Analysing the Six Day War - Neorealist view

In this anarchical system, the Arab states could always pose an existential threat to Israel. An examination of the situation shows that Israel had clear strategic disadvantages relative to its Arab neighbors. Firstly, its population was much smaller and therefore its military force. Secondly, it was surrounded by hostile Arab states with Syria to the north, Jordan to the East and Egypt to the south. Therefore unlike many other states, Israel had a real chance of fighting a three front war that would threaten its very survival. Thirdly, Israel had no ally in the Middle East, which made it feel even more insecure and therefore prone to bold and risky decisions. Its only ally was the U.S but during that time, the U.S just began its ground war in Vietnam and therefore could not afford to fight another war to defend Israel. (Ovendale, 2004) Therefore the only option for Israel was to defend itself. Nasser's Egypt was in a similar situation. Having received what now known as the false Soviet report (Parker, 1996), Nasser still decided to move his troops into the Sinai, in case Israel really intended to invade Syria - Egypt's ally. Despite Egypt's real intention, this move made Israel felt threatened and therefore became even more ready to accept a preemptive war. Again, this is a result of the anarchical system where every state has to defend itself.

The question is, if Israel only intended to defend itself and if the Arab states did not intend to absorb Israeli territory then how could a war happen? In answering this question, one must consider the strategic disadvantages of Israel because they are the reasons that this country embraced the preemptive strike doctrine. (Ovendale, 2004) In fact, as soon as Nasser made the decision to close the Gulf of Aqaba, the Israeli foreign minister - Abba Eban said that Israel had to think like it a nation that had already been invaded. (Ovendale, 2004) This logically leads to the Israeli preemptive strike on the 5th June 1967 that virtually devastated the Egyptian air force and thus began the Six Day War. So far the analysis has shown that the events that led to the outbreak of the war are in accordance to what Waltz's theory predicts.

The limitation of the explanation on this level is that it makes Israeli decision seem rather irrational. Despite the swift and magnificent victory against three much bigger countries, Israel still saw itself as the "victim of strategic insecurity". (as cited in Isacoff, 2005, p.79) As the war concluded, the Arab states refused to discuss peace with Israel, leading to the Israeli fear that it would continue facing security threats in the future. Israel supposedly launched the war only to safeguard its security interests, but the war ended up perpetuating its security problem. Waltz's theory predicts that in an anarchical system, states would take actions to ensure its security, not making it more vulnerable like Israel did after the Six Day War and therefore this level of analysis does not fully account for the reasons why the Israeli government made the decision to go to war.

Second level of analysis: war caused by internal state structure

Leaders often do not make decisions solely by themselves, nor do they make decisions without any constraints or influences. These constraints and influences could be found on the second level of analysis, which examines the internal structure of the state. To understand the internal structure of a state, one may look into the type of government, its economic system, its ideology and finally, domestic problems that a state is facing. (Waltz, 1998) The internal structure of a state is an important factor influencing a country's decision to go to war because leaders may wage war simply to divert people's attention away from serious domestic problems or because there are rival groups within the leadership circle. Because Israel took a unilateral decision that led to war, to explain the outbreak of the Six Day War requires one to examine the internal organization of Israel.

To explain the Israeli decision to wage war, one must examine the institutionalization of Israeli militarism, a process that began in 1936. (Isacoff, 2005) This means that the Israeli government gradually came to accept that a military solution would be a "legitimate and desirable way to end the Israeli-Arab conflict". (Isacoff, 2005, p.77) Following this line, the Israeli government's decision to go to war seems to be based less on strategic calculation or the threat of Arab aggression than institutional norms. However, against this claim, the Israeli Cabinet was rather divided even on the brink of war. (Ovendale, 2004) In fact, the Cabinet almost unanimously rejected an immediate strike in the beginning. (Ovendale, 2004) Nevertheless, the pressure on the Israeli Prime Minister to hand the defense portfolio over to hero of the 1956 war - Moshe Dayan showed that the military had considerable political power, and that there was a rival between the civilian and military leadership. Dayan, who was a hawk, finally became the Minister of Defense and he soon drew a plan for preemptive strike that was realized on June 5th 1967. Had the civilian government stood firmly against the military, Israel may have had a chance to obtain a diplomatic arrangement that would not lead to the outbreak of the war. In this case, the rivalry between the military and civilian leadership had major implications for the state's decision to go to war, as Waltz's theory accurately predicts. However, the analysis has shown that the anarchical international system and the Israeli institutionalization of militarism can only explain why Israel and Egypt reacted to events in a certain way. They alone cannot explain why war was inevitable. Hence, one must examine the causes of war on the first level of analysis.

First level of analysis: war as part of human nature

It is to a certain extent inappropriate to say that Egypt or Cairo makes a certain decision because the country or the capital as a whole very rarely makes a collective decision. Moreover, all crucial decisions are made by a very small group of leaders and policymakers, in some case a single man, who like everyone else is an individual, whose actions are dictated by the human nature. On the first level of analysis, the nature of man and his behaviors are the root causes of war. (Waltz, 1998) As Thomas Hobbes had famously described the state of nature as "a war of every man against every man", it follows that war is a natural product of the nature of man, and that is violent, self-interested and foolish. Following this line of thought, in trying to explain the Six Day War, it would be necessary to examine the roles and motives of key players.

If one believes that the Israeli government only launched the preemptive strike in response to Nasser's moves, the natural question is: did Nasser really want a war with Israel? If Waltz's theory is true and men are really violent, self-interested and foolish by nature, the answer must be "yes". However, evidence proves otherwise.

Nasser saw himself as the leader of the Arab world and sought to promote Pan-Arabism with Cairo at the very center. (Ovendale, 2004) Therefore he had the burden to prove that Egypt was the protector of the Arab World's interests, therefore it had to stand firm in the face of any Israeli challenge. This allowed the Arab countries to actively shape Nasser's foreign policy, especially towards Israel. This influence over Egyptian foreign policy was very clear towards the outbreak of the war. Although the withdrawal of the UNEF and the decision to block of the Straits of Tiran essentially made war inevitable, they were not Nasser's deliberate decisions. Nasser only made those decisions because the Arab world taunted that Egypt was "hiding" behind the UNEF and that it was not interested in helping its Palestinian brothers. (Reynolds, 2001) For Nasser to do otherwise would mean that Egypt did not represent the Arab World and that it was not weak or indecisive against Israel. Hence, Nasser's only viable choice was to exercise brinkmanship, that is to put on a show of force to satisfy the Arab countries and to deter Israel but not to actually wage a war. Nasser had already done so once in 1960, but unfortunately, this time it was a badly miscalculated decision that sent the wrong signals to Israel.

Indeed, misperception on both sides is the key cause of this war, something that Waltz's theory does not take into account. Nasser moved his troops into the Sinai and replaced the UNEF there because for mysterious reasons, it trusted the false Soviet report that the Israelis were really moving massing troops on the Israeli-Syrian border to topple the Damascus government. Since Egypt had a mutual defense pact with Syria, Egypt had to prepare to come to its defense. The Arab worlds’ taunting at Egypt further reinforced this decision. In reality, however, Israel made no such decision to move troops toward the border with Syria, thus the Israeli government saw Egypt's decision as provocative and threatening. It therefore decided it had to respond in kind. In other words, what happened was a modified security dilemma. Misperception and miscalculation led both sides into believing that they must be prepared for war and in the end, because one felt that it could only win if it took the first strike, the war broke out.

So against what the theory predicts, the Six Day War was not rooted in the human nature if one looks at Egypt and Israel. Possible counter argument is that the Arab world was really hostile towards Israel and both sides were engaged in bombastic rhetoric so it seemed that some of them were really violent and wanted war against Israel. However, bellicose rhetoric is different from actually being violent in nature. Evidence even proves that both sides generally tried to avoid war. While Nasser initially demanded only a partial withdrawal of the UNEF so as to avoid the need to close the Straits of Tiran and therefore not giving the Israelis a cause to go to war (Ovendale, 2004), the Israelis also consulted the U.S extensively before launching the preemptive strike. In fact, the Israeli Prime Minister even tried to reach an agreement where a naval force would be sent to the Straits of Tiran to keep it open to Israeli shipping so as to avoid war. (Ovendale, 2004) For this reason, it is unreasonable to believe that the warring parties desired war as the theory assumes. Therefore the theory fails to explain the causes of war on the first level of analysis.

Conclusion

The analysis has shed lights on some important matters. Firstly, Waltz's theory predicted correctly that the international system was an important background cause to the outbreak of the war as Israel had shown. The theory also makes accurate predictions as the internal structure of a state did strongly influence Israel's decision to launch the preemptive strike. The first level of analysis on the other hand, has very limited explanation power in this case study. It is problematic to include the role of the violent human nature in this conflict, and the theory completely ignored the miscalculations and misperceptions from both sides. Since Waltz's theory fails to account for the key causes of the war, it does not adequately explain the causes of the Six Day War.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Articles

Jonathan B. Isacoff (2005). Writing the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Historical Bias and the Use of History in Political Science. Perspectives on Politics, 3, pp 71-88 doi:10.1017/S1537592705050061

Waltz, K. (1998). Explaining War.

Books

Ovendale, R. (2004). The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Wars. Harlow: Longman

Parker, R. (1996). The Six-Day War: A Retrospective. Gainesville: University of Florida

Reynolds, D. (2001). One World Divisible: A global history since 1945. New York: W.W. Norton

Schulze, K. (1999). The Arab-Israeli Conflict. London: Longman