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
The Obama Administration’s Suspension of
Syria Talks With Russia Is the Most
Dangerous Development in a New Cold War
The collapse of talks takes the United
States one step closer to an unnecessarily
deadly “military solution” to the Syria
crisis.
By James Carden
October 04, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "The
Nation" -
This afternoon
the State Department announced that the
Obama administration is suspending bilateral
talks with Russia regarding the war in
Syria. The statement by State Department
spokesman John Kirby read, in part, that the
decision to suspend “bilateral channels with
Russia that were established to sustain the
Cessation of Hostilities” was “not a
decision that was taken lightly.” The
statement said that the United States
“spared no effort in negotiating,” yet
“Russia failed to live up to its own
commitments.”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest told
reporters
on Monday,
“Everybody’s patience with Russia has run
out.” Meanwhile, the pressure on the
administration to “do something” in Syria is
growing. At a Senate Foreign Relations
Committee hearing last week, Tennessee
Senator Bob Corker repeatedly expressed his
dismay that the administration has not come
up with a “Plan B” in Syria, including the
implementation of a no-fly zone over
northern Syria or the creation of so-called
“safe zones” for non-combatants fleeing the
violence.
Former general and CIA director David
Petraeus, no doubt echoing the establishment
consensus on these issues, told Charlie Rose
last week that establishing these zones
would be “very, very straightforward” and
could be achieved “very, very quickly.” The
general’s assurances aside, the
administration might do well to recall the
consequences of a similar operation over
Kosovo (which resulted in a bombing campaign
that lasted 78 days) or of the more recent
imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya.
Unlike in those cases, both the Russians and
Iranians have personnel on the ground in
Syria, while the Russian and the Syrian Arab
Air Forces are executing an air campaign
over rebel-held (or more accurately, jihadi-held)
east Aleppo. The mainstream media continue
to gloss over the rather salient fact that
civilians who are trying to flee the
Russian-Syrian bombardment are often blocked
from doing so by US- and Gulf State–funded
“rebels.”
The
decision by the Obama administration to
suspend talks with Russia, therefore, while
alarming in the extreme, is perhaps not so
surprising, given a
CNN report over the weekend that showed
that Secretary of State John Kerry—whom many
observers (including this author) wrongly
saw as a dove on matters relating to Syria
and Russia—has been pushing for a military
solution in Syria all along.
A
leaked recording of Kerry at UN headquarters
in September reveals that he told Dutch
diplomats: “I think you’re looking at three
people, four people in the administration. I
lost the argument. I’ve argued for the use
of force. I’m the guy who stood up and
announced that we’re going to attack Assad
for the use of weapons.” Kerry continued,
“So far, American legal theory does not buy
into the so-called right to protect.… Nobody
[is] more frustrated than me.”
Is
there any relevant history to which
administration officials might turn to guide
them, now that it seems we are
eyeball-to-eyeball with Russia in Syria?
Perhaps.
On
January 27, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson’s
National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy and
Defense Secretary Robert McNamara authored
what became known as the “fork in the road”
memo regarding US policy in Vietnam. Bundy
wrote President Johnson that “Bob and I
believe that the worst course of action is
to continue in this essentially passive
role which can only lead to eventual
defeat and an invitation to get out in
humiliating circumstances.” [Emphasis
added.]
The
alternatives Bundy and McNamara set out to
Johnson were these: either “use our military
power in the Far East and force a change in
Communist policy” or “deploy all our
resources along a track of negotiation,
aimed at salvaging what little can be
preserved with no major addition to our
present military risks.”
Tragically, Johnson chose the former option.
President Obama, it would
seem, is now himself at a “fork in the road”
with regard to Syria. He would be unwise to
brush aside the advice of his predecessor
Jimmy Carter, who wrote in
The New York Times/em> only
two weeks ago that
American-Russian leadership is critical
for this approach to work. Each side
must persuade its regional allies to
cooperate. But that alone won’t be
enough. The Syrians who have been the
cannon fodder in this war must make
their voices heard, with a loud and
clear statement: “Stop the killing.”
A
military solution, and facile promises of
easy answers like the imposition of no-fly
and/or safe zones (which are neither easy
nor answers) is not the way forward. Obama
and his advisers have made a potentially
grave error in cutting off talks with the
Russians, and even a cursory glance back
through the history of recent American
military interventions should steer them
back to, not away from, the negotiating
table.
James
W. Carden is a contributing writer at The
Nation and the executive editor for the
American Committee for East-West Accord's
EastWestAccord.com. |
