Barry Posen on Aid to Israel
Writing by abuhatem on Tuesday, 27 of May , 2008 at 4:10 am
Barry Posen wrote in the fall concerning U.S. aid to Israel:
U.S. military assistance to Israel makes the occupation of the territories relatively inexpensive for Israeli political leaders, and implicates the United States in the deed. This may not be “central” to U.S. problems in the Arab world, as so many insist, but it certainly does not help. The United States should therefore develop a ten-year plan to reduce U.S. government direct financial assistance to Israel to zero. Israel is now a prosperous country that happens to be surrounded by military powers lacking any capacity to conquer it. Two of these countries, Egypt and Jordan, have peace treaties with Israel, and the rest have no possible superpower patron to back them with new supplies of modern conventional offensive weapons. Israel has to decide on the merits, and within its own sovereign capacities, how much the occupied territories matter to its security, and how to allocate security spending accordingly.
Posen is a very intelligent international relations theorist, a defensive realist who leans strongly on the side of non-intervention, although not wholly a non-interventionist himself.
Category: International Relations
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