166. Letter From the Acting Secretary of State to the British Ambassador (Caccia)1
Dear Harold: I should like to give you our thoughts on the suggestions for slowing the arms race between Israel and the United Arab Republic set out in the oral message from the Foreign Secretary [Page 366] which you gave the Secretary of State in a written memorandum on August 12.2 You mentioned in your covering letter a related question now before you, i.e. Mr. Ben-Gurion’s request that Israel be permitted to purchase the British ground-to-air missile, “Bloodhound.”
The Foreign Secretary is, of course, quite right with regard to the Israel–UAR arms race and right in saying that if we are to embark upon efforts to mitigate this we should start with the French. How successful we would be in so doing is problematical. Eight or nine years ago a sincere attempt was made on tripartite US-UK-French basis to limit the flow of armaments into the Middle East but little success was achieved and the project is now moribund.
The obstacles which occur to us as arguing against such a UK–US initiative at this time are formidable:
- 1.
- Could the French be brought to cooperate? Experience over the years has shown that close and long-standing ties exist between French arms manufacturers and Israel.
- 2.
- Could the UAR be persuaded to cooperate? Feelings in the UAR are so intense against Israel that we believe that any assurances by us that Israel would not receive Mirage III aircraft simply (a) not be believed and (b) considered a ruse by the imperialist powers to keep the UAR from overcoming its present military inferiority to Israel.
- 3.
- Could Israel be persuaded to cooperate? We doubt this without an ironclad assurance from the three powers that the USSR would not supply MIG–19s to the UAR. We could not give such an assurance, nor even if it were given could we carry out the inspections and safeguards with regard to Soviet arms deliveries which Israel would be likely to demand. Israel–UAR relations will have to improve a great deal before Nasser could be expected to refuse a Soviet offer of MIG–19s.
- 4.
- Would the purity of our motives be accepted by the two parties? We doubt this. We believe we would only be creating new turmoil and suspicion from both sides. To the UAR such an initiative would be a Western imperialist trick designed to foster the interests of Israel. To Israel our initiative would appear as an effort to weaken the defense posture of little Israel which does not accept the idea that it now possesses a superior military capability to that of the UAR. From the US point of view this impression would be particularly undesirable since we have recently responded negatively to a large part of Israel’s arms request to us and we are particularly anxious to avoid giving Israel the impression we are attempting to interfere with her efforts to purchase arms elsewhere.
- 5.
- Even if it were possible to deal with the various complications involved, would the parties really welcome the diversion of scarce resources from areas to internal development? We think in both cases they might give lip service to this reasonable idea but in practice we doubt that Nasser could really accept a reversal of the arms acquisition [Page 367] policies he has pursued for years and which have been one of the sources of his popularity, above all with the Egyptian army which is still in a traumatic state as the result of its crushing defeat at the hands of the Israelis in Sinai. Israel with its high level of intelligence and profound sense of national claustrophobia resulting from the enmity of its neighbors is unlikely to forego guns for butter particularly since the latest equipment is such an important morale factor in Israel’s well-trained army. Based upon our conversations with Mr. Ben-Gurion not long ago Israel is determined to have both guns and butter.
With regard to the question of ground-to-air missiles Israel as you know pressed us recently to let them acquire Hawks. Without saying “no” bluntly we have discouraged the Israelis from thinking that we might supply these in the foreseeable future for a number of reasons. Primarily, we are unwilling to abandon our traditional policy of avoiding the role of a major supplier of arms to the Middle Eastern countries. The supplying of an advanced and expensive weapon, such as the Hawk, might very well have been construed as favoritism in Arab-Israeli affairs since the arms we make available to Arab nations are much simpler and much less costly.
In addition, we feared that supplying the Hawk to Israel might stimulate the UAR to the acquisition of a missile capability from the USSR. The Hawk, although purely a defensive weapon, is highly effective against aircraft. Substantially increasing the defense of the Israeli airfields would, of course, make the Israeli air force more effective both in defenses and offenses. Therefore, the UAR, to counter this, might seek to obtain a long range missile capability from the USSR against which the Hawk would have no effect. If this indeed were the result the Middle East would have moved into a new cycle of the arms race, the missile age.
We recognize, of course, Israel’s desire to keep her defenses as modern as possible and to this end we have recently made something of an exception to our usual policy by agreeing to sell the Israelis certain modern electronic equipment for an early warning radar system.
I am sure Secretary Herter would be happy to explore these matters further with the Foreign Secretary if he so desires.
With best wishes,
Sincerely,
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 784A.5612/8–2660. Secret; Personal. Drafted by Jones on August 22. Attached to the source text is a memorandum from Jones, August 24, which reviews the contents of the letter.↩
- A copy of the message and a brief memorandum of Caccia’s conversation with Herter on the occasion of its presentation are ibid., Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204, and Central Files, 780.56/8–1260, respectively.↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this stamped signature.↩