Post New

Don't be fooled.

Dont let Biden and the Liberal War Machine make it sound like somehow America spanked Israel and got tough about apartheid and genocide. It just means there's a new leader at the helm continuing the same old crap that human history is tired of and finally responding to.

America will still be Israel's mule - whether it's Bibi or Mickey Mouse in charge.

Decades of work has yet to be done.

Condolences in advance for enlisted folks who one day have to die for some conflict that has little to do with America. "We support the troops".

America will still be Israel's mule - whether it's Bibi or Mickey Mouse in charge.

Part of this is right - replacing Netanyahu would be unlikely to materially change Israeli policy in the short term, and probably not in the intermediate term. But it ignores the very real geopolitical reasons why we support Israel militarily. Not because we're their mule, but because it is in our interest to do so.

The Middle East is very important, geopolitically. There's the obvious fact that a lot of oil and gas is there, of course - and it's also a critical shipping route. So the West generally, and the U.S. specifically, care a lot about what happens in the region. And so do our largest geopolitical rivals. Russia, of course, has forged alliances with Iran and Syria for decades - and increasingly China is bringing countries into its sphere of influence through the Belt and Road. The Gulf War eliminated Iraq as a strategic check on the Shi'a states, and Iran's military influence - backed by Russia - is driving the security needs of all of the Sunni countries.

So we want to project power into the area and counter those growing influences. But we don't have a lot of allies in the region. So it is enormously beneficial for the U.S. for Israel to have oversized military might compared to the other regional powers. Not only does it serve as a direct check against Iranian hegemony, but it also draws the other Sunni nations (like Saudi Arabia) into Israel's security sphere. And as an added bonus, Israel's oversized economy in the region creates an alternative to those nations being exclusively in the Chinese economic sphere, as changing oil markets (especially America's oil and gas revolution) shift away from Gulf oil heading west to the U.S. and instead head east to China and India. The last thing we want is for the various Sunni states to fully commit to the Chinese sphere of influence as a means of protecting themselves against Iran/Syria, and we'd really like them to continue to shift a little more towards the West through economic ties with Israel.

All of that means that it is very much in the US' interest for Israel to continue to be one of the strongest powers in the region, militarily and economically. Which is a big part of the US' balancing act on the current crisis.

Part of this is right - replacing Netanyahu would be unlikely to materially change Israeli policy in the short term, and probably not in the intermediate term. But it ignores the very real geopolitical reasons why we support Israel militarily. Not because we're their mule, but because it is in our interest to do so.

Thanks so much for this perceptive, reality-based summary of the central forces driving the various dynamics there. So helpful. I really appreciate it.

"All of that means that it is very much in the US' interest for Israel to continue to be one of the strongest powers in the region, militarily and economically. Which is a big part of the US' balancing act on the current crisis."

Luckily, many in the world - and especially the younger generation in America are starting to disagree.

Could they be bought off on their way to power? Absolutely.

We shall see.

Condolences in advance to American military folk and civilians - who will again and again die over this.

Iran Hegemony: Saddam was a nice check. But - O'reilly, O'Malley, and Petrov - - OR was it Pearl, Wolfowitz, Rummy, and Cheney - saw to it that we took him out.

China's power: "Free Trade!" - the same Google Jockeys were all for it and had the most eloquent answers when it was questioned.

One of our only allies in the region: I wonder why that it.

America could very well remain Israel's mule. Israel's agents are well funded and well organized and articulate and hold much well earned influence in key levers of America.

But then again the sun would never set on the British Empire here.

I'm not saying it's a sure bet. I'm saying I have reason to be optimistic, that one day, this will change.

Luckily, many in the world - and especially the younger generation in America are starting to disagree.

Why would that be lucky? Regardless of whether they agree or disagree, geopolitical realities remain real.

The U.S. is affected by the larger world, and we care about what happens in it. To use a trivial example, we (ostensibly) don't want China to "take over the world" - basically seizing unipolar hegemony over the global economy. If we don't want that to happen, then we (and others) need to take actions to check Chinese efforts to expand their sphere of influence, both economic and military, to our exclusion. If you want to win the race, or even just do well, you need to compete.

We have real interests in the Middle East. How we prioritize those interests compared to competing goals is the subject of a lot of fierce debate and discussion. But the fact that what happens in the Middle East affects a lot of things in the world is not.

One of our only allies in the region: I wonder why that is.

Do you really not know? It's not hard to understand why, if you know a little history.

It's not entirely wrong to trace it back to WWI, the French and British, the Sykes-Picot agreement, and the fustercluck that followed. The whole area was run by the Ottoman Empire at the time, Britain and France were fighting the Central Powers that the Ottomans belonged to. The Brits and French secretly agreed how they were going to carve up the Ottoman territories if they won. But in order to win they needed a lot of help from the people who actually lived in the Middle East (modern-day Syrians and Jordanians and Saudis and the Jewish population in the region and in other countries) to rebel against the Ottomans. So they ended up making a whole host of contradictory promises to everyone and everybody. So when the secret deal got revealed and all the contradictory promises went unfulfilled, and basically everybody in the region ended up hating Britain and France.

So when the Cold War started after WWII, nearly all the countries in the region ended up gravitating to the Soviet bloc, in opposition to the NATO/Western alliance. That was due in part to the historical distrust of the Entente powers from the fiasco of WWI and the League of Nations era, in part to Soviet positioning itself as an anti-colonial/anti-western power, in part due to Western support for the partition of the Mandate into Israel and an Arab state, and especially in part due to the Soviets very actively supplying the region with military arms. The U.S., France, and Britain had all agreed not to sell many weapons to any of the warring factions in the area to keep the Arab-Israeli conflict tamped down - but then the Soviets swooped in in 1955 and sold Egypt a literal sh!t-ton of weapons. Egypt (under Nasser) vaulted to primacy in the region, closely aligned with the Soviets - and his prominence as the leader of the pan-Arab movement and general inclinations towards the Soviet side of the global conflict broad the rest of the powers with them. They consolidated around opposition to the West and Israel, and allied with the Soviet Bloc.

And that's why we encountered a region with almost no allies in the Cold War era. We eventually walked away from the Tripartite Declaration and became a major source of military support for Israel (along with France), the Soviets started to shift their focus in the region after all the Arab nations lost the 1967 war so badly, over the ensuing decades Egypt and Saudi drifted a little more towards the west in response (but never enough to become firm allies of the U.S.), etc. But it mostly traces back to that.

It's very lucky.

More people will be able to sample the "alive" button on the dashboard lol.

But again - no way am I saying it's a done deal.

The war machine is good, real good.

For instance - AOC. Smart. Waiting her turn. But in the meantime - slightly playing a little nicer with the Israeli masters. So that right these is evidence I would be wrong. The rest of the squad will hold a sign or tweet a thing - eventually the Machine will get rid of them.

Hence I'm just saying - such improvement and justice in the world looks more possible now - than it did just 10 years ago.

For instance - AOC. Smart. Waiting her turn. But in the meantime - slightly playing a little nicer with the Israeli masters.

They're not "Israeli masters." We support Israel not because Israel has mastery over the U.S., but because:

1) For the first five decades of its existence, Israel was a critical regional check against the Soviets in the Cold War;
2) For the last two decades, Israel has been a critical regional check against Iranian hegemony after the removal of Sunni control over Iraq;
3) For all of that time, Israel has been an important platform for the U.S. to influence outcomes in the region, which hosts important energy resources and critical shipping routes; and
4) In recent past, Israel is a critical counterweight to expanding Chinese interests in the region.

That's why anyone who takes U.S. interests seriously - like someone who wants to rise in leadership in either party rather than just be a soundbite warrior - ends up taking a cautious approach to U.S.-Israeli relations and our military support of the country. Not because they need to play nice with "masters," but because it's an important facet of our foreign policy.

It's not entirely wrong to trace it back to WWI, the French and British, the Sykes-Picot agreement, and the fustercluck that followed.

May I take a moment to point out that this is merely one of the areas of modern concern that can be traced back to the British? Sikes-Picot, India/Pakistan, Myanmar/Burma, Ireland/Northern Ireland? And don't get me started on those colonies they lost in the late 18th century. What a disaster that has turned out to be.

Rgds,
HH/Sean

Thanks for that Albaby, this is one of my weakness areas in history. I'll have to read up in this area.

May I take a moment to point out that this is merely one of the areas of modern concern that can be traced back to the British? Sikes-Picot, India/Pakistan, Myanmar/Burma, Ireland/Northern Ireland? And don't get me started on those colonies they lost in the late 18th century. What a disaster that has turned out to be.
****

This was all done by design. The entities you cite - killed each other and cost each other money and resources decades after the Empires left.

It was another gift to the world from Europe and they were able to exploit internal tribalism, or exploit internal differences and turn it into tribalism combined with buying off the well educated or well to do.

Luckily, this will NEVER happen to America. No foreign country can exploit the Red vs Blue thing. Or try to concentrate an ethnic vote in a certain region to influence politics.

Oh, wait......

That's why anyone who takes U.S. interests seriously - like someone who wants to rise in leadership in either party rather than just be a soundbite warrior - ends up taking a cautious approach to U.S.-Israeli relations and our military support of the country. Not because they need to play nice with "masters," but because it's an important facet of our foreign policy.
****

Just because someone questions genuflecting for one side in someone else's conflict, especially when many in the world question such - doesn't mean they don't take U.S interest seriously.

It just means - they get relegated to occupied territory, even in cyberspace.

And - well, people braver than them are sick of it, and are taking action.

And younger generations of all stripes are waking up to it.

All I'm doing is hoping some of those voices don't become Israeli Mules, and can still make it to key levers of power without doing so. Granted it's as probable as me losing weight -but hey, I walked 20 minutes yesterday anything is possible.

Just because someone questions genuflecting for one side in someone else's conflict, especially when many in the world question such - doesn't mean they don't take U.S interest seriously.

No - but framing the position of the U.S. as "genuflecting for one side," rather than a response to actual geopolitical concerns, does.

We're not genuflecting. We don't shape our foreign policy positions solely - or primarily - because of the benefits to Israel. It's because paying Israel to have one of the world's biggest militaries (proportional to the size of the country) benefits us.

So if you're looking at this as a situation where we're genuflecting to Israel, rather than getting a geopolitical advantage we couldn't possibly get through other means, then it shows that you're not taking seriously those geopolitical interests.

I sorta question this. Sure, 30 years ago, we had vital interests in the middle east. But today? We're a net exporter of energy (which was the reason we were highly interested in the past: energy). Why do we care now? Other than humanitarian, why not just let them tear each other apart? Eventually they will tire of it, and come to peace on their own. We've shown time and again that we can't force peace on them. And I don't think our interest in the area are nearly as acute as they used to be. The Suez is the only thing I see, and it's practically unusable because of some well-funded yahoos firing missiles and drones in the Red Sea.

Sure, 30 years ago, we had vital interests in the middle east. But today? We're a net exporter of energy (which was the reason we were highly interested in the past: energy). Why do we care now?

Oh, a bunch of reasons.

The first is that even though we are energy independent, most other countries in the world are not - and we're very interested in what happens with those other countries. Top of the list would be China, which has been trying to expand its influence all over the globe, and has been cozying up to the various oil exporting nations in the ME for the last decade or so under their Belt and Road plan. To the extent that those nations can be pushed towards (or kept in) the Western/Israeli economic and security spheres of influence, the better to check China's global expansion. Also on that list are the economies of most of our allies - Japan and South Korea in a big way, but also Europe generally. An interruption in oil exports from the region might not hit the US badly, but it could devastate our Asian allies - with enormous geopolitical consequences. The "oil weapon" is still potent for those countries, and we don't want China being the main ally of the ones who can wield that weapon against Japan and South Korea.

The second is that the region is critically important for global shipping. Even without oil, a sizable amount of global seaborn trade goes through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea trade route. And U.S. naval forces traverse the area - it's an important point of flexibility for us to move naval assets from the Med and northeast Atlantic theaters into the Indian Ocean.

Finally, the area is one of a few limited land borders between the edge of NATO and non-NATO countries. Turkey shares a border with Iran, Syria, and Iraq. Iran is one of the regional hegemonic military powers, and a close ally of Russia. Syria is also mostly a Russian proxy, and is deeply allied with Iran as well. So checking the growth of Iran's power and influence in the region is a critical aspect of NATO defense, and an oversized Israeli military keeps Iran focusing on that threat and helps provide the other nations with an alternative security strategy than allying with them or China.

To say nothing of the fact that Israel is a de facto nuclear power - and probably one of the biggest risks to U.S. security is that something goes very badly wrong with one or more of the nuclear nations. So no matter what, we are deeply invested in what happens in and around the nuclear countries. Something going wrong in Israel or in India/Pakistan are certainly two of the top scenarios for inadvertently triggering global thermonuclear war.

All of that together keeps the region pretty important for U.S. interests. We pay about $4 billion a year to Israel in military aid (approximately), which allows them to have a super-big military footprint in the region so that we don't have to do it ourselves. There's certainly a solid argument that's good value for the price.

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)? I would think mending fences with some of those nations would go further, and we also would have (some) influence over how they treated Israel (so it's not like we would be abandoning them, just helping them maintain their security through other means).

I still think Suez is a lost cause until nations in the region rise-up and tell the Houthis to "cut it out, or else". The sea is too small, and the range of the weapons are adequate to target any ship that doesn't have defensive capabilities (i.e. most of them). If we had improved relations with Iran, maybe we could have some influence. But as long as we're monotonically supporting Israel, that won't happen.

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. I suppose we could be, but that isn't among the various reasons I have seen espoused over the years. Generally, it's the Jewish lobby in the USA (very monied, and so very powerful), various religious reasons (e.g. Israel needs to reunite all their territories for the Second Coming; or less apocalyptic like Jesus was a Jew, etc), a sort of recompense for the Holocaust, they are more like "us" (i.e. not Muslim, even if misguided that they don't subscribe to the New Testament), and some others.

If we had improved relations with Iran, maybe we could have some influence. But as long as we're monotonically supporting Israel, that won't happen. - 1pg

-----------
I don't think so, but that ship has sailed. We have to face the situation as it exists regardless of how we got here.

If we responded to these Houthi attacks with a deterrent level of response on something Iran actually values, then the Houthi attacks will cease regardless of anything to do with Israel. Biden's proportionate response policy leads to just what we are seeing, unending perpetual harassment until sooner or later one lucky missile gets through and damages a destroyer and kills a few hundred sailors.

Iran doesn't care how many Houthi get killed, but if Karg Island or the Revolutionary Guard HQ was destroyed, they would feel some actual pain. Trump took out Solemani to deter Iran. A response of this level by the Biden Admin is called for but he appears to not have the stomach for it and the Iranians have figured that out.

I don't know that the ship has already sailed, but it would be a long-term endeavor to improve relations. Not going to happen in a few days, or even a few months.

I'm all in favor of warning Iran through back-channels (so they don't have to publicly back down, which is a lot harder to do) that either they gain control of the situation, or we start sending Iranian ships and support installations into the great here-after. I've read allegations that the Iranians are operating a command/control vessel that is supplying the Houthis with targets. Let them know they will lose that ship if they don't cease immediately.

I would have hoped Egypt would step in since they are the big losers if Suez traffic ceases. But so far, nothing I'm aware of.

I've read allegations that the Iranians are operating a command/control vessel that is supplying the Houthis with targets. Let them know they will lose that ship if they don't cease immediately. - 1pg

-------------

Yeah, I forgot about the C&C ship. That would be a better place to start than my two suggestions, although Karg Island serves the dual purpose of shutting down oil sales to the Chicoms.

It’s long past time for that ship to suffer a serious malfunction at sea. Such as…the kind caused by a torpedo.

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.

Post New

Berkshire Hathaway FAQ

---

Contact Shrewd'm
Contact the developer of these message boards.