Not So "Special Relationship?": US-Israel Relations During the Obama Administration

Dr. Ilai Saltzman, Schusterman-AICE visiting Israel Assistant Professor, Claremont McKenna College

Wednesday, January 14, 2015
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
UCLA School of Law, Room 1447

In recent news, it has been reported that senior White House officials referred to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as “chickensh*t” and “coward” – an incident that raised the level of personal enmity between Benjamin Netanyahu and the Obama Administration, and possibly quashed the viability of the “special relations” between the two countries.

In this talk, Dr. Ilai Saltzman will argue that this most recent incident merely reflects a deeper and more prolonged trend in US-Israel relations that dates back to Barack Obama’s first presidential term. Indeed, since Obama took office in 2009, some of the underlying foundations of the “special relationship” between Israel and the US were fundamentally challenged and the outcome was noticeable discord and ongoing diplomatic friction between Washington and Jerusalem. In this talk, Dr. Saltzman will examine the nature of these shifts during Obama’s first term in office and show that they reflect more than a simple lack of “chemistry” between the two leaders.

Dr. Ilai Z. Saltzman is the Schusterman-AICE visiting Israeli Assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.  In the past he has taught at the International Relations department and the Rothberg International School at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as the Political Science department at Tel-Aviv University.

He holds an MA in International Relations from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and PhD from University of Haifa. Dr. Saltzman was a research fellow from 2010 to 2011 at the Belfer Center for  Science and International Affairs' International Security Program at Harvard University's John F.Kennedy School of Government.

He is the author of Securitizing Balance of Power Theory: A Polymorphic Reconceptualization (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012). He is currently working on projects dealing with US foreign policy, Israeli foreign and security policy, and US-Israel relations.

Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies(310) 825-9646
Israel@international.ucla.edu

Sponsor(s): Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies