2023-07-10 14:14:44
At the NATO summit in Vilnius, which begins on Tuesday, the question of Ukraine’s membership will play an important role. However, American President Joe Biden has reiterated that he opposes such a move at this time. The war with Russia must first end, he said in an interview with CNN broadcast on Sunday – “otherwise we would all be at war with Russia”.
Christian Meier
Political correspondent for the Middle East and Northeast Africa.
Biden pointed out that even after hostilities have ended, Ukraine’s NATO accession would be a lengthy process. He spoke at length about this with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. However, he assured the Ukrainian that the United States would be willing to provide security guarantees like those for Israel. “If there is an agreement, if there is a ceasefire, if there is a peace agreement,” Biden said, Washington is offering Ukraine “security a la the security we offer Israel.” It is about, among other things, supplying weapons to enable the country to defend itself.
The USA and Israel have been politically allied since Israel was founded in 1948. During the Cold War, the Middle Eastern country was in the western camp. However, massive American military aid to Israel only began later—after the Yom Kippur or October War in 1973. Since then, Israel has been the country receiving the most American military aid, ahead of Egypt. In 2016, then-President Barack Obama raised support to a new record level: Israel was to receive $38 billion between 2019 and 2028. In the previous decade it had been $30 billion.
The money is mainly used for the purchase of American weapons and thus also serves the US defense industry. Israel used some of the money to modernize its air force and buy American F-35 fighter jets. Another deal was only announced at the beginning of July: Israel is buying 25 more F-35 aircraft for three billion dollars, thereby increasing its fleet of this type by fifty percent.
It’s not just about the quantity: The “Qualitative Military Edge”
The F-35 deal makes it clear that military aid to Israel is not just about quantity. Israel’s army is the only one in the Middle East to which the plane will be sold. The F-35 developed by Lockheed Martin is considered the most modern fighter aircraft in the world. Other countries in the region are therefore also interested in it, such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) or Saudi Arabia.
However, this would detract from a component of the US-Israeli brotherhood in arms called the QME, “Qualitative Military Edge.” The doctrine states that Israel should always have a qualitative advantage over other countries in the Near and Middle East when it comes to military technology.
For this reason, critical tones came from Israel when the USA – still under President Donald Trump – announced in 2020 that fifty F-35 aircraft would be sold to the UAE. The debate became even more excited when Israeli media reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had approved the US-Emirati $23 billion deal in exchange for the UAE making peace with Israel in the so-called Abraham Accords. Netanyahu denied this.
Friederike Böge, Ankara Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 15 Published/Updated: Recommendations: 2123 A comment by Nikolas Busse Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 93
However, Joe Biden’s successor administration in the United States put the deal on hold in early 2021 to review the details. Washington continued to impose more and more conditions. These remained vague in detail, but were probably intended to ensure that Israel’s QME is maintained. There were also concerns in the US about technological and military cooperation between the UAE and China. At the end of 2021, the Emirati government announced that it was no longer interested in the deal.
On the other hand, according to reports, Saudi Arabia has now increased interest in the American fighter jet. The government in Riyadh is also said to be trying to use the rapprochement desired by Israel in order to obtain state-of-the-art armaments technology from the USA.
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