Robert J. Lieber

Energy, Economics and Security in Alliance Perspective

T h e s e words, spoken by a leading French expert on foreign policy, reflect an increasingly urgent fact of contemporary European affairs. Energy problems, in their broadest sense, together with a group of important and substantially related economic issues, have become fundamental European security concerns. Although the importance of traditional military and strategic issues should not be minimized, for most Europeans, including the informed public and even those generally attuned to foreign policy, discussion of European deterrence and defense has tended to become somewhat abstract and removed. SALT 11, the SS-20, grey area weapons, MBFR, enhanced Pershings, and a 3 percent real increase in NATO defense budgets are debated among a relatively limited number of specialists. By contrast, economic and energy security issues have become pressing and important subjects of great attention in both public and elite arenas. The energy crises of 1973-74 (touched off by the Yom Kippur War), and of the winter and spring of 1979 (following the Iranian revolution) have brought energy to the fore as a crucial concern. In retrospect, the October War and the upheaval in Iran have been catalysts, rather than fundamental causes for an energy problem which is likely to be enduring in both its supply and price consequences. Together with difficulties involving economic growth, inflation, unemployment, balance of payments, monetary instability and industrial structure, Europe faces an ensemble of troublesome issues, many of which have important security consequences, and which are likely to prove increasingly threatening during the 1980s. The topic of energy and economic problems as European security issues is not only crucial, it is also enormous-a subject lending itself rather to the

Personal Whim or Strategic Imperative?: The Israeli Invasion of Lebanon

I T h e 1982-1983 crisis in Lebanon has again demonstrated the persistent tendency of observers to identify Israel with the idiosyncracies of specific individuals. In the 1950s, Israel’s conduct was instinctively associated with the virtues and vices of David Ben Gurion; in the 1960s, especially after the Six-Day War, Israel was often reduced to the attributes of Moshe Dayan; and, in the first part of the 1970s, it became a kind of Golda Meir writ large. Since 1977, it has become indistinguishable from the personality of Menachem Begin or, worse still, the vices of Begin and Ariel Sharon. When Israel’s leaders have been international favorites, the country and its diverse and complicated society have appeared upright, enlightened, and virtuous. When its elected leaders have been disliked abroad, it has been widely reproached. The result has been the trivialization of complex strategic issues. The events of last year, for example, have been reduced, as in the title of a recent article, to a matter of ”Begin’s Rhetoric and Sharon’s Tactics.”’ But, does such an approach do justice to the subject? Or does it make more political sense to depict the Israeli invasion of Lebanon as the culmination of a complex strategic sequence? Surely the personificufion de pouvoir is as sterile for scholarship and statecraft as it is appealing in its dramatic simplicity. Therefore, tracing these events to the imperatives of security rather than the idiosyncracies of individuals provides a far sounder basis for policy analysis. Specifically, the invasion must be evaluated against the backdrop of the past three decades. For twenty years after 1948, a succession of Israeli Cabinets had maintained a continuity of policy toward Lebanon. But this pattern was broken nearly a decade before Begin’s victory in the 1977 elections. A

A Foreign Policy for America?: A Review Essay@@@Primary or World Order.@@@Eagle Entangled, U.S. Foreign Policy in a Complex World.@@@The Illusion of Peace, Foreign Policy in the Nixon Years.

c r i t i cs of American foreign policy often talk past each other and the administrations they analyze. For many, a central concern remains George Washington’s warning about foreign entanglements. For others, who accept the inevitability of a global role for the United States, the main problem is the declining value of assets like military power as America experiences economic interdependence and the fragmentation of alliances. Rarely do observers who charge that the substance of policy is flawed respond directly to those who insist that the processes of policy formulation and implementation are at fault. Radical prescriptions-a call for junking both the content and institutional structure of U.S. foreign policy-find a small audience in the post-Vietnam era. Too frequently, authors speak to the already convinced who suspect that there is truth in single-track explanations of U.S. behavior, whether the culprit be economic determinism, national security manias, or leaders’ misperceptions. The three volumes reviewed reveal the range of contemporary writing about American foreign policy. As a group, they alert us to: