Another “Special Relationship” Bites the Dust!

When I was studying American history in high school, I learned about how the transatlantic conflicts that led to the American Revolution and the War of 1812 eventually gave way to a “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom. However, that epithet has had to endure any number of strains, most of which tend to originate on our side of the pond. For example, about ten years ago, Geoffrey Wheatcroft wrote an article for The New York Review of Books that worked very hard at avoiding the phrase “unholy alliance” in the relationship between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair.

This phrase also comes to mind when I think about how our country deals with the state of Israel. I had not given this country much thought (regardless of my Jewish upbringing) until I found that the only job I could get after receiving my doctoral degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was at the Technion (which was also known at the “Israel Institute of Technology”). The good news was that this provided an excellent “proving ground” for honing the skills for teaching computer science for undergraduates, graduate students, and thesis candidates.

I then returned to the United States to teach computer science at the University of Pennsylvania; and that was probably where I first encountered the “special relationship” epithet about the relationship between Israel and America. I have to confess that none of this had much to do with any Jewish background. Indeed, the more I read the news, the more I found myself calling Israelis “God’s Chosen People consistently trying to convince God that he made the wrong choice!” This was an insight that took root and gradually grew over the course of the last quarter of the last century.

Now the first quarter of the new century has elapsed, and the “special relationship” seems to have lost its “speciality.” This was affirmed in the headline of an Opinion article for Al Jazeera by journalist Said Arikat, “America’s decades-old bipartisan consensus on Israel has been shattered.” The opening paragraph deserves to be quoted in full:

Last week, more than 100 House Democrats voted to cut off military aid to Israel. Though the amendment failed because some Democrats and almost all Republicans voted against it, it exposed something far more significant than the legislative outcome: The bipartisan consensus that shielded Israel from meaningful congressional scrutiny for generations is beginning to fracture.

I suppose that there are cynics that would argue that, where international diplomacy is concerned, nothing is “special” any more. Personally, I think it is more a matter of trying to take a “global view” without interference from “self interest.” To be fair, this is no easy matter, particularly when it would be fair to say that there is considerable dissatisfaction over the state of governance in our own country.

That said, I wonder if we should just focus on matters other than governance. Voltaire understood this in his “punch line” for Candide. All that matters is that we should “cultivate our own gardens.” Hopefully, we can manage that task without interference from “higher powers,” governmental or otherwise!