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In recent months, prominent figures on the American right have escalated their campaign against Israel, arguing it is “a completely insignificant country” with “no resources” that threatens to drag the United States into wars. “What are we getting out of this?” asked Tucker Carlson.
This question has several answers. Below, Michael Doran explains why, without Israeli experience, technology, and collaboration, the US would be less safe.
Key Insights
1. Israel’s Iron Dome technology will be crucial to President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense project.
Developed by Israelis under constant rocket fire and co-funded by the United States, the Iron Dome demonstrates how civilian populations can be protected at scale from barrages of rockets from Lebanon and Gaza. Golden Dome aims to ensure American survivability under attack from ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, cruise missiles, and emerging aerial threats. In building such a system, the United States is drawing directly on Israeli technology, expertise, and combat experience. As Washington seeks to develop such a system, Israel provides:
- Mature, combat-tested interception technologies
- Real combat data generated under sustained missile and drone assault
- A strategic framework forged under existential pressure
2. American missile defense advancement was frozen for decades. But Israel has been developing new technologies to deal with real-world threats.
The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty constrained American missile defense research. Missile defense became legally fraught and politically radioactive in the US, and serious development stalled. But Israel faced no such constraints. It was not bound by the ABM Treaty. It was not immobilized by arms-control orthodoxy. It confronted real missiles from real adversaries. After the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraqi Scuds fell on Israeli cities, interception became a survival requirement rather than an academic debate. President Ronald Reagan’s 1985 decision to invite Israel into the Strategic Defense Initiative allowed Jerusalem to develop capabilities Washington could not pursue at the time. Those gains were shared fully with the United States and continue to be shared to this day, including the Arrow family of advanced missile defense systems.
3. The campaign to portray Israel as a strategic liability corrodes American power.
In an era of great-power competition, adversaries test the United States by eroding alliance cohesion and legitimacy. They reframe proven assets as burdens. Weakening the partnership behind Arrow and Iron Beam directly degrades American defensive capacity.
The implications extend far beyond the Middle East. In its rivalry with China, the United States holds a decisive structural advantage, namely, its web of global alliances. Israel plays an outsize role within this system. A small state with unusually concentrated capabilities, it aligned with the United States by choice rather than necessity. Treating Israel as a liability would alter that alignment. Israel would be forced to hedge just as other Middle Eastern countries have done. Efforts to weaken the US-Israel relationship therefore advance Beijing’s interests by narrowing America’s coalition and degrading the mechanisms through which US power is generated.
Quotes may be edited for clarity and length.
Go Deeper
The world has gotten more dangerous, but America can still threaten its enemies and maintain deterrence on a wide scale. Across critical security domains, Hudson Institute has deepened its threat analysis and forged policy options with American officials and US allies, writes President and CEO John Walters in a year-end note.
“Anyone who proposes cutting aid to Israel in the name of ‘the American interest’ simply does not understand what the American interest is,” Michael Doran argues in The Jewish Chronicle.
China is the greatest threat to American security and prosperity, leading many to believe that Washington should deprioritize other regions in its security policy. But Beijing’s inroads in the Middle East demonstrate how the region is still a critical front in the era of US-China competition, writes Zineb Riboua.
