The Golden Lariat : explaining American aid to Israel

An observational study was conducted to determine the most likely explanation of American support for Israel. Several extant hypotheses were considered, most particularly, and at greatest length, that of a pro-Israel domestic lobby in the United States, but also that it had to do with Cold War containment, common values, or precedent. It was ultimately concluded that the domestic lobby hypothesis could not account for American support, since the level of that support correlated negatively with the resources of the lobby, and because sudden, temporary changes in the level of American support did not coincide with any similar changes in the resources of the lobby. Furthermore, statistical analysis indicated that there was on balance no benefit for politicians who supported the lobby's agenda, and no cost for those who opposed it. Likewise, the other explanations also proved unsatisfactory. The containment hypothesis, for instance, could not explain why American support continued after the Cold War ended, while the common values hypothesis could not explain why American support did not begin until 1971, nor why it peaked in 1979 and began to decline in the eighties. Finally, it was concluded that the best explanation of American support was that it gave the United States the leverage to restrain Israeli belligerence, for which the United States was blamed by the Arab states. In this way, the U.S. was able to minimize damage to its relations with the Arabs resulting from the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Political Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Kraus, Richard (Richard A.)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Stephen Van Evera.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/54610

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/54610