The Next U.S. Peacekeeping ‘Boot’ To Drop: The Golan Heights?

(Washington, D.C.): The full costs of President Clinton’s latest diversion of the U.S. military
into a distant and highly problematic peacekeeping operation have not yet been properly
estimated, let alone paid for. It is a safe bet, however, that the tab for the Kosovo mission will
turn out to be very high, costing the Pentagon billions of dollars that are desperately needed to
restore its troops’ present combat readiness and provide for that needed in the future.

Given this backdrop, it is little wonder that the Clinton Administration hopes that it
can
quietly get the United States committed to another, similarly open-ended peacekeeping
mission — a mission that is, if anything, even more fraught with danger and potentially
costly
risks than that underway in the Balkans today.

Mission Impossible?

For at least five years, the Clinton team has sought to lubricate negotiations between Israel
and
Syria, and increase the prospects that they would produce a “peace” agreement, by offering to
assign U.S. troops the task of guarding (or “monitoring”) the strategic plateau between the two
countries known as the Golan Heights. The theory is that Israel would feel more
comfortable
relinquishing physical control of high ground that has long been recognized as critical to its
security if American forces were in place there.

This theory appears about to be put to the test. Ehud Barak, who was
finally installed today as
Israel’s Prime Minister, has made it clear that he intends to make the completion of a treaty with
Syria a top priority. In point of fact, the governing coalition he has painstakingly
cobbled
together appears to have only one common denominator: A determination to make
“peace” with Israel’s Arab neighbors on whatever terms are necessary. In the case of
Syria,
that means paying the price long demanded by the Syrian despot, Hafez Assad
— the surrender
of the Golan Heights captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War.

In his inimitable fashion, Assad — long recognized as one of the most cunning and ruthless
dictators in the Middle East (which is saying something) — has responded by combining
laudatory public comments about Barak with an arms-shopping spree in Moscow. ¹ There he
hopes to purchase new fighter jets, tanks and other military hardware that might prove useful
should he wish to launch future attacks on Israel once the Golan Heights are restored to Syrian
control.

What is at Stake

Those who favor Israeli territorial concessions to Syria often argue that an
American deployment
on the Golan would mitigate against such a danger in several ways: First, they suggest that U.S.
peacekeepers would ensure that Israel continues to receive the sort of early warning and other
critical intelligence about Syrian military activities the Jewish State has collected from
installations on the Heights over the past thirty-two years.

Second, they have implied that American forces would serve, at a minimum,
as a “trip-wire”
with which Syria would have to reckon were it to decide once again to mount an attack against
Israel from this vantage point. And third, some have even argued that the U.S. deployment could
be sufficiently large and powerful to defend the plateau — and, therefore, the Galilean valley
below it — against a determined Syrian attack.

Unfortunately for the advocates of an American mission on the Golan,
none of these
propositions stands up to close scrutiny. In fact, in 1994, a blue-ribbon group
sponsored by
the Center for Security Policy carefully considered each argument for deploying U.S. troops on
the Golan and found them to be seriously defective. ² This
group, whose eleven members
included five distinguished four-star general officers (notably, former Chiefs of Naval
Operations Admirals Carl Trost and Elmo Zumwalt and former
Marine Corps
Commandant Al Gray), ³ determined that:

If Israel withdraws on or from the Golan, it will be required to
adopt measures to
compensate to the extent possible for the military risks inherent in relinquishing the
territory. It will have to consider: Investment in more surveillance assets, higher
sustained
readiness for air and other forces, a larger standing army, and means and methods to increase the
speed of military mobilization. All such measures entail large costs — political and societal as
well as financial. A U.S. force deployment to the Golan will not significantly reduce those
costs.
One of the dangers of such a deployment is that it may create a false sense of security in
Israel and discourage the investments necessary to address such risks. This would not
serve
U.S. interests, much less Israel’s.

A Dangerous, Unwarranted Sense of
Security

This last point is especially important. If Israel decides it wishes to
assume the risks
associated with making a peace agreement with a notoriously untrustworthy despot like
Assad, that is its business. But the Jewish State must understand that those risks will
be sharply
increased, not kept the same — let alone mitigated — were American forces to replace
Israeli ones
on the Golan.

The Center for Security Policy panel of top former military and civilian
officials concluded that:

There is no mission or rationale for a U.S. peacekeeping force on
the Golan that would
justify the resulting costs and risks. Indeed, the net effect could be negative for Israel’s
security and regional stability, while the consequences could include the loss of U.S. lives and,
possibly, a credibility-damaging retreat of the U.S. forces under terrorist fire. In any event, such
a deployment would increase the danger of direct U.S. involvement in a future Middle East war
and undermine Israel’s standing with the U.S. public as a self-reliant ally.

The Bottom Line

These facts demand that the question of deploying U.S. forces on the Golan
Heights be subjected
to rigorous public debate now, before such a deployment becomes an integral part of
any Israeli-Syria deal. Otherwise, Congress is likely to be presented with another Clinton
fait accompli,
whereby any action to prevent an ill-advised commitment of American troops is portrayed as a
mortal threat to the “peace process” and, therefore, politically untenable.

The interests of a true regional peace will only be served if an
agreement between Israel
and Syria is forged on the basis of genuine, mutual reconciliation and a shared
commitment to peaceful coexistence. Absent such sentiments on the part of Hafez
Assad, a
Golan in Syrian hands will likely once again become a locus for conflict. It would be a double
disservice if the commitment of American forces has the effect of increasing the chances for such
a conflict and of putting those troops into its midst.

¹ It remains to be seen whether State Department Spokesman James
Foley’s statement today
that “We would be very concerned about any new Russian arms sales to Syria or to any other
designated state sponsor of terrorism,” will have any perceptible effect upon either the Syrians’
efforts to buy advanced weapons from Moscow or the Russians’ efforts to makes subsidized
arms sales to Damascus. Both the Kremlin and Assad could be forgiven, however, for finding
any American threat to withhold aid to Russia for abetting a state sponsor of terrorism given the
Clinton Administration’s assiduous determination to promote cordial relations with the Russians
and Syrians.

² The full text of this study may be seen by visiting the Center’s web
site at
Golan.

³The other eight authors were: General John
Foss, former Commanding General, U.S. Army
Training and Doctrine Command who had responsibility for U.S. forces in the Sinai;
Lieutenant
General John Pustay (USAF, Ret.) former President, National Defense University;
General
Bernard Schriever, former Commander, U.S. Air Force Systems Command;
Douglas J. Feith,
former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Middle East specialist on the National
Security Council; Frank Gaffney, Jr., former acting Assistant Secretary of
Defense and Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense; Richard Perle, former Assistant Secretary of
Defense; Eugene
Rostow, former Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and Under
Secretary of
State for Political Affairs; and Henry Rowen, former Assistant Secretary of
Defense for
International Security Affairs and chairman of the Central Intelligence Agency’s National
Intelligence Council.