Sunday, April 18, 2010

Obama - 'Support for Israel Must be Balanced Against Other American Interests'

This quote is getting a lot of play, but in itself it is not as bad as people are portraying it. Of course our support for anyone must be seen through the lens of our other interests. It is not our job to protect Israel if it means we will be destroyed anymore then the reciprocal of that statement is true. That said, our interests and Israel's interests are very much in line. The problem is not the statement, the problem is the inference of the statement. The inference being that Israel is about to get thrown under the bus (again).

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/world/middleeast/15mideast.html

"When Mr. Obama declared that resolving the long-running Middle East dispute was a “vital national security interest of the United States,” he was highlighting a change that has resulted from a lengthy debate among his top officials over how best to balance support for Israel against other American interests.

This shift, described by administration officials who did not want to be quoted by name when discussing internal discussions, is driving the White House’s urgency to help broker a Middle East peace deal. It increases the likelihood that Mr. Obama, frustrated by the inability of the Israelis and the Palestinians to come to terms, will offer his own proposed parameters for an eventual Palestinian state.
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3 comments:

  1. wahh poor Israel.

    You might find it interesting, I'm hearing a rumour that in Obama's phone call with Hu Jintao they discussed the possibility that China would put sanctions on Iran if Obama agreed to sanctions on Isreal- Iran to halt progress on Nuclear weapons- Isreal to agree to peace with the palestinians and end its own weapons programs

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  2. @Ian Spencer Dubrowsky - I doubt that is true, but if it is China would likely come out on top. Such a move would break the strategic relationship between Israel and the United States. China would be glad to step in throwing more money at Israel then we do in exchange for technology that is on par with the ours.

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  3. its just a rumour, something to chew on. but even so your analysis is pretty wrong.

    international relations is not zero-sum, who is "coming out on top" is a pretty shallow way to look at this. if interests are aligned, as they are in this scenario then an agreement can be made and should be made. I don't know what you mean by "strategic relationship", but the current dynamic of the Israeli-U.S. relationship has been a disaster. That's not just my opinion by the way but to an extent now the opinion of the U.S. military. Here's a lesson in Marxist dialectics for you, truth- especially in politics is inherently tied to the notion of "system"

    for example whatever Israel does, the U.S. also does by proxy- because everyone they kill they kill with our weapons. We have several puppet governments in the middle east whose domestic legitmacy is threanted by anger over what Israel does to the palestinians and by proxy the U.S.. the vast majority of arabs for example hate their governments, there governments are repressive and authrortarian ( and also U.S. puppets). the israeli-palestinian conflict brings attention to politics that these dictators do not want. So ultimatly peace is in the interests of the United States, mainly because ISrael's role for the past 40 years - to act as an american military outpost in order to keep arab populations in line, is now obsolete because we are there ourselves.

    I don't understand competly why china would make that agreement, clearly U.S. political actors would gain a lot more if they could get the chinese to agree to sanctions. China wans to keep buying Iranian gas. The notion that if china were to agree to something like this because they would do it because they would want to "step-in throwing money at Israel for technology" is pretty dumb too I think. Israel has already for years been selling military technologies to the Chinese, for reasons like that, as well as Israel's own spying and stealing technologies from the U.S., within the intelligence community it is basically a truism that Israel is basically an un-tethered rogue state. Israel just has the tanks we gave them, Palestinians have rocks.

    Besides in the scenario of the rumour, it is the United States and not China who would actually gain something- China's interest with regards to Iran is the status quo- keep us selling them treasury bonds to finance our wars, of which without better relations with Iran will only become more difficult, keep the United States distracted, keep dragging feet on sanctions and keep the Iranians on their toes in order to compell them to make more and more concessions with regards to the selling of natural resources to the Chinese.

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