1st Edition
Lyndon B. Johnson and the Politics of Arms Sales to Israel In the Shadow of the Hawk
Lyndon B. Johnson and the Politics of Arms Sales to Israel seeks to reconstruct and elucidate the processes behind the decisions made by the Johnson Administration during the years 1965-68 to sell Israel M-48 tanks, A-4 Skyhawk planes and F-4 Phantom planes. This examination is based on a distinction between three factions which competed for influence within Washington's high-policy elite: the traditionalists (whose major representative was Secretary of State Dean Rusk); the pragmatists (whose most outspoken representative was Robert Komer of the National Security Council); and the domestically oriented policymakers (the central decision-maker who quintessentially exemplifies this category being President Johnson). This book is a sequel to John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Arms to Israel, which examined the first arms deal between the US and Israel.
Biography
Abraham Ben-Zvi is professor in the Department of Political Science; senior research fellow at the Jaffee Center of Strategic Studies; and the head of the Security Studies Program at Tel Aviv University. Professor Ben-Zvi is a graduate of the University of Chicago. He is the author of numerous books, monographs and articles that seek to elucidate various facets of American policy in the Middle East, particularly those pertaining to the formation and dynamics of the American-Israeli alliance. Among his books are: The United States and Israel: The Limits of the Special Relationship (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Decade of Transition: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Origins of the American-Israeli Alliance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); and John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Arms Sales to Israel (London: Frank Cass, 2002.
