If the US left them, even for a brief period like a year, they’d be forced to actually pursue peace.
No. It just leaves a geopolitical power vacuum into which another opportunistic state would step in and supply them with some equally deadly munitions and financial guarantees. Nothing would change for the Israelis or the Palestinians.
Also, we probably stationed some Really Massive Ordinance over there that we can’t just evacuate on a Hercules or a Galaxy or 10. Its not like the US will just walk away from that. (Yes, like we did Afghanistan. Twice.)
Yeah, I suppose that’s one read if you completely disregard the rather startling drift in US policy in Israel from October 2023 to now. We abstained from a UNSC veto on a ceasefire. SoS Blinkin is going more aggressively at Netanyahu than I’ve ever seen a US official go at ah Israeli PM in my lifetime (“cohesive plan” quote), Biden called out Bibi in his SOTU when there are DIRE domestic issues at hand.
Look, I’m not saying we’re clean here, and aren’t complicit. We’re walking a line of “being supportive” and bringing unorecedented diplomatic pressure on Israel to knock it off. Things are happening “really fast” on the scale of decades old policy, and that means something. Keeping hold on those ties means (a) yes, we’re complicit in the eyes of history, but (b) we are using those ties to try to minimize further bloodshed.
It’s slow. Its maddening. It’s also real politics on an international scale which, I am sorry, marginalizes death. I’m not OK with that and I’m struggling to make sense of it myself, but among other likely outcomes it’s probably the best play the US can make given the alternatives.
People with a lot more information than me are making the decisions. I’m trying to trust that.
People are looking at it from a moral perspective, which is admirable and good but does nothing to explain why it’s happening or how to stop it. Geopolitics is about power, not morals. I wish it weren’t so but that’s the world we live in. When you look at it through the eyes of power, it will still be complicated but it will be honest and constructive.
Yup. Think of a country like a large freighter. It takes a lot of time between turning the wheel and the ship actually turning. Especially when there’s something wrong, like we’ve seen in Baltimore…
It just leaves a geopolitical power vacuum into which another opportunistic state would step in and supply them with some equally deadly munitions and financial guarantees.
Who? Russia who is buying weapons from North Korea? China who’s trying to win over the Middle East? This is a needlessly pessimistic assumption.
Wjy not China? Does it embarrass the US? Sure, even Russia who would LOVE to snipe a US ally.
Because they want the Middle East on their side. They’ve been posturing that way for a while now. Israel is inherently a regional pariah state and that’s not changing anytime soon., so I don’t see China making that decision. It works for the US because it has both “needs” for hard power projection in the region and frankly ridiculous amounts of soft power, but China lacks both of these things.
Edit: Russia is impossible because they don’t have the soft power necessary to keep Iran satiated (I think at this point it’s impossible even for the US, but for Russia doubly so) if they make such a step. At least personally, even from a geopolitical perspective if I had to choose between Iran and Israel I’d choose Iran, for a lot of reasons.
No. It just leaves a geopolitical power vacuum into which another opportunistic state would step in and supply them with some equally deadly munitions and financial guarantees. Nothing would change for the Israelis or the Palestinians.
Also, we probably stationed some Really Massive Ordinance over there that we can’t just evacuate on a Hercules or a Galaxy or 10. Its not like the US will just walk away from that. (Yes, like we did Afghanistan. Twice.)
Basically “if we don’t support their genocide then someone else will”?
Yeah, I suppose that’s one read if you completely disregard the rather startling drift in US policy in Israel from October 2023 to now. We abstained from a UNSC veto on a ceasefire. SoS Blinkin is going more aggressively at Netanyahu than I’ve ever seen a US official go at ah Israeli PM in my lifetime (“cohesive plan” quote), Biden called out Bibi in his SOTU when there are DIRE domestic issues at hand.
Look, I’m not saying we’re clean here, and aren’t complicit. We’re walking a line of “being supportive” and bringing unorecedented diplomatic pressure on Israel to knock it off. Things are happening “really fast” on the scale of decades old policy, and that means something. Keeping hold on those ties means (a) yes, we’re complicit in the eyes of history, but (b) we are using those ties to try to minimize further bloodshed.
It’s slow. Its maddening. It’s also real politics on an international scale which, I am sorry, marginalizes death. I’m not OK with that and I’m struggling to make sense of it myself, but among other likely outcomes it’s probably the best play the US can make given the alternatives.
People with a lot more information than me are making the decisions. I’m trying to trust that.
Ding ding ding!
People are looking at it from a moral perspective, which is admirable and good but does nothing to explain why it’s happening or how to stop it. Geopolitics is about power, not morals. I wish it weren’t so but that’s the world we live in. When you look at it through the eyes of power, it will still be complicated but it will be honest and constructive.
Geopolitics can also be painfully slow:/
Yup. Think of a country like a large freighter. It takes a lot of time between turning the wheel and the ship actually turning. Especially when there’s something wrong, like we’ve seen in Baltimore…
Who? Russia who is buying weapons from North Korea? China who’s trying to win over the Middle East? This is a needlessly pessimistic assumption.
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Because they want the Middle East on their side. They’ve been posturing that way for a while now. Israel is inherently a regional pariah state and that’s not changing anytime soon., so I don’t see China making that decision. It works for the US because it has both “needs” for hard power projection in the region and frankly ridiculous amounts of soft power, but China lacks both of these things.
Edit: Russia is impossible because they don’t have the soft power necessary to keep Iran satiated (I think at this point it’s impossible even for the US, but for Russia doubly so) if they make such a step. At least personally, even from a geopolitical perspective if I had to choose between Iran and Israel I’d choose Iran, for a lot of reasons.
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