Israel and the U.S.: who is whose tool?

by Revolution ( revolution.sfbureau [at] gmail.com )

Monday Jul 12th, 2010 4:25 PM
Israel could not sustain its aggressive, expansionist policies without U.S. military aid and
diplomatic support. If the Obama administration wanted to, it could pressure Israel to
comply with international law and resolutions, join the international consensus, and enact a
two-state solution. While the "Israel lobby" thesis conveniently explains his failure to do so
and absolves U.S. policy-makers of responsibility for their ongoing support of Israeli
apartheid, violence and annexation, it simply does not stand up under closer scrutiny.

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From A World to Win News Service. The American international policy professors John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who are critical of U.S. support for Israeli settlement
expansion and its attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, argue that "the unmatched power of the
Israel lobby" distorts U.S. foreign policy. Many people outraged by these crimes have been
influenced by their still widely circulated article "The Israel Lobby" that first appeared in The
London Review of Books in 2006 (available at lrb.co.uk) and was later expanded into a book
published in 21 countries.

Their work contains much useful information about the links between the U.S. and Israel.
Yet their basic theory turns reality upside down. The truth is that Israel exists largely thanks
to the U.S., because it plays an essential role in American domination in the Middle East and
its current quest to "stabilize" an unjust and unacceptable situation for the people. In
arguing that "American interests" would be better served by less uncritical support for
Israel, Mearsheimer and Walt do not really confront the nature of the U.S.—a monopoly
capitalist country whose wealth and power are inextricably linked to a global empire of
exploitation and oppression. Nor do they thoroughly deal with the nature of Israel as a
colonial settler state whose existence itself is no more defensible than the apartheid regime
in South Africa.

This greatly weakens their critique of the U.S.-Israel nexus and reduces it to wishful
thinking. That's especially dangerous at a time when the U.S. is trying to have it both ways,
to do everything possible to support Israel's continued existence and aggression and at the
same time try to appear as a friend to the Palestinians.

Despite their academic prominence, these two scholars have been the object of a Zionist
hate campaign and an intellectual boycott, especially in the U.S. It is shameful that so many
writers and public figures who explode in the face of any criticism of Israel have tried to
silence Mearsheimer and Walt by pinning the label of anti-Semitism on them. But while
these two consider themselves critical friends of Israel, it is true, as their attackers realize
and they do not, that once you start to analyze Israel from the point of justice for all, the
whole Zionist enterprise can be called into question.

In fact, their argument is essentially similar to the all-too-common idea among the masses
of people in the world and the U.S. itself, that U.S. crimes in the greater Middle East and
beyond can be explained by "Jewish pressure groups" rather than a system that basically
can't work any other way.

The following reply to Mearsheimer and Walt was written in April by Stephen Maher, who
describes himself as a graduate student at the American University School of International
Service who has lived in the West Bank. We are reprinting it from his blog
rationalmanifesto.blogspot.com and electronicintifada.org. While we do not share some
important elements of his analysis, we welcome both his basic conclusion and his method of
taking all the facts into account and testing ideas against reality.

*****

Many of Israel's critics blame an "Israel lobby" for the near-total complicity of the U.S. in
Israeli annexation, colonization and cleansing programs in the occupied West Bank. This
complicity continues to the present, despite the "row" that erupted after the Israeli
government humiliated U.S. Vice President Joe Biden by announcing the construction of
1,600 settlement units in occupied East Jerusalem while he was visiting the country.
Indeed, despite the apparent outrage expressed by top White House officials, the
administration has made clear that its criticism of Israel will remain purely symbolic.
However, as we shall see, the lobby thesis does little to explain U.S. foreign policy in the
Middle East.

Years after Noam Chomsky, Stephen Zunes, Walter Russell Mead and many others
published their critiques of the Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer "Israel lobby" thesis,
many of the sharpest critics of Israel continue to attribute U.S. foreign policy in the Middle
East to the influence of the lobby. Given the prevalence of the Israel lobby argument, and
the latest diplomatic confrontation between the U.S. and Israel, it is important to revisit the
flaws in the thesis, and properly attribute U.S. behavior to the large concentrations of
domestic political and economic power that truly drive U.S. policy.

U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is similar to that which is carried out elsewhere in the
world, in regions free of "the lobby's" proclaimed corrupting effects. The inflated level of
support that the U.S. lends Israel is a rational response to the particular strategic
importance of the Middle East, the chief energy-producing region of the world. By building
Israel into what Noam Chomsky refers to as an "offshore U.S. military base," it is able to
protect its dominance over much of the world's remaining energy resources, a major lever
of global power. As we shall see, those blaming the lobby for U.S. policy once again
misunderstand the U.S.'s strategic interests in the Middle East, and Israel's central role in
advancing them.

Geopolitics and the U.S.-Israeli relationship

A central claim of the "Israel lobby" thesis is that the "lobby," however defined,
overwhelmingly shapes U.S. policy towards the Middle East. Thus, if the argument were
true, its proponents would have to demonstrate that there is something qualitatively unique
about U.S. policy towards the Middle East compared with that in other regions of the world.
Yet upon careful analysis, we find little difference between the purported distortions caused
by the lobby and what is frequently referred to as the "national interest", governed by the
same concentrations of domestic power that drive U.S. foreign policy elsewhere.

There are states all around the world that perform similar services to Washington as Israel,
projecting U.S. power in their respective regions, whose crimes in advancing Washington's
goals are overtly supported and shielded from international condemnation. Take for instance
the 30 years of U.S. support for the horrors of the Indonesian invasion and occupation of
East Timor. In addition to the use of rape and starvation as weapons, and a gruesome
torture regime, Indonesian president Suharto slaughtered 150,000 persons out of a
population of 650,000. These atrocities were fully supported by the U.S., including supplying
the napalm and chemical weapons indiscriminately used by the Indonesian army, which was
fully armed and trained by the U.S. As Bill Clinton said, Suharto was "our kind of guy."

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, U.S. ambassador to the UN at the time of the Indonesia invasion,
later wrote that "the Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly
ineffective in whatever measures it undertook" to end the butchering of the East Timorese,
a goal he carried out with "no inconsiderable success." Yet this support was not due to the
influence of an "Indonesia lobby." Rather, planners had identified Indonesia as one of the
three most strategically important regions in the world in 1958, as a result of its oil wealth
and important role as a link between the Indian and Pacific oceans.

In some regions, as in Latin America where U.S. clients like Guatemala, Honduras, and El
Salvador, and terrorist armies like the Nicaraguan Contras, spent years murdering
defenseless peasants demanding basic human rights, the threat is mostly one of "successful
defiance"; that is, a country defying U.S. orders and getting away with it. Should the U.S.
tolerate one such case, the logic goes, it will embolden resistance to its dictates elsewhere.
The danger underlying such defiance—referred to as "the threat of a good example" by
Oxfam—is that a country will implement a successful model for independent development,
refusing U.S. dictates and seeking to direct much-needed resources to serve the needs of
the domestic population instead of wealthy foreign investors.

Such thinking is deeply institutionalized and exhibited by U.S. policy worldwide, going back
to the very beginnings of the modern imperial era after World War II. It was clear from
early in the war that the U.S. would emerge as the dominant world power in its aftermath,
and so the State Department and Council on Foreign Relations began planning to create a
post-war international order in which the U.S. would "hold unquestioned power." One way it
planned to do so was gaining control of global energy resources, primarily those of Saudi
Arabia, which were referred to at the time as "the greatest material prize in history" by the
U.S. State Department.

As Franklin Roosevelt's "oil czar" Harold Ickes advised, control of oil was the "key to postwar
political arrangements" since a large supply of cheap energy is essential to fuel the world's
industrial capitalist economies. This meant that with control of Middle Eastern oil,
particularly the vast Saudi reserves, the U.S. could keep its hand on the spigot that would
fuel the economies of Europe, Japan and much of the rest of the world. As U.S. planner
George Kennan put it, this would give the United States "veto power" over the actions of
others. Zbigniew Brzezinski has also more recently discussed the "critical leverage" the U.S.
enjoys as a result of its stranglehold on energy supplies.

Thus in the Middle East it is not simply "successful defiance" that the U.S. fears, nor merely
independent development. These worries are present as well, but there is an added
dimension: should opposition threaten U.S. control of oil resources, a major source of U.S.
global power is placed at risk. Under the Nixon administration, with the U.S. military tied
down in Vietnam and direct intervention in the Middle East to defend vital strategic interests
unlikely, military aid to pre-revolution Iran (acting as an American regional enforcer)
skyrocketed. Amnesty International's conclusion in 1976 that "no country has a worse
human rights record than Iran" was ignored, and U.S. support increased, not because of an
"Iran lobby" in the U.S., but rather because such support was advancing U.S. interests.

Strategic concerns also led the U.S. to support other oppressive, reactionary regimes,
including Saddam Hussein's worst atrocities. During the Anfal genocide against the Kurds,
Iraqi forces used chemical weapons provided by the U.S. against Kurdish civilians, killed
perhaps 100,000 persons, and destroyed roughly 80 percent of the villages in Iraqi
Kurdistan, while the U.S. moved to block international condemnation of these atrocities.
Again, supporting crimes that serve the "national interest" set by large corporations and
ruling elites, and shielding them from international criticism, is the rule, not the exception.

It is no coincidence that the U.S.-Israel relationship crystallized after Israel destroyed the
independent nationalist regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser in a pre-emptive attack in 1967,
permanently ending the role of Egypt as a center of opposition to U.S. imperialism. Since
before World War II, Saudi Arabia had happily served as an "Arab facade," veiling the hand
of the true ruling power on the Arabian peninsula, to borrow British colonial terminology.
With Nasser's Arab nationalist rhetoric "turning the whole region against the House of
Saud," the threat he posed to U.S. power was serious. In response, the State Department
concluded that the "logical corollary" to U.S. opposition to Arab nationalism was "support for
Israel" as the only reliable pro-U.S. force in the region. Israel's destruction and humiliation
of Nasser's regime was thus a major boon for the U.S., and proved to Washington the value
of a strong alliance with a powerful Israel.

This unique regional importance is one reason for the tremendous level of aid Israel
receives, including more advanced weaponry than that provided to other U.S. clients.
Providing Israel with the ability to use overwhelming force against any adversary to the
established order has been a pivotal aspect of U.S. regional strategy. Importantly, Israel is
also a reliable ally—there is little chance that the Israeli government will be overthrown and
the weapons end up in the hands of anti-Western Islamic fundamentalists or independent
nationalists as happened in Iran in 1979.

Today, with the increased independence of Europe, and the hungry economies of India and
China growing at breakneck speed along with their demand for dwindling energy resources,
control over what is left is more crucial than ever. In the September 2009 issue of the Asia-
Africa Review, China's former Special Envoy to the Middle East Sun Bigan wrote that "the
U.S. has always sought to control the faucet of global oil supplies," and suggested that since
Washington would doubtless work to ensure that Iraqi oil remained under its control, China
should look elsewhere in the region for an independent energy source. "Iran has bountiful
energy resources," Bigan wrote, "and its oil gas reserves are the second biggest in the
world, and all are basically under its own control" (emphasis added).

It is partially as a result of this independence that Israel's strategic importance to the U.S.
has increased significantly in recent times, particularly since the Shah's cruel, U.S.-
supported dictatorship in Iran was overthrown in 1979. With the Shah gone, Israel alone
had to terrorize the region into complying with U.S. orders, and ensure that Saudi Arabia's
vast oil resources remain under U.S. control. The increased importance of Israel to U.S.
policy was illustrated clearly as its regional strategy shifted to "dual containment" during the
Clinton years, with Israel countering both Iraq and Iran.

With Iran developing technology that could eventually allow it to produce what are referred
to in the February 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review as "anti-access weapons" or weapons
of mass destruction that prevent the U.S. from being able to freely use force in any region
of the world, this is a crucial moment in Washington's struggle to seize control of Iran. This
confrontation, stemming from the desire of the U.S. to control its oil and destroy a base of
independent nationalism, makes U.S. support for Israel strategically crucial.

The "Israel lobby" and U.S. pressure

If we adopt "the lobby" hypothesis, we would predict that the U.S. would bend to Israel's
will when the interests of the two states diverge, acting against its "national interest." Yet if
U.S. policies in the Middle East were damaging its "national interest," as proponents of the
lobby argument claim, that must mean that such policies have been a failure. This leads one
to ask: a failure for whom? Not for U.S. elites, who have secured control of the major global
energy resources while successfully crushing opposition movements, nor for the defense
establishment, and most certainly not for the energy corporations. In fact, not only is U.S.
policy towards the Middle East similar to that towards other regions of the world, but it has
been a profitable, strategic success.

Indeed, the U.S.'s policy towards Israel and the Palestinians is not to achieve an end to the
occupation, nor to bring about respect for Palestinian rights—in fact, it is the actor primarily
responsible for preventing these outcomes. To the U.S., Israel's "Operation Defensive
Shield" in 2002 had sufficiently punished the Palestinians and their compliant U.S.-backed
leadership for their intransigence at Camp David. While the Palestinian Authority was
already acting as Israel's "subcontractor" and "collaborator" in suppressing resistance to
Israeli occupation, in the paraphrased words of former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben
Ami, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's deliberate destruction of Palestinian
institutions provided the opportunity to rebuild them, and ensure an even greater degree of
U.S. control.

The settlement and annexation programs help guarantee Israeli control over the most
valuable Palestinian land and water resources, ensuring Israel will remain a dominant
society not easily pressured by its neighbors. To help achieve these goals, the U.S. shields
Israeli expansion behind a "peace process" in hopes that given enough time the Palestinians
will concede more and more of what was once theirs. The primary concern is to present the
appearance that the U.S. and Israel are ardently crusading for peace, battling against those
who oppose this noble objective. Though it is true that people across the region are appalled
and outraged by Israeli crimes, such anger is a small consideration next to the strategic
gain of maintaining a strong, dependent ally in the heart of the Middle East.

The reconstitution of an even more tightly controlled Palestinian Authority, with General
Keith Dayton directly supervising the Palestinian security forces, enabled the U.S. to meet
these goals while more effectively suppressing resistance to the occupation. Likewise,
redeploying Israeli soldiers outside of Gaza allowed Sharon a free hand to continue the
annexation of the West Bank while being heralded internationally as a "great man of peace."

The treatment of Israel by the mainstream U.S. media is also standard for all U.S. allies.
Coverage in the corporate press is predictably skewed in favor of official U.S. allies and
against official enemies, a well-documented phenomenon. Thus, proponents of the lobby
thesis are missing the forest for the trees. What they see as the special treatment of Israel
by the mainstream press is actually just the normal functioning of the U.S. media and
intellectual establishment, apologizing for and defending crimes of official allies while
demonizing official enemies.

Of course, this is not to argue that there are not organizations in the U.S., like the American
Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League and AIPAC [the lobbying group American Israel
Public Affairs Committee] that seek to marginalize dissent from Israeli policy in every forum
possible. Rather, I am pointing out that the power of these groups pales in comparison to
other, far more powerful, interests and concerns. While the AJC or ADL may mobilize for the
firing of a professor critical of Israel, for example, that argument is amplified by the elite-
owned and controlled press because doing so serves their interests. Likewise, AIPAC can
urge unwavering support for Israel on the part of the U.S. government, but without the
assent of other far more powerful interests, like the energy corporations and defense
establishment, AIPAC's efforts would amount to little. U.S. policy, like that of other states, is
rationally planned to serve the interests of the ruling class.

Israel could not sustain its aggressive, expansionist policies without U.S. military aid and
diplomatic support. If the Obama administration wanted to, it could pressure Israel to
comply with international law and resolutions, join the international consensus, and enact a
two-state solution. While the "Israel lobby" thesis conveniently explains his failure to do so
and absolves U.S. policy-makers of responsibility for their ongoing support of Israeli
apartheid, violence and annexation, it simply does not stand up under closer scrutiny.
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