Zero-Sum Game, Israel The United States and India

Recent reports that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, warn India that its military ties with Israel, and the last weapons transactions between the parties come at the expense of future transactions with the United States, should be heard in Jerusalem.

Strengthened military relations in recent years between Israel and India have brought tremendous line transactions between the parties, Falcon jet, improvement of tanks, planes and helicopters, missile, drones, or in other words anything that the IDF have a world advantage comes to the Indian Army today. International security researchers claim that Israel will soon become, if not already the largest supplier of arms to the Indian Army.

But Israel did not enter into a vacuum in India. Every new deal that Israel performs with the Indian army someone else conduct one less transaction, that someone is mainly the United States, hence U.S. Secretary of State warning.

Of course this does not mean that Israel should stop selling weapons to India, Israel must continue to sell and even to more new markets. But Israel needs to consider one thing. The United States had passed the stage where it can produce weapons and don't sell it to other countries. Modern production of weapons is a process so expensive that even the enormous size of the U.S. military is not enough to repay the costs invested in development. So every time that the United States is losing a potential buyer of weapons to Israel or any other country, it will sell the lacking to other countries, countries that have a lot of money and until now the United States refrained from selling them weapons so crucial. Unfortunately for Israel these countries are particularly rich Arab countries, with emphasis on Saudi Arabia and smaller Gulf states and perhaps even Egypt.

So if in the coming years there will be an increase in U.S. arms sales to Arab countries, we should not be surprised, we must accept it with understanding and even preparation for a scenario this weapons leak to hostile hands. To sell weapons? Yes, but with an eye open on impact.