It didn’t draw much attention at the time, but The Wall Street Journal reported last Thursday that Pentagon plans for reducing U.S. forces in the Middle East, in favor of redeploying much of it to address the greater threats it saw coming from China and Russia, have been “upended” by the growing need to keep Israel’s back after the Oct. 7 attack.
The Journal reported that the new reality the U.S. faces is that Israel, a nation that has long prized its independence, is now embroiled in conflicts on multiple fronts and has found itself increasingly dependent on the U.S. military. This has forced hard choices between spending on current needs and planning for future needs.
According to the report, this has led to tension between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Israeli counterparts over the scope, magnitude and characteristic “close to the vest” approach of the Israeli operations against Iran and its proxies. While there is certainly still strong general American support for Israel, including the announcement that the U.S. is sending Israel a state-of-the-art missile defense system – the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD – the looming crunch forcing the U.S. to make hard choices between its own security needs and Israel’s has now become a real concern.
To be sure, a militarily and economically strong Israel has long been vital to American security interests. However, the concerns we are hearing about the U.S. having to make those choices suggest that they may very soon become a political issue and create momentum for at least conditioning U.S. aid to Israel on Israel’s cooperation with the U.S. vision of its own security interests.
And the potential for providing even more fodder for the antisemites always looms large. Yet in spite of everything, it should be clear from recent events that Israel provides much of the glue that deters the Arab world from turning on itself, a key U.S. interest.
