Israel's China Problem.

• Author: Samet, Daniel J.

In May 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went to Jerusalem for several hours' worth of meetings with Israeli national security officials. Ordinarily, a trip to Israel by America's top diplomat wouldn't be particularly noteworthy. But this time, the fact that amid the coronavirus pandemic Pompeo flew so far to spend less than one day in Israel showed something was amiss in U.S.-Israel relations. That something was China. During a press conference with then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Pompeo all but named Beijing in slamming non-democratic nations that "obfuscate and hide information." Israel took the hint: tread carefully with the Chinese.

Growing Sino-Israeli ties had troubled American policymakers for some time before Pompeo's visit. The United States watched as its Asian rival traded more and more with Israel and pumped investments into the country. According to the World Bank, in 2018 China-Israel trade totaled approximately $15 billion, and Israeli exports from China were valued slightly higher than Israeli exports from America. While Jerusalem and Beijing drew closer, Washington worried that its relationship with its Middle Eastern friend could be a casualty. As the U.S. government has reached a consensus that the People's Republic of China (PRC) is America's top national security challenge, it has concomitantly evaluated its bilateral relationships through a China lens. Chinese investment in Israel has given American officials grievances that the Trump administration voiced with regularity. Behind those grievances was concern about longstanding defense ties between Washington and Jerusalem. Should the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) buy Israeli ports, build Israeli 5G networks, and secure an even larger economic footprint in the country, America might be forced to rethink its entire security relationship with Israel. Although Jerusalem appears to have gotten Washington's message, the China variable will strain bilateral ties for the foreseeable future.

This predicament calls for a clear statement of American strategy. A few papers aside, there has been little analysis of what the United States should do--and how it should do it--as regards Chinese influence in Israel. Yet the United States has a deep interest in stopping Israel from falling any further into the PRC'S orbit. Doing so requires mobilizing non-military tools of diplomacy, including some coercive ones, to bring Israel around to the U.S. position. China has become the issue in U.S.-Israel relations--and American policymakers should treat it as such.

American foreign policymakers have long seen Israel's security as important to that of their country--and rightly so. During the Cold War, Israel aligned itself with the U.S.-led order while nearby Middle Eastern states joined the Soviet sphere. Having an anti-communist bulwark in that volatile region was a boon to the United States. This was also true throughout the War on Terror, as Israel played a key role in American counterterrorism efforts. Today, it pays to have the region's most innovative economy, most powerful military, and most vibrant democracy on our team. Though the Middle East has lost the geopolitical importance it once had, an alliance with Israel very much remains in America's interest. From assisting with security threats to providing information technology that powers firms in Silicon Valley, Israel has helped America stay safe and prosperous. The two countries have grown so close that President Barack Obama and Netanyahu both called the bond between them "unbreakable" in 2016.

Yet for a relationship so strong, the PRC has been an irritant for so long. In particular, Sino-Israeli defense cooperation has not sat well with Washington. In 2005, Jerusalem nixed the sale of Harpy assault drones to Beijing following a ferocious lobbying campaign by the United States, which considered the Harpy a threat to Taiwan's security. Around the same time, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission stated in its annual report that Israel ranked "second only to Russia as a weapons system provider to China and as a conduit for sophisticated military technology." Israel had similarly backed out of an arms deal with China in 2000 after Washington objected to the proposed sale of the advanced Phalcon radar system. U.S. government officials had worried that sophisticated military hardware might end up in CCP hands as early as 1992, when the George H.W. Bush administration probed whether Beijing had acquired...