March | 2012 | Allison W. Good

Archive | March, 2012

The irrationality of Benjamin Netanyahu

In political science, we talk a lot about rational versus irrational actors. Recently, the policy elite have put a lot of time into analyzing the Israel-Iran situation, and their attempts to deduce whether or not Iran is a rational actor have only produced even more confusion. But what about Israel? And what about Netanyahu? This is a question that many have answered in columns, analytical articles, and Twitter rants, but no one has looked at it from a purely theoretical standpoint. I contend that Netanyahu is an extraordinarily irrational actor.

Graham T. Allison, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, is the authority on decision-making theory. In Essence of Decision, he outlined three decision-making models, but I’m going to focus on the bureaucratic or governmental politics model, which best applies to Israel’s domestic political reality. Instead of defining the state as a cohesive actor, this model focuses on what happens inside the government. Actors, in this case, are either individuals or organizations that have positions of power within the government. Their goals and motivations are to maximize their power and influence, as well as to promote strategic national interests, but their objectives and values may conflict. There’s bargaining based on actors’ relative power and the availability of information and resources, but all of that may be distorted by misperceptions, time pressure, and personality. Sound familiar?

Netanyahu is our actor, and we know that as the prime minister he has a whole lot of power and influence. In order to attack Iran, he does need the support of his cabinet, but that cabinet is led by fear-mongering hawks Ehud Barak and Avigdor Lieberman. Technically, Netanyahu the individual does not have absolute power over this decision, but judging from his personality and previous actions, he will convince his cabinet if he needs to. I don’t think the principle of bargaining matters much here except for determining the extent of an attack.

First, we have the prime minister’s goal of maximizing his power and influence. Israeli elections will happen soon, and while Netanyahu and his Likud Party are more popular than ever, that support could always use some additional shoring up. He can’t maximize his international influence so long as Iran is capable of producing nuclear weapons, and Bibi most certainly desires to continue his role as an important international player. Second, there are the strategic national interests, which is where his irrationality stems from. According to the prime minister, Israel must not allow Iran to develop nuclear capabilities for fear of another Holocaust. He’s said as much in more diplomatic language, but preventing a second Holocaust is the crux of what he thinks are strategic national interests.

Unfortunately for Bibi, even a surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities isn’t in Israel’s strategic interest, and I’m not saying anything revolutionary. A unilateral strike would harm Israel’s special relationship with the US, a wound that could potentially last for years depending on who we elect in America in 2012. The chances for an American-supported strike are slim to none, given President Obama’s preference for consensus building, diplomacy, and negotiations. There’s also a good reason why most Israelis in public opinion polls are against conflict with Iran. What happens to the 7 million Israelis the day after, or hours after, the surgical strike? Are the borders safe? Who joins Iran in the counterattack? Hamas has announced that they wish to take no part should that situation arise, but they’re not the only non-state players that matter in this equation. In addition, there’s also evidence that attacking a state’s nuclear facilities actually speeds up its production timeline. This would not be a just war, and I don’t think Iran would react with anything less than its maximum capacity, since surgical strikes almost always result in the killing of innocent noncombatants.

Netanyahu is not working in either the strategic or popular interests of Israel. He has a personal vendetta based on a “second Holocaust” narrative that is sure to make Israel more enemies than friends and endanger Israeli citizens. I’m not saying he’s crazy; on the contrary, Netanyahu is extremely calculating and intelligent. But facts are facts, and there is no personal influence and power or national strategic advancement to be gained from attacking Iran.

Tags: Iran, Israel, Netanyahu, nuclear, Obama, US, war

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The European Union’s Syria policy, just business as usual

4 Mar

On Thursday, Foreign Policy senior editor David Bosco drew my attention to an article by Jan Techau of the Carnegie Endowment, which argues that the euro crisis has improved Europe’s foreign policy. “Financial chaos notwithstanding, Europe has hung together on Iran and been surprisingly coherent on the Arab spring,” Bosco explains. The continent, he continues, “has been struggling for decades to fashion a more coherent foreign policy.” But has the European Union actually “hung together” on the Arab spring? And will it actively enforce European Parliament decisions that could harm a financially unstable country like, I don’t know, Greece? Lastly, can it be more proactive than the United Nations?

So far, the European Parliament and the European Council have called for increased sanctions, recognized the SNC as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people, committed to documenting the atrocities, emphasized humanitarian aid, and passed a resolution asking all member states to recall their ambassadors and cut diplomatic ties with Syria. Member states’ responses, however, have not been so closely coordinated. France and Britain have closed their embassies in Syria, but it’s been a few weeks since that recommendation was made for the whole European Union. It’s not surprising that others probably won’t follow suit. The EU has always operated as a two-tiered organization, with France and Britain leading the top tier.

As the Economist pointed out last week , the EU’s sanctions-oriented approach “may soon reach its limits in terms both of people and transactions to ban and of interests among European states.”

“Slovenia has vetoed placing a Belarusian oligarch on the sanctions list, apparently to protect a firm with a juicy contract to build a housing and office complex in Minsk, complete with a new Kempinski hotel.

To impose oil sanctions against Iran took a promise to help debt-crippled Greece find an alternative source of oil (and soft finance). The Greeks blocked moves to ban imports of phosphates from Syria.”

The fact that Slovenia is backing a Belarusian oligarch is significantly indicative of the divide between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. I don’t care what other people say; the EU is not a union. Latvia also made sure that prominent bussinessman Yury Chizh was blocked from that list. Oligarchs are still the key players in Eastern Europe, and that’s no secret.

And then we have Greece. Moody’s lowered its credit rating again on Friday from a “C” to a “Ca”, and says that “’the risk of a default even after the debt exchange has been completed remains high.’” Greece needs those Syrian phosphates for fertilizer purposes, and the country can’t risk additional economic degeneration.

The EU’s commitment to being an observer is a good metaphor for how ineffective its foreign policy is in general. When the European Council (all EU leaders) met Friday, they came up with no new means to pressure Assad “apart from a plan to gather evidence against those responsible for atrocities.” I’m against intervening, and I’m also against arming the FSA, but the EU’s focus on human rights (which is not just a Syria thing) and inability to actually enforce resolutions on all member states reminds me of the UN, which hasn’t been able to pull itself together this time around because of Russia and China. European policy towards Syria is well-intentioned in terms of imposing sanctions, but the makeup of the EU preculdes the necessary conditions for such unilaterial actions. As usual, it’s misrepresenting this reality by pushing a fantastical unified front. I can’t say, of course, that I’m surprised.

Tags: Britain, European Union, France, Greece, Iran, Latvia, Syria