Very good summary of current affairs and likely outcomes under circumstances that limit options. I particularly liked your reference to Ukraine's neutral sovereignty sold in exchange for worthless NATO guarantees. So began the selling out of Ukraine that recently ended with Trump acquiring the very earth they stand on.
Another advantage that Russia and China in particular enjoy is the speed with which decisions can be made. Organizations such as NATO or the EU are cumbersome, as each member first goes through a domestic political process before a decision is made at a higher level.
Unfortunately, the three simple conclusions are probably much too honest, straightforward, and efficacious to ever be implemented ... But they're good ones!
Israel, with an illicit nuclear triad defence, "feels threatened"? Bullshit, Israel wants "Eretz Israel", at any cost to it's neighbours. Land grab, pure and simple.
It's essential to clarify that Israel is not even approximately strategically self sufficient, in the way that China is except for certain commodities, Russia is except for manufactured goods, and US certainly has potential for, but is too spoiled by unlimited borrowing power to actually do.
In Israel's case, there appears to be wide "freedom of action", including an impunity to global norms that can only be described as incredible. But this exists wholly as a voluntary gift of the US. The mechanism is continual supply of not just weapons and military-adjacent resources like satellite data, but also US spending down its own legacy of global soft power at light speed, just to contain the global (and even US-domestic) backlash against detestable Israeli practices when it exercises power.
The reason for US providing this blank check is, at this point, political. We are now 15+ years into the era of new generation US oil/gas production. As a result, US is no longer exposed to global oil/gas pricing, as it once was. This greatly reduces the strategic value of maintaining Israel as a foil to other regional powers. The trend is that this strategic value will shrink more, as the age of renewable energy comes into maturity -- a reality exemplified by renewables becoming the majority of generation in the largest and most actively modernizing energy market: China.
Much of the world rightly perceives that the US holds equally responsibility for the currently unfolding crimes of the Israeli state. There's a long historical pattern of US encouraging and enabling large scale atrocities by proxies, and then pushing a narrative after the fact, which assigns the proxy autonomy it did not have in reality - for the purpose of the US avoiding responsibility as the main and indispensable sponsor.
Hamas & Hezbollah are ‘terrorist’ organisations? Are you saying this only in the sense that they are ‘designated’ as such by the UK, the US, and various Empire vassal states, or are you saying that you actually believe these non-state actors are ‘terrorist’ organisations? In the case specifically of Hamas, can a grassroots organisation using armed struggle to resist an illegal occupation, be called ‘terrorist’? Were the French or Yugoslav resistance movements in WW2 terrorist organisations, since they used armed resistance against their Nazi occupiers? A related question Ian; do you regard the IDF as a terrorist organisation?
The inclusion of Israel in this piece, as well as the labels applied to it and Hezbollah and Hamas, are troubling. If Israel, a country that disenfranchises and persecutes a population in territories it claims as its own (not to mention genocide and ethnic cleansing), is a democracy then so was apartheid South Africa. If Hezbollah and Hamas are terrorist organisations then so was the ANC in South Africa and most other liberation movements. There are also a number of problems comparing Israel to Russia and China.
Fair challenge, but I worry you have misunderstood the point of this post. I seek not to justify Israel's atrocities and war crimes, which I have regularly criticised, but to explain how Israel is able to withstand external pressure.
Don't forget that democracies do terrible things. Just look at colonialism Would you say Britain was not a parliamentary democracy when it used concentration camps in South Africa? Was America not a democracy when its soldiers torched villages and raped women in Afghanistan. It is not always a badge of honour.
Ian: Can you explain how you can include the word democracy in the same sentence as the word Israel? On what basis could Israel possibly be described as a democracy, when (leaving aside Gaza, and leaving aside the lived experience of Palestinians inside Green line Israel), 3.3 million Palestinians ive under permanent Israeli control inside greater Israel, with no civil or even human rights, whatsoever. Please explain how that is a democracy?
Back 2.5 millenia, Athens was a democracy and a slave state. While Rome was not a pure "democracy", it was a fairly effective slave-state republic until Octavian. The US was of course a mixed slave-state/free-state republic till 1861. By the way, after 1865, Southern states experimented with full democracy and actually elected black representatives to state and federal legislatures. Before they gave up after something like 10 to 15 years, and gradually instituted Jim Crow.
Most of the colonization in 19 and 20 c. (and before) was done by the democracies, including the UK constitutional monarchy and the French Republic. The “exemplary” democracy of the world - the US - was a very proud apartheid state.
There is a long history of occupying, slave-owning and apartheid democracies. Israel is just one of them.
Israel’s foreign reserves $218billion: Israel GDP nominal: $540billion. Can anyone believe these figs? They actually seem preposterous. Like a sort of reverse Russia, the economy of which, western politicians, media, think-tanks, etc, constantly like to denigrate and make smaller (eg: economy same size as Spain😂).
The devil reads scripture. He understands that the difference between a threat and a warning is INtent and not CONtent. He reads that the borrower is a slave to the lender and so he and his minions in the West, the spiritually wicked in high places, have engineered a global economy that runs on debt.
I know, it's not fashionable nor intellectually respectable to openly argue that Satan has a hand in geopolitics, but those of us who have witnessed in our own lifetime the napalming of innocent villagers in Vietnam, the complete destruction of Iraq on the basis of total lies, the poisoning for profit of our own children, the modern slavery in north Africa, and the sacrifice of our children on the altar of globalist open borders insanity, are of a different opinion.
Velociraver's point about Israel is equally pertinent. What Israel is doing in Gaza is evil. I am not ashamed to say so.
It's also a strategic blunder and a political quagmire, a self-zugswang from which there's no way out without severe pain, but it's primary characteristic is evil, as has been much of Western "foreign policy" for my entire life.
I don't disagree that foreign policy has a worrying habit of producing evil outcomes nor that there are indeed evil actors. But I also think that evil emerges from a number of factors, including incompetence, hubris, wishful thinking, and groupthink/ the laundry of real insight analysis. It's a disgrace that western politicians and policy makers never learn from their mistakes.
For longer than you and I have been alive, war has been an immensely profitable business for our political and financial classes. They’ve made obscene amounts of money using obscene methods and garnered dangerously concentrated powers.
They can legitimately argue that none of their wars of choice were mistakes or failures. Only those of us who believed the pretexts they invented for their wars, their propaganda programs, their public relations spin doctors, think they made mistakes or failed to achieve their objectives.
I once had the chance to speak to the board of directors of a very large and wealthy company, explaining to them how their policies would eventually lead to the government imposing structural changes on them, breaking apart the monopoly elements from the pieces they subsidized and dominated by means of the funds extracted from the monopoly.
They agreed that I was right and this would probably happen. But, they said, in the meantime we make a lot of money.
It’s the same thinking with our politicians. The smart ones know that people will eventually become enraged enough to do something drastic to alter the situation, steering it back towards decentralization and a more genuinely liberal democratic system.
But in the meantime … they make a lot of money, gather a lot of power, and prepare to survive the revolution in style.
Very good summary of current affairs and likely outcomes under circumstances that limit options. I particularly liked your reference to Ukraine's neutral sovereignty sold in exchange for worthless NATO guarantees. So began the selling out of Ukraine that recently ended with Trump acquiring the very earth they stand on.
Thank you, and indeed!
Another advantage that Russia and China in particular enjoy is the speed with which decisions can be made. Organizations such as NATO or the EU are cumbersome, as each member first goes through a domestic political process before a decision is made at a higher level.
Indeed
Unfortunately, the three simple conclusions are probably much too honest, straightforward, and efficacious to ever be implemented ... But they're good ones!
Israel, with an illicit nuclear triad defence, "feels threatened"? Bullshit, Israel wants "Eretz Israel", at any cost to it's neighbours. Land grab, pure and simple.
It's essential to clarify that Israel is not even approximately strategically self sufficient, in the way that China is except for certain commodities, Russia is except for manufactured goods, and US certainly has potential for, but is too spoiled by unlimited borrowing power to actually do.
In Israel's case, there appears to be wide "freedom of action", including an impunity to global norms that can only be described as incredible. But this exists wholly as a voluntary gift of the US. The mechanism is continual supply of not just weapons and military-adjacent resources like satellite data, but also US spending down its own legacy of global soft power at light speed, just to contain the global (and even US-domestic) backlash against detestable Israeli practices when it exercises power.
The reason for US providing this blank check is, at this point, political. We are now 15+ years into the era of new generation US oil/gas production. As a result, US is no longer exposed to global oil/gas pricing, as it once was. This greatly reduces the strategic value of maintaining Israel as a foil to other regional powers. The trend is that this strategic value will shrink more, as the age of renewable energy comes into maturity -- a reality exemplified by renewables becoming the majority of generation in the largest and most actively modernizing energy market: China.
Much of the world rightly perceives that the US holds equally responsibility for the currently unfolding crimes of the Israeli state. There's a long historical pattern of US encouraging and enabling large scale atrocities by proxies, and then pushing a narrative after the fact, which assigns the proxy autonomy it did not have in reality - for the purpose of the US avoiding responsibility as the main and indispensable sponsor.
Hamas & Hezbollah are ‘terrorist’ organisations? Are you saying this only in the sense that they are ‘designated’ as such by the UK, the US, and various Empire vassal states, or are you saying that you actually believe these non-state actors are ‘terrorist’ organisations? In the case specifically of Hamas, can a grassroots organisation using armed struggle to resist an illegal occupation, be called ‘terrorist’? Were the French or Yugoslav resistance movements in WW2 terrorist organisations, since they used armed resistance against their Nazi occupiers? A related question Ian; do you regard the IDF as a terrorist organisation?
If there was any solid evidence that China was persecuting Uighurs, why isn’t it before the ICJ?
China is too big
The inclusion of Israel in this piece, as well as the labels applied to it and Hezbollah and Hamas, are troubling. If Israel, a country that disenfranchises and persecutes a population in territories it claims as its own (not to mention genocide and ethnic cleansing), is a democracy then so was apartheid South Africa. If Hezbollah and Hamas are terrorist organisations then so was the ANC in South Africa and most other liberation movements. There are also a number of problems comparing Israel to Russia and China.
A most troubling and unsatisfactory article.
Mahmoud,
Fair challenge, but I worry you have misunderstood the point of this post. I seek not to justify Israel's atrocities and war crimes, which I have regularly criticised, but to explain how Israel is able to withstand external pressure.
Don't forget that democracies do terrible things. Just look at colonialism Would you say Britain was not a parliamentary democracy when it used concentration camps in South Africa? Was America not a democracy when its soldiers torched villages and raped women in Afghanistan. It is not always a badge of honour.
Ian: Can you explain how you can include the word democracy in the same sentence as the word Israel? On what basis could Israel possibly be described as a democracy, when (leaving aside Gaza, and leaving aside the lived experience of Palestinians inside Green line Israel), 3.3 million Palestinians ive under permanent Israeli control inside greater Israel, with no civil or even human rights, whatsoever. Please explain how that is a democracy?
Back 2.5 millenia, Athens was a democracy and a slave state. While Rome was not a pure "democracy", it was a fairly effective slave-state republic until Octavian. The US was of course a mixed slave-state/free-state republic till 1861. By the way, after 1865, Southern states experimented with full democracy and actually elected black representatives to state and federal legislatures. Before they gave up after something like 10 to 15 years, and gradually instituted Jim Crow.
Most of the colonization in 19 and 20 c. (and before) was done by the democracies, including the UK constitutional monarchy and the French Republic. The “exemplary” democracy of the world - the US - was a very proud apartheid state.
There is a long history of occupying, slave-owning and apartheid democracies. Israel is just one of them.
Israel’s foreign reserves $218billion: Israel GDP nominal: $540billion. Can anyone believe these figs? They actually seem preposterous. Like a sort of reverse Russia, the economy of which, western politicians, media, think-tanks, etc, constantly like to denigrate and make smaller (eg: economy same size as Spain😂).
The devil reads scripture. He understands that the difference between a threat and a warning is INtent and not CONtent. He reads that the borrower is a slave to the lender and so he and his minions in the West, the spiritually wicked in high places, have engineered a global economy that runs on debt.
I know, it's not fashionable nor intellectually respectable to openly argue that Satan has a hand in geopolitics, but those of us who have witnessed in our own lifetime the napalming of innocent villagers in Vietnam, the complete destruction of Iraq on the basis of total lies, the poisoning for profit of our own children, the modern slavery in north Africa, and the sacrifice of our children on the altar of globalist open borders insanity, are of a different opinion.
Velociraver's point about Israel is equally pertinent. What Israel is doing in Gaza is evil. I am not ashamed to say so.
It's also a strategic blunder and a political quagmire, a self-zugswang from which there's no way out without severe pain, but it's primary characteristic is evil, as has been much of Western "foreign policy" for my entire life.
I don't disagree that foreign policy has a worrying habit of producing evil outcomes nor that there are indeed evil actors. But I also think that evil emerges from a number of factors, including incompetence, hubris, wishful thinking, and groupthink/ the laundry of real insight analysis. It's a disgrace that western politicians and policy makers never learn from their mistakes.
For longer than you and I have been alive, war has been an immensely profitable business for our political and financial classes. They’ve made obscene amounts of money using obscene methods and garnered dangerously concentrated powers.
They can legitimately argue that none of their wars of choice were mistakes or failures. Only those of us who believed the pretexts they invented for their wars, their propaganda programs, their public relations spin doctors, think they made mistakes or failed to achieve their objectives.
I once had the chance to speak to the board of directors of a very large and wealthy company, explaining to them how their policies would eventually lead to the government imposing structural changes on them, breaking apart the monopoly elements from the pieces they subsidized and dominated by means of the funds extracted from the monopoly.
They agreed that I was right and this would probably happen. But, they said, in the meantime we make a lot of money.
It’s the same thinking with our politicians. The smart ones know that people will eventually become enraged enough to do something drastic to alter the situation, steering it back towards decentralization and a more genuinely liberal democratic system.
But in the meantime … they make a lot of money, gather a lot of power, and prepare to survive the revolution in style.