Omani information minister provided the following distinction between security and defense policy: "There is a very big difference between the security strategy and the defense strategy. The security strategy deals with the firmness of the internal front of the GCC states, while the defense strategy deals with resisting external threats to these states" (WAKH, November 6, 1985, cited from FBIS-NES, 216, November 7, 1985, C3). Back.
Note 71: KUNA, April 4, 1984, cited in FBIS-NES, 5, 67, April 5, 1984, C1. Back.
Note 72: MENA, April 4, 1985, cited in FBIS-NES, 85, 66, April 5, 1985, C2-3. Back.
Note 73: "Al-Hawadith," March 6, 1987, pp. 30-31. Cited in FBIS-NES, March 10, 1987, p. 3. Back.
Note 74: That the GCC was able to construct some modest cooperation against their shared internal threats emboldened them to undertake military cooperation. The first GCC meeting commissioned a discussion group to consider their security needs, which became the first paper on the concept of collective defense in 1982 (author interview with Abdalla Bishara). Soon thereafter the GCC developed a series of elaborate and sustained measures designed to increase military coordination and cooperation: a rapid deployment force, the outline for a unified army, an early warning network, a series of joint maneuvers through the "Peninsula Shield" exercises, attempted coordination of military procurement to standardize equipment and training, an integrated training academy. As Bahraini minister of foreign affairs Shaykh Muhammad Khalifa observed: "We feel we have started a never-ending effort, because every coordination action has unknown results" (WAKH, April 24, 1984, cited in FBIS-NES, 5, 81, April 25, 1984, C1). See Braun, "The Gulf Cooperation Council's Security Role," for an overview of GCC security cooperation. Back.
Note 75: George Joffe, "Middle Eastern Views of the Gulf Conflict and Its Aftermath," Review of International Studies 19 (1993): 191. Back.
Note 76: See F. Gregory Gause III, The Oil Monarchies (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1993), ch. 5, for a good discussion of the Gulf states' post-Gulf war security policies. Back.
Note 77: See Lewis, "Rethinking the Middle East"; Kramer, "Arab Nationalism"; Ibrahim Karawan, "Arab Dilemmas in the 1990s: Breaking Taboos and Searching for Signposts," Middle East Journal 48 (Summer 1994): 433-54; and Muhammad Faour, The Arab World After Desert Storm (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1994); and author interview with Abdalla Bishara. Back.
Note 78: Interview and date not given. Cited in FBIS-NES-91-059, March 27, 1991, pp. 9-10. Back.
Note 79: FBIS-NES-92-232, December 2, 1992, pp. 1-2. See also the "Memorandum of Understanding" signed between the Arab League and the GCC ; FBIS-NES-92-034, February 20, 1992, p. 3. Back.
Note 80: Oded Granot, "Outcome of Arab League Conference Analyzed," Ma'ariv, in FBIS-NES, March 31, 1994, p. 3. Back.
Note 81: For the text of the Damascus Declaration, see FBIS-NES-91-152, August 7, 1991, pp. 1-2. Back.
Note 82: As noted by Ihsan Bakr in Egypt's Al-Ahram, "We have to acknowledge the apprehensions of the people in the Gulf, or at least some of them, who fear an Arab presence in the Gulf, because the past is not very encouraging" (June 7, 1992, p. 9, cited in FBIS-NES-92-114, June 12, 1992, 9-10). Back.
Note 83: FBIS-NES-92-241, December 15, 1992, pp. 10-11. Back.
Note 84: Barnett, "Nationalism, Sovereignty, and Regional Order in Arab Politics." Back.
Note 85: Kramer, "Arab Nationalism," p. 198; Karawan, "Arab Dilemmas in the 1990s"; and "Arafat Suggests Formation of Mideast 'Regional Order'," FBIS-NES, February 4, 1994. Back.
Note 86: Paul Noble, Rex Brynen, and Baghat Korany, "Conclusion: The Changing Regional Security Environment," in B. Korany, P. Noble, and R. Brynen, eds., The Many Faces of National Security in the Arab World, p. 281 (New York: St. Martin's, 1993). Back.
Note 87: As one editorial lamented, "The paradox of the negotiations between the Arabs and Israel are [sic] more acceptable--and maybe successful--than the Arabs' negotiations with one another. And the enmity with Israel has begun to drop to low levels, compared with inter-Arab hostilities. The negotiations with it over the demarcation of its border are much easier than negotiations among Gulf states, on the grounds that Israel is more acceptable" (Abd-al-Bari Atwan, al-Quds al-Arabi, December 23, 1994; cited in FBIS-NES, December 30, 1994, p. 3). Back.
Note 88: While the U.S. has concluded several strategic agreements with the Gulf states, these agreements are always quite careful to limit U.S. visibility for fear of offending local sensitivities. Consequently, the U.S. has forgone military bases in favor of stockpiling and over-the-horizon agreements. Back.
Note 89: "Sawt al-Kuwayt al-Duwali," July 21, 1992, p. 9; cited in FBIS-NES-92-142, July 23, 1992, p. 2. Back.
Note 90: "Defense Minister on Army, Security Accords." FBIS-NES-007, January 10, 1992, p. 10. The London-based al-Quds al-Arabi editorialized that the Gulf Summit Declaration of December 1991 was evidence that the Gulf states had abandoned their Arab brothers for isolation and demonstrated real hostility toward the Arabs; FBIS-NES-27-003, January 6, 1992, p. 5. Back.
Note 91: Michael Handel, "Israel's Contribution to U.S. Interests in the Middle East," in Harry Allen and Ivan Volgyes, eds., Israel, the Middle East, and U.S. Interests, pp. 80-85 (New York: Praeger, 1983); and A. F. K. Organski, The $36 Billion Bargain (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). Back.
Note 92: Michael Barnett, "From Cold Wars to Resource Wars: The Coming Decline in U.S.-Israeli Relations?" Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 13, no. 3 (September 1991): 99-117. A possible objection to the U.S.-Israeli case is that its uniqueness renders it a poor place for theory testing and plausibility probes. Many of the so-called unique features of Israel and U.S.-Israeli relations first suggest complexity and not uniqueness and second require explanation and not dismissal. Moreover, even if U.S.-Israel relations does exhibit some atypical qualities--what social relationship does not?--this does not justify its exclusion as a case. The idea of using exceptional and atypical cases for theory development has become a more widely accepted methodological practice in recent years. See Michael Barnett, "The Methodological Status of the Israeli Case," in Michael Barnett, ed., Israel in Comparative Politics: Challenging Conventional Wisdom (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), for a detailed discussion of the methodological status of the Israeli case. Back.
Note 93: Mohammed Ayoob, "The Security Problematique of the Third World," World Politics 43, no. 2 (1991): 257-83. Back.
Note 94: Cheryl Rubenberg, Israel and the American National Interest (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986). Back.
Note 95: Organski, The $36 Billion Bargain, p. xv. Back.
Note 96: Camille Mansour, Beyond Alliance: Israel and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Abraham Ben-Zvi, The United States and Israel: The Limits of the Special Relationship (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 16-17; and James Lee Ray, The Future of American-Israeli Relations (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1985), p. 25. Back.
Note 97: See Mansour, Beyond Alliance, for an excellent review of the shortcomings of the literatures that treat U.S.-Israeli relations as driven by either systemic or domestic politics and an interesting discussion of how cultural factors and shared values represent its real foundation. Ben-Zvi, The United States and Israel, begins with the assumption that the special relationship is dependent on shared beliefs and then proceeds to examine the conditions under which the "national interest" can overcome normative power. See Peter Grose, Israel in the Mind of America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), and Seth Tillman, The United States in the Middle East (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), for other statements that acknowledge shared identity and values as the basis of U.S.-Israeli relations. Back.
Note 98: Morton Halperin, "Guaranteeing Democracy," Foreign Policy 91 (Summer 1993): 105-22; and Samuel Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations," Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer 1993): 22-49, provide a fairly simplistic but effective representation of how U.S. policy makers see both themselves and those who are part of the community. Although the relationship is equally dependent on Israel's reading of the U.S., I focus on the debate over Israel's identity both for illustrative purposes and because it was here that the real challenges existed. Back.
Note 99: Amos Elon, "The Politics of Memory," New York Review of Books, October 7, 1993, p. 4. Back.
Note 100: S. N. Eisenstadt, Change and Continuity in Israeli Society (New York: Humanities Press, 1974). Back.
Note 101: The debate over Israel's Jewish identity is perhaps best illustrated in the continuing controversy over "Who is a Jew?" Back.
Note 102: Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism (New York: Basic Books, 1981). Back.
Note 103: Baruch Kimmerling, "Between the Primordial and the Civil Definitions of the Collective Identity," in E. Cohen, M. Lissak, and U. Almagor, eds., Comparative Social Dynamics, p. 262 (Boulder: Westview, 1985). Back.
Note 104: Elon, "The Politics of Memory"; Tom Segev, The Seventh Million (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993). Back.
Note 105: Although the Holocaust has been internalized within the American historical consciousness, it has been in a particular American way. For instance, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., is a testimony to both the need to resist future Holocausts and ambiguous role of the U.S. in protecting and overcoming the Holocaust. See David Schoenbaum, The United States and the State of Israel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 321. The contradictions were ever-present at the commemorative ceremony with Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, imploring President Clinton, the leader of the West, to do something to stop the modern-day Holocaust in Bosnia. Back.
Note 106: See Segev, The Seventh Million, for illustrations of how the legacy of the Holocaust translates into particular foreign policy actions. Back.
Note 107: While those states that are "core" members of the West might not be able to live up to its supposed standards, their status is taken for granted (and in this respect these questions are hardly ever addressed), and transgression is viewed as an occasional, and excusable, lapse--not cause for questioning its very identity and membership within the community. Back.
Note 108: Grose, Israel in the Mind of America, p. 316. Back.
Note 109: Interview with author. Back.
Note 110: That Reagan would frequently quote biblical scripture and openly discuss Israel's place in biblical prophecy only served to strengthen the link between the U.S. and the Jewish state. Back.
Note 111: "The idea was harmful, especially once it took root in the popular mind, for it created an erroneous perception of what Israel can allow itself to do in its relations with the United States, and thus provided indirect support for annexationist and other extreme policies" (Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel's Fateful Hour [New York: Harper and Row, 1988], p. 129). Back.
Note 112: May 28, 1984, pp. 7, 12, cited in FBIS-NES, 5, 107, June 1, 1984, I5-6. Back.
Note 113: This is consistent with the proposition that identity is partly informed by an outside threat; consequently, the demise of that threat can potentially undermine the actor's identity. See Simmel, Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations.
Note 114: Kimmerling, "Between the Primordial and the Civil Definitions of the Collective Identity." Back.
Note 115: Those who championed Greater Israel had three immediate methods for resolving the possibility that Arabs might outnumber Jews in a future Israel. One was to deny that this demographic revolution would ever occur either because of alternative projected birthrates, anticipated immigration, or desired Palestinian emigration. The second, articulated by the political party Moledet, was to "transfer" Palestinians to Arab states through either forced means or incentive packages. A final option, visibly and starkly articulated by Meier Kahane's Kach Party, was to deny citizenship to the Palestinians in an expanded Israel. Kahane argued that Israel could not be both Jewish and democratic, and since Israel would always be a Jewish state the Arabs would never be citizens. Although Kach was a minority party that was eventually ruled unconstitutional by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1984, Kahane and his followers touched a raw nerve in Israeli politics as they challenged Israel's democratic character and image. Back.
Note 116: The Jewish American leadership was quite sensitive to Israel's deteriorating status as a consequence of the decline of the Cold War and its occupation policies and altered their presentation of Israel accordingly to highlight its democratic character. For instance, testimony by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (aipac) to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Israel's aid package between 1982 and 1993 reveals a pronounced emphasis on Israel's democratic character and Western identity. In general, the vanishing strategic rationale caused supporters of Israel to focus on the base reason for U.S.-Israeli relations: their shared identity and values. Back.
Note 117: FBIS-NES-88-174, September 8, 1988, pp. 50-51. Back.
Note 118: Interview with author. Back.
Note 119: Committee on Foreign Affairs, Foreign Assistance Legislation for Fiscal Year 1994: Part 2, Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993), p. 60. Back.
Note 121: While approximately 20 percent of those polled said that a deterioration in relations would increase their support for Shamir, more than 40 percent said that it would undermine it; Davar, March 30, 1992, p. 2, cited in FBIS-NES-92-062, March 31, 1992, p. 19. Back.
Note 122: Harkabi, Israel's Fateful Hour, p. 205. Back.
Note 123: Interview with Yitzhak Rabin on the MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour, Monday, September 13, 1993. Also see Ben Lynfield, "Rabin Tries to Make Less of 'Greater Israel,' " Christian Science Monitor, January 25, 1994, p. 22. Back.
Note 124: More recent events, including Israel's decision to label Kach and Kahana Hay as terrorist organizations after the terrorist attack in Hebron in February 1994, was also read through the image of the Western "self" in general and the belief that Israel's democratic and liberal identity were being challenged from within. See, for instance, "Rabin Addresses Knesset on Hebron Massacre," FBIS-NES, March 1, 1994, pp. 31-33; and Clyde Haberman, "Israel Votes Ban on Jewish Groups Linked to Kahane," New York Times, March 14, 1994, p. 1. Back.
Note 125: This "Islam vs. the West" debate has become a particularly troubling and vocal one in the U.S. over the past few years, beginning soon after the Iranian revolution but gathering momentum and contributors since the end of the Cold War. For a sampling of the literature, see Ghassan Salame, "Islam and the West," Foreign Policy 90 (Spring 1993): 22-37; Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations"; and Said, "The Phony Islamic Threat." Back.
Note 126: Ariel Sharon claimed that the U.S. and Israel are threatened by Arab-Muslim fundamentalism and that the U.S. should begin discussions with Israel on how best to confront this mutual threat. IDF Radio, 28 March 1992, cited in FBIS-NES-92-061, March 30, 1992, pp. 27-28. Yitzhak Rabin also argued that Islam represents a shared threat, implying that Israel has not only a new strategic role but also a shared identity. Daniel Williams, "U.S. Offers to Sell Israel Upgraded Fighter Jets," Washington Post, November 16, 1993, p. 31. Back.
Note 127: Barnett, "Sovereignity, Nationalism, and Regional Orderin Arab Politics." Back.
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