Against materialism

Exhibit A: American support for Israel

A criticism commonly leveled against American culture is that it is too materialistic. Americans worship the almighty dollar; they work harder and longer than people in most other developed countries, in endless pursuit of the latest and shiniest baubles.

A correlate of this claim is that American foreign policy is rooted in materialism. Policy makers cynically pursue American material interests: access to markets and raw materials, naval and military bases, allies and clients.

There is much to this line of thinking. The mode of economics chosen by Americans—capitalism—is profoundly materialistic. Each generation of Americans does tend to confer necessity status on items that were luxuries or simply unheard of before. American foreign policy has deliberately sought access to foreign markets and military bases; it has employed American military might to acquire and retain allies and protégés.

But there has been at least one striking exception to this rule in the foreign policy realm: American support for Israel. For seventy-five years the United States has taken actions that have undermined its material interests in a crucial part of the world. This was especially true at the beginning, when Israel was barely strong enough to defend itself, let alone contribute to American regional defense. During the late 1940s and the 1950s, American analysts pointed out to Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower that America's material interests lay in cultivating the Arab oil producers of the Middle East. Backing Israel would make the task more difficult. Truman rejected this view, insisting that the United States be the first country to recognize Israel. Eisenhower was a bit more standoffish, to the point of chastening Israel, along with Britain and France, when those three countries launched a war against Egypt in 1956. But Ike quickly reassured the Israelis by landing American troops in Lebanon in 1958 as a warning to Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser not to get grandiose ideas.

American interests in the Arab and Muslim worlds suffered when Israel seized large territories in the June War of 1967. Ordinary Americans suffered directly when American support for Israel in the October War of 1973 triggered an embargo of oil shipments to America by Arab members of OPEC.

American leaders persuaded Israel to give back most of the seized territories, but Israel's retention of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, combined with continued American support for Israel, has undermined America's standing among Arabs and Muslims to the present. To those audiences, Israel is an occupying oppressor, and the United States is its facilitator.

To be sure, the fervor of the attachment of certain Arab countries to the Palestinian cause has waned over time. But every so often it flares up, if only opportunistically. And when it does, as during the last few weeks, America's reputation takes another blow.

For understandable reasons, the governments of both Israel and the United States have argued that American support for Israel serves America's material interests. Israel does not want to be seen as a recipient of charity, and American presidents don't want to be seen as charity’s dispensers. But the intelligence assistance, for example, that Israel gives the United States derives much of its value from the trouble Israel causes America in the region. And while presidents have repeatedly cited Israel’s positive example of a democratic government in an undemocratic neighborhood, the chances that the neighbors will be willing to take a lesson from the Zionists are about nil. 

The simple fact of the matter is that the United States supports Israel because most Americans consider it the right thing to do. Americans admire Israel's grit and devotion to democracy. Some Americans have felt guilt about the Holocaust. Some Americans see Israel's existence as a harbinger of the second coming of Jesus. Jewish Americans often have an emotional attachment to the Jewish state in the historic homeland of the Jewish people.

Before the creation of Israel, the United States had little interest in the Middle East. American interest in the region would have grown even if Israel had never been created; the emergence of oil as a currency of international power would have attracted American attention under any circumstances. But the existence of Israel guaranteed that American attention would be intense and persistent, even as it complicated American relations with other countries of the region. Those complications were a price Americans were willing to pay.

Whether the value, in moral and psychological terms, was worth the cost is a separate question. The current conflict appears to indicate that American policy hasn’t brought the underlying problem much closer to resolution. Yet indications are that President Biden’s request for new aid to Israel will receive the approval of Congress.

Supporting Israel might or might not be the right thing to do, but we Americans—we (part-time) idealists—still think it is.