| This dissertation examines how changing American views of and policies toward Israel shaped a key paradox of America's imperial mission in the Vietnam War and post-Vietnam eras. Whereas the Six Day War of 1967 drew admiration from an aging generation of liberal Cold Warriors toward Israel's citizen-soldier model, an increasingly fractured American public witnessed the Israeli debacle during the October War of 1973 through different projections of American global responsibility. Many conservatives wished to stifle what they saw as the seeds of a defeatist culture at home by bolstering fortress Israel. Simultaneously, however, an influential cadre of what I term "post-Vietnam liberals," who developed during the Vietnam War a more negative attitude toward armed conflict, realized an opportunity to fashion themselves as Israel's responsible educators toward more peaceful ways. This design flattered post-Vietnam liberal sensitivities by discursively (though not practically) escaping the politics of violence that shadowed United States' intervention in South East Asia, and portraying themselves as the promoters of a healthy civilian-minded order. The media event surrounding the signing of the Camp David agreement was the crowning moment for this impetus.;At the same time, however, policymakers across the political landscape developed their military ties with Israel, using it as a de facto naval base for the Sixth Fleet from 1976 onward. My study shows how mid-1970s liberals used the performances set around their relationship with Israel as a springboard to overcome imperial scruples: it allowed them to resurrect a sense of American exceptionalism and self-perception as a noble power, while actively (yet far from their eyes) boosting their own as well as their client state's expansive military apparatus.;Israel was not alone in drawing military support alongside talk of peace-promoting causes from the United States, but no other client has entangled itself with the American patron so successfully, so eagerly, and to such a high degree of dependency as the small Middle Eastern state. I contend that Israel's courting of American patronage marginalized the voices of many of its own people whose interests, opinions, and preferences often conflicted with those of their government. The different sentiments Americans and Israelis held toward the idea of a war-mobilized society throughout these war-strewn decades challenged the bedrock of American popular support to Israel, and Israeli propaganda agents scrambled to preserve their state's popularity among an American public that developed a much more diverse and conflicted relationship toward military power. My source base synthesizes English and Hebrew language materials found in state and nonstate archives from Presidential Libraries and the National Archives to repositories of press, film, cartoons, and prose in both countries, allowing me to examine the ways states and individuals manipulated popular perceptions of the international relationship. |
