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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   38751 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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Read Mearsheimer's 'The Israel Lobby'.

It's absolutely astonishing how much Israel gets from the US and how much harm it causes the US.

Israel didn't participate in either of the Gulf Wars (in fact they sucked up Patriot missile batteries that could've been used elsewhere due to Iraqi Scud strikes attempting to fracture the US-led Coalition). They provided dubious/faulty intelligence on Iraq's WMDs to encourage the second Gulf War. Their invasion of Lebanon in 1982 led to the foundation of Hezbollah, which then attacked US forces in the area. People like Ramzi Yousef (first WTC bomber) was a single-issue anti-Israeli terrorist. Osama Bin Laden was heavily influenced by US support for Israel (and its treatment of Palestinians) in the development of his views. Iran's nuclear program is a threat to US interests aside from Israel but it was heavily motivated by the Israeli nuclear arsenal. Said arsenal also exposes the lie in the US's non-proliferation efforts and makes it harder for the US to negotiate.

While Israel did help beat up Soviet allies in the Middle East, US unwillingness to sell weapons to Egypt and co pushed them towards the Soviets in the first place. The Cold War is over, so the US could dump Israel like they dumped South Africa.

The US-Israeli alliance angers a lot of Arabs making them uncooperative with the US (even supposedly US-friendly states worry about losing their legitimacy by openly helping the US). When the US provided massive aid to Israel in the 1973 war the Arabs responded with an oil embargo that cost the US hundreds of billions of dollars.

Furthermore, US aid to Israel is unusually generous in scale and type. The US funded billions for the development of indigenous, Israeli-only weapons like the Merkava tank and the (cancelled) Lavi aircraft. The US prepositioned military supplies in Israel (ostensibly for their own use there), which the Israelis then used for their 2006 war in Lebanon. The US provides billions of dollars to Israel's neighbours like Egypt and Jordan to maintain good relations with Israel. The aid Israel gets has very little oversight and it gets sent out at the beginning of the year rather than in monthly or quarterly installments, so they get interest on it.

And then there's all the espionage, selling US technology to the Chinese and the USS Liberty incident.

The US has allies who actually participate in American wars, who provide useful intelligence and bases, who don't cause all kinds of problems for the US. Nobody else gets special treatment like this, a fact that is due to the astonishing power of the Israel lobby. They have tremendous influence. I'll add some excerpts from the book:

Former House Speaker Richard Armey said in September 2002 that "my No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel."

Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, once noted, "There are a lot of guys at the working level up here [on Capitol Hill] . . . who happen to be Jewish, who are willing . . . to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness . . . These are all guys who are in a position to make the decision in these areas for those senators . . . You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level

Bill Clinton once described AIPAC as "stunningly effective" and "better than anyone else lobbying in this town," while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called it "the most effective general-interest group . . . across the entire planet."

Harry Lonsdale, the Democratic candidate who ran unsuccessfully against Senator Mark Hatfield (R-OR) in 1990, has described his own visit to AIPAC headquarters during that campaign. "The word that I was pro-Israel got around," he writes. "I found myself invited to AIPAC in Washington, D.C., fairly early in the campaign, for 'discussions.' It was an experience I will never forget. It wasn't enough that I was pro-Israel. I was given a list of vital topics and quizzed (read grilled) for my specific opinion on each. Actually, I was told what my opinion must be, and exactly what words I was to use to express those opinions in public . . . Shortly after that encounter at AIPAC, I was sent a list of American supporters of Israel . . . that I was free to call for campaign contributions. I called; they gave, from Florida to Alaska.

Philip Zelikow, a member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board ( 2001 - 03 ) , executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and counsellor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ( 2005 - 06 ) , told a University of Virginia audience on September 10, 2002 , that Saddam was not a direct threat to the United States. "The real threat," he argued, is "the threat against Israel." He went on to say, "And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat . . . And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.

There's an entire chapter devoted to Israel's antipathy for Syria (over the Golan Heights which the Israelis annexed from Syria and the Syrians want back) and attempts to get America to deal with them. Familiar names like John Bolton pop up now and again, it's like seeing the prequel to a TV show. Now that Syria's been engulfed in an extremely bloody civil war, it's easy to see how Israeli influence might have been involved in bringing the US into the conflict. US troops still patrol parts of Eastern Syria to this day.

And the book goes on further! There's the Lebanon chapter, where the Israelis killed 1100 Lebanese civilians after Hezbollah killed a handful of their soldiers. They were partially using nominally US-owned weapons as part of their war effort, of course. The calumnies and skullduggery just goes on and on...

I have great sympathy for the tankies on the matter of Israel and media bias.

Fascinating. I might have to add that book to my to-read list.

I've always regarded the whole Israel/Palestine thing as messy and complicated. Because it is certainly both of those things. There isn't a good guy or bad guy in that story. Both sides have done nasty things to the other. While I don't buy into the idea that transnational Jewry pulls all the strings of the world nonsense, I absolutely can buy that there are a lot of powerful and influential people who happen to be Jewish.

Israel didn't participate in either of the Gulf Wars (in fact they sucked up Patriot missile batteries that could've been used elsewhere due to Iraqi Scud strikes attempting to fracture the US-led Coalition).

I haven't read Mearsheimer's book so I'm not familiar with how he handles the subject, but there are good reasons Israel didn't participate in either Gulf War. Namely, the US didn't want it to. In Desert Storm, there was concern that if Israel got involved it would put the Arab members of the coalition in a precarious position and they would need to withdraw, as being openly allied with Israel would have been a political disaster for them internally. Given that the coalition needed to use these countries as staging areas, having them in was critical. Saddam understood this, which is why he launched SCUD missiles at civilian targets in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities—if he could provoke Israel into joining the war, the coalition effort would be imperiled. It took a great deal of restraint and US diplomacy to ensure that Israel wouldn't retaliate even after the attacks continued, and the crisis eventually passed.

Absolutely right. But what's the point of having this ally if they're really just a liability to your warfighting ability?

The mere existence of the US-Israel special relationship complicates US military strategy.

How did that limit the US's warfighting ability? If the US had stayed ambivalent throughout the entire Arab-Israeli conflict, once Saddam started launching SCUDS we would have been in a much less advantageous position when it came to keeping Israel out of the war. Can you imagine what the mood would be like in America if our cities were subjected to a month of missile attacks from a foreign adversary? Can you imagine any situation where there wouldn't be immediate calls for retaliation? It was largely because of our special relationship that we were able to convince them to cool it. If we were just some other country the Israelis would have looked at us and said "Who the fuck are you to tell us how to respond to attacks on our country!" Do you think Israel really gave a shit about Kuwait, a country that still doesn't recognize them? Before you knew it you'd have had Israeli bombers over Baghdad and the US and its Western allies scrambling to keep the Arabs in the coalition, along with uncertainty about how far Israel really wanted to take this. The SCUD attacks are an example of why having them as an ally enhances our warfighting ability in the region.

  1. Iraq invades Kuwait

  2. US and coalition attacks Iraq

  3. Iraq attacks Israel

Why did Iraq attack Israel? To break up the US coalition! If the US had stayed ambivalent throughout the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iraq wouldn't be diverting missiles to target Israel. They hit Israel because they're a US ally, because the other Arabs hate them.

If it weren't for Israel, it would've been much easier to create a coalition against Iraq, since countries like Syria wouldn't have lingering distrust with the US for aiding their enemy.

It's a bit weird tbh to mention US aid to Israel without mentioning the Camp David Accords, since the ongoing aid was essentially the cost of brokering peace between Israel and Egypt (who similarly is the recipient of 1.3B in military subsidies a year). The Accords were a massive, historic achievement, fracturing the Arab bloc and bringing Egypt back into an uneasy harmony with the West, after Suez threatened them being a fixture of the Soviet sphere. The aid sent to Israel and Egypt is of little consequence for what it has bought. Mearsheimer, of course, is too much of a natural contrarian to recognise that though, as we can also see in his dim opposition to Western involvement in the Ukraine crisis (despite it being a course of action that is almost expressly prescribed by the offensive realism he put his name to).

You think he doesn't mention Camp David?

As discussed in Chapter 1, the American delegation at Camp David took most of its cues from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, coordinated negotiating positions with Israel in advance, and did not offer its own independent proposals for settling the conflict. Even the "Clinton parameters" presented in December 2000 were less an independent American proposal than Clinton's summary of where the negotiations stood and his assessment of the bargaining space within which a solution might be found. Palestinian negotiators complained that the Israelis would sometimes present them with a specific proposal, and then later the Americans would offer the same idea, only the Americans would label it a "bridging proposal." As another member of the U.S. team later admitted, Israeli proposals were often "presented [to the Palestinians] as U.S. concepts, not Israeli ones," a subterfuge that fooled no one and reinforced Palestinian suspicions. Not surprisingly, Palestinian representatives protested that they were "negotiating with two Israeli teams—one displaying an Israeli flag, and one an American flag.

Let's not forget Israeli involvement in the ill-fated Suez operation. There was a third party to Britain and France's invasion, that managed to escape most of the blame. As I said above, Egypt and Syria moved towards the Soviet Union because the US was unwilling to sell them weapons that might be used against Israel. Israel certainly didn't help bring the Arab world towards the US - quite the opposite.

Furthermore, why is the US aiding Egypt? To benefit Israel, as I said above.

Finally, the aid that the United States provides to several of Israel's neighbors is at least partly intended to benefit Israel as well. Egypt and Jordan are the number two and three recipients of U.S. foreign aid, but most of this money should be seen as a reward for good behavior—specifically, their willingness to sign peace treaties with Israel. Egypt received $71.7 million in U.S. aid in 1974, but it got $1.127 billion in 1975 and $ 1.320 billion in 1976 (in constant 2005 dollars) following completion of the Sinai II disengagement agreement. U.S. aid to Egypt reached $2.3 billion in 1978 and soared to a whopping $5.9 billion in 1979, the year the Egypt-Israeli peace treaty was signed. Cairo still gets about $2 billion annually. Similarly, Jordan received $ 76 million in direct aid in 1994 and only $57 million in 1995, but Congress rewarded King Hussein's decision to sign a peace treaty in 1994 by forgiving Jordan's $ 700 million debt to the United States and removing other restrictions on U.S. aid. Since 1997, U.S. aid to Jordan has averaged roughly $ 566 million annually. U.S. willingness to reward Egypt and Jordan in this way is yet another manifestation of Washington's generosity toward the Jewish state.

And compare the magnitude! This is a lot of money for a fairly wealthy country.

In per capita terms, this level of direct foreign assistance amounts to a direct subsidy of more than $ 500 per year for each Israeli. By comparison, the number two recipient of American foreign aid, Egypt, receives only $ 20 per person, and impoverished countries such as Pakistan and Haiti receive roughly $5 per person and $27 per person, respectively.

Finally, Mearsheimer's suggested strategy in Ukraine does not espouse offensive realism but realism generally as opposed to liberalism, which he blames for NATO expansion. Just because he invented offensive realism it does not follow that he endorses it for all situations. Rising powers like China should be treated to declining powers like Russia, in his mind. Context matters.

Just to provide another perspective, I just recently read this book by Stephen Gowans - an actual tankie - and I thought it provided a reasonable argument for seeing the relationship the other way around, ie. it is really US that is at top of this relationship and Israel its accomplice.

Basically, the argument is that it's not necessary to argue that US relationship to Israel is governed by factors beyond direct US interests. In Gowans' telling, what is important is America's grand strategic vision for Middle East, which revolves around keeping Middle East divided in small states that cannot unite under the aegis of socialist Arab nationalism or another vision, ie. Islam. The biggest danger from American perspective would be an united socialist Arab nation which could nationalize oil production and stop easy Western access relatively inexpensive and guaranteed supply of Middle Eastern oil, not mainly because US needs it, as such, but because it concurrently works as a control factor that keeps Europe on US leash.

For this purpose, America supports whatever forces that can effectively stand against Arab socialism and anti-American Islamism (Iran included), whether that means Gulf monarchs, suitably non-anti-American Islamists, ethnic minorities, secular pro-American dictators - or Israel, a settler-colonialist nation created and fostered through Western influence. Israel is just one part of a general puzzle, albeit a very important one, due to its strategic location and the fact that is interests and Western interests meet quite well.

Thus, it's not necessary to explain the invasion of Iraq with Israeli influence - it's sufficient that Saddam at least came from an Arab-nationalist background and ran a highly nationalized economy (which was swiftly privatized after Iraq invasion). It's not necessary to explain the destabilization of Syria with Israeli influence - it's sufficient that Assad is an Arab nationalist, and even a successful overthrow of his regime is not necessary, destabilization is enough to achieve goals. It's not necessary to explain Nasser's pro-Soviet orientation with Israel - US would have eventually opposed him anyway, as he was an Arab nationalist. The same goes for Gaddafi etc.

I'm not saying that I'm fully buying this thesis, but it's an interesting counterweight.

US support for Israel didn't really begin in earnest until the Kennedy Administration, and by that time Pan-Arabism was a lost cause. Pan-Arabism's main proponent was Nasser, and other Arab leaders were rightly suspicious that Nasser only advocated for it under the presumption that he would be running everything. It was this reason that the union of Egypt and Syria was so short-lived; Syria, despite being nominally committed to the Pan-Arab cause, wasn't about to surrender sovereignty to Egypt. I haven't read Gowans's book, but any serious concern about Pan-Arab socialism after about 1970 comes across as anachronistic.

Thus, it's not necessary to explain the invasion of Iraq with Israeli influence - it's sufficient that Saddam at least came from an Arab-nationalist background and ran a highly nationalized economy (which was swiftly privatized after Iraq invasion).

Well, no, it's not sufficient. Saddam may have been an Arab Nationalist but he was one who was already hated by the rest of the Arab world. Even the fellow Ba'athists in Syria sent troops to fight against him during Desert Storm.

It's not necessary to explain the destabilization of Syria with Israeli influence - it's sufficient that Assad is an Arab nationalist, and even a successful overthrow of his regime is not necessary, destabilization is enough to achieve goals.

Detsabilization by whom? I have yet to hear any credible arguments that the United States, Israel, or any other Western government is responsible for the situation in Syria. Israel had fought wars there but they'd been doing that since 1948, and had officially been in a cease-fire since 1974. If anything the US government was criticized for not getting involved enough; Obama publicly called for Assad's resignation but nonetheless allowed him to cross several "lines in the sand" without any action or consequence other than condemnation. The US didn't get formally involved until 2017 but even then this was pretty minimal involvement.

It's not necessary to explain Nasser's pro-Soviet orientation with Israel - US would have eventually opposed him anyway, as he was an Arab nationalist.

Nasser was only pro-Soviet because they were willing to sell him weapons when the US wasn't. And the reason the US wasn't was that they were trying to keep the Arab-Israeli Conflict in low gear. Nasser wasn't interested in aligning himself with any superpower, only with doing what he felt was in Egypt's interest. And if that meant playing the powers off of each other and getting into wars, then so be it.

Your summary here highlights a lot of the objections I have with purely ideological writers like Gowans and Chomsky is that they have a sort of tunnel-vision where they stick to a thesis that confirms their priors and if there's tons of evidence to challenge this thesis, they ignore it rather than address it. It's almost as if they assume that their audience is a bunch of fellow tankies without knowledge of the subject looking for a polemic they can use any time they're trying to crap on US foreign policy, kind of like how in Manufacturing Consent Chomsky expects that the reader won't know that the North Vietnamese invaded Laos in 1958 and that that may have had an influence on Laotian politics at the time.

This all assumes that "instability" can only be caused by powerful interference, which in the Middle East is hysterical. The place is built on instability, everyone hates everyone and the minute a strongman falls (like Ghadaffi or Hussein), everyone goes right back to the blood feuds, terrorism and murder that are the normal social interactions of the ME.

These are societies built on ever-shifting clan alliances, backroom dealings, secret accords and political gamesmanship dressed up as muslim piety. It does not require the US or Israel to destabilize it, it is already unstable. Now, both countries and many more have done a lot of bad shit in the ME, but that's a different question to what causes it. And the sad answer is: the will of the people. This is what the populace of the ME wants, an endless struggle of internecine violence, intermittent warfare, insane racism and religious bigotry. This is what they vote for, given a chance (MB in Egypt, Hamas in the territories, Erdogan in Turkey etc.). This is what they default to any time a dictator installed to keep a lid on things so the oil keeps flowing falls.

Ghadaffi, for all his faults, at least didn't allow slavery. Hussein, a truly despicable tyrant, was 100% better than the ISIS regime his people installed at the first opportunity once he and the US were gone. This is not a US problem, it's not an Israel problem, hell, it's not even a dictator problem. It's a people problem. You can't have peace among people who don't want it. You can enforce it, for a while, if you're strong enough. But every dictator falls, and every foreign intervention runs out of money or political will eventually. You're left with the population, and if the boys want to fight, you better let 'em.

The biggest danger from American perspective would be an united socialist Arab nation which could nationalize oil production and stop easy Western access relatively inexpensive and guaranteed supply of Middle Eastern oil, not mainly because US needs it, as such, but because it concurrently works as a control factor that keeps Europe on US leash.

I have never quite understood this argument. All of those countries need to sell oil in order to finance various state projects (including the all-important state project of ensuring that spoils go to the people whose support the leader needs to stay in power). So, the idea that in any realistic scenario the West will be unable to buy oil doesn't make much sense.

So, the idea that in any realistic scenario the West will be unable to buy oil doesn't make much sense.

At least, if you have not read about or lived through the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, or the 1979 oil crisis. Things can in fact get worse in a way that is bad for the people making them worse too.

I did, in fact, live through both of those incidents. But the latter was the result of a drop in production as a result of conflict; it was not an embargo. As for the former, it was short-lived, and that is the point: It is unsustainable for those states to employ an embargo for very long. Note, also, that the US is not reliant on imported oil anymore, unlike in 1973; moreover the vast majority of current imports come from non-OPEC countries, esp Canada.

As for the former, it was short-lived, and that is the point: It is unsustainable for those states to employ an embargo for very long.

It is unsustainable as those states are currently constructed. Which is kind of the point.

But the latter was the result of a drop in production as a result of conflict; it was not an embargo.

And a united socialist Arab nation could certainly result in a drop in production. It might not be true that socialism can cause sand shortages in the Sahara, but it can certainly cause oil shortages in countries with plentiful oil.

We can see from Russia's actions, right now, that ability to offer access to oil (and gas) to other countries offers a country a lot of potential power to affect things, should it so choose, for whatever reason. The argument is not related to a simplistic "America overthrows countries to get their oil" model, it's related to the idea that America fears that oil-producing countries might use their production ability as a leverage and wishes to have enough influence to perhaps utilize that leverage itself.

simplistic "America overthrows countries to get their oil" model

That model is nowhere implied in Gdanning's reply. He argues the leverage is not that big, as any "crude democracies" have to share their oil rents to keep elites and populace sate, which sets a limit to their oil output game. Same holds for Russia: they are still reaping surpluses, even with exports to Europe shut, and hugely discounted sales to China, but I am not sure it would last for long.

The argument you outlined looks plausible to me, but all narratives about need for preventive action are also weapons by themselves.

It doesn't seem to have helped Russia this time though, even heavily dependent countries like Germany and the baltics haven't taken a soft stance. It works for minor transgressions and concessions, until it doesn't. Then the consumer finds other sources and your own economy is in shambles. It's the "King Cotton" myth.

It's still a major deal in Europe, and is predicted to cause considerable troubles, both regarding the economy and the angry populace. All things told European countries would likely vastly prefer a scenario where Russia has a government that doesn't do things like this to one that does.

It's a double-edged sword. Sure, there will be damage in europe, but the russian economy is also screwed. Using your market power like this is not some "I win" button, it's brinkmanship, you can squeeze some advantage in the beginning, but if you keep pushing, the two cars collide, and not only is your leverage gone, now you also have a serious problem.

Sure, there will be damage in europe, but the russian economy is also screwed.

But that's not what we were sold. It was "something something, the GDP of Italy, two weeks to flatten the Russian economy". The entire affair is a massive blow to credibility of people who measure economic influence by GDP.

It's way too early to say that. I do think russia will suffer far more than europe from the severing of trade, so you can count me in the gdp camp. I'll grant that some predictions on the deterioration of the russian economy under sanctions (I've heard -50% early on) were exaggerated.

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