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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 Russian Navy Is Back

By Eric Margolis

November 19, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - Russia’s dispatch of a ten-ship flotilla to the Syrian Coast has raised some outrage and sneers aplenty in the West. Particularly when one of its embarked MiG-29K fighters crashed on takeoff from Russia’s sole carrier, the obsolescent Admiral Kuznetsov which lacks catapults.

Joining Kuznetsov are believed to be two ‘Akula’ class nuclear-powered attack submarines that are much feared by Western navies.  On the surface will be the powerful, missile-armed battle-cruiser, ‘Peter the Great.’ Unlike Western warships, which are essentially fragile tin cans packed with electronics, `Peter the Great’ is armored and built to withstand punishment.

Other Russian missile frigates and supply ships are also off Syria.

Washington just hates it when the Russians dare do what the US has been doing since World War II: conduct gunboat diplomacy, however limited.

As a student of Russian naval affairs, I’m watching the current deployment of warships from the Red Banner Northern Fleet with much interest.  

Russia has wanted to be a major naval power since the days of Peter the Great in the early 1700’s, but it has always faced the curse of Russian geography.  In spite of limited access to the world’s seas, Russia is largely a landlocked nation spread over vast distances. Russia faces geographic barriers every way that it turns.

Most important, Russia’s major fleets – Northern, Baltic, Black Sea, and Pacific – are unable to concentrate on supporting one another due to geographical constraints. Compare this to the mighty US Navy that can move all but the largest warships from the Pacific to Atlantic or vice versa. All major US naval bases give easy access to the high seas. The only Russian ports that do are remote Vladivostok and even remoter Petropavlovsk on Kamchatka – that has no land link to the rest of Russia.

No Russian can forget the calamity of the 1903-1904 Russo-Japanese War. Russia’s Pacific Squadron was largely bottled up in the naval fortress at Port Arthur by a surprise Japanese attack, 38 years before the Pearl Harbor attack.

As a result, Russia has to send its Baltic Fleet more than halfway around the globe to the North Pacific on a 33,000km (18,000 miles) journey of the damned that took nearly half a year.] An accidental encounter in the fog with the British herring fleet nearly provoked a war with Great Britain – which reacted with similar alarm as Vladimir Putin’s fleet sailed by Britain on the way to Syria.

On 27 May 1905, the combined Russian fleet was ambushed off Korea at Tsushima by Japan’s brilliant admiral, Hideki Togo. After a fierce battle (I’ve sailed over the exact spot) the Russian fleet was sunk or captured, the first time a Western power had been defeated. Tsushima lit the fuse of the 1917 Russian revolution.

Russia’s inability to unite its fleets threatened their defeat in detail in a major war. World War II saw the Russian fleets more engaged in naval infantry land battles than maritime operations.

During the Cold War, the US and its allies were able to bottle up Russia’s fleets by sealing off the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap, then Baltic exits at the Skaggerak Strait, and the Black Sea exit at the Turkish Straits.  The US Navy planned to directly attack Russia’s Pacific Ports and cut the Tran Siberian railroad that supplied them.  As a final impediment, the US SOSUS underwater hydrophone system was able to spot Soviet submarines from the time they left their home ports.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s neglected navy atrophied and rusted. The current mission to Syrian waters is an important sign that the Kremlin intends to restore some of its former naval power and assert Russian interests in Syria, where its had maintained a modest supply and repair depot at Tartus since 1971.

Moscow’s use of naval forces to fire missiles and launch air strikes at jihadist rebels in Syria is its biggest naval venture since 1990. Interestingly, Moscow used its almost forgotten Caspian Sea squadron to launch missiles at the same jihadists. Such strikes could have been done solely from land. The Kremlin was signaling that its strategic reach had lengthened.

America’s legions of pro-war neocons are now screaming that the Red Navy’s deployment to Syrian waters is somehow a grave threat to the West. It is not.

The US Navy and land-based NATO airpower could easily deal with the Russians. What really worries the neocons is that the Russian flotilla might deter or impede an Israeli attack on Syria and Lebanon.

And besides, is Russia not allowed to have a navy?  Syria’s coast is as close to Russia as Mazatlan, Mexico is to Texas.

Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune the Los Angeles Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times, Nation – Pakistan, Hurriyet, – Turkey, Sun Times Malaysia and other news sites in Asia. http://ericmargolis.com

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