Kennan on U.S.-Israel Ties

Via Justin Logan, the late George Kennan expressed his concerns about foisting concessions on Israel in pursuit of peace in the 1970s:

But we should not try to tell them, or the Arabs, what the terms of a settlement should be. It is they, after all, not we, who would have to live with any settlement that might be achieved. Many of us can think, I am sure, of concessions which, in our personal opinion, it would be wise for the Israelis to make; but for the United States government to take the responsibility of urging them to make such concessions is quite another matter. There are many who would think, for example, that it would be wise for them to give up the Golan Heights. They may of course be right. But how can we be sure? What would our responsibility be if we urged this upon them and it turned out to be disastrous?

There are two predominant schools of thought in Washington with respect to Israel and the peace process. The first is that the U.S. should generously subsidize Israel and let Israel do what it wants. The second, now predominant in the Obama administration, is that the U.S. should generously subsidize Israel and tell it what to do.

Neither option strikes me as particularly satisfactory. We shouldn't be telling Israel what to do, but nor should we be subsidizing behavior with which we disagree. Iran is very illustrative of an issue where the two countries have divergent interests and yet, as I wrote earlier, one party is going to be made to suffer. Either Israel will have to accept greater insecurity and concede a nuclear Iran, or the U.S. will have to live with the dangers of Iranian reprisals if Israel strikes.

It would be far better for both parties if the client-patron relationship evolved into something more flexible.