comment on Zionism discussion

[Brad DeLong]

>On Sat, 14 Jul 2001, Brad DeLong wrote:
>
>>  But what does the U.S. get from this $3 billion a year, besides a more
>>  difficult and prickly relationship with the Gulf states where the oil
>>  is?
>
>It only seems mysterious if you consider that half alone.  The other half
>is the $2.1 billion a year we pay Egypt.  Both payments are enshrined in
>the Camp David accords of 1978, and essentially started (on a smaller
>scale) just after the Yom Kippur war of 1973.  And a good case can be made
>that the annual payment to Egypt (which could never be made without a
>larger one to Israel) bought the end of general war in the middle east and
>made the Middle East a one-superpower zone.  We essentially bought
>condominium....

And what good for the United States--speaking as a flinty-eyed State 
Department realist--is "condominium" over the western Middle East? 
Giving both Egypt and Israel an excuse to avoid war in order to 
receive aid is a good thing from the idealist perspective (to which I 
belong). But the U.S.'s strategic interests are in the eastern Middle 
East.

Brad DeLong