FIGURE 1.

NET AID TO ISRAEL

Annual grants and loans less debt service

• EXCLUDING TRANSITIONAL QUARTER FOR COMPARABILITY

ADJUSTED BY U.S. DOD INFLATOR

3ASIS OF COMPUTATION-SEE APPENDIX

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At the same time, Israel's need for assistance has continued to grow. It derives, above all, from the necessity to maintain a military balance against an Arab coalition which is receiving everlarger numbers of more sophisticated arms. Because of its direct relevance to the question of Israel's need for aid, I would like to devote a few minutes to an assessment of the military balance.

Some people have concluded from Israel's successes against the Syrians in Lebanon last summer that Israel need no longer fear an Arab attack and that Israel now has all the arms it needs for selfdefense. This perception, although widespread, is erroneous and misleading, because the balance between Israel and Syria in Lebanon is but a small piece of the picture, for several reasons: (1) In 1982, Israel had to fight only a portion of the forces of one Arab country. In the future, Israel must be able to defend itself against a much wider threat, like that of 1973 when eleven Arab countries contributed forces.

(2) Syria is one of the few remaining Arab countries
which gets most of its weapons from the USSR.
Many Soviet systems are less capable and more
vulnerable to Israeli countermeasures than the
Western-supplied systems that are now entering
the arsenals of other Arab countries, such as the
Saudi F-15s which can easily outperform the Syrian
MiG-21s.

(3) Syria itself is now in the midst of a major

to

modernization and rearmament, reportedly including
a satellite data link connecting Syrian air defense
a control system in Moscow. The Soviets are in-
troducing new countermeasures at a feverish pace, to
ensure that Syria will fare better in any future
round of fighting.

(4) Israel must take account even of the Soviet Union
itself as a potential threat.

Russia now has seven

airborne divisions whose troops and equipment could

be introduced rapidly into a Middle Eastern conflict.
It also has several thousand military personnel already
on the ground in Syria.

If the Arab

Above all, Israel is forced to plan, not only for the situation that exists at a given moment, but for the more demanding situations that could come about over a ten year time horizon. League is divided today, this can change rapidly, as it does from time to time, and Israel may face a much larger coalition than is

apparent at the present time. Taken together, the Arabs pose a formidable threat, possessing collectively almost as many combat aircraft and tanks as NATO (e.g. 1,912 jets compared to NATO's 1,986 in Central and Northern Europe). The long lead-time on aircraft and tank procurement makes it necessary for Israel to plan against this larger threat today.

In the wider strategic perspective, Israel operates on a narrow margin of safety, with the certain knowledge that the first war it truly lost would be the last. As Figure 2 shows, Arab military forces have a substantial quantitative advantage over those of Israel, averaging a ratio of about three-to-one. For example, Israel has about 634 aircraft against the Arabs' 1,912 (2,341 counting Egypt), and 3,600 tanks compared to the Arabs' 7,550 (9,650 if Egypt is included) counting only those Arab countries able to send forces. This is a quantitative disparity considerably larger than that faced by NATO in Europe or by South Korea, and it forces Israel to take extraordinary measures to compensate.

Until recently, this quantitative imbalance was offset by important qualitative advantages in Israel's favor, but these too are eroding. Israel can no longer count on having better weapons than those available to the Arabs. For example, Israel now has a total of about 125 advanced-design combat aircraft (F-15s and F-16s), in service or on order. By comparison, Arab countries now have in service or on order more than 160 Western state-of-the-art jets (U.S. F-15s and F-16s, French Mirage 2000s) not to mention the latest Soviet models. If in the future the U.S., as expected, sells to the Arabs another 200 advanced fighters and the French only add 40, by the end of the decade the Arabs will have 400 to Israel's current 125, making it all the more important that the Administration end delays on authorizing the 75 additional F-16s to Israel. Allowing the qualitative balance of airpower to tip in the Arab favor is definitely not in the interest of the United States. If the Arabs are able to compound their advantage in quantity with an advantage in quality, the temptation to resort to force will grow dramatically.

Equally important, there are growing indications that the Arabs are acquiring sophisticated electronic warfare equipment from Soviet and Western sources, as we are now seeing in Syria. Much of the equipment is state-of-the-art, some developed by Western companies with access to highly secret data about the very weapons that are used by Israel.

There are other disturbing trends. The growing range and payloads of Arab ground attack aircraft may soon mean that the Arabs will have a deep strike capability against Israel, raising the spectre of a surprise attack in the air. The sheer number and diversity of revolutionary new systems being introduced into Arab arsenals at the same time raises the possibility of technical breakthroughs that will give an unforeseen advantage to the Arabs (as new missiles and radars did in 1973). The shift that is taking place in several Arab states, from Soviet to Western Sources of arms, worsens Israel's problems, because most of its Countermeasures are designed against Communist rather than Western systems. The very plurality of the arms which Israel now faces, in both numbers and types, raises the danger of a saturation effect, a point beyond which Israel cannot cope. Finally, as noted above, the growing interventionary power of the Soviet Union raises cedented danger of escalation to superpower involvement.

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These new problems come on top of some asymmetries which have long characterized the conflict. The Arabs are able to maintain standing armies while Israel relies on reserves, creating favorable conditions for an Arab suprise attack. In the diplomatic context of Middle Eastern wars, Israel is expected to allow the Arabs to fire the first shot, thus conceding the advantage of choosing the time and place of conflict. The Arabs can lose one war after another and come back to fight again, but Israel cannot afford to lose even one. If Israel wins on the battlefield, it is not permitted to translate these results into a peace settlement at the conference table, but must settle for mere cease-fires and begin to prepare for the next round of fighting which the Arabs openly declare is their intention.

In sum,

the military balance at this moment may seem favorable to Israel because of the sharp divisions which now characterize the situation in the Arab world. But this advantage is temporary and cannot be the basis of sound planning. The longer-term trends in the military balance are disturbing, and Israel's requirement for U.S. aid to offset these adverse trends remains a vital need. The fact that net aid is declining in real terms does not help the situation.

In conclusion, then, the sum proposed for aid to Israel this year is offset by many advantages accruing to the United States and to Western security, and is one of the most cost-effective expenditures made by the United States in the foreign policy and international security arena. From the point of view of Israel's

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