Seth Ackerman wrote:
>
> It may seem far-fetched in today's atmosphere, but there's nothing
> unrealistic about the idea of the US calling a Rambouillet-style conference
> with Israel, Egypt and the Palestinians, laying out a settlement and
> threatening to cut off aid / impose sanctions on anyone who says no. The
> question is why the US won't do this.
>
An empire must -- or at least its leaders usually _think_ it must -- maintain its imperial prestige. (This is _not_ a matter of psychology, and should not be compared to an individual's dislike of embarassment.) Despite various claims that the U.S. was in Vietnam for titanium or South China Sea oil or to provide a trading partner for Japan or other economic reasons -- and despite even the proclaimed fear of the "domino effect" -- this need to defend imperial prestige (variously expressed by different presidents) seems to me to have been the primary factor operating there.
I find your explanation of the original U.S. commitment to Israel quite convincing. I think what one might describe as "imperial momentum" may well explain its refusal to change its policy. (It has been a long time since I read Thucydides, but if I remember the speech he gave to Pericles correctly, this was essentially the reason Pericles gave for urging war with Sparta.) And it is not quite irrational. While at the present time claims that Europe or Japan have already "overtaken" the U.S. and that the U.S. has become a third-world economy are simply laughable, it is not laughable to see as a very reall possibility that Lenin's analysis of inter-imperialist competition still holds, and that if the U.S. did begin to show weakness there exist (or could come into existence) competing imperialisms or alliances that would move against it.
Carrol