On July 26, 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. For France and the United Kingdom, who were owners of the canal, as well as Israel, which depended upon trans-Suez traffic for trade, it was a casus belli. Paratroopers dropped to secure the Canal, as Israeli forces pushed across the Sinai. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s decision to side with Egypt over three American allies almost destroyed NATO. The president, though, justified his action in realism. In 1956, there was one Jewish state but ten independent Arab states dedicated to its destruction. Eisenhower believed that by siding with Egypt over Israel, he could sway the broader Arab world to his side in the Cold War. By the Lebanon crisis two years later, he realized he was wrong: Because of its democracy, Western orientation, and culture, Israel was simply a better ally. There followed a de facto alliance that, despite occasional crises during the Reagan, Obama, and Biden administrations, continues to the present day.
From a military standpoint, President Lyndon Johnson institutionalized the informal alliance between the United States and Israel with the Qualitative Military Edge (QME) approach. The concept was simple: Arabs would always hold the edge in both population and amount of military equipment compared to Israel, so the United States would demonstrate its commitment by guaranteeing that Israel would always have more technologically advanced weaponry than its adversaries. Weapons sales involve various US agencies, and debates about capabilities are commonplace. In practice, the State Department considers inputs from the intelligence community to determine the QME. Historically, if weapons were too technologically advanced, the process made them off-limits to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or other potential Israel adversaries.
Perhaps Israel’s decades-long QME should be the model for Armenia. Like Israel at the height of Nasser’s Pan-Arabism, Armenia faces an existential threat at the hands of irredentist Pan-Turkic forces. Whereas Hamas and Hezbollah justify Israel’s extinction in religious prerogatives, the Azerbaijani regime both sandblasts thousand-year-old churches and destroys graveyards while sponsoring Islamist mercenaries to torture and behead Christians.
Compared to Turkey with 86 million people and Azerbaijan with another ten million, however, Armenia’s 2.8 million people will never be able to field an infantry comparable to its neighbors.
Armenia traditionally depended upon Russia for protection but no longer can stomach President Vladimir Putin’s hypocrisy. Putin’s cynical citation of the 1991 Alma Ata Declaration to justfy Russian refusal to enforce the Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire while Russia simultaneously ignored it when Azerbaijan troops occupied portions of Syunik or violated it itself when Russia invaded Ukraine demonstrate how dangerous dependency on Moscow to protect Armenia from external aggression can be.
For decades, a top priority of Armenian groups was Armenian Genocide recognition. President Biden fulfilled that goal, though tying it to undeserved and illegal Section 907 waivers enabled the Azerbaijani regime to fulfill its ambition to expel Nagorno-Karabakh’s indigenous Armenian population. President Ilham Aliyev may whisper sweet nothings to Secretary of State Antony Blinken but in Azerbaijani, Aliyev hints at conquest of Armenia proper.
