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 “Major and Deadly” Wars to Come
By Andre Damon
October 05, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "WSWS"
-
The
Atlantic Council, a leading US geopolitical
strategy think tank, published a report on
September 20 titled The Future of the
Army. The document outlines the
far-reaching preparations that are underway
for the United States, in the report’s own
words, to fight “major and deadly” wars
between “great powers,” which will entail
“heavy casualties” and “high levels of death
and destruction.”
The
report confirms the warnings made by the
World Socialist Web Site and the
candidates of the Socialist Equality Party
in the 2016 US elections that the world
stands closer to war than at any time since
1939.
The
document was co-authored by Lt. General
David Barno, who commanded the US-led force
in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, having
previously taken part in the US invasions of
Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989. It was
published by the Atlantic Council’s Brent
Scowcroft Center on International Security,
named after a leading military adviser to
the Ford, Nixon, George H. W. Bush and Obama
administrations.
It
presents a picture of the near future
(2020-2025) as a horrifying dystopia,
characterized by spiraling inequality,
economic insecurity and perpetual war.
“Today’s world of haves and have-nots will
be greatly magnified,” it states, “with
those fortunate enough to have employment
and access to stunning technology living in
stark contrast to the hundreds of millions
struggling to survive in disrupted
environments.”
This world “will be marked by the breakdown
of order, widespread violent extremism and
aggressive large states.” The world
situation will be driven by “unpredicted and
unpredictable events,” including the
possibility of “a nuclear exchange.” Noting
that “urban operations will increasingly
dominate land warfare,” the Atlantic Council
predicts that armies will operate “in
densely packed metropolitan areas where
civilian populations are a part of the
battlefield.”
Speaking of the present situation, the
report declares that “the United States has
entered an era of perpetual war.” It notes,
“After fifteen years, the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq are still continuing.”
There is, additionally, “an increasing
number of conflicts in the gray zone, whose
primary characteristic is ambiguity—about
their objectives, participants, and even
outcomes, since they clearly lack defined
end points.”
But, as the document cautions, “The Army
cannot focus solely on these types of
conflicts.” It must prepare for what “we’ve
called ‘the next big war’—involving very
capable adversaries, high levels of death
and destruction, and perhaps hundreds of
thousands of US troops.”
The
Atlantic Council roots the likelihood of
such a war in what it calls “Russia’s
resurgence,” which requires NATO to
“seriously prepare for the possibility of a
Russian attack on one or more of its members
for the first time since the end of the Cold
War.” China, likewise, has “become
increasingly aggressive.”
Noting that 5,366 US soldiers died during
the Iraq war, the report declares that “the
next big war” will see levels of violence
and death far beyond what has been seen in
Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. It bemoans the
fact that Army “personnel have not been
psychologically hardened by personal
experience for the grim task of fighting
through heavy losses to battlefield
victory.” It warns that “current Army
leaders have little if any experience with
the extreme battlefield stresses caused by
overrun units and heavy casualties,” adding,
“These stresses were common during past US
conflicts and could likely be so again
during a future big war.”
“A
future major war against a great power
competitor might,” according to the report,
“require the Army to grow by several orders
of magnitude in order to prevail.” To make
this possible, the Army must begin making
plans for a “mass mobilization.” As the
Atlantic Council explains, “The growing
threats in today’s world” mean that the Army
“must once again build a mobilization plan
to rapidly grow the size of the Army to meet
a national crisis of existential danger.” In
other words, it must prepare to institute a
draft.
Finally, there must be active preparations
for an intervention—or even takeover—by the
military in the event of what the report
calls a “breakdown of civil order”—a
euphemism for the emergence of a political
challenge from below to the domination of
the ruling class. The Atlantic Council notes
that “the large-scale disruption of civil
order…would almost certainly engage much of
the Army in providing extensive support to
civil authorities throughout the country.”
Totally left out of this analysis, except as
the object of military repression, are the
American people. It never occurs to those
engaged in the preparation of these policies
to consult the population. It is taken for
granted that it must acquiesce to a course
of action that will result in death and
destruction on a horrific scale.
None of this is being discussed or even
hinted at in the US elections. The media and
the establishment candidates are seeking to
bury the real issues at stake. The questions
of life and death are deliberated away from
the cameras. They are the purview of the
“deep state”—the Pentagon, the intelligence
agencies and their associated think tanks.
One
can be certain that in the second
mud-slinging match between Hillary Clinton
and Donald Trump, scheduled for October 9,
none of the issues raised in the Atlantic
Council report will be addressed. Regardless
of whether Trump or Clinton wins next
month’s election, the war preparations will
go ahead. In the United States, dominated by
an immensely powerful financial oligarchy
and the vast national security apparatus in
its employ, elections serve as little more
than a façade for policies determined behind
the scenes and kept out of public view.
There is no way for workers to oppose the
drive to war by voting for either Clinton or
Trump, or, for that matter, the candidates
put forward by the third-rate capitalist
parties, the Greens and the Libertarians.
Nothing can stop the drive to war except the
mobilization of the international working
class. Workers and young people seeking a
genuine alternative to war should support
the campaign of Jerry White and Niles
Niemuth, the Socialist Equality Party’s
candidates for president and vice president
in the 2016 elections, and make plans to
attend the SEP’s November 5 conference in
Detroit,
Socialism vs. Capitalism and War.
Copyright ©
1998-2016 World Socialist Web Site -
All rights reserved |
