Stardate 20020909.1625

(Captain's log): I'm digging through my mail box, trying to deal with things people have been writing to me. In reaction to a post where I listed only Australia, Canada and the UK as what I considered true allies, several people wrote to ask why I hadn't included Israel in that list.

It's a bit difficult to explain. Part of it is that our relationship with Israel is to some extent one of the last remnants of Cold War diplomacy (though no less genuine for all that). The Cold War was a multi-decade struggle between the US and certain allied nations, and the USSR (primarily). Both sides had nuclear weapons, and during the Cuban Missile Crisis we came perilously close to a nuclear exchange.

It was tacitly recognized by both sides that it was too dangerous for there to be direct military conflict between a significant number of Soviet troops and a significant number of American troops, because of the risk of escalation. So the Cold War (which really was a war; a hell of a lot of people died in it) was fought as a deeply complex diplomatic struggle which included a series of proxy wars. The various major battles of the Cold War were invariably fought on at least one side by a smaller nation which was supported by one of the two major protagonists. And in such cases, if forces of that protagonist were present, they were under deep cover, in small numbers, and not acknowledged by either side even if both knew they were there.

The Korean war was the first such example. This was before the People's Republic of China had attained "great power" status and broke away from the USSR, turning the Cold War into a three-way standoff, and the Korean war was fought on the "red" side by North Korea and China, with support from the USSR. (By tradition in American military analysis, maps showing units will show friendlies in blue, and enemies in red. I'm told that the USSR used to use exactly the opposite color scheme.) The blue side was a mix of American and South Korean forces, with smaller commitments from an extremely wide variety of other nations.

However, some Soviet military personnel did participate. Some of the MiG-15's which fought over Korea were piloted by Russians, flown from airbases on the far side of the Yalu River in China. And it's more than likely that a lot of the ground crews there were Russian. None of this was acknowledged at the time; everyone pretended that those MiGs and ground crews were Chinese.

By the same token, we fought in Viet Nam against Soviet proxies, Ho Chi Minh's North Vietnam. Since then it has come out that in Viet Nam some pilots for the red forces were also Russian. During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA operated small numbers of men in Afghanistan and in Pakistan and funneled equipment to the Mujahadin, with various degrees of attempts at secrecy. Ultimately, any attempt at deniability was abandoned when the decision was publicly made to provide a large number of shoulder-launched Stinger missiles, which is widely credited with changing the balance of power in the war and leading to the ultimate decision by the USSR to withdraw.

In other cases, the battles were fought by proxies on both sides. Sometimes the alliances with the proxies were tight, in other cases they were loose. For instance, you had the Contras in Nicaragua fighting against the Sandinistas, with support for each from its respective patron but little direct involvement by either side.

You also had cases of proxy nations heavily supported by one side. The two best examples of that are Israel and Cuba. Cuba was a Soviet proxy in the Western hemisphere which was seen as a base, a stepping stone by which to try to spread communist revolution in Latin America. It was also a slap in the face for America, since Cuba had been an American possession before the revolution. And Cuba provided mercenary troops to fight where the USSR wasn't politically able to, such as in Angola.

America's relationship with Israel wasn't really like that. Our reasons for supporting Israel are complicated, and they've changed with time. Among other things, it hasn't always been as strong as it is now.

In 1956, Israel worked with France and the UK on a plan which would, among other things, have resulted in the loss of Egyptian control over the Suez canal by Nasser's Egypt. (The reasons for this were complicated, and it was not a naked grab for power by Israel. For one thing, Nasser had been stirring up the Palestinians.) The US actually issued a threat which forced Israel, France and the UK to back off.

But by the mid 1960's, the US was a firm patron of Israel, in part because by that point the USSR had strongly aligned itself with the Arabs. Other reasons include a large population of Jews in the US, a certain amount of feeling of obligation due to the Holocaust, a strong general support by Americans for spunky underdogs, a recognition of shared values between the US and Israel on both a political and economic level, and the fact that a lot of American Jews eventually lived in Israel either temporarily or permanently. That is by no means a complete list.

But it was also motivated in part by Cold War politics, and the 6-day War is widely seen as being one of the major battles of the Cold War.

From about 1965 forward, Israel's existence depended on strong support from the US, and everyone knew it. The US used its veto in the UNSC many times to prevent damaging resolutions from passing. The US provided much essential aid. Technology exchange between the nations