"Israeli hawks recognize that the US commitment to Israel matters in a non-rhetorical way..."

LG&M, here

" .... Recounting recent meetings with Israeli national security officials, Indyk said that “the Israelis were upset at the way that Bush had offended Russia with missile defense” in Eastern Europe. The Israelis, like many Americans and most of the rest of the world, saw the deployment of untested missile defense technology in Poland and the Czech Republic as needlessly provocative of Russia, whose support is seen as necessary for any effort to bring Iran’s nuclear program under control.

Speaking about President Obama’s engagement policy, Indyk said “The key to this strategy has always been Russia,” because of their close relationship with the Iranians, ......

President Obama’s diplomacy “is about trying to concert the international community into a solid block against the Iranian nuclear program such that the Iranians would see that it is not in their interest to pursue nuclear weapons.” Indyk said “That is what is happening now.”

There are some interesting observations to be made here regarding interdependence of commitments. Neoconservatives are HUGE on reputation; a reputation for weakness means that the terrorists will destroy us, while a reputation for strength means that they'll cower in their dark caves until they undergo conversion and emerge as fierce advocates of Reaganomics. Indeed, neoconservatives elevate this conception of reputation above all other diplomatic considerations, such that any move that takes into account the genuine foreign policy concerns of Russia, China, or Iran in fact indicates weakness, and thus should be avoided......

For American neocons, the pro-Israel logic worked as followed: If the United States demonstrated an irrational commitment to a useless system just to piss off Russia, then it would indicate that the US would pay high costs to do irrational things in support of Israel. If we failed to push forward with the missile system, then our commitment to expensive, irrational programs would be in question, Israeli "will" would fracture, and the Jordanians would push the Israelis into the sea, or something. As all commitments are interdependent, the North Koreans would soon conquer Japan, Turkey would capitulate to Tehran and work to restore the Caliphate, Brazil would elect Hugo Chavez as God Emperor, and Washington State would secede and join Canada.

Of course, real Israelis have to actually live in Israel, and they saw the world a bit differently. Israeli hawks recognize that the US commitment to Israel matters in a non-rhetorical way. The defense system in Poland had no practical, real world impact on Israeli security. Moreover, Israel actually needs to deal with Russia;.... It turns out, rather, that neither the Poles nor the Israelis care overmuch about the other; rhetorical support for the neocon vision of liberty/missile defense/bunker busting/awesomeness/sexy/democracy/whiskey collapses in the face of real world material interest. In the end, it's almost as if our allies value material and institutional commitments to their defense more than they value a nebulous American reputation for "toughness".