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Practical ally? In strategic terms, there are two groups.
The Arabs/Islamic world, with population about 600 million in MENA alone. They have a lot of oil. They have a lot of useful bases. They have Suez. They have the power to create all kinds of problems for the US, by allying with US enemies like the Soviet Union, Russia and China.
Israel, population 10 million. No oil. Barely any useful bases, at least compared to the rest of MENA. They're better at fighting and high technology, yet the only people they fight are the Arabs (and usually do so with US equipment). They're hated by about a third of the world, see pic related (https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/693544044241076224/most-disliked-country-in-each-nation-2022).
Why on earth would any sane, unbiased strategic thinker choose to ally with Israel over the Arabs? The US wouldn't have any enemies in the Arab world if it weren't for Israel, that's by far the biggest problem with US-MENA relations.
Israel is the absolute worst ally the US could possibly have. And the alliance is the most one-sided alliance you could possibly imagine. On no occasion has Israel actually contributed troops to a US war. They soak up huge amounts of resources (consider the economic impacts of the Arab Oil Embargo caused by Arab hatred of the US-Israeli alliance), incite enormous amounts of anti-US sentiment, get free US equipment, billions of dollars in aid. They sell loads of US technology to China, they lure the US into stupid wars like Iraq with false intelligence and their political influence.
Because the Arab world is a basket case that fights itself as much as anyone else. Israel isn’t the best ally, but it has the benefit of being a functioning country that has predictable enemies and doesn’t fall victim to coups.
Do you honestly believe that? It’s impossible to get involved in the Middle East without picking sides that pisses someone off, and a lot of these countries are unstable basket cases that can’t resist openly stabbing their sponsors in the back and throwing temper tantrums, which Israel for all its faults at least does a lot less of.
Aside from numerous coups, there's the Iraq-Iran war, the Gulf War and a rather desultory North-South Yemen war. That's it. Four out of 7 inter-state wars in the Middle East involved Israel (First Arab Israeli, Suez, Six-Day War, Yom Kippur). 4/8 if you include the Syrian Civil War/ISIS war and (generously) consider Israel not to be a primary participant. 5/9 if you include Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
And Israel's predictable enemies include every state in the region! Don't pick the side that angers everyone.
When did Egypt or Syria stab Russia/SU in the back? I don't recall them attacking Soviet ships, selling Soviet technology to the US, sending faulty intelligence to encourage Soviet invasions, frustrating Soviet diplomacy by being universally hated in the region.
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That wasn’t the question…
I’d like to hear your reasoning on that. It doesn’t seem to apply to Iran, which manufactured quite the list of complaints about Western culture. Nor is it necessary to explain al-Qaeda and other fundamentalist groups. The “American-Israeli alliance” is a footnote in bin Laden’s motives. But then, I expect the Christians were enough to get us (via the UN) intervening in Lebanon.
Not so. Per your own link:
The other guy who bombed the World Trade Center back in 1993, Ramzi Yousef, was primarily motivated by hatred of Israel and sought to bomb American targets to bring about change. Key Islamist leaders like Sayyid Fadlallah or Sayyid Qutb hated America for its support of Israel.
As for Iran, while the US has non-Israel related incentives to prevent Iran dominating the region, Israel makes things much harder harder. Israel has constantly been pushing for the US to invade Iran, constantly trying to prevent a diplomatic solution. Even in the 1990s, the Israelis lobbied for the US to adopt dual containment of Iraq and Iran, bringing in a large number of troops to contain Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (thus creating another of bin Laden's agreements). AIPAC has undermined US relations with Iran, mobilized to strengthen anti-Iran sanctions. For example, when Iran chose an American oil company, Conoco, to develop the Sirri oil fields as an overture, Clinton killed the deal. Clinton later said that Edgar Bronfman, former head of the World Jewish Congress was one of the deal's most effective opponents. AIPAC was also involved. There are many such examples.
If Israel didn't exist, there would probably have been US-Iranian rapprochement.
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United States has, thus far, successfully managed to ally with both Israel and the (oil-wise the most important) Arabs, ie. Saudi-Arabia and the Gulf states, though. Of course recently Saudi-Arabia has taken steps away from this alliance (ie. now joining BRICS), but I daresay that has less to do with US stance vis-a-vis Israel and more to do with general strategic/trade concerns and the uncomfortable match with America's (claimed) human rights agenda. Whatever current enemies US has with the Arab world are not particularly important in the grand scale of things.
It is also an attempt to force the US to play hardball with Iran without Saud firing up their own nuclear program, which I think is understated as it concerns the American Alliance.
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Iran isn't Arab but it is Islamic and they really don't like Israel. Iran is 3rd strongest in the anti-Western axis, fairly important and well-placed to block oil exports.
If our allies look to jump ship the moment the unipolar moment ends, then it's not a very useful alliance. The moment we need them, they don't want to work with us. The population of these countries uniformly hates Israel and this poses a stability problem for their leaders, who need weapons and alliances with a great power. If they have no choice, they'll go with the West and smooth over the contradiction with welfare and repression. But now that they have a choice? Do we want ME oil fuelling Chinese war industry?
True, the human rights agenda doesn't help either.
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Israel is the only country in the region that is even remotely sharing western values. Especially if you view politics as a fight between worldviews, you're essentially asking "why aren't we fucking over our own team to instead make deals with enemies that hate us, our views, and only work with us because they can't beat us?" You can certainly view everything in more narrow teams, but most people nowadays think in very large, globe spanning teams, and Israel is then part of "our" team already, whether we support them or not. It might still end up not worth it, but it's not as easy as you make it out to be. Especially assuming they need our help to not get swallowed by the arabs you may think about it in terms of the following thought experiment to understand the people who favor the alliance with Israel:
Imagine a much less centralized US that is more like a european union of states and that Mexico moved in a very different direction in terms of religion and values (say that they still follow some kind of central american religion, maybe not outright human sacrifices but incompatible with modern values to the same degree that conservative arabic Islam is), and is still hostile about the annexed territories and, in particular, about New Mexico. They are willing to work with the greater US in a limited capacity, but there's frequent costly border skirmishes and threats of war. New Mexico itself has a significant minority of mexican-identifying people that want to become independent/join Mexico, and the state in general is somewhat irrelevant and can't protect itself. You're in a far northern state and there is no chance whatsoever that you're at a direct threat from Mexico, and the US as a whole is clearly superior to Mexico in terms of military. Somebody comes along and asks you why the hell are you allying New Mexico when you can just abandon them and ally with Mexico instead? It's just a much better ally in any category you can imagine!
Also, you're argument pretty closely applies to Ukraine, as well.
I'm sure you'll find some ways how this example is different from the Israeli example, but this is - I think - quite close to how supporters of Israel view the situation.
Why do they hate us? Why does anti-Western Islamism exist (and before that anti-Western pan-Arabism)? Why did Egypt and Syria and Iraq all move to favour the Soviet Union? Why does Iran hate us? In a nutshell - Israel. The US was unwilling to provide weapons that might be used against Israel, so those countries moved to work with the Soviets instead. Now they're cosying up to China and Russia precisely because we favour Israel. Israel has done huge damage to democracy and liberalism in the Middle East, it makes Arab liberals look like spineless, impious and unpatriotic rats in a grand confrontation between good and evil.
Well they have nuclear weapons now, (so much for the non-proliferation meme). Why do they need help? The help that the US gives Israel was used to invade actually weak countries like Lebanon.
There are a whole host of differences here, like said annexations happening within living memory (Golan Heights for example), a large population of forcibly displaced Mexicans wanting to go back to New Mexico and the fact that there's no European union of states. Europe and North America aren't even on the same continent as Israel, it's a different region entirely. Mexico also isn't the world's largest oil producer. New Mexico in this case, I assume, is not a nuclear power.
And let's not forget all the things Israel actually did. Pre-emptively bombing its neighbours, annexing strips of their land, resettling their people onto annexed land, blowing up a US vessel, luring the US into a costly and futile occupation of Iraq (and calling for a sequel in Iran based on a nuclear program that's six been months away from a bomb for the last 20 years)...
Precisely. It's foolish to ally with weak countries that have little marginal value, angering strong countries in the process. The economic consequences of our Ukraine initiative is already hitting Europe hard. Strength should be conserved and wielded where it's most needed, which is clearly Asia. Angering Russia by getting involved in Ukraine opens up a second front, gives China a useful, resource-rich ally and worsens our position overall.
I think you're being very naive here, and also with Ukraine. I'm hardly a hardliner on both issues - back during Maidan time I was actually in favour of the russian territories getting their independence referendum, and I currently work together with different muslim researchers that work in arabic universities. I can see the value of working with people even if they have very different values. But the arabic world has been opposed to the west for a long time now. The alliance with the soviets was purely out of convenience and correspondingly never very stable. The Israeli issue might be the most legible complaint they can give us, but I'm quite confident that if we had given up on the Israelis we'd have different things we'd be fighting over with them. Likewise, they can take our aid and weapons and then abandon us if it suits them just fine, and in terms of their own worldview they'd be perfectly justified in doing so. The same goes for Russia, there was a time where there was a decent chance they may switch to the western side, but I don't see such a chance with the current leadership anymore.
The key here is how people identify their teams. Most people nowadays consider themselves something like "Team Western World", which spans the globe and so to them being on different continents is not a reason to not send (military) aid. You, from what I can gather, consider yourself primarily "Team America", so I gave an example that applies directly to America, to get you in a similar headspace as the average Israel supporter. It's not about the example being perfectly comparable - it never is - , the purpose is to understand how others think about an issue due to their values differences. If you want, you may imagine many displaced Mexicans - with the average values as other Mexicans - wanting to live in New Mexico for the purpose of the example, and similar.
Imo, depending on Russia in terms of energy was foolish long before the Ukraine, and having to look for other options was overdue. I'd surely have preferred if we had followed your tag line and build enough nuclear plants to be independent before the conflict, though. Likewise arming Ukraine is actually a reasonably cheap way of bleeding Russia, and the basic logic of geopolitics dictates, independent of Ukraine, that Russia had to align itself with China if it has any aspirations of defending against westernization and being a superpower. If we were to give up on Ukraine, they could just take it ... and ally with China anyway. In the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has actually shown remarkable weakness (and/or Ukraine has shown remarkable strength). It is reasonable to conclude that this is a good point to invest resources to strengthen your position.
Like what? Sure, there are often disputes between countries. Yet they have oil that the West needs. We have technology they need. There are good reasons for us to get along. But if we are totally committed to supporting a state that's hated by the Arab population, that will make allying with Arab states much more complicated and risky.
I'm Australian but we're practically a vassal dependant upon US strength, so close enough. The West and the US are interrelated since the US is the primary actor. I suppose I use the terms semi-interchangeably. But it is true that US actions tar the entire West for better or for worse.
They could've tried to play both sides off against each other for the greatest benefit like China did in the Cold War. China went from deadly US enemy fighting the US in Korea and Vietnam to tacit US ally by the 80s. Ideally, Russia would want access to Chinese and Western markets and overtures from both so as to maximize their flexibility. But now we've pushed them into a corner with China and Iran. Trump was perhaps the only statesman who could do a Nixon and improve relations with Russia, only he was totally crushed with phoney collusion narratives. Diplomacy should be flexible, not ideological.
Today, that is certainly the case. We should've just done nothing with regard to Ukraine back in 2008. We should've listened to Putin's speech back in 2007 where he openly complained about NATO expansion, US missile defence, unilateral invasions. Blowing the whole 'international law and rules-based order' to bits with the Iraq War wasn't a great move. But it's too late now. We're stuck on this course.
They're being blown to smithereens. Ukraine has already taken WW1-tier numbers of amputations, their casualties and death toll must be horrific, contra the rosy casualty reports from Western intelligence and media. After lying through Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't trust these people if they say things are going well. Ukraine infamously tried to draft a man with no hands six months back: https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/02/26/ukraine-finds-stepping-up-mobilisation-is-not-so-easy. You can see many videos of men running from draft officials, being dragged into cars. This is an army desperate for more manpower - presumably much of it has already been lost. We'll look weak and foolish once they lose. We'll be sending the message to China that if there are temporary reverses at the start of the war, all you need to do is buckle down, mobilize more men and fight on to victory.
Furthermore, non-trivial reserves of munitions have already been exhausted. It will take many years to rebuild Javelin and Stinger stockpiles, artillery stockpiles, long-range missile stockpiles. These are weapons that are needed more in Asia defending Taiwan, which is vital to the global balance of power, whilst Ukraine is negligible. It would've been better to have a proper military-industrial complex capable of sustaining medium/high-intensity wars indefinitely, yet apparently we don't have that.
And we're still getting the oil even in this world where we aid Israel. As you said there's plenty of disputes, do you want me to supply a list? There's plenty of conflicts around (not) punishing blasphemy against The Prophet, around housing "terrorists", some other land disputes... As a counter-example France vs Germany paper over their serious disputes for the most part and many of them have been de-facto forgotten, because they have free movement between them, share most values nowadays anyway and overall cooperate on many issues. On the other hand it's the anti-west hardliners that dictate the tone in the middle east because their culture is already slanted that way and the large value difference causes a lack of sympathy. There is always two different effects to letting a any power do what it wants; On one side, if there's mutual sympathy they may be grateful. On the other side, without mutual sympathy they will interpret the lack of resistance as weakness. With the middle eastern powers I have much less confidence in the first than the latter.
Yes_chad.jpg. What did you expect of the war? After a takeover any able-bodied Ukraine is a potential russian conscript. At the risk of sounding maximally cynical, if we consider Ukraine losing a foregone conclusion, we ideally want to take in as many Ukrainian refugees as possible, and otherwise maximum casualties on both sides. In terms of the ammo and other military resources we send them, I don't think they're as valuable to us as you make them out to be; The west is mainly inhibited by a lack of will when it comes to war, not resources or economy. If we want to create them faster, we have a lot of slack to build up the respective industry. On the other hand, Russia is constrained in terms of economy, and they're also burning through a lot of resources (just as manpower). In addition, the war has greatly increased the willingness of Europe in particular to fight. Even left-leaning former pacifists I know are talking about how we need to spend more on the military nowadays, it's nuts. And this is Germany. If Russia starts to make serious gains again I wouldn't be surprised if Ukraine's direct neighbours, especially Poland, would start to send their own army after all, independent of what the rest of the west wants. Russia may win the Ukraine war after a drawn-out conflict, but they will have lost a lot of manpower and military stockpiles in the process while Europe will be in an increased state of military readiness.
Just think about the alternative: Since we send no aid, Ukraine crumbles relatively fast. Any attempts at guerilla warfare or resistance is met with the punishment of Ukrainian civilians. The Ukrainian military gets absorbed into the Russian military. Russia itself has minimal losses in terms of manpower and military stockpiles compared to our world. Europe has almost no time to build up any military and, due to the way propaganda works, the willingness to build the military up will be much lower. How is that world better than ours? If I were in Putin's - or Xi's - shoes, I'd see that as a clear sign that the west is weak and would immediately try to see how much more I can get away with.
At times. The 1973 Arab Oil Embargo was pretty bad!
Quite right, which is why they organized the Oil Embargo in response to the US sending an enormous amount of military aid to Israel. That is why, amongst other reasons, Osama Bin Laden hated the West and blew up the Twin Towers. It's a fundamentally symmetrical phenomenon. Arabs play the game and can react to our activities. Which is why, unless there are good reasons, we should avoid antagonizing them by, for example, providing Israel with massive amounts of military aid that they use to kill Arabs. Or invading Iraq. Likewise with Russia. If we didn't try to depose their allies in Syria, advance our sphere of influence ever closer to them... we wouldn't be experiencing the current crisis.
But what are the second-order impacts of this? If other countries know that we'll sacrifice them en masse for our own interests, why would they ally with us? Is Taiwan sleeping soundly, knowing they're also 'not a treaty ally but we like them' and seeing Ukraine getting turned into the Somme? We don't even recognize that they're a country! And what are the Russians going to do in retaliation? Send assistance to our other enemies? Stir up trouble? Coup various nations in Africa? Once the war is over, a lot of Russians are going to remain very angry with us for getting their countrymen killed with our weapons. Putin will likely be replaced with a real hardliner when he dies.
It will take at least 5 years of surge production to replace the reserves of munitions that have been expended. Taiwan may not have that time and Taiwan is actually important. It's not like we can just print money and buy missiles, there are hard caps in industry and trained manpower. The people who know how to build munitions factories are often retired now, our manufacturing sector has shrunk.
https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/230109_Military_Inventories_Graphic.jpg?V07Bh5IFz5cOgg9qXyu.wrwD7BYakT7C
Well then we bring on WW3. The whole point is to avoid that outcome. France, Britain and the US have a large nuclear arsenal and can prevent Russia invading NATO members but Russia can also lay waste to the Polish army, Europe and America. When it comes to tactical nuclear weapons, their advantage is considerable.
Given that we spent the last few years building up the Ukrainian military, it would be embarrassing to give up on them. But it would be far more embarrassing to lose if we make a major effort, which we have now made. It's the difference between looking impotent and proclaiming one's impotence to the whole world. Ideally, we should've done nothing to start with, then there would be no risk of looking weak, since we never declared an interest in Ukraine. Russia demolishing Georgia didn't make us look weak, we never really tried to strengthen Georgia militarily. But now that we've pursued this loathsome path, it is hard to leave. It becomes more and more tempting to keep doubling down in a desperate hope for victory. Likewise, the Russians will keep intensifying their efforts. They've spent significant amounts of blood on this, they are becoming less and less willing to give up, their demands will increase.
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That's literally half a century ago. To me it honestly seems like the muslim world has by now more or less accepted the Israel-Western alliance and hasn't had appetite to punish us for it in a long, long while, and the 1973 Oil Embargo (emphasis on 1973) is just evidence in favour from my PoV. I have to admit, I'm increasingly unsure how much point there is in this argument, since we seem to interpret the same evidence very differently and our intuitions and expectations about alternative worlds are our main disagreement, and I don't see how either can convince the other here, it's not like we can just run a simulation of different scenarios.
I don't think Ukraine losing completely is a foregone conclusion, I was pointing out that even granting your assumptions the current war is better for us than the alternative where Ukraine gets curbstomped and de-facto incorporated because we do nothing. Likewise "I'd rather die than be drafted into the Russian Army" is a rather common sentiment for Ukrainians. I don't trust Russian stats either, there is endless stories on their side as well about questionable draftings. We can also prop up Ukraine economically more or less indefinitely, Russia has no such backing. The counteroffensive was too optimistic and much more manpower-intensive than Ukraine can afford, but I think Ukraine has still a decent chance to grind everything into a stalemate. On the issue of retaliation, I have absolutely no confidence in Putin not doing those things anyway. Again, I see a bigger chance in trying to drain him of resources than in just hoping that if we give him Ukraine on a silver plate he'll be nice.
Nope, it just doesn't work. Georgia is far away enough and small enough that even most Europeans genuinely don't care about it, but Ukraine is literally next door for pretty much the entire Eastern Europe, and even for Germans it's uncomfortably close to home. For us, Georgia is a "I didn't even know it's technically Europe" country, Ukraine is a "my grandma's carer is from there and I've always liked her" country. I'm pretty sure Scandinavians, especially Finns, would also care no matter what. It's mostly southwest Europe + France + UK that could possibly not care. Even if the US had never supported Ukraine, large parts of Europe would at the very least rage impotently and probably try to send aid (and remember the occasion). In your alternative world, the west would look impotent and divided, more than in this world. Even worse, it gives Europeans yet another excuse to just not help out if Taiwan ever should get attacked and try to strike a deal with China instead.
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