Respect and Mistrust: Kennedy, Israel, and Dimona
Date
2019-12-16
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Abstract
This dissertation is an examination of American-Israeli relations through the lens of American nonproliferation policy, pertaining to the Israeli nuclear program known as Dimona. President John F. Kennedy held a favourable view of Israel; he admired the Jewish state as it fit neatly within his worldview of a nation worth supporting in the Cold War. Kennedy’s dominant priority of nonproliferation, stopping the Israelis from developing a nuclear program, overruled this positive view of Israel. For the first two years of his Presidency, 1961 and 1962, Kennedy tolerated Israeli behaviour and maintained a positive view of Israel. By 1963, he adopted one of the firmest stands of any President against Israel, notably the most severe approach to Dimona. Due to troubling intelligence, he no longer trusted the Israelis regarding their nuclear intentions and confronted them accordingly. This study investigates this clash of presidential priorities. It delves deeper than existing scholarship into why Kennedy chose his specific course of action in 1963 and how this confrontation affected bilateral relations. It argues that though Kennedy and the United States “won” the diplomatic standoff on Dimona, the Israelis outsmarted their counterparts and ultimately achieved their aims. Despite Kennedy’s sustained concern and the deployment of nearly all means at his disposal, he and the Americans “lost” the war on Israeli nuclear proliferation. The dissertation concludes that though Dimona constituted a serious diplomatic rift, decisive actions by Kennedy and equally astute measures by Levi Eshkol and skilled Israeli diplomats guaranteed that the American-Israeli special relationship continued. Despite Kennedy’s best efforts, coordinated deception and organized Israeli diplomacy ensured the Americans never truly deciphered the extent of Israeli nuclear progress. This case study of Israeli nuclear proliferation best exemplifies how Kennedy and the United States responded to potential proliferation threats at a key juncture in the Cold War.
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Keywords
Nuclear proliferation; Israel; American Foreign Relations; Nuclear weapons
Citation
Cahill, A. (2019). Respect and Mistrust: Kennedy, Israel, and Dimona (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.