The announcement last week by the United
States of the largest military aid
package in its history – to Israel – was
a win for both sides. Israeli prime
minister Benjamin Netanyahu could boast
that his lobbying had boosted aid from
$3.1 billion a year to $3.8bn – a 22 per
cent increase – for a decade starting in
2019.
Mr Netanyahu has presented this as a
rebuff to those who accuse him of
jeopardising Israeli security interests
with his government’s repeated affronts
to the White House.
In the past weeks alone, defence
minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared
last year’s nuclear deal between
Washington and Iran with the 1938 Munich
pact, which bolstered Hitler; and Mr
Netanyahu has implied that US opposition
to settlement expansion is the same as
support for the “ethnic cleansing” of
Jews.
American president Barack Obama,
meanwhile, hopes to stifle his own
critics who insinuate that he is
anti-Israel. The deal should serve as a
fillip too for Hillary Clinton, the
Democratic party’s candidate to succeed
Mr Obama in November’s election.
In reality, however, the Obama
administration has quietly punished Mr
Netanyahu for his misbehaviour. Israeli
expectations of a $4.5bn-a-year deal
were whittled down after Mr Netanyahu
stalled negotiations last year as he
sought to recruit Congress to his battle
against the Iran deal.
In fact, Israel already receives
roughly $3.8bn – if Congress’s
assistance on developing missile defence
programmes is factored in. Notably,
Israel has been forced to promise not to
approach Congress for extra funds.
The deal takes into account neither
inflation nor the dollar’s depreciation
against the shekel.
A bigger blow still is the White
House’s demand to phase out a special
exemption that allowed Israel to spend
nearly 40 per cent of aid locally on
weapon and fuel purchases. Israel will
soon have to buy all its armaments from
the US, ending what amounted to a
subsidy to its own arms industry.
Nonetheless, Washington’s renewed
military largesse – in the face of
almost continual insults – inevitably
fuels claims that the Israeli tail is
wagging the US dog. Even The New York
Times has described the aid package as
“too big”.
Since the 1973 war, Israel has
received at least $100bn in military
aid, with more assistance hidden from
view. Back in the 1970s, Washington paid
half of Israel’s military budget. Today
it still foots a fifth of the bill,
despite Israel’s economic success.
But the US expects a return on its
massive investment. As the late Israeli
politician-general Ariel Sharon once
observed, Israel has been a US
“aircraft carrier” in the Middle East,
acting as the regional bully and
carrying out operations that benefit
Washington.
Almost no one blames the US for
Israeli attacks that wiped out Iraq’s
and Syria’s nuclear programmes. A
nuclear-armed Iraq or Syria would have
deterred later US-backed moves at regime
overthrow, as well as countering the
strategic advantage Israel derives from
its own nuclear arsenal.
In addition, Israel’s US-sponsored
military prowess is a triple boon to the
US weapons industry, the country’s most
powerful lobby. Public funds are
siphoned off to let Israel buy goodies
from American arms makers. That, in
turn, serves as a shop window for other
customers and spurs an endless and
lucrative game of catch-up in the rest
of the Middle East.
The first F-35 fighter jets to arrive
in Israel in December – their various
components produced in 46 US states –
will increase the clamour for the
cutting-edge warplane.
Israel is also a “front-line
laboratory”, as former Israeli army
negotiator Eival Gilady admitted at the
weekend, that develops and field-tests
new technology Washington can later use
itself.
The US is planning to buy back the
missile interception system Iron Dome –
which neutralises battlefield threats of
retaliation – it largely paid for.
Israel works closely too with the US in
developing cyberwarfare, such as the
Stuxnet worm that damaged Iran’s
civilian nuclear programme.
But the clearest message from
Israel’s new aid package is one
delivered to the Palestinians:
Washington sees no pressing strategic
interest in ending the occupation. It
stood up to Mr Netanyahu over the Iran
deal but will not risk a damaging clash
over Palestinian statehood.
Some believe that Mr Obama signed the
aid package to win the credibility
necessary to overcome his domestic
Israel lobby and pull a rabbit from the
hat: an initiative, unveiled shortly
before he leaves office, that corners Mr
Netanyahu into making peace.
Hopes have been raised by an expected
meeting at the United Nations in New
York on Wednesday. But their first talks
in 10 months are planned only to
demonstrate unity to confound critics of
the aid deal.
If Mr Obama really wanted to pressure
Mr Netanyahu, he would have used the aid
agreement as leverage. Now Mr Netanyahu
need not fear US financial retaliation,
even as he intensifies effective
annexation of the West Bank.
Mr Netanyahu has drawn the right
lesson from the aid deal – he can act
against the Palestinians with continuing
US impunity.
- See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2016-09-19/palestinians-lose-in-us-military-aid-deal-with-israel/#sthash.fL4Eq28N.dpuf
Propaganda And Barf Alert
The United States Must Be the World’s
Policeman
Only America has the material and moral
greatness to stop the slide into chaos and
foster peace.
By Anders Fogh Rasmussen
Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth- based
journalist and winner of the Martha
Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism -
See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2016-09-19/palestinians-lose-in-us-military-aid-deal-with-israel/#sthash.H1NbQCac.dpuf
September 21, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "WSJ"
- Barely had I been seated before
Vladimir Putin told me that NATO—the
organization that I then headed—no longer
had any purpose and should be disbanded.
“After the end of the Cold War, we dissolved
the Warsaw Pact,” he said. “Similarly, you
should dissolve NATO. That is a relic from
the Cold War.”
During
my visit to Moscow in December 2009, I
sensed that President Putin was challenging
the world order that the U.S. created so
successfully after World War II. Beginning
in 2014, he invaded Ukraine and launched a
military action in Syria.
From my former positions as prime minister
of Denmark and secretary-general of NATO, I
know how important American leadership is.
We desperately need a U.S. president who is
able and willing to lead the free world and
counter autocrats like President Putin. A
president who will lead from the front, not
from behind.
The
world needs such a policeman if freedom and
prosperity are to prevail against the forces
of oppression, and the only capable,
reliable and desirable candidate for the
position is the United States. The
presidential elections thus come at a
pivotal point in history.
The
Middle East is torn by war. In North Africa,
Libya has collapsed and become a breeding
ground for terrorists. In Eastern Europe, a
resurgent Russia has brutally attacked and
grabbed land by force from Ukraine. China is
flexing its muscles against its
neighbors—and the rogue state of North Korea
is threatening a nuclear attack.
In
this world of interconnections, it has
become a cliché to talk about the “global
village.“ But right now, the village is
burning, and the neighbors are fighting in
the light of the flames. Just as we need a
policeman to restore order; we need a
firefighter to put out the flames of
conflict, and a kind of mayor, smart and
sensible, to lead the rebuilding.
Only America can play all these roles,
because of all world powers, America alone
has the credibility to shape sustainable
solutions to these challenges. Russia is
obsessed with rebuilding the empire the
Soviet Union lost. China is still primarily
a regional actor. Europe is weak, divided
and leaderless. The old powers of Britain
and France are simply too small and
exhausted to play the global role they once
did.
This is not simply about means. It is also
about morality. Just as only America has the
material greatness to stop the slide into
chaos, only America has the moral greatness
to do it—not for the sake of power, but for
the sake of peace.
Yet
the U.S. will only be able to shape the
solutions the world needs if its leaders act
with conviction. When America retrenches and
retreats—if the world even thinks that
American restraint reflects a lack of
willingness to engage in preventing and
resolving conflicts—it leaves a vacuum that
will be filled by crooked autocrats across
the world.
The
Obama administration’s reluctance to lead
the world has had serious consequences, and
none is graver than the behavior of Mr.
Putin. While Europe and the U.S. slept, he
launched a ruthless military operation in
support of the Assad regime in Syria and
tried to present Russia as a global power
challenging the U.S. in importance. In
Europe, he is trying to carve out a sphere
of influence and establish Russia as a
regional power capable of diminishing
American influence.
These
are only a few examples of what is now at
stake as autocrats, terrorists and rogue
states challenge America’s leadership of the
international rules-based order—which was
created after World War II and which secured
for the world an unprecedented period of
peace, progress and prosperity.
The
next president must acknowledge this
inheritance. American isolationism will not
make the U.S. and other freedom-loving
countries safer and more prosperous, it will
make them less so and unleash a plague of
dictators and other oppressors. Above all,
American isolationism will threaten the
future of the rules-based international
world order that has brought freedom and
prosperity to so many people.
Mr. Rasmussen, a former prime
minister of Denmark and a former
secretary-general of NATO, is the author of
“The Will to Lead—America’s Indispensable
Role in the Global Fight For Freedom,” out
this month from HarperCollins/Broadside
Books.
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