Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016
The Middle East
The Internationalists contains only one discussion of Israel and Palestine. It concerns the violence that erupted in East Jerusalem after Israeli soldiers stormed the Al Aqsa mosque in May 2021. Everything Ward writes about the Biden Administration’s response to that episode reads ominously in light of Al Aqsa Flood and Israel’s subsequent campaign of collective punishment, which many observers, including the un’s Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, have argued rises to the level of genocide. Again and again, Biden officials expressed the view that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is something they would rather not have to deal with. ‘The administration didn’t want to get bogged down in the Middle East’, Ward writes. ‘There were bigger problems to solve . . . The thinking among the president’s advisers was this too shall pass’. ‘We’re really not going to get involved in Israel–Palestine’. one source told him. ‘We’re going to let this go by’, another said.footnote28 Ward acknowledges that Biden was slow to mount a substantive response to the May 2021 crisis, but he does not question the larger strategy of putting Israel and Palestine on what he calls ‘the backburner’ in order to focus more energy on Russia, China and climate change. It was this idea, the notion that the us could simply choose to not ‘get involved’ or ‘get bogged down’ in the actions of its most important client state, that October 7 revealed as delusional.
When Biden officials said that they didn’t want to get bogged down in Israel, they meant that they approved of their predecessor’s plan for the region and hoped to continue implementing it. As Oliver Eagleton wrote in Sidecar, the us since 2016 has pursued a goal of replacing ‘direct intervention with oversight from a distance’, a goal requiring ‘a security settlement that would strengthen friendly regimes and constrain the influence of nonconforming ones’.footnote29 Under the Abraham Accords, which were signed in 2020, Bahrain and the uae normalized relations with Israel and began to receive increased arms shipments from the us. Three years earlier, Washington had moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and formally recognized the city as Israel’s capital. The decision outraged the un—fourteen out of fifteen members of the Security Council supported a motion condemning the move. Trump’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the decision ‘did not indicate any final status for Jerusalem’, which would be left to the two parties to negotiate and decide’, but this was the kind of lie that did not even intend to be convincing.footnote30 The decision was a clear bet that the us could get away with ignoring Palestinians and the occupation entirely as it shored up alliances with reactionary states across the region. America’s official strategy for the Middle East, then, assumed that the occupation would continue indefinitely.
Biden decided to stick with Trump’s plan. Though he called the decision to move the embassy ‘short-sighted and frivolous’, he said even as a candidate that he would not move American diplomats back to Tel Aviv, and a corollary promise to open a consulate for Palestinians in East Jerusalem remains unfulfilled. Instead, Biden’s State Department has worked to add Saudi Arabia to the Abraham Accords, even as it did nothing to advance the ‘two-state solution’ that Biden still claims to support. It was as though Frederick Kagan and other turn-of-the-century neocons were whispering in Sullivan’s ear as he fleshed out America’s strategy for the Middle East. In Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defence Policy, published in 2000, Kagan had discussed the importance of maintaining a ‘two-war standard’, meaning a military sufficiently large and powerful to be capable of fighting full-scale wars against two regional powers at the same time. Coming into office in 2021, it would have been clear to Biden who those two were going to be: Russia and China. That meant direct military supervision of the Middle East was off the table for the foreseeable future. Instead, the State Department would ensure that the region’s reactionary powers were armed to the teeth, and the Palestinians would be left to their ongoing fate.
For Saudi Arabia to have joined the Abraham Accords would likely have doomed the Palestinians to decades of continued occupation, and it is plausible that Hamas launched Al Aqsa Flood in part to stop that process in its tracks. There is no question that the us, like Israel itself, was caught completely off guard by October 7. The notion of Palestinian political agency played no role whatsoever in the State Department’s global strategizing, a blind spot most vividly illustrated by the fact that Jake Sullivan wrote the following in a Foreign Affairs essay that went to print on 2 October 2023: ‘Although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades.’footnote31 Since then, an Administration that took power promising to lead a worldwide defence of democratic humanism has thrown the full weight of its diplomatic might and arms-manufacturing industry behind a right-wing government that is carrying out one of the most brutal campaigns of collective punishment in history. Biden has vetoed several un resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, Blinken has called South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice ‘meritless’, and Department of Defence Spokesman John Kirby has repeatedly asserted that the us will refuse to draw any ‘red lines’ on Israel’s conduct in Gaza, conduct that has included the mass killing of people lining up to receive food aid.
Gaza versus hegemony
From a strategic point of view, the Biden Administration’s white-knuckle support for Israel and Netanyahu is not difficult to understand. The us views Israel as the crucial guarantor of its control over the Middle East, not just despite but because of its belligerence. For America to restrain Israel in a material way, for Biden to reduce or end weapons shipments to Netanyahu, or for the State Department to demand of Israel the concessions that would be required in order to establish a Palestinian state, would be for the us to deviate from the repressive political logic that undergirds its whole approach to the region. Israel is a snarling dog that menaces Iran and other anti-us powers around the Gulf, and the us can only shorten Israel’s leash so much (which is to say, very little) before it loses the deterrence benefits of Israeli aggression.
However, Biden’s backing for Netanyahu’s war may now be pushing the costs of us support for Israel beyond what American hegemony can bear. The war has made expansion of the Abraham Accords much more difficult: negotiations were frozen after October 7, and though Saudi Arabia still clearly desires ‘normalization’ with Israel, it has now returned to its position that this will depend upon an actual resolution of the Israeli–Palestine conflict, as opposed to being satisfied with vague signs of ‘progress’ toward such a resolution.footnote32 Even if Israel were to agree to the Kingdom’s terms and cooperate in establishing a Palestinian state—and that is unlikely, even after Netanyahu leaves office—the war has cemented popular regional hatred of Israel for at least another generation, which will make it harder for regional autocrats to balance what the us demands in exchange for weapons and security guarantees against what their domestic populations are willing to tolerate. In addition, the deep and sustained us engagement that establishing a Palestinian state will require would delay even further the date on which America can put the Middle East on the ‘backburner’. Without sustained and committed diplomatic engagement from the us, the regional consequences of Israel’s war are likely to spread and intensify in unpredictable ways.
America’s strained efforts to ignore Israel’s many war crimes since October 7 are also imposing mounting costs of their own, both at home and abroad. Whatever claim Biden could make for rebuilding the West’s moral leadership with his opposition to Russia has been destroyed, and much of the Global South views the us with contempt. There is no move that the us could make in defence of Ukraine that could possibly compensate for the blank, droning repetition of American politicians saying ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ while phone screens are filled with videos of idf soldiers dancing and cheering as they reduce yet another Palestinian university to rubble. Biden’s efforts to draw an analogy between Russia’s attack on Ukraine and Al Aqsa Flood have been risible. Nine countries suspended or cut diplomatic ties with Israel because of the war, and one African diplomat told journalists that America’s veto of the un ceasefire resolution ‘told us that Ukrainian lives are more valuable than Palestinian ones’. ‘We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South’, one g7 diplomat said. ‘Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again’.footnote33
There may be a touch of well-intentioned melodrama in statements like that. Surely someone will listen to the us again, given the right trade deal or arms package. But the Israel–Gaza war appears to be a watershed for American domestic politics as well. It has been years since there was so large a divide between public opinion and the behaviour of elected representatives on an issue of such importance. In Washington, the House of Representatives passed a December resolution declaring that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism, with the few Congressmen who are willing to speak up for peace being treated in roughly the same manner as Barbara Lee after her speech opposing the passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force in September 2001. Meanwhile, a clear majority of Americans, including more than half of Republicans, support a permanent ceasefire. Protests have erupted across the country, and activists have successfully convinced a meaningful share of Democratic voters to write ‘uncommitted’ on their primary ballots. Biden’s reelection campaign was always going to be a tricky affair, given his recent difficulties navigating press conferences and other public events that haven’t been set on ‘easy mode’. Now it is going to be harder, because many younger voters, people who should be part of the Democratic Party base, seem determined to disrupt as many campaign events as they can. Biden does not appear to have a plan for appeasing these voters. Informed at a January 2024 meeting that his poll numbers were dropping in Michigan and Georgia as a result of his support for Israel, Biden ‘began to shout and swear’.footnote34
Tapas in Washington
As for the American press, it initially tried to portray Israel’s war on Gaza as a standard foreign-policy morality play, with Hamas a horde of apolitical barbarians scurrying about in their dastardly tunnel system while brave Israelis fought once again to defend themselves from a transhistorical antisemitism. Papers such as the New York Times overwhelmingly advanced Israel’s account of the war, quoting Israeli sources more often than Palestinian ones, avoiding the active voice when describing how Palestinians died, and paying more attention to antisemitism than to violence and bigotry targeting Arabs and Muslims (there has been much more of the latter in the us since October 7). In one now-notorious incident, the Times tasked two inexperienced freelancers—one of them a recent college graduate who mostly wrote about food—with repackaging as investigative journalism Israeli propaganda about an alleged systematic campaign of sexual violence by Hamas on October 7.
As the war has progressed, however, and as Israel has made it clear it has no strategic vision beyond destroying as much of Gaza as possible, the political efficacy of these media tactics has decreased. How is one to believe the old line about the idf being the world’s most moral army when each week brings new photographs of Israeli soldiers giggling like fraternity creeps as they fondle lingerie they found in Palestinian homes? How is one supposed to take seriously the idea that antisemitism runs amok on America’s streets when groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace have been at the forefront of recent protests and aipac has admitted it counts every pro-Palestinian protest as an antisemitic incident? It must be frustrating to the State Department that Netanyahu and the Israelis are so unwilling to make even a half-hearted effort to portray their war as a solemn and restrained defence of a besieged nation. Instead, the war appears on American television, laptop and phone screens as an orgy of violence, a revenge campaign of ethnic cleansing that satisfies those carrying it out precisely because of its gratuitousness.
Biden and the press have made slight adjustments to their tactics over the past few months. First, instead of solely portraying Israel’s war as something it isn’t (measured and heroic struggle against antisemitic psychosis), the American media began to acknowledge the war as a tragic situation while trying to skirt the issue of who bears responsibility for the tragedy. Administration spokespeople allowed that Palestinian civilians were in a desperate situation, that ‘too many’ women and children had died, that hunger in Gaza had become a serious problem, and that settler violence in the West Bank was concerning. They said they wished Israel would fight its war a bit differently but reminded reporters that it is a sovereign nation, ignoring the fact that Israel’s decades of belligerence have only been made possible by America’s military largesse. During this period, Biden largely seemed to be playing for time, hoping that Israel’s rage would exhaust itself in time for the war to not weigh too heavily on his reelection prospects in November.
Then, on April 2, Israel launched airstrikes on a convoy run by World Central Kitchen, a charity organization founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, killing seven of its workers. In addition to one Palestinian, the dead included three Britons, one Australian, a Pole and a dual citizen of the us and Canada. Condemnation from Washington, as well as from European capitals, was swift and severe. Thirty-seven Congressional Democrats, including ride-or-die Biden loyalist Nancy Pelosi, wrote a letter to Biden and Blinken urging that the us halt arms transfers to Israel. For the first time since October 7, Netanyahu found himself cornered into apologizing for the Israeli military’s conduct, assuring the world that he ‘deeply regrets the tragic incident’, dismissing two officers, and reprimanding three others.
As Edward Luce put it with unnerving frankness in the Financial Times, ‘The latest incident has affected Joe Biden in a way earlier ones did not’:
Put simply, Andrés is a Washington celebrity. He was one of the pioneers of high-quality restaurants in an early 1990s Washington that had a well-deserved reputation for dowdy food. Andrés’s Jaleo introduced Spanish-style tapas food to America’s capital. In 2016, his restaurant, Minibar, was one of Washington’s first batch to merit a two-star Michelin award. Among others, Nancy Pelosi, the former us Speaker, has nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.footnote35
That Biden could only be moved to pity by a war crime that personally affected the man who introduced tapas to Washington speaks volumes about the moral bankruptcy of his administration. Equally disturbing are the signs that he hopes blame for Israel’s atrocities can be laid solely at the feet of Netanyahu, with America’s support for the larger Zionist project evading any real modification. But Netanyahu is a perfect representation of the Zionist project, not a tragic or maniacal aberration from it. As the New York Times reported as late as February, more than 80 percent of Israelis still believed that the idf was using ‘adequate or too little force’ in Gaza, and 88 percent of Jewish Israelis believed that ‘the number of Palestinians killed or wounded in Gaza is justified’.footnote36 Biden remains unwilling to acknowledge, much less confront, the extent to which Israel’s war on Gaza is an authentic expression of the desires of Israeli society writ large.
‘Global leadership’
One imagines that in Washington’s ideal world, Israelis will eventually kick Netanyahu out of office and replace him with someone whose name and image will be unfamiliar. Though they will share Netanyahu’s politics, they will be an unknown quantity in the eyes of most Americans, and this will make it possible for Blinken and Sullivan to project their fantasies about the kind of leader Israel should have onto them. The us will describe the new Prime Minister as a pragmatist, a reformer, someone whose commitment to Israel’s defence remains unshakeable but who simultaneously regrets some of the excesses of his predecessor and recognizes the importance of at least performing basic concern for Palestinian civilians. The Israeli government will make conciliatory diplomatic gestures toward Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other reactionary regimes in the region, and while it will not be required to actually pursue concrete steps toward a Palestinian state, it will not display total contempt for the idea. It will stop throwing fuel onto the fire of global popular outrage. The new leader will be a figure to whom Democrats can point as they explain why continued support for Israel remains vital to America’s national interest, buying the us time to oversee a negotiated settlement that reaffirms the permanent occupation of Palestine without having to call it that. It is a despairing, hopeless vision of the next several years. Should it come to pass, Biden will call it a historic success that reaffirms the importance of America’s global leadership.
One should not discount the possibility that Biden will get what he wants. The war has permanently damaged his standing with American Arab and Muslim communities, particularly in crucial states such as Michigan and Minnesota, but it’s still the case that his opponent is a man who ended his first term as the least popular president in the country’s history. Trump is fundamentally a small-time crook who made it big, and it is obvious that a primary motivation behind his current presidential campaign is to keep himself out of jail. Americans have little desire to relive the chaotic atmosphere of his first term. They also have decades of experience in tuning out violence overseas, and if Biden is able to extract a few concessions from the Israeli government by mid-year, his campaign may be able to persuade some fence-sitters that he made a good-faith effort to ease the suffering of Palestinian civilians.
Even if Biden does eke out a victory this autumn, however, the dream of American hegemonic rejuvenation in the twenty-first century is still in trouble. To begin with, there is little evidence that Biden has begun to the lay the foundation for a durable majority that could keep Democrats in power over the course of several election cycles, and this makes it unlikely that the United States is going to see any respite from the whiplash political dynamics that have militated against longer-term strategic policy-making over the past decade. More centrally, however, the first pillar of the Biden administration’s geopolitical strategy, ‘a foreign policy for the middle class’, which amounts in practice to a protectionist green-military Keynesianism targeting China, has been meaningfully undercut by the consequences of pursuing the second pillar, democracies versus autocracies. The Russia–Ukraine war has exacerbated an inflationary surge around the world, including within the United States. Even with historically low levels of unemployment and strong wage growth (at least relative to recent history), Americans have been outraged by levels of inflation not seen in decades, and their views on Biden’s stewardship of the economy are particularly negative. Whether Biden can turn public opinion around on this front now that inflation has eased remains to be seen, but much political damage has already been done and time is running out.
Biden didn’t just promise to ensure that America’s economy remains the world’s largest, or that America’s military remains the world’s strongest. He promised to do what Giovanni Arrighi said is required of a hegemon in The Long Twentieth Century. Hegemonic power, Arrighi wrote, is ‘the power associated with dominance expanded by the exercise of “intellectual and moral leadership”’. What distinguishes it from its non-hegemonic competitors is that only the hegemon can plausibly claim to be advancing global interests other than its own. ‘The claim of the dominant group to represent the general interest is always more or less fraudulent’, Arrighi writes. ‘Nevertheless . . . we shall speak of hegemony only when the claim is at least partly true and adds something to the power of the dominant group’.footnote37
American hegemony certainly lives on for now in Europe, where compliant nato allies continue to fall over one another in their rush to hollow out social services and buy American arms. And the us may be able to retain economic dominance in a relative sense even if it never manages to reverse the slowdown in global growth, so long as its own economic power weakens less than that of its rivals. But after Gaza, America can no longer credibly claim global ‘hegemony’ in Arrighi’s sense. Biden’s support for Israel, motivated both by strategic considerations and what appears to be a real inability on his part to see Palestinians as fully human, flies in the face of both American and global public opinion. Europe may hold on to America’s coattails for a while yet, but in the rest of the world, continued American supremacy will be based primarily on coercion. Arrighi identified the catastrophe of America’s invasion of Iraq as the turning point: ‘The unravelling of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century’, he wrote, ‘has for all practical purposes resulted in the terminal crisis of us hegemony—that is, in its transformation into mere domination’.footnote38 If it is true that Iraq marked the point at which American hegemony actually changed into domination, then perhaps Gaza marks the point at which Americans finally realized it.
The last working-class hero in England.
Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018
Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
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