On 2010-08-08, at 6:49 PM, SA wrote:
> Marv Gandall wrote:
>
>> My own view, of course, is that the refusal to contemplate a complete cessation of military and economic aid to Israel has less to do with fear of domestic pressure from Jewish and Christian Zionists than with US strategic interests. Such a move, from the POV of the US, would not result in an "offshore balancing" but in an new imbalance of power in the region in favour of Iran and the Islamist movement which would be much more detrimental to US interests than it's current support of Israel. This doesn't, however, preclude the US threatening Israel at critical junctures with more limited suspension of military, financial, diplomatic or other forms of support unless Israel complies with US demands. Israel typically complies. This happened notably under Eisenhower in 1956 following the Suez invasion, but also under Ford in 1976 initiating the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai, under Reagan in 1982 limiting the Israeli incursion in Lebanon designed to wipe out the PLO, and more tentatively under the timid Obama administration earlier this year with regard to curbs on settlement expansion. So there is room to squeeze Israel, notwithstanding the existence of the Lobby, in order to satisfy wider US policy objectives - but well short of throwing it to the wolves, which would be in conflict with those same objectives.
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> I'm a little confused by this. First, I don't see why cutting off aid to Israel would result in "a new imbalance of power in the region in favour of Iran and the Islamist movement." Is the correlation of forces so finely balanced right now that a mere US aid cutoff would immediately result in Iranian regional domination? Do you really believe US policy is only trying to maintain an equal regional power balance between Israel and Iran? That's not how I see it - to me, it looks like Israel clearly dominates and the US, rather than balancing off that lopsided domination, is propping it up. (That's also Walt's position.)
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> Second, I didn't realize we were arguing about why the US isn't following a policy of "throwing Israel to the wolves." That doesn't seem like such a puzzle. The puzzle is why the US refuses to use its influence to settle the Israeli-Pal. conflict along reasonable lines - since by refusing to do this the US seemingly creates a lot of problems for itself. It's not clear why fostering such a settlement would create Iranian regional hegemony. If anything, it might make it easier for Arab states to more openly (and therefore boldly) align themselves with US attempts to forestall Iranian domination. The Arab states are already on board for that, of course, but right now they're restrained from acting too openly in line with the US.
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> I think there's a widespread misconception on the left that if the US really wanted to, it could force a settlement on Israel very easily. Just a stern phone call threatening US support and Israel would fall into line. Chomsky often makes this claim, but I think he's wrong. Forcing a reasonable settlement on Israel means forcing a nuclear state whose army and political leadership are suffused with religious fundamentalists and ultra-nationalist extremists to abandon its religious-colonial project and uproot 9% of its (Jewish) population. If you think that would be easy, ask yourself how the US is doing with its effort to get Pakistan to stop supporting the Taliban, and then multiply by 3.
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> I obviously think it's worth doing, but the degree of difficulty and risk of disaster is high. A US policymaker doesn't have to be convinced of the strategic utility of Greater Israel - nor under the Lobby's sway - to have little appetite for such a thing.
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There's no doubt that what you casually describe as the "mere" cutoff of US economic, military, and diplomatic support for Israel would be seen by both Israel and its enemies as a major blow, depriving it of its patron and completing its global isolation. But I agree I was loosely overstating the case in suggesting that it would lead to a "new imbalance of power in the region in favour of Iran and the Islamist movement" - at least, not insofar as Israel's national security is concerned and for so long as it remains the region's sole nuclear power.
That being said, the largely immeasurable effect of a cutoff of US aid is beside point, is it not? We both agree with Anna Marie Slaughter and most everyone else that there is no prospect of a rupture in the long-standing strategic alliance between Israel and the US in the foreseeable future. Israel is not going to be thrown to the wolves, and I've never suggested that some sort of an accomodation with the Palestinians (not likely to be a "reasonable" one) which is forced on the Netanyahu government would be tantamount to the same. In fact, you've quoted me above stating precisely the opposite: that within the framework of its support for Israel, the US as the stronger party has been able to rein in the Israelis in and pressure them to conform to broader US policy interests. You seem uncertain about this. On the one hand, you say you are "puzzled why the US refuses to settle the Israel-Palestinian conflict"; on the other, you suggest there's a "widespread misconception...that the US, if it wanted to, could force a settlement on Israel very easily."
I think your confusion about what the US can or cannot do regarding a peace settlement stems from a more general one, which is the real point at issue: Who controls this alliance - the Americans, or the Israelis acting through their US proxies in the Israel lobby?
It seems to me implicit, if not explicit, in the argument of those who see a sinister fifth column at work in the US that were successive Republican and Democratic administrations left to their own devices, unencumbered by the lobby, they would have conducted a substantially different bipartisan foreign policy in regards to the Middle East. It further seems to me that the onus is on those like yourself who accept this argument to more precisely demonstrate how US foreign policy in this region is guided by unwelcome domestic pressure from within, rather than, as I believe, by imperial considerations in which the Israelis have an important but distinctly subordinate role.
For example:
1. Absent domestic pressure from the Zionists, would the US have pursued a more "even-handed" policy against the Islamic Republic of Iran following the overthrow of the Shah? Would it have balked at imposing sanctions? Would it now be only mildly rebuking but largely turning a blind eye to the Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons, as earlier in the case of Israel, India and Pakistan?
2. Does the US support Israel because it has been compelled to by the Israel lobby or because it has properly seen Israel as its strongest ally in the region against left-nationalist and then Islamist movements which have threatened its energy and geopolitical interests? Does the US refuse to support UN resolutions condemning Israel for its harsh occupation of the Palestinian territories, its brutal incursions into Lebanon and Gaza, its racial ideology, primarily because it is afraid to buck the Zionist lobby at home or because of its strategic alliance with the Israeli state?
3. Did the Bush-Cheney administration reluctantly invade Iraq at the behest of pro-Likud Jewish advisors like Feith, Wolfowitz, Perle, and Abrams solely for the purpose of ridding Israel of the "rejectionist" Baathist regime or were other considerations of Empire involved for Jewish and non-Jewish neocons independent of their alliance with Israel and their ties to Zionist lobbyists?
Those will do for starters.
Of course, it is difficult to separate the interests of the Empire from those of Israel and its ideological supporters in the United States because those interests are convergent. Those fixated on the Israel lobby, however, start from the mistaken assumption that those interests are divergent - that the US interest lies in completely cutting off support to the Israelis, not pressuring it within the context of such support - and that successive US administrations have refrained from doing so, not because they don't think it would be in the interest of US imperialism, but because they are frightened by the apparently decisive influence of Jewish and Christian Zionists in US electoral politics. That's what I also hear you to be arguing.