CIAO DATE: 09/07
The National Interest
Israel in NATO?
Richard Rupp
Abstract
At first glance, the idea of NATO membership for Israel may sound inconceivable, a proposal hardly worthy of serious consideration. After all, nato signifies the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Israel, in many ways, is far removed from the North Atlantic. Israeli membership in NATO would likely enmesh the alliance in Middle East conflicts, a proposition that few European elites would welcome. Consider the response to the request for peacekeepers for Lebanon. After considerable cajoling and urgent requests by un Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Europe, with nearly two million men and women in uniform, has dispatched only a few thousand troops to the region.
However, during the past few years a growing and influential constituency has emerged that is actively lobbying for Israeli inclusion in the alliance. Policymakers and commentators, ranging from former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar to the editors of the Wall Street Journal, have called on NATO to act quickly in advancing Israel’s candidacy for full membership. Proponents of this initiative, who include longtime nato supporters Ronald Asmus, Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino and U.S. Congresspersons Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Robert Wexler (D-FL), cite an array of arguments as to why Israel should urgently be incorporated into NATO. Israeli membership in NATO, they argue, could ameliorate the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and ultimately prove key to a successful two-state solution, facilitate Western efforts in the War on Terror, and, most importantly for some, decisively enhance the containment or elimination of Iran’s growing wmd program. Some of these points have been reiterated in the proposals advanced in this issue by Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman.
NATO’s entry into post-Cold War Middle East and Mediterranean politics commenced in 1994 with the initiation of the alliance’s Mediterranean Dialogue linking Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria in a range of security-related discussions. The Mediterranean Dialogue, however, yielded modest results throughout the 1990s.
In the aftermath of 9/11, however, many alliance supporters called on nato to further expand its presence in the region. In June 2004, NATO leaders launched the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative that promised to transform NATO relations with Middle Eastern states from dialogues into partnerships. Brussels intended for closer ties between the alliance and Middle East governments to yield regional-defense reforms, to improve interoperability among military forces and to facilitate multilateral cooperation in combating terrorism and proliferation of wmd.