The A W A C S Aftermath
Rosenbaum, Aaron
THE AWACS AFTERMATH No victory—but not quite a defeat. AARON ROSENBAUM The campaign to block the sale of the AWACS radar and command plane to Saudi Arabia was all those adjectives we normally...
...it mounted irrefutable arguments...
...But it's doubtful if Jepsen will find an enthusiastic welcome for his efforts...
...He had the courage to stand up to the President at a White House meeting of Senators and defend the patriotism of those opposing the sale...
...It galvanized and aroused Jews everywhere...
...Eli Jacobs, a leading Republican, set up his own operation in what was an apparent attempt to ingratiate himself with the White House so as to be designated as their leader of the Jews...
...many rejected another litmus test...
...This is apt to show some surprising friends, and unmask some enemies...
...This was implicit in the tepid statements of many Senators who favored the sale...
...chipping away at the bloc opposed to the F-15 sale...
...Sadat's death affected the arguments of both sides, and as a result, its effect was neutralized...
...Historic...
...would be debunked...
...the Air Force's own testimony from 1977 proved otherwise...
...Glenn is hardly Israel's best friend...
...But the stampede began only after the leading conservative Republican opponent of the AWACS sale, Sen...
...Yet this is hardly a convincing proof, given that only a handful of senators made the difference...
...American Jews should elicit a quid pro quo that binds the Administration never again to tolerate political tactics that question the loyalties of the Jews...
...The precedent of Iran was powerfully persuasive...
...Much of the invidious rumor aimed at opponents of the AWACS sale came from the National Security Council...
...Attend a symposium on business opportunities in Saudi Arabia, listen to the mandatory Saudi proclaim his country's friendship for America while attacking Jewish domination of "your foreign policy" and watch and listen to the rousing reception given this message...
...As it turned out, the opponents of the AWACS sale clearly won the debate on the merits...
...it demonstrated a mastery of the techniques of modern lobbying...
...Ultimately, you can reason out the causes, the engines and the vectors of anti-Semitism only so long...
...But so is the widespread concern among non-Jews about rising anti-Semitism...
...The President was backed by three political entities of unsurpassed political influence: the military-industrial complex, the petro-diplomatic complex...
...Opponents of the sale confronted not just the charm of Ronald Reagan...
...Zorinsky told lobbyists that he voted for the sale in order to strengthen himself at home, and that this would assure that a friendly senator would be around "when he's really needed...
...It employed computerized mailings, pollings and demographic analyses to find additional supporters...
...But it was not quite that simple...
...Once done, it becomes a precedent, a hook on which one can hang the encouragement that is lobbying...
...There is nothing conspiratorial here: they gave themselves the orders...
...The Jewish community was informed of the issues early...
...After the F-15 fight, Jewish lobbying power was materially diminished...
...But opposition was also an intellectual necessity: win or lose—and losing was never all that likely—it was clear that the aftermath of an AWACS battle would speed the testing—and the probable collapse—of the very Arabist and Saudiphilic principles that had dictated the AWACS sale in the first place...
...Perhaps there will always be those surprising, crushing last-minute defections...
...And Sen...
...Howard Baker and Sen...
...Mathias is easy to understand: he is a WASP elitist who believes that swarthy types have no business making foreign policy, an enterprise presumably best left to the over-bred descendants of Anglo-Saxon horse thieves...
...There is something perverse in the fact that the AWACS is Sadat's putative memorial...
...Other leading Republican Jews would not let themselves be used, and Gordie Zacks, Vice President Bush's Jewish fund raiser, worked tirelessly to keep fellow Jewish Republicans not just away from the side of the White House, but visibly in the opposition...
...Pete McCloskey (Democrat, California...
...What happened was that Jepsen had simply underestimated what it meant to oppose his President—a man who had worked for his election to the Senate when no one thought Jepsen had a chance—on a matter of principle...
...John Glenn (Democrat, Ohio) played a crucial role in opposing the sale, but the Jewish community should be careful of conferring any special rewards on him...
...they continued to oppose an American military presence in the kingdom and were actually working against similar arrangements with Oman, Somalia and Sudan...
...has Continued on page 57 a knee-jerk sympathy to everything Israel demands...
...it remains the primary source of solace to those mourning the loss in the Senate and awaiting a day of reckoning...
...The most invidious positions were those of Sen...
...The Saudis' consultant, Fred Dutton, also was scurrilous...
...Charles Mathias (Republican, Maryland) and Rep...
...The most notable of these was Gen...
...There was an increase in letters from Jew-hating constituents, but that happens every time an Israel-related issue comes up...
...Much is revealed just by examining why the AWACS sale was proposed in the first place...
...It shows just how intimidated policy makers are by the specter of Saudi disfavor...
...Of Jews loyal to the Administration, two stand out...
...Simultaneously, its lobbyists worked Congressional offices with assiduity...
...Robert Packwood (Republican, Oregon), Sen...
...The Administration claimed the AWACS technology was 1960s vintage...
...Defenders of both argued later that their votes didn't matter, that Sen...
...It is true that a number of Republican senators had begun to move toward the President on Friday...
...Unitarian, has a Jewish father...
...James Exon (Democrat, Nebraska) and Sen...
...In 1978, it could be argued (and was) that the F-15s were necessary to assure stability in the price of oil...
...As to Cohen, he cited the fear of anti-Semitism as the determining factor in his vote...
...The corporations got their marching orders...
...His indifference to his constituents is a threat, and it is a waste to try to cultivate him...
...Every circumstance contains opportunities...
...The willingness of two Administrations casually to discard assurances to Congress and submit to still another "litmus test" of America's good intentions towards the Saudis is also disturbing...
...Like Rudman, he seems to have no sense of how carefully non-Jewish Senators weigh the position and demeanor of their Jewish collegues when it comes time to consider Israel-related issues...
...While Jewish communities in the large states met with members of Congress, wrote letters, traveled to Washington and sought out supporters in the non-Jewish community, a number of smaller communities relied on the old style of communicating through one or two distinguished, wealthy Jews...
...region...
...Cranston has earned it...
...Carter and NSC advisor Brzezinski sent ambiguous signals and used delaying tactics, leading Javits and Church to think the White House was mulling over a deal when in fact it was steadily It was an unusual convergence of circumstances mat made the President look like a wizard...
...Alan Simpson (Republican, Wyoming) were convinced by the President's reasoning and went off the resolution of disapproval...
...Sen Alfonse D'amato makes many New York Jews uncomfortable, but there can be no faulting his performance on this issue...
...It had been prepared to accept the F-15 enhancements, primarily because both Israelis and American Jews wished to avoid a confrontation with a new and apparently friendly Administration...
...AIPAC has already begun moving in this direction...
...Yet lobbying is never successful unless there is someone willing to be lobbied...
...Concomitantly, the willingness of Americans—no patsies—to meet Saudi litmus tests and mollify Saudi demands decreases with each instance...
...As to former Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter, their interventions apparently changed few votes—but did measurably lower the level of the debate...
...Charles Grassley of Iowa with him...
...More than any other Senator, Packwood assumed the dirty work of being point man...
...Dine and the leaders of the anti-AWACS coalition in the Senate (Packwood, Cranston, Boschwitz, Jackson, Moynihan, Pell and Biden) operated this time without illusions...
...Charles Percy (Republican, Illinois) was the Administration's willing tool, but he did have the decency and principle to attack the anti-Semitic slurs that permeated the campaign for the AWACS...
...No doubt the famous Carter vindictiveness was at work here, too...
...What he never seemed to appreciate was just how much flack Humphrey had to withstand to gain his position of moral leadership...
...Though polite, he was contemptuous of those who came to lobby him on AWACS...
...The resolution to block the AWACS sale lost for a variety of reasons...
...Opposition to the AWACS sale was thus ineluctable...
...But it is no longer enough...
...The Administration's claim that its opponents had been working on AWACS non-stop while the White House had been preoccupied with the economy was not without foundation...
...Members who have voted the other way should be told that an opportunity to demonstrate their longstanding and genuine concern is coming soon...
...Rudy Boschwitz (Republican, Minnesota) and a number of others...
...Zorinsky has been irascible and, as "a friend indeed" has probably been more trouble than he's worth since he entered the Senate...
...Why did he do it...
...In assessing the performance of the Jewish community and its lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), there is not much that one can fault...
...Packwood was singled out by the White House for vilification...
...The effect is real...
...The decisions of Sen...
...In the next confrontation, our opponents will act as if those they are attempting to persuade have no memory and historical consciousness...
...In that instance, the Ford Administration cut a compromise...
...The vote in the Senate was ultimately decided because of the President's effective lobbying...
...A former assistant to Robert Kennedy, Dutton seems to have abandoned all the principles of that great man except ruthlessness...
...They did an exceptional job...
...Then you just have to fight it...
...It doesn't wash...
...The American Jewish community has to avoid a desire for "revenge" and practice pragmatism wherever possible...
...The AWACS aftermath is most of all an opportunity to say thanks to friends...
...The fact remains that there was precious little evidence to back up the rumors...
...A continuing priority for the national Jewish community should be to teach the small communities those sophisticated lobbying techniques that most of the larger communities have by now mastered...
...The AWACS campaign allowed the Jews to recapture politically what had been lost three years ago and to build upon it...
...and the presidents and Washington representatives of the Aramco companies, especially Mobil and Amoco...
...The President argued that the assassination was an even more powerful reason to support the sale, in order to demonstrate America's constancy and to win more Egypt-like allies (i.e...
...Buck's minions pushed an AWACS buy everytime they met with their counterparts in Saudi Arabia...
...Corporate types who merely say that America should put its own interests first and resist the influence of foreign governments or their partisans are in fact implanting the stereotype a little deeper...
...AIPAC and its allies on the Hill used a series of Congressional communications with the White House throughout the spring and summer, ostensibly aimed at persuading the President not to go ahead with the sale...
...After the F-15 sale, a number of good relationships (which were in evidence in the AWACS vote) grew out of rap-proachments sought by both sides...
...His announcement also made it possible for Sen...
...Not this time...
...Aside from the obvious cynicism it evokes there is a problem with the resolution of a foreign policy issue purely on the basis of applied political power: It sends the wrong signals...
...But the three years since the F-15 sale showed that these arguments were as faulty as the opponents of the sale had said they were...
...The polls showed nothing...
...arrangements whatever to assure an American presence...
...It was clear back in April that whatever the outcome of the AWACS vote, the pernicious deference to the Saudis would either be curtailed or exposed...
...There is no other explanation...
...One can hardly say enough about Sen...
...Compared to 1978, opponents of the AWACS had many more hard commitments of support, and had them earlier...
...Kasten (Republican, Wisconsin) were prepared to switch to the President's side if the vote were dependent on it...
...Lobbyists from the NSC, the Pentagon and the oil companies excoriated opponents for endangering America's oil supply and security relationships, yet shrugged off their tactics over drinks as just gamesmanship and politics...
...It is a tribute to Tom Dine that he and his staff labored on this issue for six months, yet left no bruised feelings or residue of bitterness on Capitol Hill...
...Muriel Humphrey (with assurances he apparently had no intention of keeping...
...Finally, the gradualism made it easier to attract and hold sponsors of the Packwood resolution of disapproval...
...But the President can only ask for trust so many times, particularly if he fails to show that that trust was not improvidently granted...
...this was manifested first in the drive to persuade the President not to submit the package, then in attempts to have him withdraw it, and finally in the move to kill the resolution of disapproval in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...
...The corporations were amoral, but they were pretty straight up about it...
...AWACS project manager who knew he would not get a promotion if cost overruns were not neutralized by a big foreign buy...
...It was a demonstration of the nature of multi-national corporations first outlined by former Senator Frank Church: The companies are neither loyal to the countries where they were founded and have their headquarters, nor to the governments with which they do business...
...McCloskey accused the Jews of seeking to "control" the Congress...
...It told us a lot about the United States, a lot about our friends and about our adversaries...
...Their visibility on this issue is also related, no doubt, to their post-presidential involvement with multi-national corporations...
...Perhaps there will always be those surprising, crushing last-minute defections...
...The Jewish community emerges from the fight politically cohesive, ideologically coherent, respected, unbroken, better organized than ever and unintimidated...
...And why not...
...Jews are increasingly sick of politicians who pledge their support for Israel yet always seem to vote the wrong way...
...The corporate campaign for the AWACS, represented as it was within all three complexes described above, was more than a tribute to greed...
...it followed a good game plan...
...Rudman worked on a number of his fellow senators, and by his suggestion that the Jewish community was divided on the issue, changed some minds...
...This was reason enough to fight the AWACS...
...it would destabilize and endanger the Saudis...
...and the industrial-political complex...
...Heinz (Republican, Pennsylvania) and Sen...
...And the Administration, desperate for a win, did very little to countermand those who were lobbying for the AWACS a little too energetically...
...Ambassador Maxwell Raab returned from Italy, ostensibly because of a Libyan death threat, to work on Sen...
...Packwood originated the legislative strategy...
...Rudman, for example, along with a few others, is already supporting the Fahd plan...
...With the Fahd peace plan and the European push to deal with the PLO, we are getting down to basics...
...This is not just a slick technique...
...The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and AIPAC pursued an active campaign from early in the spring...
...The Jewish community has to look for and promote candidates who are not just well-intentioned, but who also know the issues and are motivated to work...
...Later, on the day of the vote, Howard Baker would provide Bander space in his own Majority Leader's suite just off the Senate floor...
...The corporations played on this fear among wavering Senators, laundering their cowardice by defining it as pragmatism...
...My response was: We weren't sure until the last week that we would lose...
...Politicians are besieged by demands...
...that without the F-15s, the Saudis would not support the then-uncompleted Sadat peace initiative, dooming it to failure...
...The Administration could not justify the outright sale of the AWACS system to Saudi Arabia when we had not sold it to our NATO allies, nor could it explain how Saudi Arabia could protect the system from Soviet agents when it could not protect itself or how the Administration could guarantee continuing American control and access to the AWACS when there were no formal The opponents of the AWACS sale clearly won the debate ori the merits...
...His decision has reportedly damaged him politically at home, and one has to wonder why politicians will accept so much political damage just to do the "statesmanlike thing" on an Israel-related issue...
...On the AWACS issue, it was a natural: the primary risk of the AWACS sale was in fact to the U.S., through the threat of compromised technology...
...Working with Reps...
...Alan Cranston devoted himself to this issue...
...The strategy this time was based on the assumption that the Administration would be unlikely to compromise unless it were faced with a certain loss...
...The Administration suggested the AWACS was a sitting duck...
...The AWACS battle was also joined because initial opposition to the transaction was even more widespread than was opposition to the F-15s...
...Why did he take the risk then and not now...
...Yet I think they will be wrong...
...He spent day and night on the phone, cajoling his colleagues and working the press...
...The President's victory began a week later, when he put James Baker in charge of the salvage operation...
...Jepsen had been Out Front, as the expression goes, working on his colleagues while proclaiming that a religious motivation as a born-again Christian was responsible for his position...
...This was an inspired approach, for the letters, colloquys and resolutions progressively sensitized the Congress and press to both the issues at hand and the weakness of the President's case...
...After the Senate vote, no more than a dozen Senators left the chamber convinced that the sale had been justified on its merits...
...The petro-diplomatic complex was represented by former State Department officials who blanketed the Congress (particularly former ambassadors to Saudi Arabia...
...and any attempt on his part to assume a visible role of leadership on Israel's behalf is likely to be shrugged off...
...it reached out effectively to the non-Jewish community for alliances...
...But politics is the art of the possible— and the chutzpadik...
...What happened, ultimately, was that a few key people folded under the pressure, and by their example made it easier for others to tender their support to the President...
...Too many Senators simply did not want to take responsibility for blocking the sale and incurring the wrath of the Saudis...
...it was well organized...
...Jepsen remains a self-professed friend of Israel, and no one is about to tell him not to work on Israel-related issues in the future...
...AARON ROSENBAUM The campaign to block the sale of the AWACS radar and command plane to Saudi Arabia was all those adjectives we normally squander on smaller things: Momentous...
...It cannot do so without inflicting damage on itself...
...As Kasten put it, he felt that sponsorship of the resolution of disapproval meant an obligation to vote for it...
...Carter and his Defense Secretary, Harold Brown, felt no compunctions about discarding their solemn 1978 assurances to the Congress when, shortly after the 1980 election, they moved favorably on the Saudi request for F-15 enhancements...
...The threat to Israel was clear: if the 1978 F-15s symbolized a change in the U.S.-Israeli "special relationship," then the AWACS signaled the start of a quasi-European American policy in the Middle East, with the United States actively undercutting Israel's technological advantage over Arab military forces...
...One Senator was told by a corporate VP, "I don't care if the Russians get their hands on those planes...
...Boeing, General Electric and more than a thousand subcontractors weighed in with letters, calls and visits on behalf of the package...
...Former Vice PresiThere is something perverse in the fact that the AWACS is Sadat's putative memorial...
...Yet the opponents of the AWACS package had good answers to these pitches...
...But that was all the effect the assassination really had...
...Better that those who reviled him in life should be asked to emulate his example...
...The idea of a Saudi AWACS sale was conceived within the Air Force by Maj...
...If the Administration won the vote, then it would have to test the commitments made on behalf of the Saudis with even greater severity—either that, or acknowledge its unwillingness to call the Saudis to task...
...Moreover, we had to take a stand, not just because everyone expected us to, but also because it was important to win the intellectual battle, if nothing else...
...The AWACS outcome supposedly proved that it is not possible to defeat both a President pleading for personal support and the confluence of corporations, bureaucracies and petrodollars...
...it did not slacken at the end...
...Obviously, the appeal by this persuasive President was the most important...
...Worse, they had spurned American policy, even undermined it, and been rewarded...
...Jackson, in particular, though pressed hard by Boeing, played a central role in debunking the Administration's dissimulations...
...They are seen as a godsend, a sugar daddy who will underwrite weapon development costs, acquisition costs and overruns...
...Rudman did the most damage by far, scorning the Jewish community and proclaiming to his colleagues that this was an opportunity for him to demonstrate that he is not beholden to any ethnic group...
...The origin of the sale also illustrated some basic facts about the way things happen in Washington...
...Warren Rudman (Republican, New Hampshire), Sen...
...So are the oil companies and the contractors hungry for business in the Arab world...
...The same thing was said of the F-15s...
...The Jewish community has a responsibility to work through the answer with Cohen and with itself...
...Edward Zorinsky (Democrat, Nebraska) and Sen...
...This was the first major test of AIPAC's new executive director, Tom Dine, and much of his staff...
...By the time the Carter Administration's unwillingness to consider any compromise was revealed, Carter had wooed away Sen...
...Richard Allen and his assistants, Gen...
...The intensity of their lobbying may well—as they claimed—have reflected a desire to protect presidential prerogatives from Congressional influence, but it is difficult to believe that they would have been quite so zealous, and so nasty, had their target not included the Jews...
...we should also remind the Administration that it is bound by its own word to gain a Saudi response for the AWACS, and to assure that Israel is not threatened by the planes...
...Some special notes might go to Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan), Claiborne Pell (Democrat, Rhode Island), Joe Biden, Howard Metzenbaum (Democrat, Ohio), Henry Jackson (Democrat, Washington) and Daniel Moynihan (Democrat, New York) for providing leadership and expending the extra measure of energy and time...
...Some interface between researchers and leaders of ADL and AJC and senators who saw the truly bad stuff during the AWACS campaign might offer long term benefits...
...Cohen's decision is particularly troubling, since Cohen is not only one of Israel's best friends, but a politically astute legislator with presidential aspirations...
...Zorinsky said that he had been under attack from the former head of the Strategic Air Command, and that a vote against AWACS would play into his hands, and increase his chances of beating Zorinksy for the Senate seat in 1982...
...Schweitzer and Admiral Nance, along with Richard Burt of the State Department's Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs were unrestrained in their lobbying tactics...
...Though targeted by the White House for attacks that claimed that he was more of a Zionist than a Republican, he acted throughout with dignity and vision...
...Jewish reticence in this regard is self-defeating...
...It was as if nothing had changed since 1978, nothing had been learned...
...The Jews, a people defined by their money and sense of historical purpose, will have an opportunity and an obligation to show how wrong they are...
...When Jepsen first entered the Senate, he told Jews with whom he met that he wanted to be a champion of Israel in the mold of Hubert Humphrey...
...it used its contacts well...
...After 1978,1 was often asked: "Why did the Jewish community go ahead with the F-15 fight if you knew you were going to lose...
...Mathias applauded ethnic diversity but suggested in a Foreign Policy article that ethnic lobbying can work against America's interests and might elicit a backlash...
...To refuse to join the fray would be the surest way to encourage even greater aggressiveness among the Arabists, the bureaucratic opponents of Israel and the corporate advocates of the politics of oil...
...The Reagan Administration would have to put the commitments it made on behalf of the Saudis to the test...
...The President's press conference comment that it was not the business of other nations to determine American foreign policy was a horrendous gaff (courtesy of the National Security Council), precisely because it adumbrated anti-Semitic slurs...
...Edward Zorinsky and Sen...
...The best way to channel good intentions is to tie them to some positive act with which the member of Congress feels comfortable...
...David Durenburger (Republican, Minnesota) and Sen...
...But the AWACS was an open provocation...
...This means personalizing anti-Semitism...
...Both Israel and the Jews are "owed" now by the Administration and the Congress...
...As noted before, many Senators felt uncomfortable about assuming responsibility for blocking the sale...
...Working through a pro-Saudi lobby comprised of Air Force officers within the Pentagon who are attached to the top echelons of the military, Buck won bureaucratic allies...
...Alan Cranston (Democrat, California), Sen...
...Any legislative battle provides the opportunity to say thank you, and expressions of gratitude should be tendered to these men and every Senator who stood the heat and voted against the sale...
...AIPAC demonstrated that it is a modern lobby, using both the traditional and high technology approaches...
...Important...
...Journalists whose cynicism towards pro-Israeli lobbying permeates their reporting clucked in indignation that the specter of anti-Semitism was sullying our body politic...
...Enormous time and energy and political credit were invested in what, on the face of it, proved to be a losing effort...
...Three days after he escaped an assassin's bullets, a poorly briefed Ronald Reagan approved the sale of five AWACS and enhancements for Saudi Arabia's F-15s...
...Together, they blitzed the White House staff and circumvented normal reviews by both the State Department and the White House's Office of Congressional Liaison...
...Conversations with dozens of people in Washington convince one that Jepsen's defection was the critical blow against the resolution...
...Alliances initiated during 1978 were expanded, especially among Christian groups and organized labor...
...Sen...
...Opponents pointed out that the murder demonstrated precisely the instability in the region, which made the provision of first line weapons so ill-advised...
...Roger Jepsen of Iowa, publicly renounced six months of pronouncement and lobbying and switched...
...They were aided by the fact that the National Security Council, normally charged with coordinating policy between the various bureaucracies, was hamstrung by White House restrictions and the marginal gamesmanship of its head, Richard V. Allen...
...Rudy Boschwitz proved the value of an informed and devoted Jewish Senator...
...It revealed some continuing realities and reiterated some old lessons...
...Hence their efforts throughout the spring of 1978 were aimed at working out a deal with the Carter White House for significantly fewer F-15s...
...That the Carter Administration initiated the AWACS transaction at the very time Jimmy Carter was appealing for Jewish votes demonstrates (as if anyone needed a reminder) the duplicity basic to that Administration...
...It also encompassed three former Presidents of the United States...
...Simultaneously, it must start cutting definitive deals with both congressmen and candidates...
...William Cohen (Republican, Maine) to oppose the sale were more damaging than other defections, Jepsen's aside...
...In the face of this unparalleled display of corporate power, certain members of the Senate derogated their own constitutional power...
...It could also be argued (and was) that this was a unique litmus test...
...The State Department, initially doubtful of the AWACS portion of the package, showed itself to be an institutional good soldier and thereafter gave its full support to the entire deal...
...Fascell, Broomfield, Hamilton, Kemp and O'Neill, they pushed for an early vote in the House, a gambit that put compromise pressure on the White House while upsetting its lobbying effort...
...But the President can only ask for trust so many times, particularly if he fails to show that the trust was not improvidently granted...
...But many believe the conservative Hatch had been a Trojan horse all along, that his defection had been planned to weaken the opposition...
...What about the anti-Semitism...
...The Jewish community, like Israel, cannot afford to pick and choose its friends...
...In 1978, AIPAC and its allies in the Senate—Sen...
...Every other constituency feels entitled to spell out to candidates what it wants in exchange for its support...
...While the Jewish community of Maryland loves Mathias' liberalism, his positions increasingly translate as the de facto disenfranchisement of the Jews in foreign affairs...
...Many members of the Congress who voted for the sale want a reconciliation with the Jewish community...
...It is apparent that one reason for the relative success of the AWACS campaign was the experience gained from the F-15 fight of '78...
...What I'm talking about is jobs...
...Zorinsky and Cohen changed their votes only at the end...
...Simpson is one of the Senate's good guys, and a man with a considered and rooted support of Israel...
...And those who voted the other way notice such outpourings, too...
...Orrin Hatch (Republican, Utah) and Sen...
...Frank Church and Sen...
...The industrial-political complex brought together the dozens of companies with business interests in Saudi Arabia, plus the Republican party apparat (spurred into action by Lyn Nofziger...
...Both went public in their condemnation of the excesses of ethnic lobbying...
...The Jewish community knew what sort of arguments to expect, what sort of parliamentary maneuvers might be tried, what kind of media campaign might be waged...
...But it was an unusual convergence of circumstances that made the President look like a wizard...
...The fears Cohen voiced were heart-felt, though fellow Senators mocked him for covering up his "sell-out" after he left the Senate floor...
...In a sense, the process that led to the proposing of the AWACS sale made the campaign to stop the sale inevitable...
...It doesn't do much good to bemoan corporate influence when the abdication of responsibility by some members of the Senate has made that influence possible...
...It is the voice of the military-industrial complex that speaks here...
...The Administration tuned its lobbying on him to raise these concerns...
...And in this dichotomy there lies a clue: It is apparent that the Jewish community has to turn both anti-Semitism and Christian concern about anti-Semitism back on themselves...
...This is a pattern of behavior with which Jews are familiar, but the vener-ability of the syndrome does not ameliorate its effect...
...One would be remiss not to note some lobbying opponents who did not play fair...
...Cranston increasingly emerges as the inheritor of the mantle of principle in the conduct of foreign policy—the mantle William Fulbright arrogated for himself but never deserved...
...Church and Javits failed to realize in 1978 how intent the Carter Administration was on forcing a confrontation with the Jewish community and Israel's supporters in Congress...
...A lobbying campaign is never complete until those who have stuck out their necks are thanked and rewarded...
...Non-Jews can, it seems, tolerate nonspecific anti-Semitism, but their anger is aroused when a public figure is guilty of it...
...Cohen, a More than any other Senator, Packwood assumed the dirty work of being point man...
...The anti-Semites, the real ones in the corporation and public life, have to be targeted...
...Rudman and Zorinsky are Jewish...
...Many Americans thought the Saudis undeserving...
...His defection after Sadat's death hurt, primarily because it was unquestionably done for honorable reasons...
...Historians will almost certainly trace the beginning of the President's victory to October 6, when Sadat was assassinated...
...The AWACS outcome supposedly proved that it is not possible to defeat both a President pleading for personal support and the confluence of corporations, bureaucracies and petrodollars...
...they led the political and economic boycott of Egypt after the peace treaty was signed...
...it would unbalance the region as a whole...
...Some members of the Senate, however, were less forthright...
...He was the one who shot down the President's call for congressional non-interference in foreign policy by reminding the President to his face that his position had been different during the debate on the Panama Canal Treaty and the Salt II debate...
...Jones sold the Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, on the necessity of a quick and favorable decision on an AWACS sale to Saudi Arabia...
...They have a long memory for those who take the time to articulate and demonstrate their gratitude...
...Jacob Javits— acted on a different assumption, one that derived from the 1976 imbroglio over the sale of missiles to Saudi Arabia...
...What is scary is that the Mathiases and McCloskeys are having an effect...
...Howell Heflin (Democrat, Alabama) were particularly impressive in their pursuit of a principled resolution of the problem...
...The intellectual case for the Saudis is more vulnerable than ever before, and the Administration has positioned itself to further test Arabist biases—if it wants to...
...It lost, but not as badly as in 1978, nor for any reason within its ability to control...
...What else could account for citations of "changing circumstances" by officials of the White House to explain their decision to go ahead with the sale...
...He became involved because he was concerned about the transfer of American technology...
...Yet there is no substantive difference between a policy that is ambivalent and one that steadily ignores its own professed underpinnings...
...Moreover, opposition to the AWACS sale could credibly be pursued purely in terms of promoting America's interests: AWACS would threaten America's own security...
...Javits to adopt a more realistic and aggressive approach...
...But Senators talked about anti-Semitism more this time...
...He played it straight, refusing to support the sale when the President did not provide adequate assurances of joint control...
...consulting firm specializing in political and military affairs...
...So a dose of afterthought is useful here, to tote up what was really won and lost, and to ruminate over lessons for the present and the future...
...former secretaries of State and Defense who willingly posed at the White House and whose calls and visits were directed by White House advisor James Baker...
...Dutton and the corporate types, particularly the oil companies, parroted the Arab line that Jews dominate foreign policy making and that the U.S...
...In the end, the weakness of the Administration's case—the fact that there was no case at all for the AWACS, save that certain bureaucracies wanted to sell it, the Saudis wanted to buy it and the President had promised it— was revealed by one simple reality: the Administration stopped discussing the facts of the sale altogether...
...What I'm talking about is jobs...
...If the Administration lost the vote and the Saudis took revenge, then the case for their undying alliance with the U.S...
...Nixon's comments blaming Begin and the American Jewish community as the sole obstacles to the sale were as openly anti-Semitic as any made during September and October...
...The sale had become a political test, something to do for the President...
...as chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, it was claimed he was motivated only by his appetite for Jewish campaign contributions...
...But the White House effort, led by Richard Allen, was divided against itself, arrogant and halfhearted...
...its own lobbyists discounted such assurances in appearances on Capitol Hill and on television...
...It's not their fighting ability that attracts, it is their willingness to pay billions for weapons...
...The AWACS campaign paved the way to broader ties to labor (with the coalition for strategic stability in the Middle East) and religious groups, (with Christians United for American Security and the Christian Leadership Conference for Israel), as well as to national security types that now have a better appreciation of the value of Israel...
...expert witnesses shot this down...
...What else could account for no less a tough guy than the Secretary of State telling the Foreign Relations Committee that commitments to a foreign government supercede those made to the Congress...
...it is right, it is principled, and it is a natural weapon against charges of dual loyalty...
...Jesse Helms (Republican, North Carolina) showed that he is everything we fear: he ,\ repeatedly told colleagues that if the sale were defeated, there would be gas lines in six months, and you know who we would have to blame...
...If there was any weakness in the Jewish community's lobbying, it came from those areas where the Jewish population is sparse...
...I don't care if the Russians get their hands on those planes...
...What is interesting is that the Administration would use Sadat's death to aid the cause of an Arab nation that had done its best to undercut Sadat's peace campaign...
...They couched their lobbying in terms of America's interests (read Mobil's advertisements), but towards the end, they acknowledged that it was a matter of jobs and investments...
...New key contacts who had been discovered during the F-15 battle were in place and better educated in the facts of the issue and in lobbying techniques...
...that the sale would pave the way for Saudi military cooperation with the United States...
...The Administration did nothing to discourage the fear, stressing that arms sales—whatever the law says—are really the sole province of the President...
...All of them lobbied, and lobbied hard, for the Saudi AWACS...
...Carter generally stuck to the issues, but he seized upon Sadat's death to push for AWACS, sleazily asserting that Begin ought not to have come to the Sadat funeral since his presence discouraged "moderate" Arab leaders from attending...
...This was the man who had stood before the AIPAC policy conference in May and sworn to oppose AWACS as a dire threat to Israel...
...The Saudis raised the price of oil 250...
...The Saudis were encouraged in their intransigence...
...Actually, it was an easier endeavor than the campaign against the Saudi F-15s...
...The Jewish community in particular felt obligated to fight the AWACS...
...Moreover, the step-by-step approach wore down the resistance of Republicans (particularly those in the House) to the idea of alignment against a Republican President...
...A number of Senators said that they were voting for the AWACS because they were convinced it posed no threat to Israel...
...Their sole allegiance is to the bottom line...
...The announcement of the sale and the legislative battle that followed affected the Jewish community as few events have since Israel's inception...
...Nixon was reliably reported to have been encouraged to make his statement by—who else?—the NSC...
...Sen...
...It should be noted that AIPAC's executive director at the time, Morris Amitay, correctly assessed the Carter Administration's duplicitous intentions, but was unable to persuade Sen...
...They defended a position consistent with the best interests and ideals of the United States...
...The performance of these men proves the accuracy of the observation that those who are the most enthusiastic supporters of Israel when addressing Jewish audiences or campaigning for Jewish votes invariably become "even handed" when they want to appear "presidential...
...Ending the control the Saudis have over American policy is an incremental process, and the closeness of the AWACS vote is evidence that the war of ideas is progressing...
...But if the Administration capitulates to Saudi threats, or does nothing but press Israel, it now does so in full sight of the American people, the Congress and our friends and adversaries abroad...
...Too many defense types have become enamoured of the Saudis...
...Here, in the absence of war, the corporate-bureaucratic mind finds an utterly satisfying rationale, one wholly removed from the reality of foreign policy...
...He argued that without the approval of the transaction, he would be unable effectively to conduct foreign policy...
...They traded letters...
...Larry Pressler and a number of others...
...Ford's public posture was more dignified, but his private lobbying of Senators was occasionally characterized by entreaties not to "let the Jews win on this...
...David Jones, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a political general and man whose record shows a greater concern with empire-building and contractor-cosseting than with the security of the nation...
...The anti-Semitism wasn't there, yet it was...
...When Jepsen went, he took Republican Sen...
...But the opponents of the sale hardly come away empty-handed and defeated...
...It has been seven years since the first override provisions were passed in the Arms Export Control Act...
...The transaction will pose a real threat both to the United States and to Israel...
...The Administration promised that certain state of the art systems would not be added to the "stripped down" planes the Saudis would receive...
...It was almost a fulfillment of Lenin's prediction: "The capitalists will sell us the very rope with which we hang them...
...Corporate lobbying was intense...
...hence defeat of the sale was the goal...
...they refused to join the Camp David peace process...
...Of others, a few simple points...
...It was an amazing statement even on the facts, given that Israel had ordered its embassy in Washington to be uncooperative with people seeking help on the AWACS issue, while Saudi Arabia had Prince Bandar al-Sultan camped out at the Fairfax Hotel...
...The momentum had shifted in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the opponents of the F-15 deal were unable to hold a majority on the floor of the Senate...
...His last article in moment, "Woo and Woe On The Campaign Trail," was in the January-February 1980 issue...
...They had been provided with a system not even Egypt, not even Israel, not even NATO had been able to acquire outright...
...Too many Jews vitiated their impact by not following AIPAC's lead, instead talking only about Israel...
...This short voyage through the bureaucratic labyrinth reveals some troubling realities about the power structure in Washington...
...Such is the nature of politics...
...David Boren (Democrat, Oklahoma) to come down on the side of the President...
...Few wanted to take responsibility for undercutting the ability of the President to execute foreign policy, particularly so early in his term...
...Jepsen's move also influenced Sen...
...Saudi Arabia) for the West...
...Reagan the candidate attacked Carter for this inconstancy...
...on lesser matters, it often works...
...It is—or was—simply unheard of for aJeading sponsor of a piece of legislation to utterly defect and join the opposition, and Jepsen's previous self-righteousness made the impact of it all the worse...
...This was implicit in the tepid statements of many Senators who favored the sale...
...There was a desire to avoid a vote...
...It would have been better, to be sure, had the sale been blocked...
...the Congress has never used them...
...Slade Gorton (Republican, Washington...
...In some ways, the Defense Department has become more of a champion of Israel's enemies than the State Department...
...The AWACS fight demonstrates how vital a few committed legislators are to any lobbying campaign...
...John T. Buck, the Aaron D. Rosenbaum is president of Aaron Rosenbaum and Associates, a Washington D.C...
...It was he who pioneered the canard, "Reagan or Begin...
...The only other weakness that seems apparent was the insistence of some Jews on couching the AWACS issue solely in terms of the threat this sale posed to Israel...
...When the Arabs talk of Jewish "dominance" they see an international cabal of "World Zionsim" at work, ala the Protocols of the Elders of Zion...
...There was a fear of using the provisions of the Arms Export Control Act, which allow the Congress to override weapon sales...
...There are many people in the Pentagon—both civilian and military—who dismiss Israel's strategic value and who believe that Saudi Arabia rather than Egypt is America's most important military ally in the Israelis and American Jews wished to avoid a confrontation with a new and apparently friendly Administration...
...It worked the media with leaks, managed events and sophisticated briefing papers...
...This certainly applies to the aftermath of the AWACS fight...
...in the Senate and in the press, there was fear of a repeat of the Iranian debacle of concern that compromise the AWACS technology would endanger the security of the West...
...Joe Biden (Democrat, Delaware) dissected and rebutted Cohen's concerns on the floor of the Senate, but he didn't change Cohen's mind...
...Since a victory for opponents was in hand on Friday, October 23, and was lost Wednesday, October 28, the turning point in the campaign took place in the four days before the vote...
...The Jewish community thus opposed the AWACS sale because it wanted to and was expected to by both opponents and allies...
...It should be remembered that seven years ago, Cohen's was one of the swing votes on the House Judiciary Committee cast in favor of the impeachment of Richard Nixon...
...Anti-Semitism in America is still not polite, and as David Borac, columnist for the Jewish Press, says, exposing the haters is still the best means of cutting off their political influence...
...The ADL and the American Jewish Committee both have projects under way exploring corporate anti-Semitism and the relationship between Arab investment and the harassment of American Jews...
...The military-industrial complex was represented by the Air Force, as detailed earlier, and the military contractors...
...That is a lesson that will not be lost on Jordan, and Egypt, and Pakistan, and the Soviets...
...Yet this is hardly a convincing proof, given that only a handful of Senators made the difference...
...Concomitantly, the willingness of Americans^no patsies—to meet Saudi litmus tests and mollify Saudi demands decreases with each instance...
...Few saw it but everyone talked about it...
...dent Mondale's work against the sale struck most observers as transparently self-serving, since Mon-dale had been the Carter administration's most aggressive lobbyist during the 1978 F-15 fight, bullying Senator Muriel Humphrey mercilessly...
...This is a useful approach...
...But investigation reveals that this was a rumor started by the White House lobbyists to discredit Kasten and Heinz, precisely because they were firm in their opposition to the President...
...The Battle Over the AWACS was a good fight...
...But his motivations were significantly narrower than those of other Senators concerned with the technology issue, such as Henry Jackson and Dale Bumpers (Democrat, Arkansas...
...American supporters of Israel have increasingly learned to lobby on the basis of America's national interest...
...Jepsen, Rudman, Zorinsky and Cohen may be the "heavies" of the vote, but it would be wrong to remember them more richly than the heroes, those who fought the good fight and came so close to victory...
...Here again, the making of campaign donations confers a responsibility to try to cut a definitive promise...
Vol. 1 • December 1981 • No. 7
