Max Ajl's excellent post today concludes with this reference to the work of Nitzan and Bichler, which is quoted:
“During the 1990s, dominant capital as a whole was increasingly seeking cross-border expansion, a process which required tranquillity, not turmoil. Given that military conflict endangered such expansion, and that high energy prices threatened to choke the green-field potential of ‘emerging markets’, the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition found itself increasingly isolated.”
What happened, as petroleum prices again plummeted in the late 1990s and early 2000? We went to war again, first in Afghanistan, and then in Iraq, whereupon profits for the petroleum companies, the weapons industries, and the Tel-Aviv stock market shot through the roof—just look at the figures—representing a confluence of interests between arms manufacturers, the oil industry, and the Israel Lobby. Is this a functionalist explanation? Yes, it is. Does it explain the political economy of the Middle East? Fairly compellingly. Does this mean there’s no Lobby, or that it has no power? Not at all: it has plenty of power, just not determinative influence vis-à-vis American foreign policy in the Middle East. Has Nitzan and Bichler’s book been studiously ignored by those writing on the Israel/Zionist/Jewish Lobby? Yes, it has. In the case of M-W, this ignorance makes a great deal of sense. In the case of leftist analysts, this ignorance is more confusing. It’s not our problem to explain that ignorance, but the repercussions of writing the petrodollar-weapondollar core out of our analyses is all of our problem, especially when those trying to root the Lobby in materialist analyses are dismissed as crypto-Zionists, Jewish apologists for Israel, or whatever term of abuse is hauled in to avoid real discussion.