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
Russia Reads US Bluster as Sign of War
As U.S. politicians and pundits have fun
talking tough about Russia and demonizing
President Putin, they are missing signs that
Moscow isn’t amused and is preparing for
actual conflict, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray
McGovern.
By Ray McGovern
October 12, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Consortium
News"
- During the Reagan administration, I was
one of the CIA analysts assigned to present
to White House officials the President’s
Daily Brief, which summed up the CIA’s views
on the pressing national security issues of
the day. If I were still in that job – and
assuming CIA analysts are still able to
speak truth to power – I am afraid that I
would be delivering alarming news about the
potential of a U.S.-Russian military clash.
We
analysts were responsible for picking up
warnings from Moscow and other key capitals
that the U.S. news media often missed or
downplayed, much as the major news outlets
today are ignoring the escalation of
warnings from Russia over Syria.
For
instance, Russian defense spokesman Maj.
Gen. Igor Konashenkov warned on Oct. 6 that
Russia is prepared to shoot down
unidentified aircraft – including any
stealth aircraft – over Syria. It is a
warning that I believe should be taken
seriously.
It’s true that experts differ as to whether
the advanced air defense systems already in
Syria can bring down stealth aircraft, but
it would be a mistake to dismiss this
warning out of hand. Besides, Konashenkov
added, in a telling ex-ante-extenuating-circumstance
vein, that Russian air defense “will not
have time to identify the origin” of the
aircraft.
In
other words, U.S. aircraft, which have been
operating in Syrian skies without Syrian
government approval, could be vulnerable to
attack with the Russian government
preemptively warning that such an incident
won’t be Moscow’s fault.
As
for the prospects of reviving the Syrian
negotiation track, its demise was never
clearer than in the remarks on Sunday by
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in a lengthy
interview with Russian Channel One. He ended
it with a pointed comment: “Diplomacy has
several allies in this [Syria] endeavor –
Russia’s Aerospace Forces, Army, and Navy.”
Lavrov recognizes that Secretary of State
John Kerry has failed in his efforts to get
the U.S.-backed “moderate” rebels to
separate from Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate,
which has been renamed from Nusra Front to
the Syria Conquest Front. With that key
“separation” feature of the partial
cease-fire gone, Lavrov is saying that
military force is the only way to drive the
jihadists from their stronghold in east
Aleppo and restore government control.
President Vladimir Putin and his advisers
seem willing to bear the risk of escalation
in the hope that any armed confrontation can
be limited to Syria. There also appears to
be an important element of timing in
Russia’s current behavior with the Russians
considering it best to take that risk now,
since they believe they are likely to face a
more hawkish president on Jan. 20.
Of
equal importance, there seems to be a new
feeling of confidence inside the Kremlin,
even though the “correlation of forces”
globally and in the Middle East remains in
favor of the United States. Russia has
gained a key ally in China, and Chinese
media have shown understanding and even
sympathy for Russia’s behavior in Syria.
Often overlooked is the fact that China
played down its longstanding insistence on
the inviolability of sovereign borders and
avoided criticizing Russia’s annexation of
Crimea in 2014, following what was widely
viewed as a U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine that
removed elected President Viktor Yanukovych.
The Chinese do not care for “regime change”
– whether in Kiev or Damascus – and look
askance at US insistence that President
Assad “must go.”
More important, military cooperation between
Russia and China has never been closer. If
Russia finds itself in a major escalation of
hostilities in the Middle East and/or
Europe, the troubles may not end there. The
US should expect significant saber-rattling
by China in the South China Sea
All
of these signs point to very dangerous days
ahead, though there has been little
intelligent discussion of these risks in the
major US news media or, seemingly, in
Washington’s halls of power. There is a
sense of sleepwalking toward an abyss.
Ray McGovern prepared the
President’s Daily Brief for Presidents
Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. During Reagan’s
first term he conducted one-on-one morning
briefings of the Vice President, Secretaries
of State and Defense, the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the President’s
national security assistant. He now works
with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the
ecumenical Church of the Saviour in
inner-city Washington. |
