The puppeteer’s paradox: In the US–Israel relationship who is the master and who is the slave?

In the complex calculus of American foreign policy, few relationships are as contentious as that between the United States and Israel. Two competing theories attempt to explain it, each proposing a starkly different solution to a fundamental question: Who is really in charge of whom?

In my recent podcast, JasimAzawiShow, I posed the question to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson—a man who worked for years in the engine room of American power as Chief of Staff to the late US Secretary of State Colin Powell—whether Israel dictates US ME foreign policy or merely plays this role. He paused, as he often does when guiding the listener to an unpleasant truth. He recalled Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, on the US Senate floor, shouting, “Come on, people! If Israel doesn’t do it, then we have to do it!” The tantrum, Wilkerson stated, revealed what Washington would prefer to conceal: that Israel is the United States’ “forward operating base,” a willing implementer of policies Washington itself cannot openly pursue. The US, Wilkerson implies, uses Israel as a smokescreen, a prop, and an alibi so that it can say: we cannot act differently because Israel dictates our domestic policy. 

Wilkerson’s contention—that Israel is a surrogate instead of a master—is an interesting inversion of the conventional narrative. Israel’s power, to him, is not structural but functional: it does America’s dirty work in the area, from confronting Iran’s ambitions to containing Arab nationalism and overseeing regional oil flow. Yet that same contention runs directly into the face of one of the most controversial claims in modern political science.

Then, in 2007, University of Chicago Professor John J. Mearsheimer and Harvard Professor Stephen M. Walt published “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.“ The book detonated like a controlled explosive in the American academy. They argued that AIPAC and a constellation of pro-Israel organizations “have managed to shape and sometimes dictate” US Middle East policy in ways harmful to American strategic interests. The lobby’s influence, they maintained, was “unmatched by any other foreign interest group in Washington,” with the ability to stifle debate and punish critics of Israeli policy.

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That tension—Wilkerson’s “America behind the mask” vs. Mearsheimer’s “America under the thumb”—has fueled decades of debate over who actually makes US foreign policy in the Middle East. It’s an old question, but one that refuses to die.

Few represented this ambivalence more viscerally than Richard Nixon, the ultimate realist. On one Nixon Presidential Library tape, the president is heard fulminating: “I hate it, it’s what the Zionist lobby is doing to me. They want to make people do what they want. I hate it!” The voice is shrill, face contorted, outrage real, and a sense of entrapment evident. Years later, in another interview, the same Nixon, calm and logical, delivered a judgment shattering in its finality: “Contrary to all beliefs, Israel is not an asset. Israel is a liability.” 

Between those two statements exists the essence of the puppeteer’s paradox. Washington depends on Israel to project its strategic will across the Middle East; Israel depends on Washington to survive the backfire that this power projection creates. Each purports to be the master of the other—and each, in a sense, is right.

Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, mocked the endless speculations over who is in charge. “One week they tell us Israel is dominating the United States,” he told reporters. “And the next week, they tell us the United States is dominating Israel. This is rubbish. We have a relationship, a partnership of allies who share values and share goals.” Yet as any foreign policy expert knows, alliances are very rarely between equals. They are marked by leverage, dependence, and the power of saying no.

Netanyahu’s “shared values” argument has often been rhetorical camouflage for asymmetry. While Israel receives over $3.8 billion in yearly US military aid and unmatched diplomatic shelter at the U.N., Washington remains hostage to a domestic political consensus in which backing Israel is a patriotism litmus test. When a member of Congress steps out of line, a political price is swiftly and publicly extracted.

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Wilkerson, after decades of observing the power machinery in action, phrases it differently. Congress, for him, is less under Israel’s control than under fear—fear of being charged with disloyalty. A republican expert told Tucker Carlson on his show, “Every Republican member has a Zionist babysitter, telling him how to vote”. The result is paralysis: a legislature not prepared to delink US interests from Israeli ones, for fear of ending a political career.

The strategic asset approach accurately accounts for cases in which Israeli behavior aligns with American interests in containing competing powers and projecting regional influence. It cannot, however, account for why the United States sends billions of dollars in military aid each year to a nation with a strong economy, or why US administrations consistently defend Israel from international condemnation even when it interferes with other foreign policy goals.

This dynamic reached its apex in 2015, when Netanyahu, at the invitation of Republican leaders, addressed a joint session of Congress to denounce President Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Iran. Members of Congress erupted into applause—43 standing ovations for a foreign leader who was quite openly confronting the sitting US president. The symbolism was not hard to read: the tail wagging the dog.

And yet, Mearsheimer’s theory is not cast in iron in every instance and occasionally merits scrutiny. If Israel truly controlled Washington, it would have prevented Obama’s nuclear deal, prevented the US from selling arms to Arab rivals, and secured automatic American backing for each Gaza war. That has not always happened. Israel may push, prod, and provoke—but it cannot dictate absolutely. The interests of the two partners may sporadically collide. 

As Nixon’s tapes remind us, America’s presidents have long grappled with the cost of that engagement. “Israel is a liability,” he cried, but Washington has not reached the point of complete severance. The paradox endures because it suits both sides—politically, strategically, and psychologically. Each can claim control; each remains, in fact, the other’s captive. The reality is less conspiratorial, more symbiotic. The two are thus not connected as puppeteer and puppet, but as two actors trapped in a drama they can no longer rewrite.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.