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US Isolation
By Noam
Chomsky
December 30, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "ZNet"
-
On 23 December
2016, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2334
unanimously, US abstaining. The Resolution reaffirmed
“that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing
settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab
territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity
and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a
comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East
[and] Calls once more upon Israel, as the occupying
Power, to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva
Convention, to rescind its previous measures and to
desist from taking any action which would result in
changing the legal status and geographical nature and
materially affecting the demographic composition of the
Arab territories occupied since 1967, including
Jerusalem, and, in particular, not to transfer parts of
its own civilian population into the occupied Arab
territories.”
Reaffirmed. A matter of some import.
It is important to recognize that 2334 is nothing new.
The quote above is from UNSC Resolution 446, 12 March
1979, reiterated in essence in Resolution 2334.
Resolution 446 passed 12-0 with the US abstaining,
joined by the UK and Norway. The primary differences
today are that the US is now alone against the whole
world, and that it is a different world. Israel’s
violations of Security Council orders, and of
international law, are by now far more extreme than in
1979 and are arousing far greater condemnation in much
of the world. The contents of Resolution 446-2334 are
therefore taken more seriously. Hence the intense
reaction to 2334, both coverage and commentary; and in
Israel and the US, considerable hysteria. These are all
striking indications of the increasing isolation of the
US on the world stage. Under Obama, that is. Under Trump
US isolation will likely increase further, and indeed
already has, even before he takes office.
Trump’s most significant step in advancing US isolation
was on November 8, when he won two victories. The lesser
victory was in the US, where he won the electoral vote.
The greater victory was in Marrakech, Morocco, where
some 200 nations were meeting to try to put some real
content into the December 2015 Paris agreements on
climate change, which were left as promises rather than
the intended treaty because the Republican Congress
would not accept binding commitments.
As the electoral votes came in on November 8, the
Marrakech conference shifted from its substantive
program to the question whether there could even be any
meaningful action to deal with the severe threat of
environmental catastrophe now that the most powerful
country in world history is calling quits. That was,
surely, Trump’s greatest victory on November 8, one of
truly momentous import. It also established US isolation
on the most severe problem humans have ever faced in
their short history on earth. The world rested its hopes
for leadership in China, now that the Leader of the Free
World has declared that it will not only withdraw from
the effort but, with Trump’s election, will move
forcefully to accelerate the race to disaster.
An amazing spectacle, which passed with virtually no
comment.
The fact that the US is now alone in rejecting the
international consensus reaffirmed in UNSC 2334, having
lost even Theresa May’s Britain, is another sign of
increasing US isolation.
Just why Obama chose abstention rather than veto is an
open question: we do not have direct evidence. But there
are some plausible guesses. There had been some ripples
of surprise (and ridicule) after Obama’s February 2011
veto of a UNSC Resolution calling for implementation of
official US policy, and he may have felt that it would
be too much to repeat it if he is to salvage anything of
his tattered legacy among sectors of the population that
have some concern for international law and human
rights. It is also worth remembering that among liberal
Democrats, if not Congress, and particularly among the
young, opinion about Israel-Palestine has been moving
towards criticism of Israeli policies in recent years,
so much so that the core of support for Israeli policies
in the US has shifted to the far right, including the
evangelical base of the Republican Party. Perhaps these
were factors.
The 2016 abstention aroused furor in Israel and in the
US Congress as well, both Republicans and leading
Democrats, including proposals to defund the UN in
retaliation for the world’s crime. Israeli Prime
Minister Netanyahu denounced Obama for his “underhanded,
anti-Israel” actions. His office accused Obama of
“colluding” behind the scenes with this “gang-up” by the
UNSC, producing particles of “evidence” that hardly rise
to the level of sick humor. A senior Israeli official
added that the abstention “revealed the true face of the
Obama administration,” adding that “now we can
understand what we have been dealing with for the past
eight years.”
Reality is rather different. Obama has in fact broken
all records in support for Israel, both diplomatic and
financial. The reality is described accurately by Middle
East specialist of the Financial Times David Gardner:
“Mr Obama’s personal dealings with Mr Netanyahu may
often have been poisonous, but he has been the most
pro-Israel of presidents: the most prodigal with
military aid and reliable in wielding the US veto at the
Security Council… The election of Donald Trump has so
far brought little more than turbo-frothed tweets to
bear on this and other geopolitical knots. But the
auguries are ominous. An irredentist government in
Israel tilted towards the ultra-right is now joined by a
national populist administration in Washington
fire-breathing Islamophobia.”
In an interesting and revealing comment, Netanyahu
denounced the “gang-up” of the world as proof of
“old-world bias against Israel,” a phrase reminiscent of
Donald Rumsfeld’s Old Europe-New Europe distinction in
2003.
It will be recalled that the states of Old Europe were
the bad guys, the major states of Europe, which dared to
respect the opinions of the overwhelming majority of
their populations and thus refused to join the US in the
crime of the century, the invasion of Iraq. The states
of New Europe were the good guys, which overruled an
even larger majority and obeyed the master. The most
honorable of the good guys was Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar,
who rejected virtually unanimous opposition to the war
in Spain and was rewarded by being invited to join Bush
and Blair in announcing the invasion.
This quite illuminating display of utter contempt for
democracy, along with others at the same time, passed
virtually unnoticed, understandably. The task at the
time was to praise Washington for its passionate
dedication to democracy, as illustrated by “democracy
promotion” in Iraq, which suddenly became the party line
after the “single question” (will Saddam give up his WMD?)
was answered the wrong way.
Netanyahu is adopting much the same stance. The old
world that is biased against Israel is the entire UN
Security Council; more specifically, anyone in the world
who has some lingering commitment to international law
and human rights. Luckily for the Israeli far right,
that excludes the US Congress and – very outspokenly –
the President-elect and his associates.
The Israeli government is of course cognizant of these
developments. It is therefore seeking to shift its base
of support to authoritarian states such as Singapore,
China and Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist India, now
becoming a very natural ally with its drift towards
ultranationalism, reactionary internal policies, and
hatred of Islam. The reasons for Israel’s looking in
this direction for support are outlined by Mark Heller,
principal research associate at Tel Aviv’s Institution
for National Security Studies. “Over the long term,” he
explains, “there are problems for Israel in its
relations with western Europe and with the U.S.,” while
in contrast, the important Asian countries “don’t seem
to indicate much interest about how Israel gets along
with the Palestinians, Arabs, or anyone else.” In short,
China, India, Singapore and other favored allies are
less influenced by the kinds of liberal and humane
concerns that pose increasing threats to Israel.
The tendencies developing in world order merit some
attention. As noted, the US is becoming even more
isolated than it has been in recent years, when US-run
polls – unreported in the US but surely known in
Washington – revealed that world opinion regarded the US
as by far the leading threat to world peace, no one else
even close. Under Obama, the US is now alone in
abstention on the illegal Israel settlements, against a
unanimous UNSC. With Trump and his bipartisan
congressional supporters, the US will be even more
isolated in the world in support of Israeli crimes.
Since November 8, the US is isolated on the much more
crucial matter of global warming. If Trump makes good on
his promise to exit from the Iran deal, it is likely
that the other participants will persist, leaving the US
still more isolated from Europe. The US is also much
more isolated from its Latin American “backyard” than in
the past, and will be even more isolated if Trump backs
off from Obama’s halting steps to normalize relations
with Cuba, undertaken to ward off the likelihood that
the US would be pretty much excluded from hemispheric
organizations because of its continuing assault on Cuba,
in international isolation.
Much the same is happening in Asia, as even close US
allies (apart from Japan), even the UK, flock to the
China-based Asian Infrastructure Development Bank and
the China-based Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership, in this case including Japan. The
China-based Shanghai Cooperation Organization
incorporates the Central Asian states, Siberia with its
rich resources, India, Pakistan, and soon probably Iran
and perhaps Turkey. The SCO has rejected the US request
for observer status and demanded that the US remove all
military bases from the region.
Immediately after the Trump election, we witnessed the
interesting spectacle of German chancellor Angela Merkel
taking the lead in lecturing Washington on liberal
values and human rights. Meanwhile, since November 8,
the world looks to China for leadership in saving the
world from environmental catastrophe, while the US, in
splendid isolation once again, devotes itself to
undermining these efforts.
US isolation is not complete, of course. As was made
very clear in the reaction to Trump’s electoral victory,
the US has the enthusiastic support of the xenophobic
ultra-right in Europe, including its neo-fascist
elements. And the return of the ultra-right in parts of
Latin America offers the US opportunities for alliances
there as well. And of course the US retains its close
alliance with Gulf dictatorships and with Israel, which
is also separating itself from more liberal and
democratic sectors in Europe and linking with
authoritarian regimes that are not concerned with
Israel’s violations of international law and harsh
attacks on elementary human rights.
The developing picture suggests the emergence of a New
World Order, one that is rather different from the usual
portrayals within the doctrinal system.
The views
expressed in this article are the author's own and do
not necessarily reflect Information Clearing House
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