President Donald Trump today meets Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Mar-a-Lago, almost 63 years to the day after John F. Kennedy met Golda Meir in Palm Beach. There JFK told her that there was a “special relationship” between America and Israel.
Trump and Netanyahu should declare a new special relationship that brings both countries even closer than they were in 1962. The sooner Washington and Jerusalem double down on ties, the better for global security and liberty.
Israel has become America’s best defense partner. This wasn’t so during the Cold War, when Israel lagged behind other US allies in Europe and elsewhere that boasted formidable militaries. Yet they’ve let their capabilities atrophy to the verge of helplessness. Israel, by contrast, fights and wins its battles and is a world leader in defense innovation. Working hand in glove, Washington and Jerusalem have neutered Iran, the main American adversary in the Middle East, and made the region safer and richer.
Going forward, the Trump administration should leverage Israel’s power more and more. It should have the Israelis play the leading role in Middle Eastern security so the US can focus on more important theaters. It should ask Israel, which has gone from a middle-income to a high-income country in just a few decades, to phase out American military aid. And it should deepen cooperation in missile defense, electromagnetic weapons, artificial intelligence, and other fields to ensure that the US preserves its edge over adversaries like China. The new special relationship will be a much truer partnership than the dependency of decades past, when America kept Israel afloat by sending it gobs of resources.
Today’s relationship goes beyond the military domain to the moral one. America and Israel are the last real defenders of Judeo-Christian civilization. Mass migration has rendered unrecognizable once great societies in Europe, Canada, and Australia, where governments appease radical Islamists who would replace Western civilization with barbarism. America and Israel will stop at nothing to prevent the erosion of their national purpose and the rise of a global caliphate. At a time when so many in the free world have lost their self-confidence, Israel is the sole American ally willing to stand up for its way of life.
A new special relationship may also dent criticism of Israel from the American right. Republicans under 50, half of whom view Israel unfavorably, increasingly associate it with failed foreign policies of the past and are less receptive to the providential case for Israel than older Republicans. Highlighting the ways in which Israel advances US interests could engender more support for the Jewish state among younger conservatives and help stop anti-Zionism from taking over the Republican Party as it has the Democratic Party.
Trump and Netanyahu are the right leaders to inaugurate a new era in bilateral relations. Trump gets the realities of power better than any president in recent memory. He understands that Israeli strength is American strength and is unafraid to show support for Israel, no matter how politically incorrect. For his part, Netanyahu is a spokesman for the US-Israel relationship like no other. He is also a keen student of history who appreciates that bilateral ties must keep up with the times if they are to keep flourishing.
The US and Israel have come a long way since December 1962, when Israel was a weak, vulnerable country in need of American assistance to survive. How better to honor the special relationship of Kennedy and Meir’s day than with a new one befitting a new chapter?