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
Regime Change In The Philippines
By Paul Craig Roberts
October 14, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- When will the neoconservative chant begin:
“Duterte must go”? Or will the CIA
assassinate him?
President Rodrigo Duterte has indicated that
he intends a more independent foreign
policy. He has announced upcoming visits to
China and Russia, and his foreign minister
has declared that it is time for the
Philippines to end its subservience to
Washington. In this sense, regime change has
already occurred.
Duterte has suspended military maneuvers
with the US. His defense minister said that
the Philippines can get along without US
military aid and prefers cooperation over
conflict with China.
Duterte might simply be trying to extract a
larger pay-off from Washington, but he had
better be careful. Washington will not let
Duterte move the Philippines into the
Chinese camp.
Unless, of course, Washington has bitten off
more than it can chew in the Middle East,
Africa, South America, Ukraine, Russia and
China and is too occupied elsewhere to deal
with the Philippines. Still, Duterte would
do well to request a praetorian guard from
China.
The
view is spreading in Asia that the American
era is over, wrecked by disastrous US
economic and foreign policies. The rise of
Russia and China has birthed what William
Engdahl calls the Eurasian Century.
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/10/11/eurasian-century-now-unstoppable.html
China’s One Belt One Road approach to
Eurasian development is cooperative. The
operating principle is that everyone works
together to build a future for everyone.
This is far more attractive than
Washington’s arrogance of organizing the
world in the interest of US corporations.
As
Michael Hudson, James Galbraith, and I have
explained, Western economic organization has
deteriorated into a system of financial
looting. For example, the economy of Greece
has been destroyed in order that private
banks that over-lent to the Greek government
did not have to write down any of the bad
debt. Instead, the debt was paid by reducing
Greek pensions, cutting education,
healthcare and public employment, and by
privatizing public companies, such as
municipal water companies, with the result
being a higher price of water to people
whose incomes are falling.
The
cost of participating in the Western system
is imposed austerity and loss of national
sovereignty. Economic cooperation with China
does not result in such costs.
Most likely, Duterte has decided to switch
the Philippines’ bet from the US to China.
When Japan and South Korea also realign, the
“pivot to Asia” is over.
Then perhaps even Europe will awaken and the
conflict that the neoconservatives are
brewing between the West and Russia will be
stillborn.
Otherwise, mushroom clouds will prevail.
Whether there is time for these changes
before mushroom clouds make their appearance
depends on the outcome of the US
presidential election. Americans are an
insouciant people and do not understand the
stakes. Hillary has promised conflict with
Russia. Trump says he sees no point in
conflict with Russia. This difference is the
only important issue in the election.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts editor of
was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for
Economic Policy and associate the Wall
Street Journal. He was columnist for
Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service,
and Creators Syndicate. He has had many
university appointments. His internet
columns have attracted a worldwide
following. Roberts' latest books are
Dissolution of The Failure of Laissez Faire
Capitalism and Economic the West,
How
America Was Lost,
and
The
Neoconservative Threat to World Order.
'I'll humiliate you':
Duterte challenges West to probe Philippines
drugs war:
Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte called
U.S. President Barack Obama, the European
Union and United Nations "fools" on
Thursday, and warned they would end up
humiliated and outsmarted if they accepted
an invitation to investigate his war on
drugs. |