Spectator 's Journal/A New Balance of Terror
Haselkom, Avigdor
A New Balance of Tenor by Avigdor Haselkorn The Bush Administration took two steps in October that confirm an important change in U.S. thinking toward the Middle East. Ironically—and...
...The Bush Administration apparently believes the model of U.S.-Soviet strategic relations, as practiced under MAD, can be applied to the Middle East...
...Top administration officials are already on record as claiming that Iraqi Scud attacks on Israeli cities prove only that territory has little value in this missile age...
...First, Bush worries about Israel using its window of opportunity in the wake of the Gulf war to pre-empt the Syrian military buildup...
...Another belief it is abandoning is one arrived at by a Joint Chiefs of Staff study in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War: that Israel cannot be defended within its 1967 borders...
...But this was the second time the Bush Administration had gone to bat for the Syrian military...
...The Israeli analysts who wondered out loud about the logic of asking their country to increase its territorial vulnerability by giving up land while simultaneously allowing Syria to continue its missile buildup simply failed to recognize the emergence of the new U.S...
...Defense Minister Moshe Arens remarked on Israeli radio on October 22 that the U.S...
...We address these security concerns for the Israelis, so why do they need to make these flights...
...Second, by providing for a missile-based "balance of terror" between Syria and Israel, 48 The American Spectator January 1992 Benetton U. by Tim W. Ferguson the administration can present "territorial compromise" as the only viable basis for an Arab-Israeli settlement...
...In Scowcroft's weird syllogism, Israel's increased vulnerability to Syrian missiles is not unwelcome...
...But what Israeli leaders have ignored is that recent U.S...
...The administration, having monitored increased Israeli gunboat acAvigdor Haselkorn is a strategic analyst and defense consultant specializing in Soviet and Middle Eastern affairs...
...The New York Times, on October 9, quoted an administration official as saying: We basically wanted an official explanation from them as to why they did this and we made it clear that we don't expect this to happen again...
...Besides highlighting the territories' superfluity, the missile threat could increase pressure—military pressure—on Israel to make concessions in the name of peace...
...Lally Weymouth of the Washington Post, known for her access to top-level sources in Israel, reported on September 29 that last spring "America made a previously undisclosed request that Israel not attack" another North Korean ship, loaded with mobile Scud launchers and two dozen missiles...
...And while the Bush Administration now hopes it can impose the program on the Arab countries, it is our ally Israel that will wind up paying the price...
...policy...
...The green light the U.S...
...In Scowcroft's conception, there is no contradiction between the two...
...In allowing Damascus to arm itself with longer-range, more accurate Scud-Cs, it knows exactly what it is doing...
...Meanwhile, by making a big stink over Israel's Iraqi reconnaissance flights, the administration signals that it will not deter Syria's missile buildup but veto an Israeli pre-emptive strike...
...By all indications, Washington has been taken in by its own "new world order" propaganda...
...brokers a "peace for land" deal...
...The fact that we share intelligence with [the Israelis] leaves us puzzled as to why they would have done something like this...
...The President's national security adviser Brent Scowcroft even stated last April that Israel "needs no strategic depth...
...There are two reasons for the administration's shift...
...Any such pre-emptive action would jeopardize the Arab coalition that supported Bush in the Gulf war and now, he hopes, will protect the stability of the oil-rich Arab states...
...One day later, the Washington Times reported that the North Korean ship Mupo was heading from the Indian Ocean into the Red Sea with a cargo of Scud-C surface-to-surface missiles destined for Syria...
...Molded by their prolonged involvement in the U.S.-Soviet confrontation, Bush and Scowcroft believe that a balance of terror in the Middle East will not only bring stability but also lead to the elimination of weapons of mass destruction in the region altogether...
...First, at the beginning of the month, the administration leaked that it had "strongly protested" through "private channels" Israeli reconnaissance flights over western Iraq...
...Ironically—and dangerously—both were seen as motivated by Washington's desire to put no obstacles in the way of the Madrid peace conference...
...Again, the Israeli consensus was that President Bush was acting merely to assure the convening of the Middle East peace conference scheduled for later that month...
...priorities in the Middle East...
...Little wonder that the administration has begun badgering Israel on its nuclear option...
...has given Syria what Moscow could never havepromised: annexation and immunity from a strong Israeli response backed by Washington...
...It has begun to base its policy toward the Syrian-Israeli conflict on a balance of terror, abandoning the belief of the last several administrations that, to deter war, Israel must be militarily superior to its Arab neighbors...
...The Bush Administration is not gen- erally given to hastiness in foreign policy...
...In addition, it could deter Israel from attacking Syria and thus lead to de facto strategic stability while the U.S...
...The administration evidently believes that Syria's growing missile stockpile will help invalidate the security pretext for Israel's continued hold on the territories...
...In short, President Bush is making a reality of the dream Gorbachev told Assad could never be achieved: Syrian military parity with Israel...
...tivity in the Eastern Mediterranean, was concerned that Israel might try to intercept the ship, and intervened...
...The larger the Syrian surface-to-air missile arsenal, the less relevant territory becomes to the defense of Israel and the stronger the case for territorial compromise...
...complicity in the Syrian military buildup involves more than Secretary of State Jim Baker's "peace diplomacy...
...gave Syria effectively to absorb Lebanon and to strengthen its defenses in the Bekaa Valley need hardly be mentioned...
...While Baker's Madrid follies are treated in the Knesset as little more than his failure as an "honest broker," what is at stake is nothing less than a brand-new strategic concept and a fundamental realignment of U.S...
...In Lebanon, ironically, the U.S...
...had made "strong and discourteous" complaints over the Israeli flights and claimed it was "expecting an explanation...
Vol. 25 • January 1992 • No. 1
