33
votes
Israel is a strategic liability for the United States. The special relationship does not benefit Washington and is endangering US interests across the globe.
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- Title
- Israel Is a Strategic Liability for the United States
- Authors
- Jon Hoffman
- Published
- Mar 28 2024
- Word count
- 2022 words
I think there's good analysis in here, especially about how the US is insulating Israel from the costs of its policy decisions vis a vis the settlement program which allows them to take a path that creates further instability.
Also of course Israel no longer faces any kind of existential threat and has a great many allies in the region.
I think the former claim is quite debatable, but doesn't ultimately matter. That they perceive existential threats does.
Strategically, supporting Israel is making less and less sense as time goes on. Politically, it's very much still relevant to many US politicians. It's long been seen as political suicide to turn one's back on Israel, and I didn't think that's changed much since October. Even the extremely mild rebukes from the Biden Administration have been a big gamble, with what may be the second-most momentous presidential election in US history coming in a few short months.
Foreign policy wonks may be right that Israel is a dog as an ally, but those in the halls of power have more than just foreign policy to balance.
As long as it’s a military ally in a region that is strategically hyper important with no closer options, it will make strategic sense for them to be on close terms
Right, but at some point it'll make sense to go ally-shopping. Maybe Yemen would like some additional assistance with their civil war? Even if Israel isn't dropped as an ally entirely, if they aren't the USA's special friend in the region, the USA won't be so over a barrel when they pull shit like this.
I don’t know what you’re suggesting. It seems like getting involved in Somalia or some other failed state? Getting the Houthis to stop attacking shipping is important, but they’re stridently anti-American. It’s in their official slogan. Might as well try to ally with Iran. And taking the other side would likely doom them politically? They’re already pretty doomed.
In any case, replacing one ally with another isn’t really how alliances work. The US has a ridiculous number of alliances. In that area, Egypt is officially a major non-NATO ally with the US and the US also has a major military base in Qatar.
More is usually better, sure.
Zeihan covered this a week ago. His take is that we are looking at swapping Israel for Turkey, and that's a win if it happens. They'd make for a far better ally, they are already democratic and they have a larger military than all of their neighbors put together - Americans love that. That also cuts the rug out from under many issues arab states have with the US and incentivizes them to come together, leaving just Israel and Iran out of the loop. Frankly that is a massive improvement for the US and I don't doubt they'd make that trade.
Arguably turkeys 'democracy' has taken a major authoritarian turn over the past few years though. There have been severe power shifts away from other democratic institutions to the president. Also much of the justice system and the media are increasingly being controlled by the same, to the point that it has become very hard for public critizism and political opposition to exist.
Yeah, the "coup attempt" is when turkey ceased being a democratic ally in my mind. They're neither particularly democratic, nor particularly allied. They're lukewarm at best on both counts.
(I'm not claiming the coup had particularly high relevance on Turkey's condition as a democracy, but it was the event that made me reassess. The gradient towards authoritarianism was there before and continued to be there after.)
Israel under Netanyahu is in the process of undergoing the same democratic decline as Turkey under Erdogan. For that reason alone, the U.S. is now reaching out to Israeli opposition figures and attempting to undermine Netanyahu publicly. Netanyahu is returning the favor and colluding with the U.S.'s own anti-democratic factions.
But the U.S.'s diplomatic and undiplomatic efforts will be meaningless unless we also publicly stop shipping weapons for Netanyahu's odious coalition of ultra-right ethnic cleansers to do with as they please. We're still sending white phosphorus munitions, of all horrible things.
Netanyahu's attempts at strategic partnerships with the Republican Party and Donald Trump have been going on for quite [archive link] some time. Trump being Trump, that's transactional and complicated.
There are multiple flaws with presenting this argument like this, and for the record i'm not super confident I trust someone who seems to think that there's more civilian casualties in this conflict vs Russia/Ukraine, and even the original article is using a Trump quote of all things as if it's somehow raw fact.
While I'm sure, from a strategic perspective, the US would love to have other allies in the area, turkey is not even close to a 1 for 1 swap for Israel. Again I'm speaking from a mostly strategic level given the headline is that it's now a "strategic liability". It's mostly about quick and reliable access to the suez and the other canals/chokepoints. That entire region is one of the MAJOR choke points for the worldwide economy (as we saw very aptly demonstrated by one stuck cargo ship, but it's not just the suez), so almost every major economic power has interests over there. Hell just look at how many military bases are in/around Djibouti. Turkey, while near that area, is not closer, and in these things, closer matters. Would the US want more allies in the region, sure (they already have bases in turkey I believe), but there's no world where "well we can just swap to turkey" equates on a strategic level.
Now, are they a geopolitical liability? Quite possibly and you could spin that into being a strategic liability, but it'd have to be a pretty fucking big one given the above, and the fact that Israel's situation means they're also dependent on the US (although much less so, given that if the hamas attack didn't occur, we might actually have seen a treaty with Saudi Arabia by now). Having a strategically located ally who really has no choice but to get along with you is better than a less strategically located ally who could decide "meh fuck it" and kick you out at a crucial time.
Finally, the simple truth is that while so many countries have interests in that region, they all know they don't have solutions. For all the posturing if Israel doesn't nuke someone, I don't think anyone is ever going to draw a line in the sand over it simply because they would LOVE to just drop their military off there and otherwise not be involved. It's a shitstorm of a situation that's unlikely to ever get better, but it makes everyone look bad because it turns out strategic and economic interests often outweigh moral ones.
That ticks me off the most out of this entire mess. We were so damn close, and now it's going to be set back decades. I honestly got the impression from the negotiations that they were ready to give it a chance, but now we're disappointed again. The blessings of peace are for the prophets, not for their peoples.
It's possible that the USA will simply pack up and bug out wholesale from the entire middle east - we make our own oil now from shale, and once more of our own light/sweet refineries come online we're looking at energy independence, which means we have our oil covered in-house. Haven't had to tap Alaska yet to get there either. That means we don't have any reason to play traffic cop in the middle east anymore, especially if we're prepared to ditch globalization wholesale after re-shoring everything.
I'm wondering how the whole picture of geopolitics changes once the rest of the world starts to finally understand the US is able to walk away, won't feel it in the pocketbook by doing so, and kinda wants to walk away after decades of listening to everyone else complain about our security policies and pick fights with their neighbors like angry children do.
Have fun, your security is your own problem now. We'll still sell both sides guns, but not because we're assholes. We try to stop the wars - we're just smart enough to know that you won't, and jaded enough by now that we don't mind making money on your misery. We'll keep a friends and family plan open for allies, of course, but you won't like those deals at all compared to the ones you've been getting. We're going to be investing in america now - the continents, not just the US. It's time to support the neighbors we share a real border with and can reach by train networks yet to be built, something we should have done a lot more of over the last half century. Manifest destiny version two, north-south edition - this time with less colonialism. :P
If your region steps up and remains stable, awesome, we're more than happy to shake new hands and keep on trading anything and everything under the sun. Just don't expect us to keep bailing everyone out forever. Even the IMF's money isn't bottomless. If the aid always results in rockets instead of infrastructure, eventually it will stop coming and it will stay gone.
There's persistent advocacy for isolationism in the US that goes back to the country's founding, but it hasn't worked out well, at least for Europe. Would it work for the Middle East? It seems doubtful. We benefit too much from global trade and have too much to lose from more war.
But I do think it's high time that the US should be asking Israel what they've done for us lately, besides fanning the flames.
While I know it’s a discussion that’s got a lot of nuance but I feel i should point out that similar trade arguments were used about Russia right up until they marched into Ukraine.
The world would be VERY different if there a major shift back to isolationism but it’s not impossible
Arguing from incentives often doesn't work as well as people think it does. Similarly for deterrence. Own goals are always possible.
But I just meant to say that isolationism seems like a bad idea for the US.
The US/Turkyie alliance is undercut by the US/SDF(PKK) alliance. I don't think Turkyie is down for a free Kurdistan but historically it wouldn't be the first time the US had used the Kurds when it was strategically relevant and then abandoned them.
But, in all honestly, I don't see a way that Turkyie and the Kurds get along, with or without the US.
Israel is the only democracy in the region and has similar values to the U.S..
If you in all seriousness try to paint Israel as the pinnacle of humanitarian values, at this point in time, I honestly don't know what to tell you.
I personally read this as a condemnation of the USA's actual humanitarian choices at times that it feels threatened, rather than praising Israel at all.
Yeah, hard to tell at times.