Amanda Kruzel: Blog #5

I found our last class’s discussion surrounding leadership in the peace process to be a fascinating one! Professor Aronoff asked a question, “How important are relationships between Israeli and U.S. leaders?!” I was really excited during this discussion in class because A) Who doesn’t love to talk about relationships!?, and B) I think this is an incredible topic to discuss in context of diplomacy!

            Some hardcore realists may assert that relationships do not matter in international relations. They might say that all nations will act according to selfish interests in line with Machiavellian principles, without taking human relationships or personal biases into the equation. However, I completely disagree with this line of thinking. In my opinion, relationships are the keys to successful diplomacy! There have been many studies done on the importance of cultural-specific practices in international politics and how understandings/lack of understandings of different cultural practices have positively/negatively affected these politics! (For example, things such as eye contact, body posture, etc, can make a large difference in these relations!)

            I think the same principles apply at an individual level, and I believe that by creating good relationships between diplomats/heads of state, more positive relationships between countries can be created! In the “special” relationship between Israel and the U.S., these individual relationships have been crucial in determining the relationship between the two countries.

           

            I found it absolutely fascinating to compare the relationships between Presidents of the U.S. and Prime Ministers of Israel! One of the most interesting things was hearing about how ideological similarities contributed very positively to the relationship, while ideological differences contributed very negatively to it. This is something I had never really thought about before, but something that made so much sense! I also found it very interesting to hear about how this principle greatly affected the attempted influence over the other country’s elections, especially in the second election campaigns of Obama and Netanyahu, where both overtly and covertly vied to oust each other out of office.

We also talked a bit about strategic ways that the U.S. can attempt to get Israel to make concessions in the peace process. We talked about Option A, the “high pressure” strategy, where the U.S. gives Israel a serious ultimatum and essentially forces them to concede different things in the peace agreement. Option B, on the other hand, was what Professor Aronoff colloquially called the “hugging strategy,” where the U.S. sympathizes with Israel and then gently urges the country’s leaders to make concessions.

At first, when I heard these two options, I immediately thought to myself that it was probably a combination of both strategies that was needed to re-boot the peace process. But after a little bit of reflection, I think it definitely might depend on who is in leadership positions in Israel. I think different leaders probably respond differently to various styles of advocacy in diplomacy, and maybe looking at diplomacy from a more individual level would bring about positive results in American-Israeli foreign affairs, in relations to the peace process.