There is something increasingly strange about the relationship between the United States and Israel.
The United States provides Israel with enormous military, diplomatic, intelligence, and political support. American weapons help defend Israel. American forces have repeatedly been placed at risk protecting Israel, and American diplomacy has frequently shielded Israel internationally. Yet when an American president decides that a particular course of action is in the interests of the United States, Israel increasingly seems perfectly comfortable saying no.
That raises a simple question that Washington rarely seems willing to ask:
What exactly does “ally” mean?
There is nothing inherently wrong with Israel rejecting an American demand. Israel is a sovereign country. Its government has an obligation to pursue what it believes are Israeli national interests, not American national interests. If Benjamin Netanyahu believes an American proposal is bad for Israel, he has every right to reject it.
But sovereignty works both ways.
If Israel has the right to pursue Israeli interests independently of Washington, then Washington has precisely the same right to pursue American interests independently of Israel.
And that is where the relationship has become badly distorted.
Sovereignty Cannot Work in Only One Direction
Imagine the United States saying something very simple to Israel:
You are a sovereign country. Make whatever decisions you believe are necessary for your national security. But if those decisions contradict American policy, America is under no obligation to finance them, arm them, defend them, or absorb their consequences.
What exactly would be unreasonable about that?
The problem is not that Israel occasionally disagrees with America. Allies disagree all the time. Britain disagrees with Washington. France disagrees with Washington. Germany disagrees with Washington. Japan disagrees with Washington.
The problem arises when independence becomes asymmetric.
Israel can reject American policy because Israel is sovereign, while America is nevertheless expected to provide the weapons, money, diplomatic protection and sometimes military involvement necessary to sustain the Israeli policy that America just rejected.
That isn’t really strategic independence for both countries.
It is independence for one and obligation for the other.
The Iran War Has Exposed the Problem
The current conflict with Iran has made this contradiction much harder to ignore.
The United States and Israel do not necessarily have identical interests in Iran. They never did.
Israel naturally evaluates Iran primarily through the lens of Israeli security. America has a much broader set of considerations. Washington must think about American troops throughout the region, energy markets, relations with Arab governments, Turkey, Europe, Russia and China, global trade, the Strait of Hormuz, American military inventories and the enormous financial cost of another prolonged Middle Eastern war.
Those interests can overlap with Israel’s interests.
But they are not identical.
And once those interests diverge, Washington has to be able to say so.
If an American president concludes that continuing a war with Iran is damaging American interests, then the United States should be able to pursue a settlement regardless of whether the Israeli government likes that settlement.
Israel can continue fighting if it chooses.
But then it becomes Israel’s war.
That distinction should be obvious, yet American foreign policy has had enormous difficulty making it.
Defending Israel Is Not the Same as Financing Every Israeli Policy
There is another distinction Washington desperately needs to establish.
The United States can remain committed to Israel’s existence and security without committing itself to every military operation undertaken by an Israeli government.
Those are completely different propositions.
America can help defend Israeli cities against missile attacks. It can share intelligence about genuine common threats. It can maintain technological, economic and military cooperation. It can make clear that attempts to destroy Israel will encounter American opposition.
None of that requires Washington to provide unconditional support for every Israeli offensive operation.
There should be a dividing line between defending Israel and underwriting Israeli policy.
If Israel chooses a military operation that Washington believes damages American interests, Israel should finance it, supply it and accept the consequences of it.
That isn’t abandoning an ally.
That is what sovereignty looks like.
America Has Enormous Leverage — But Rarely Uses It
The strangest part of the relationship is that America isn’t actually powerless.
Quite the opposite.
The United States possesses extraordinary leverage.
Israel benefits enormously from American military assistance, weapons supplies, intelligence cooperation, diplomatic support and access to American technology. More broadly, America’s presence in the Middle East provides a strategic security umbrella whose value is difficult to calculate.
Yet Washington frequently behaves as though Israel possesses all the leverage.
That is an extraordinary inversion.
The United States doesn’t need to threaten Israel. It doesn’t need sanctions. It doesn’t need dramatic confrontations between presidents and prime ministers.
It simply needs to stop subsidizing policies it opposes.
If Washington says, “Don’t undertake this operation,” and Israel undertakes it anyway, the American response can be remarkably uncomplicated:
Fine. But we aren’t paying for it.
That one principle would fundamentally rebalance the relationship.
What Does America Receive in Return?
There is also a question that Congress should be asking about Israel—and frankly about every American alliance.
For every major category of American support, what does America receive in return?
Not emotionally.
Not historically.
Not rhetorically.
Strategically.
What measurable American interest is being advanced?
Perhaps there is an excellent answer. Israel provides intelligence, technological cooperation, military capabilities, and strategic benefits to the United States. Those benefits should be identified and valued.
But so should the costs.
That is how rational governments make decisions.
American foreign policy should not operate like a collection of permanent sentimental obligations inherited from previous generations. Alliances exist because they advance mutual interests.
When those interests change, alliances should change with them.
Allies, Not Clients — And Certainly Not Masters
The principle should extend far beyond Israel.
America needs normal relationships with its allies.
Saudi Arabia should pursue Saudi interests. Turkey should pursue Turkish interests. Britain should pursue British interests. Japan should pursue Japanese interests. Israel should pursue Israeli interests.
And America should pursue American interests.
Sometimes those interests will coincide beautifully.
Sometimes they won’t.
When they coincide, America should cooperate enthusiastically. When they diverge, each country should be free to pursue its own course.
That is what an alliance between sovereign countries actually looks like.
The unhealthy alternative is a relationship in which America assumes responsibility for decisions it didn’t make.
And that may be precisely where Washington increasingly finds itself with Israel.
The Answer Is Conditional Alignment
America doesn’t need to “dump Israel.”
It needs something much more sensible:
conditional alignment.
American military assistance should support objectives America actually supports.
American diplomatic protection should defend policies America actually believes in.
American troops should be placed at risk only when American interests genuinely require it.
And American weapons should not automatically underwrite military strategies an American administration has explicitly rejected.
Israel would remain perfectly free to disagree.
But freedom comes with responsibility.
If Netanyahu—or any future Israeli prime minister—believes Israeli national security requires rejecting an American president’s demands, he should reject them.
That is Israel’s sovereign right.
But an American president should then be equally comfortable saying:
“That’s your decision. But then it’s your operation, your money, your weapons and your consequences.”
There is nothing anti-Israel about that position.
Quite the opposite. It treats Israel as what Israel has always insisted it is: an independent sovereign nation capable of making its own decisions and accepting responsibility for them.
And it treats America the same way.
Because an alliance in which one country can repeatedly say no while the other country is still expected to pay the bill isn’t much of an alliance.
It is a dependency.
And when the supposedly dependent country is the one dictating the terms, Washington should probably start asking which country is actually dependent on which.
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