The Strategic Irrelevance of Israel And The Geopolitical Importance of The Red Sea

An excerpt from, “The Strategic Irrelevance of Israel” By Graham E. Fuller, The National Interest, No. 22 (Winter 1990/91):

Though I concur with much of Steven Spiegel’s historical analysis, I find myself at odds with his fundamental assertion that Israel is and will remain “a useful ally on a wide range of global and regional problems.” In fact, to my mind, the Iraq-Kuwait crisis has made one thing quite clear: the near strategic irrelevance of Israel to the U.S. when it comes to coping with inter-Arab crises. During the Cold War, America’s strategic alliance with Israel made some sense in view of the possible need to repel either a Soviet invasion of the region, or a Soviet-backed radical Arab move against Israel or its moderate Arab neighbors. The end of the Cold War eliminates that need. Israel cannot—at this stage of its evolution— play a significant role in regional Arab crises. Any Israeli involvement in the politics of the region instantly transforms that issue into a facet of the broader Arab-Israeli conflict—which none of the parties in the region needs.

The Iraqi crisis also reminds us once again that the Palestinian issue is integrally linked with almost any conflict that emerges in the area. Just as the prism of the Cold War warped America’s perception of each conflict around the globe—as we examined its impact on the East-West chess game—so too the Palestinian-Israeli problem warps perception of all events in the Middle East, forcing the U.S. to cope daily with the long shadows of that conflict as we try to forge effective Arab cooperation to meet Iraq’s relentless drive toward regional hegemony.

The third thing the crisis emphasizes is that the Middle East is such a dangerous place that, perhaps more than any other, it requires a concerted international order that can stop not only Saddam, but any future Saddam as well.

Contrary to what Steven Spiegel believes, the strategic interests of no one-notAmerica, Israel, or the Arabs are served over the long run by the maintenance of the U.S.-Israeli strategic alliance. The United States wishes to operate freely, unhindered by Israel’s refusal to consider land for peace—an agenda that drifts ever further away from the rest of the world. Israel itself needs to operate as an independent state in the region, and not as somebody’s strategic instrument. The Arab states need to begin working with each other in the region without constant obsession with the Palestinian problem that so plagues their every move even today. Cutting the binding and usually conflicting ties of the present alliance will better serve everyone’s interest.

Israel is a very important state in terms of its military power, its cultural richness, its democratic traditions, and the skills of its people. Israel, too, must have the right to become a “normal” state in the Middle East; no other development can be so important to its future. It must move to cut the apron strings of reliance on, and identification with, “imperial powers” as it seeks to coexist in the region. In years past, the idea of Israel coexisting with Arab states was not really thinkable. Today that equation is changing. Saddam can thrill a few disenfranchised or desperate Arabs with his saber-rattling, but on the whole the Arab world is not buying. 

Until now, contemporary Middle Eastern politics have been essentially dominated by a “Wild West” approach to regional crisis. When things start getting bad, eventually some “stranger” emerges from the wings—usually America or Israel—to set things right with a lightning war, or invasion, or air strike, or commando raid, or flotilla of warships. When the villain – Qaddafi, the PLO, Syria, Iran, or whoever – has been chastised or smitten, the “lone sheriff’ withdraws from the scene. This kind of ad hoc approach made some sense during the Cold War when few international mechanisms could be made to work. But today the Iraqi crisis seems to herald the first steps toward a more workable international order – one in which reasonable international consensus can be reached to take joint defensive action.

In fact there have been few incidents in history affecting the peace of the Middle East that did not have serious repercussions for the security of the Horn of Africa. Furthermore, because of its geographic location, the Red Sea extends geo-politically beyond its geographic limits, and therefore, it affects the interests of all nations that are connected with it geographically, economically, politically, and strategically. While the Arabs and Israel, Ethiopia and the Sudan, have both national interests and geo-political interests in the Red Sea, Western Europe and North America also have geo-political interests in the Red Sea, arising from their political, economic and strategic stakes. Similarly, the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies have their own interests in the area.

As a result, even ordinary conflicts that take place in the Red Sea littoral can easily become internationalized. Hence, it should not be surprising if some of the major problems of the Horn of Africa, like the Eritrean conflict, have become extensions of the conflicts in the Middle East and of those of East and West.

. . .The Red Sea is a long and narrow body of water that ordinarily separates Northeastern Africa from the Arabian Peninsula. However, authorities in field maintain that it is, in fact, an ocean in the making, which took its present form as a result of the drifting apart of the continents of Africa and Asia. In any case, the Red Sea is connected at its southern end with the Gulf of Aden by the narrow Strait of the Bab-el-Mandeb, which links it with the Indian Ocean. At its northern end, it divides into two narrow bodies, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Gulf of Suez, between which lies the Sinai Peninsula. It is linked with the Mediterranean Sea by the Gulf of Suez.

The Red Sea has a total area of some 170,000 square miles, and stretches about 1,400 miles from Bab-el-Mandeb in the south, to the Gulf of Suez in the north. While it is 220 miles long at its widest point, it is only 17 miles at its narrowest. Much of the bottom is shallow, consisting of broad coastal shelves which are studded with coral reefs and islands. But it also contains deposits of gold, silver, copper, iron ore, lead, chromium, zinc, oil and natural gas.

There are a total of nine countries that surround the Red Sea. Of these, Egypt, the Sudan, Ethiopia, and Djibouti occupy the African side of the sea and Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, North Yemen and South Yemen dominate the Asian side of the Red Sea. For most of these states, the Red Sea is their only outlet to the open waters of the oceans. Those that have alternative means are Egypt, which has 538 miles of coastline on the Mediterranean Sea, Saudi Arabia, which owns 350 miles of outlet in the Arabian Gulf, and Israel, which has 118 miles of coastline on the Mediterranean Sea.

A glance at a world map gives an indication of the paramount strategic importance of the Red Sea. Lying as it does between Africa and Asia and between the Middle East and Europe, this sea has served as an important trade route since ancient times. Before the opening of the Suez Canal, for instance, goods were transported overland by camel or donkey between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea.

In the past, powers ranging from the Persians and the Romans to the Portuguese and the Ottoman Turks, competed to control this vital seaway. They engaged in maneuvers and armed conflicts in order to achieve commercial, military and political objectives. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that no international waterway has ever been the cause of more conflicts among nations then the Red Sea.