John F. Kennedy & the Politics of Arms Sales to Israel

151 Pages·2002·3.339 MB·English

by  Abraham Ben-Zvi

JOHN F. KENNEDY
AND THE
POLITICS OF ARMS SALES TO ISRAEL
The purpose of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University is, first, to
conduct basic research that meets the highest academic standards on matters related to Israel's
national security as well as Middle East regional and international security affairs. The Center
also aims to contribute to the public debate and governmental deliberation of issues that are
- or should be - at the top of Israel's national security agenda.
The Jaffee Center seeks to address the strategic community in Israel and abroad, Israeli
policymakers and opinion-makers and the general public.
The Center relates to the concept of strategy in its broadest meaning, namely the complex
of processes involved in the identification, mobilization and application of resources in peace
and war, in order to solidify and strengthen national and international security.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
AND THE
POLITICS OF ARMS
SALES TO ISRAEL
ABRAHAM BEN-ZVI
Tel Aviv University
FRANK CASS
LONDON·PORTLAN~OR
First published in 2002 in Great Britain by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS
2 Park Square, Milton Park,
Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and in the United States ofA merica by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS
270 Madison Ave,
New York NY 10016
TIansferred to Digital Printing 2005
Website: www.frankcass.com
Copyright © 2002 Jaffee Center
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Ben-Zvi, Abraham
John F. Kennedy and the politics of arms sales to Israel. -
(Cass series. Israeli history, politics and society)
I. Arms transfers - Political aspects - United States
2. United States - Foreign relations - Israel 3. Israel
Foreign relations - United States 4. United States - Foreign
relations - 1961-1963 5. United States - Politics and
government-1961-1963
I. Title
327.7'3'05694'09046
ISBN 0-7146-5269-5 (cloth)
ISSN 1368-4795
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ben-Zvi, Abraham.
John F. Kennedy and the politics of arms sales to Israel / Abraham Ben-Zvi.
p. cm. - (Israeli history, politics, and society, ISSN 1368-4795)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-7146-5269-5 (cloth) - ISBN 0-7146-8251-9 (pbk.)
I. United States-Foreign relations-Israel. 2. Israel-Foreign relations-United States.
3. Kennedy, John F. Uohn Fitzgerald), 1917-1963. 4. United States-Politics and
government-1961-1963. 5. United States-Foreign relations-1961-1963. 6. Defense
industries-United States-History-20th century. 7. Arms transfers-United
States-History-20th century. 8. Hawk (Missile)-History. I. Title. II Series.
E183.8.17 B455 2002
382'.4562345194-dc21
2002019201
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into
a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher of
this book.
Typeset in 11.5/ 13pt Ehrhardt by Vitaset, Paddock Wood, Kent
Contents
Foreword
Vll
Preface and Acknowledgements IX
Abbreviations Xl
1 Introduction: The Debate 1
2 The Sale of Arms to Israel, 1953-60: Perceptions and Policies 7
3 The Sale of Arms to Israel, January 1961-August 1962: 33
Perceptions and Policies
4 Essence of Decision: Missiles and Refugees 65
5 Epilogue 121
Selected Bibliography 127
Index 137
To Irith and Doreen
Foreword
The subject of US relations with Israel evokes an extraordinary range
of pleadings and prejudices. Some see US support for the Jewish State
as an 'unnatural' attachment, not explainable by objective American
interests and concerns in the Middle East, and they therefore underline
the role of extraneous influences (especially domestic lobbies). But many
of those who see the relationship more favorably also stress the
importance of subjective factors (in their case shared values or religious
sentiments) that likewise transcend a narrow definition of national
interest. Thus there is a widely-shared assumption, among observers who
agree on little else, that Israel constitutes a special case in US foreign
policy that defies the usual tools of analysis; lost to sight in the heat and
smoke of partisan battle are the everyday questions one would usually ask
in the study of state-to-state relations.
In this murky landscape the recent work of Abraham Ben-Zvi is like
a flash of lightning on a stormy night. Instead of rehashing the old tired
arguments, Ben-Zvi does something that is refreshingly old-fashioned in
a period when fashionable epistomology has enthroned prejudice as
principle: he has gone to the sources to see what the evidence says. As in
his previous book, Decade of Transition, which documented the begin
nings of a more supportive stance in US policy during the Eisenhower
administration, he has combined a historian's meticulous attention to
primary sources with a political scientist's sensitivity to conceptual
implications of the evidence.
Drawing upon presidential archives in the United States and state
archives in Israel, many of them recently declassified, Ben-Zvi docu
ments with exceptional clarity the slow but steady process in which US
policymakers under two Presidents, responding to shifting strategic
realities and perceptions ofA merican interests, came gradually to a policy
of maintaining an arms balance in the Arab-Israeli conflict and a close
VI11 John F. Kennedy and the Politics ofA rms Sales to Israel
working relationship with Israel. Contrary to commonly held opinion,
the major thrust of this shift came before rather than after the 1967 war,
and it was not tied to particular personalities or lobbying campaigns
(though the domestic dimension was, of course, an important aspect of a
complex relationship). In fact, the period in which Israel was viewed
primarily as an unwanted obstacle to pursuit of closer ties with Arab
nations was fairly short-lived, being limited to the first part of the
Eisenhower years. The 'crossing of the Rubicon' to an informal strategic
partnership with Israel came, as Ben-Zvi demonstrates, in the 1962 sale
of Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel by the Kennedy administration.
The key to this decision, which was the beginning of the US arms
relationship with Israel, was a reversal of thinking in the defense com
munity based on the lack of success with earlier approaches to the Middle
East. This made possible a 'winning coalition' of security experts and
domestic political advisors that carried the day over continuing oppo
sition of diplomats and Arabists (a division that has remained in
Washington's bureaucratic politics). But lest this be cast in simple 'pro-'
and 'anti-' language as popular accounts often have it, Ben-Zvi reminds
us that closer relations with Israel were also seen as a means of exerting
greater influence and constraint over Israel actions.
Nothing is ever as simple as it seems, and this study of a complex
tectonic shift in US policy is an illuminating essay in how superpower
policies respond over time to changing realities. To be sure, major powers
do have a margin of choice (and accordingly they do make dumb
mistakes), but generally the basic lines of their policy are not determined
by arbitrary influences or chance factors. This path-breaking study of a
historic passage that has often been misread should serve as a model for
studies of controversial questions.
Professor Alan Dowty
University ofN otre Dame
2002
Preface and Acknowledgments
This manuscript was originally intended to be the first chapter in a
comprehensive book surveying various ways in which successive
American administrations have attempted, since 1962, to use the sale of
arms to Israel as a leverage for extracting from the Israeli recipient a wide
range of political compensations. However, my research at the John F
Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston and the Israeli State Archives
(ISA) in Jerusalem provided me with such a wealth of documentary
material that the planned chapter analyzing the Hawk decision of August
1962, was ultimately expanded into a separate book-size manuscript.
Although various facets of the decision of the Kennedy Administration
to sell Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel have already been alluded to
in chapter 4 of my book, Decade of Transition: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and
the Origins of the American-Israeli Alliance, my renewed encounter with
the documentary material (and particularly with the recently declassified
papers and oral history interviews of Robert W. Komer of the National
Security Council (NSC)) led me to significantly update, modify and
expand the original analysis. Whereas Decade of Transition only briefly
and intermittently touched upon the intragovernmental debate which
preceded the Hawk decision, the present work specifically seeks to
identify all the groups competing for influence and dominance within the
Kennedy Administration in an effort to comprehensively reconstruct and
elucidate the bureaucratic game (both in terms of the respective cognitive
maps of the various individuals and groups involved, and their relative
influence) as well as the actual dynamics of the decision-making process
as it unfolded during the spring and summer of 1962. In addition, while
Decade of Transition explained the formation of the American-Israeli
alliance almost exclusively in terms of the changing strategic landscape
in the Middle East, the following analysis of the Hawk decision will
approach the strategic setting as merely one element in a vastly complex,