Israel and NATO:
A Good Idea Whose Time Will Never Come

Josef Joffe

BESA Center Perspectives Papers No. 77, May 25, 2009

www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/perspectives77.html

Executive Summary: While Israel is an ideal partner for the European Union
and NATO, this will not happen for various reasons. Israel will lose
important freedom of action while the EU/NATO are reluctant to expand into
the Middle East.

Israel: The Ideal NATO Partner

In an ideal world, Israel would be part of both the EU and NATO for many
reasons. On strictly formal grounds, Israel belongs in the EU because it is
the only country in the Middle East and North Africa that fulfills all the
EU criteria: It is the only country with a stable democracy, rule of law, a
liberal (limited) state, and no capital punishment.

Economically, it is a country that has jumped straight from an agrarian to a
high-tech service industry without passing through the intermediate stage of
industrialization - which is a unique success story in the history of
development.

Israel's per capita income puts it very close to the big Mediterranean
countries, Spain ($28,000) and Italy ($32,000), and it dwarfs that of Poland
($15,000) and Portugal ($21,000). Israel's technology is more sophisticated
than some sectors of the big European countries, notably avionics,
biotechnology and software development.

Israel would also make a good military partner for NATO, given an army that,
man for man, could beat any European force. The numbers are striking: Israel
has 3,500 MBTs compared to France's 637 and Germany's 1,400. Israel boasts
435 combat aircraft, beating France (261) and Germany (298). This hardware
is generated by a population that is less than one-tenth of Germany.

In geopolitical terms, Israel would be a god-sent for the West, given that
the greater Middle East will be the most conflict-rich strategic environment
of the 21st century. Even with Iran on the march, Israel possesses military
primacy in the Middle East, especially given its non-declared nuclear strike
force.

In other words, Israel would offer precisely what the West needs as it looks
at the "clash of civilizations" that is the Arab-Islamic world: the best and
most well-equipped army; a sophisticated economy, especially in the armament
sector; and by far the highest level of political development.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Considering cost-benefit ratios, what would be in it for Israel? What would
be in it for the West?

If Israel were a member of NATO, it would be part of the most powerful
military bloc in the world. NATO's military has outlasted all predictions of
its imminent demise, and has been able to project its forces half-way around
the world, not just to Bosnia, but also to Afghanistan. Membership would
confer a strong quantum of deterrence, and of course add enormously to
Israel's defense capabilities, assuming that NATO would fight for Israel in
the hour of need.

Politically, the benefits would be just as impressive. Israel-in-NATO
implies an end to the endemic threat of isolation in the community of
nations. Given Israel's encirclement by hostile states on three sides, NATO
would provide a distant, but sturdy home of legitimacy.

Joining the EU would be advantageous for both sides. Both partners offer the
same level of economic development, with Israel providing the EU with
everything from avocados and bikinis to anti-missile defenses and bio-med
technology.

Realities

The real question is whether the union will happen, above and beyond the
association agreements in place.

The EU
First, for those countries that oppose Turkish membership, and that number
has been growing since Erdogan's ascent to power and the re-Islamization of
his country ever since, Israel would offer a classic additional argument: If
we let in Israel, how can we deny entry to Turkey? Ergo, no to Israel. Or:
If Israel, we must let in Palestine as well. But Palestine, even if it
became a state, would not meet political and economic criteria. Hence, no to
Israel again.

Second, there are those traditionally pro-Arab countries in Europe,
especially on the Mediterranean, that would cry out: "No, that will ruin our
relationship with the Arab and North African world. To protect that
relationship, we must not take in Israel, as economically advantageous as it
may be."

Third, a more general argument would center on geography, even though it
does not carry much water in the age of jet cargo planes and real-time
delivery of digital products by the Internet. This would be the argument of
contiguity: The EU has to be a seamless, contiguous entity - no further than
3,000 km from Berlin and 4,000 km from London.

Does Israel really need the EU, apart from the legitimacy that membership in
the most prestigious club in the world would confer?

Even without formal membership, Israel is one of the biggest EU trading
partners in the Euromed area, with total trade with the EU amounting to more
than ?27 billion in 2008. The EU is Israel's largest market for exports and
its second largest source of imports after the US. Israel is part of the
Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, which seeks to expand free trade across the
Mediterranean, with the ultimate aim of creating a Euro-Mediterranean Free
Trade Area by 2010.

NATO
Upon cool deliberation, the answer would have to be that Israel-in-NATO
services neither side's best interests.

Let's start with a conceptual point. Any alliance must crack the classical
dilemma between abandonment and entrapment. Preventing abandonment in the
hour of need calls for maximal entanglement, which makes sure that my
partners will fight on my side when I am attacked. Entrapment poses the
opposite imperative: I do not want to be drawn into a conflict not my own.

Now assume a rational, even-handed NATO leader. Would he want to get himself
in a situation where he had to fight Israel's wars? True, on the asset side,
Israel would be the strongest military force between Beirut and Tehran, but
it would also be the one and only NATO country at the center of almost all
regional conflicts in the richest threat environment of the world.

Israel has fought more wars than any Western country in the postwar period -
6, 7, or 8, depending on how you are counting. Most of these wars (the
exceptions are the Yom Kippur War preceded by the War of Attrition) have
been offensive wars, at the time and place of Israel's choosing.

Therefore, the entrapment risk in unwanted conflicts is statistically very
high. On the other hand, the gains for NATO are not dramatically clear.
The threat to Israel is only indirectly related to threats to Europe and the
United States. What Euro-politico, who has to look out for his country's
interest first, would entangle himself on the side of Israel - even if he is
favorably disposed to the Jewish State?

His fear of entrapment will surely overwhelm the advantages of Israeli NATO
membership, especially since Israel's history and vulnerable strategic
position tell him that Israel will not wait to absorb the first blow and
thus has a strong incentive to go first in a major crisis. With its survival
always at stake, Israel will not wait for a green light by the NATO Council.

It follows that without a seamless threat, there will not be a seamless
alliance. This will change only when the threat to Israel is more or less
congruent with the threat to the Alliance, that is, if a hegemonial
pretender like Iran had designs not only against Israel, but also against
the northern side of the Mediterranean. This is where Israel as a critical
asset might outweigh the risk it might pose as a tail that wags the NATO
dog.

NATO membership is not in Israel's best interests, even though an increasing
number of Israeli leaders and commentators argue in favor of such
membership. To explain why Israel's interests might not be well served in
NATO, let us go back to the abandonment-entrapment dilemma that each and
every alliance poses.

To minimize the entrapment risk, NATO would only extend membership if it
came with the highest degree of control over Israel's strategic choices. If
I am in on the crash, I want to be in on the take-off, is the rule here.

Is it in Israel's interest to accept such chains? If your survival is always
at stake, you do not want to entrust your fate to a cast of thirty, each one
with a veto power. Nor to a number of states that are more sympathetic to
the Arabs than to yourself.

In short, the gain in deterrence and defense capabilities do not outweigh
the existential risk of entrusting your security to a very heterogeneous
alliance that encompasses some key members who do not share your basic
interests.

To elucidate the abandonment-entrapment dilemma, West Germany might serve as
a paradigmatic example. West Germany had a strategic problem during the Cold
War that resembled Israel's. It had revisionist interests toward the East
(reunification) and was at the same time the most vulnerable member of NATO.
Situated on the frontline of the Cold War, West Germany was the pre-ordained
battlefield and victim.

Bonn had to assure the allies that it would not entrap them into its own
revisionist conflicts. It also had to extract an iron-clad assurance from
them that it would not be left alone in case the Soviets attacked westward.
How was the dilemma solved?

To reassure its allies, West Germany renounced all strategic autonomy,
integrating its forces completely into NATO. West Germany did not even have
its own general staff. In exchange, the Federal Republic received the
strongest possible guarantees by demanding and gaining a vast Allied
presence on its soil. This was the "layer-cake" along the Federal Republic's
eastern border, consisting mostly of American and British forces and
complete with nuclear weapons. This multinational deployment (about one
million men) signaled to the Soviets: If you attack West Germany, you attack
the entire alliance - hundreds of thousands of Allied troops.

Would Israel want such a NATO force? Not only would Israel not want this
force on its territory, but it would also be against such a force in the
Gaza Strip and the West Bank. These troops form a cover for Arab militants
who will not be deterred by these forces, and will hide behind them when
Israel strikes back. Hizballah in southern Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza have
always positioned themselves next to UN installations to draw Israeli fire
on UN schools or refugee camps. UNIFIL was no obstacle for Hizballah, but a
major problem for the IDF, which had to be careful not to attack UNIFIL
positions whenever it invaded the south.

Conclusions

The upshot, then, is that tighter bonds between the EU and Israel serve the
interests of both sides, but formal membership would create more costs than
profits. Increased, but sub-formal cooperation with NATO adds legitimacy for
Israel and a slight amount of deterrence. Full membership is not in the
interest of either side. For NATO, full membership is conceivable only if
Israel gives up all strategic independence, something not in Israel's vital
interests.

For the time being, Israel's strategic interests are best served by the
implicit alliance with the United States, which offers the best of all
possible worlds: The US is the security lender of the last resort, but the
"interest" Israel has to pay for that credit line, as measured in strategic
options foregone, is tolerable. Each side knows that it can count on the
other in extreme situations. Keeping one's distance adds to both sides'
options. This informal, but very intimate alliance improves America's margin
of political maneuver in the Arab world, while maximizing Israel's strategic
autonomy against it.

It is difficult to see how dependence on European countries could beat the
deal that joins America and Israel by dint of the strongest glue there is in
the affairs of nations: mutual strategic interest.

Dr. Josef Joffe is editor of Die Zeit, senior fellow at the Freeman-Spogli
Institute for International Studies, and Abramowitz fellow at the Hoover
Institution, both at Stanford University. This perspective is based on his
lecture at the BESA-ADL international conference on "US-Israeli Relations"
on May 6-7, 2009.