Israel tends to scramble categories of international-relations theory, which is one reason why academia always appears least capable, out of all sectors of Western society, of understanding events in the Middle East. And although the fantasy of Israeli military omnipotence reaches absurd levels, it is true that Israeli capability has presented us with a legitimate opportunity to wonder whether the Jewish state is now a hegemon.
The answer is no, and the explanation for that answer reveals the uniqueness of Israel as a modern military power. Additionally, the motivations behind even asking the question tell us much about the state of public debate over foreign affairs.
So, who wants to know? Although there are some exceptions, the question regarding Israeli regional hegemony is mostly being asked by those who want to see Israel weakened or destroyed. These are partisans prodding Israel for vulnerabilities so its enemies can take advantage of them.
In Foreign Policy, the academic crank Stephen Walt, the most infamous purveyor of conspiracy theories about the nefarious power of Jewish money over American policy, concentrates his energy on the quest to restrain Israel’s ability to defend itself from regional attacks. His column paints an Iranian nuclear weapon as the best way to do so. Absent Iranian nukes, Israel will still be relatively free to defend itself from external threats.
Picking up on that theme in the Washington Post is Ishaan Tharoor, who paints Israel’s preemptive action as unprovoked. Thus ignoring the entirety of recorded history, Tharoor eventually comes around to Walt’s conclusion, even quoting Walt to close his column. It’s a bizarre way to end the piece because four paragraphs earlier Tharoor had asserted the opposite of Walt’s point—that Israel “has emerged as the paramount hegemon.”
While Tharoor argues with himself, DePaul professor Tom Mockaitis writes in The Hill that Israel does appear to be a hegemon but that the U.S. should curtail its non-defensive military aid and reorient its approach around the discredited theory of linkage, in which regional problems cannot be solved until the Palestinians have statehood, an idea that was popular in academic circles but has been conclusively debunked by both events and common sense.
So, to sum up: Is Israel a regional hegemon?
Stephen Walt: No.
Ishaan Tharoor: Yes.
Ishaan Tharoor: But also no.
Tom Mockaitis: Yes.
Whichever answer you come to, you have to take the same road to get there: Israel either became a hegemon or an almost-hegemon by defeating its neighboring enemies and relying on the diplomatic and military heft of its ally, the United States.
Which means if the region has a hegemon it is… the United States. That’s the beauty of being a superpower—the term “regional” becomes quite flexible. But even more significant is the lesson we can learn from how the U.S. and Israel got to this point.
Israel did not become a near-hegemon by developing a military superiority that no one would want to test. It became a regional power by being forced to demonstrate its strength. The United States is the dominant power in North America but it has not gone to war against Mexico or Canada in nearly two centuries. Israel, however, continues to fight off its would-be conquerors on nearly every front.
Israel’s only pacified border is with Egypt, but Israel had to fight a couple of difficult wars to get there. Additionally, had Egypt not initiated war against Israel in the past, Gaza would not be an Iranian proxy enclave, and the West Bank would be Jordan, a state with whom Israel is at peace.
Regarding Syria, Israel did not depose Bashar al-Assad. The Assad dictatorship fell because of the Iranian axis’s decision to initiate all-out war on Israel. The Iranian regime itself is teetering for the same reason. Indeed, over the past two years, Israel’s actions against Iran have been carefully calibrated to dissuade Iran from all-out war—often by displaying the fact that it has capabilities that Iran may not have known about or expected it to have—while also giving Tehran the chance to save face. In other words, even when hostilities break out, Israel responds in ways meant to give everyone an off-ramp rather than seeking the total defeat and collapse of its enemies.
Which is also why the question of Israel’s supposed regional hegemony is beside the point. Israel would not, in fact, enforce a specific order upon the region no matter how much power it had. Israel would simply do what it has been trying to do since 1948: convince its antagonists to leave it the hell alone.
