> How about this: both countries use each other for their own purposes.
> Ours is bigger, richer, and more heavily armed than theirs, which
> provides certain advantages in the relationship.
Sure, so far so good. But the metaphor of "countries" as unitary agents who can do things like "use" each other, and who have "purposes", is not entirely satisfactory when you start looking at phenomena in much detail. Or so it seems to me.
Far as I can tell, the behavior of countries is driven by the interests of their elites, as those elites perceive them. And the elites aren't a unified body; rather they're a collection of formations and factions who don't necessarily always have the same purposes and perceived interests. Some things will always find a very broad consensus over most or even all elite elements; others are of great interest to relatively few, and more or less indifferent to others.
Nothing very controversial here, is there?
Nor is it controversial -- surely? -- to observe that there exists a faction or formation, or collection of F&F's, in the US, which we sometimes call the Israel Lobby for short; which is very sharply focused on one thing, namely ensuring US support for Israel; which is well-funded, well-organized, quite competent and very active; which operates very much in the open, and in fact advertises its successes in no very modest terms.
The Pawn Theory seems to suggest that the effort and expenditure made by the Israel Lobby is all quite unnecessary, really; if Israel didn't exist Uncle Hegemon would have to invent it. Which raises the question why intelligent people like Abe Foxman are spending so much time and effort to achieve something that we Marxists all know would happen anyway.
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Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com http://cars-suck.org