Dov S. Zakheim, who served as a deputy under secretary of defense for planning and resources during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, found himself in 1983 in a very difficult position. A practicing Orthodox Jew, Zakheim was born in Brooklyn, into a Zionist family whose father numbered Menachem Begin among his closest friends and had grown up in the same small Polish town as Yitzhak Shamir. Zakheim was educated in a Jewish schools, attended Zionist summer camps, and was fluent in Hebrew. In a way, he seemed to fit the stereotype of the militant Jewish West Bank settler. Yet Zakheim, in his capacity as the U.S. official responsible for the Pentagon's system acquisition and strategic planning processes, was assigned by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger to investigate and then lead the opposition to the production of Israel's prized plane, the Lavi, which threatened to demand billions more U.S. taxpayer dollars before it was complete. The low-key defense policy wonk and the long-time supporter of Israel suddenly turned into an "enemy of the Jewish people." He was described by then Israeli defense minister Moshe Arens (who had known Zakheim since he was a boy), as a "traitor to the family" and, together with his family, was severely attacked in the American-Jewish and Israel press, at synagogues, and even by his children's classmates in elementary school. In a way, as Zakheim put it, he became the "antithesis" to Jonathan Pollard, the American-Jewish naval intelligence officer sentenced to a long jail term for spying for Israel. As an Israeli television reporter described it, "Jonathan Pollard is seen in Israel as the American Jew who helped Israel. Dov Zakheim is seen as the American Jew who hurt Israel" (p. 124).
Zakheim's troubling experience helps to provide his book, a dry and detailed study by a Washington policy wonk trying to analyze and explain the economic, technological, and strategic problems involved in the high-stakes U.S.-Israeli crisis over the Lavi, with a interesting and colorful personal touch, transforming what Israelis call the Lavi Affair into something more than just another policy case involving complex cost-effective calculations in Zakheim's four-year Pentagon career. For Zakheim, the Lavi Affair has turned into a major test of the ability of an American-Jewish official to deal in an objective way and by applying professional standards with a sensitive policy issue involving the Jewish state. As Zakheim argues in his book, which focuses on his two-year odyssey of investigation, negotiations, and persuasion, he passed the test with flying colors, standing up to Israel's leaders and the Jewish state's supporters in Washington and the American-Jewish community, and securing U.S. economic and strategic interests.
In anything, one of the main arguments that Zakheim presents in this book (that with some good editing could have been condensed into a shorter but more readable magazine-length essay) is that his successful campaign to cancel the Lavi project was not only in U.S. interests; in the long-run, the decision by the Israeli government not to go ahead with the costly project and, instead, to continue its earlier policy of buying additional advanced U.S. fighters to add to those already in its inventory, also ended up serving Israeli national interests.
As Zakheim describes in his policy memoir, beginning in 1983, the Israeli embassy in Washington working together with key U.S. congressional staff members and lawmakers pushed forward a program for the sharing of specific advanced U.S. technologies and identified large amounts of U.S. funding to be allocated to the Israeli development of a new advanced fighter aircraft, the Lavi. Zakheim, leading an Pentagon investigation team to assess the Lavi program and the U.S. involvement in it, found that it would require the investment of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Moreover, he learned that the Israelis were planning to sell the Lavi, and its advanced American-designed weapon systems, to other countries in direct competition with the very U.S. aerospace companies that would provide their proprietary technology. Of course, the objectives of the fighter development went well beyond export revenue and included stoking Israeli national pride, stimulating the high-technology sector of Israel's economy, and making the country more self-sufficient in its defense. The driving force for the new plane came from Arens, the former defense minister, who was strongly supported by Israeli labor unions and the industries involved in the Lavi development. Arens became Zakheim's leading nemesis after the U.S. expert team concluded, following a full and careful analysis, that the Lavi would be far over budget and would cost significantly more than if the Israelis continued to buy U.S-made fighters.
Arens and his supporters in Israel and the United States then launched a political and personal campaign against Zakheim and his team's conclusions, forcing the Pentagon official to argue against the Lavi on two fronts: at home in the United States and in Israel's political and defense establishment. At the end, in the battle between the two New York-born Jews, Zakheim and Arens, it was the American who had the upper hand both in Washington and Jerusalem, leading to a suspenseful, contentious, and extremely close vote of the Israeli "national unity" cabinet (with the Labor ministers supporting the American position against the pro-Lavi Likud group). The Lavi project was canceled, and Arens resigned from the cabinet in protest; but the Lavi continued to engender friction between Israel and the United States after reports revealed that Israel exported Lavi technology to South Africa and China. Moreover, the Lavi crisis provided an important lesson to U.S. policymakers, suggesting that despite Israel's enormous political power in Washington, the United States, working together and effectively with sympathetic players in Israel (politicians, the press, public opinion) can affect Israeli policy-making in a direction that serves both U.S. interests as well as Israeli ones. Indeed, this lesson was studied apparently by the Bush administration, whose campaign to end the Likud government's settlement policies was based very much on the Zakheim game plan: standing up to Israel's ardent supporters in the United States and establishing policy coalitions between officials in Washington and Jerusalem and working to win the support of the Israeli press and public for the U.S. position. The policy proved to be very successful, helping to weaken Israeli public support for the Likud government and contributed to its electoral defeat. Unfortunately, it is a policy lesson that has not been reviewed by the Clinton administration and certainly has not be applied to its dealings with the current Likud government.
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Leon T. Hadar covers international politics and economics for U.S. and foreign publications.