Many of Israel's critics blame an "Israel lobby" for the near-total
complicity of the US in Israeli annexation, colonization and cleansing
programs in the occupied West Bank. This complicity continues to the
present, despite the "row" that erupted after the Israeli government
humiliated US Vice President Joe Biden by announcing the construction of
1,600 settlement units in occupied East Jerusalem while he was visiting
the country. Indeed, despite the apparent outrage expressed by top
White House officials, the administration has made clear that its
criticism of Israel will remain purely symbolic. However, as we shall
see, the lobby thesis does little to explain US foreign policy in the
Middle East.
Years after Noam Chomsky, Stephen Zunes, Walter Russell Mead and many
others published their critiques of the Stephen Walt and John
Mearsheimer "Israel lobby" thesis, many of the sharpest critics of
Israel continue to attribute US foreign policy in the Middle East to the
influence of the lobby. Given the prevalence of the Israel lobby
argument, and the latest diplomatic confrontation between the US and
Israel, it is important to revisit the flaws in the thesis, and properly
attribute US behavior to the large concentrations of domestic political
and economic power that truly drive US policy.
US foreign policy in the Middle East is similar to that which is carried
out elsewhere in the world, in regions free of "the lobby's" proclaimed
corrupting effects. The inflated level of support that the US lends
Israel is a rational response to the particular strategic importance of
the Middle East, the chief energy-producing region of the world. By
building Israel into what Noam Chomsky refers to as an "offshore US
military base," it is able to protect its dominance over much of the
world's remaining energy resources, a major lever of global power. As we
shall see, those blaming the lobby for US policy once again
misunderstand US's strategic interests in the Middle East, and Israel's
central role in advancing them.
Geopolitics and the US-Israeli relationship
A central claim of the "Israel lobby" thesis is that the "lobby,"
however defined, overwhelmingly shapes US policy towards the Middle
East. Thus, if the argument were true, its proponents would have to
demonstrate that there is something qualitatively unique about US policy
towards the Middle East compared with that in other regions of the
world. Yet upon careful analysis, we find little difference between the
purported distortions caused by the lobby and what is frequently
referred to as the "national interest," governed by the same
concentrations of domestic power that drive US foreign policy elsewhere.
There are states all around the world that perform similar services to
Washington as Israel, projecting US power in their respective regions,
whose crimes in advancing Washington's goals are overtly supported and
shielded from international condemnation. Take for instance the 30 years
of US support for the horrors of the Indonesian invasion and occupation
of East Timor. In addition to the use of rape and starvation as
weapons, and a gruesome torture regime, Indonesian president Suharto
slaughtered 150,000 persons out of a population of 650,000. These
atrocities were fully supported by the US, including supplying the
napalm and chemical weapons indiscriminately used by the Indonesian
army, which was fully armed and trained by the US. As Bill Clinton said,
Suharto was "our kind of guy."
Daniel Patrick Moynahan, US ambassador to the UN at the time of the
Indonesian invasion, later wrote that "the Department of State desired
that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures
it undertook" to end the butchering of the East Timorese, a goal he
carried out with "no inconsiderable success." Yet this support was not
due to the influence of an "Indonesia lobby." Rather, planners had
identified Indonesia as one of the three most strategically important
regions in the world in 1958, as a result of its oil wealth and
important role as a link between the Indian and Pacific oceans.
In some regions, as in Latin America where US clients like Guatemala,
Honduras, and El Salvador, and terrorist armies like the Nicaraguan
contras spent years murdering defenseless peasants demanding basic human
rights, the threat is mostly one of "successful defiance;" that is, a
country defying US orders and getting away with it. Should the US
tolerate one such case, the logic goes, it will embolden resistance to
its dictates elsewhere. The danger underlying such defiance -- referred
to as "the threat of a good example" by Oxfam -- is that a country will
implement a successful model for independent development, refusing US
dictates and seeking to direct much-needed resources to serve the needs
of the domestic population instead of wealthy foreign investors.
Such thinking is deeply institutionalized and exhibited by US policy
worldwide, going back to the very beginnings of the modern imperial era
after World War II. It was clear from early in the war that the US would
emerge as the dominant world power in its aftermath, and so the State
Department and Council on Foreign Relations began planning to create a
post-war international order in which the US would "hold unquestioned
power." One way it planned to do so was gaining control of global energy
resources, primarily those of Saudi Arabia, which were referred to at
the time as "the greatest material prize in history" by the US State
Department.
As Franklin Roosevelt's "oil czar" Harold Ickes advised, control of oil
was the "key to postwar political arrangements" since a large supply of
cheap energy is essential to fuel the world's industrial capitalist
economies. This meant that with control of Middle Eastern oil,
particularly the vast Saudi reserves, the US could keep its hand on the
spigot that would fuel the economies of Europe, Japan and much of the
rest of the world. As US planner George Kennan put it, this would give
the United States "veto power" over the actions of others. Zbigniew
Brzezinski has also more recently discussed the "critical leverage" the
US enjoys as a result of its stranglehold on energy supplies.
Thus in the Middle East it is not simply "successful defiance" that the
US fears, nor merely independent development. These worries are present
as well, but there is an added dimension: should opposition threaten US
control of oil resources, a major source of US global power is placed at
risk. Under the Nixon Administration, with the US military tied down in
Vietnam and direct intervention in the Middle East to defend vital
strategic interests unlikely, military aid to pre-revolution Iran
(acting as an American regional enforcer) skyrocketed. Amnesty
International's conclusion in 1976 that "no country has a worse human
rights record than Iran" was ignored, and US support increased, not
because of an "Iran lobby" in the US, but rather because such support
was advancing US interests.
Strategic concerns also led the US to support other oppressive,
reactionary regimes, including Saddam Hussein's worst atrocities. During
the Anfal genocide against the Kurds, Iraqi forces used chemical
weapons provided by the US against Kurdish civilians, killed perhaps
100,000 persons, and destroyed roughly 80 percent of the villages in
Iraqi Kurdistan, while the US moved to block international condemnation
of these atrocities. Again, supporting crimes that serve the "national
interest" set by large corporations and ruling elites, and shielding
them from international criticism is the rule, not the exception.
It is no coincidence that the US-Israel relationship crystallized after
Israel destroyed the independent nationalist regime of Gamal Abdel
Nasser in a preemptive attack in 1967, permanently ending the role of
Egypt as a center of opposition to US imperialism. Since before World
War II, Saudi Arabia had happily served as an "Arab facade," veiling the
hand of the true ruling power on the Arabian peninsula, to borrow
British colonial terminology. With Nasser's Arab nationalist rhetoric
"turning the whole region against the House of Saud," the threat he
posed to US power was serious. In response, the State Department
concluded that the "logical corollary" to US opposition to Arab
nationalism was "support for Israel" as the only reliable pro-US force
in the region. Israel's destruction and humiliation of Nasser's regime
was thus a major boon for the US, and proved to Washington the value of a
strong alliance with a powerful Israel.
This unique regional importance is one reason for the tremendous level
of aid Israel receives, including more advanced weaponry than that
provided to other US clients. Providing Israel with the ability to use
overwhelming force against any adversary to the established order has
been a pivotal aspect of US regional strategy. Importantly, Israel is
also a reliable ally -- there is little chance that the Israeli
government will be overthrown, and the weapons end up in the hands of
anti-Western Islamic fundamentalists or independent nationalists as
happened in Iran in 1979.
Today, with the increased independence of Europe, and the hungry
economies of India and China growing at breakneck speed along with their
demand for dwindling energy resources, control over what is left is
more crucial than ever. In the September 2009 issue of the Asia-Africa
Review, China's former Special Envoy to the Middle East Sun Bigan wrote
that "the US has always sought to control the faucet of global oil
supplies," and suggested that since Washington would doubtless work to
ensure that Iraqi oil remained under its control, China should look
elsewhere in the region for an independent energy source. "Iran has
bountiful energy resources," Bigan wrote, "and its oil gas reserves are
the second biggest in the world, and all are basically under its own
control" (emphasis added).
It is partially as a result of this independence that Israel's strategic
importance to the US has increased significantly in recent times,
particularly since the Shah's cruel, US-supported dictatorship in Iran
was overthrown in 1979. With the Shah gone, Israel alone had to
terrorize the region into complying with US orders, and ensure that
Saudi Arabia's vast oil resources remain under US control. The increased
importance of Israel to US policy was illustrated clearly as its
regional strategy shifted to "dual containment" during the Clinton
years, with Israel countering both Iraq and Iran.
With Iran developing technology that could eventually allow it to
produce what are referred to in the February 2010 Quadrennial Defense
Review as "anti-access weapons," or weapons of mass destruction that
prevent the US from being able to freely use force in any region of the
world, this is a crucial moment in Washington's struggle to seize
control of Iran. This confrontation, stemming from the desire of the US
to control its oil and destroy a base of independent nationalism, makes
US support for Israel strategically crucial.
The "Israel lobby" and US Pressure
If we adopt "the lobby" hypothesis, we would predict that the US would
bend to Israel's will when the interests of the two states diverge,
acting against its "national interest." Yet if US policies in the Middle
East were damaging its "national interest," as proponents of the lobby
argument claim, that must mean that such policies have been a failure.
This leads one to ask: a failure for whom? Not for US elites, who have
secured control of the major global energy resources while successfully
crushing opposition movements, nor for the defense establishment, and
most certainly not for the energy corporations. In fact, not only is US
policy towards the Middle East similar to that towards other regions of
the world, but it has been a profitable, strategic success.
Indeed, the US's policy towards Israel and the Palestinians is not to
achieve an end to the occupation, nor to bring about respect for
Palestinian rights -- in fact, it is the actor primarily responsible for
preventing these outcomes. To the US, Israel's "Operation Defensive
Shield" in 2002 had sufficiently punished the Palestinians and their
compliant US-backed leadership for their intransigence at Camp David.
While the Palestinian Authority was already acting as Israel's
"subcontractor" and "collaborator" in suppressing resistance to Israeli
occupation, in the paraphrased words of former Israeli Foreign Minister
Shlomo Ben Ami, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's deliberate
destruction of Palestinian institutions provided the opportunity to
rebuild them, and ensure an even greater degree of US control.
The settlement and annexation programs help guarantee Israeli control
over the most valuable Palestinian land and water resources, ensuring
Israel will remain a dominant society not easily pressured by its
neighbors. To help achieve these goals, the US shields Israeli expansion
behind a "peace process" in hopes that given enough time the
Palestinians will concede more and more of what was once theirs. The
primary concern is to present the appearance that the US and Israel are
ardently crusading for peace, battling against those who oppose this
noble objective. Though it is true that people across the region are
appalled and outraged by Israeli crimes, such anger is a small
consideration next to the strategic gain of maintaining a strong,
dependent ally in the heart of the Middle East.
The reconstitution of an even more tightly-controlled Palestinian
Authority, with General Keith Dayton directly supervising the
Palestinian security forces, enabled the US to meet these goals while
more effectively suppressing resistance to the occupation. Likewise,
redeploying Israeli soldiers outside of Gaza allowed Sharon a free hand
to continue the annexation of the West Bank while being heralded
internationally as a "great man of peace."
The treatment of Israel by the mainstream US media is also standard for
all US allies. Coverage in the corporate press is predictably skewed in
favor of official US allies and against official enemies, a
well-documented phenomenon. Thus, proponents of the lobby thesis are
missing the forest for the trees. What they see as the special treatment
of Israel by the mainstream press is actually just the normal
functioning of the US media and intellectual establishment, apologizing
for and defending crimes of official allies while demonizing official
enemies.
Of course, this is not to argue that there are not organizations in the
US, like the American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League and
AIPAC, that seek to marginalize dissent from Israeli policy in every
forum possible. Rather, I am pointing out that the power of these groups
pales in comparison to other, far more powerful, interests and
concerns. While the AJC or ADL may mobilize for the firing of a
professor critical of Israel, for example, that argument is amplified by
the elite-owned and controlled press because doing so serves their
interests. Likewise, AIPAC can urge unwavering support for Israel on the
part of the US government, but without the assent of other far more
powerful interests, like the energy corporations and defense
establishment, AIPAC's efforts would amount to little. US policy, like
that of other states, is rationally planned to serve the interests of
the ruling class.
Israel could not sustain its aggressive, expansionist policies without
US military aid and diplomatic support. If the Obama Administration
wanted to, it could pressure Israel to comply with international law and
resolutions, join the international consensus, and enact a two-state
solution. While the "Israel lobby" thesis conveniently explains his
failure to do so and absolves US policy-makers of responsibility for
their ongoing support of Israeli apartheid, violence and annexation, it
simply does not stand up under closer scrutiny.
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