Subject: Re: When Bibi Goes from Power
I do get trying to limit China expansionism and influence. But might that be better accomplished courting nations other than the primary pariah in the region (at least as viewed by most of the other nations in that region)?

If we had a time machine, perhaps.

There are reasons why the alliances in the Middle East look the way they do. To oversimplify, starting with the aftermath of WWI and through the end of WWII, nearly country in the region hated the British and the French. They liked Russia - and when Russia went in and forged a major military support agreement with Egypt (the regional leader) in '55, that sealed the deal. So the teams for the Cold War were set - the Western Bloc and Israel (and over time Saudi Arabia) against the Soviet Bloc-leaning nations like Iran, Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

Plus, it's hard to see how you could recreate the security position we have with any other partner - how we could "court" them. The main problem is that all of them know that the U.S. will be extremely reluctant to bring bodies back from the Middle East. The enormous advantage we have with Israel is that we gain access to an enormous amount of military power (relative to the region) that is locked in. For all our security guarantees to Saudi Arabia, we're not in the Middle East - so if things go t!ts up and there's a hot war with Iran (for example), Saudi Arabia has no real assurances that the U.S won't pull out eventually. Sure, maybe back when we were importing 14 million bpd. But now? When we're an oil exporter? We put about $3-4 billion per year into Israel - which gives us a bigger, more potent check on Iran and the Russia proxies than if we spent $3-4 billion on our own troops there, because Israeli troops can't leave.

I think it's a bit cynical to say that we're providing arms to Israel to keep the region otherwise occupied/focused to further our interests

More cynical than ascribing it to raw politics? I think that's backwards. It's less cynical to attribute our longstanding support for Israel to the idea that it's actually in our national interest to do so, rather than just that it's a political grab to powerful special interests.

There's a reason why our Israel policy has stayed so consistent over more than 70 years and the ebbs and flows of both political parties. It's because the region has always been enormously important to the global economy, and thus has been one of the perpetual theaters in which global geopolitical strategies played out. The region's been crucial to trade since the Silk Road, abetted by the Suez Canal, catapulted in importance with the development of the oil industry, and became a critical outpost in the Cold War. Those are real, significant, and important factors that drive our foreign policy in the region far more than Jews having good lobbyists or some cultural affinity.