In a recent article, Gilbert Doctorow asks the question about Israel and the Middle East ( “More on tails wagging dogs and vice versa”)
Which of the United States or Israel uses the other for its foreign policy? Is Israel the proxy for US foreign policy in the Middle East? Or does Israel determine US foreign policy, both through and because of the Zionist lobby and the neocons and liberals present in the US administration? Is it “the world upside down” “tails wagging dogs”? This is a very old question: who manipulates whom in this American-Israeli relationship?
One thing is certain. The United States is irremediably linked to Israel. This is an indisputable fact that will probably only disappear after great upheavals in the United States. But from there, some believe that this link can be explained by nothing other than the existence of a pro-Israel lobby. This is the thesis developed in particular by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their 1995 work The Israel Lobby. The influence of this lobby would explain the organic solidarity that binds the United States to Israel. To do justice to this idea, it should be emphasized that Mearsheimer and Walt speak of a pro-Israel lobby and not a pro-Jewish lobby. Several people of various religious persuasions are part of this lobby and it goes without saying that very many Jews oppose the unconditional support given by Washington to Israel.
Broadening the perspective
At the center of this pro-Israel lobby, there is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which largely finances the electoral campaigns of senatorial candidates or representatives of one or the other party, provided that they endorse the furthering of Israel’s interests. However, they do not act in isolation. To fully understand the nature of their influence on the regime, we must broaden our perspective, zoom out, and take a step back.
The great American plutocrats are imperialist, aggressive, expansionist, and bent on using force. The Zionist branch of this plutocracy is undoubtedly the most warmongering of all, a practitioner of colonialism from another age, and it has the approval of others who consider it useful to US imperialism. They all agree. It is the same group. To date, we have not seen any cases of divergence between these groups.
The Zionists are at the origin of neoconservatism, the policy of the US. American and Israeli neoconservative policies are similar because they come from a single matrix that considers the use of force as the primary way to achieve expansion. As the US became neocon after 1990, it became more Israelized. Same behavior, same speech. The attempts to give credence to the idea that the US is “distancing” itself from Israel are simply intended to spare the US and keep Israel in the limelight.
Are senators and representatives puppets?
However, senators and representatives are not servile puppets, devoid of agency. If they willingly submit to the various lobbies, it is because they need to promote their cutting-edge industrial sectors: Big Tech, Big Pharma and of course, also, the military-industrial complex. These industries have to be supported because they are the ones most likely to attract the attention of foreign countries. Supporting exports from these leading sectors tends to reduce the trade deficit bordering on a trillion (1 000 000 000 000) dollars annually.
What does all this have to do with our theme? First of all, the annual official donations of US$3.8 billion to Israel are largely used to fuel the military-industrial complex with Israeli orders. However, even more important than the military, pharmaceutical, computer, oil, and gas industries, there is another asset that deserves special attention: the US dollar.
With the US dollar as the de facto world reserve currency, the United States enjoys a huge advantage over its economic competitors. First of all, it ensures the financing of its gigantic debt (34,000 billion dollars). In addition, a strong dollar means that it does not have to face significant inflation in the prices of imported products. The American state can then threaten with “sanctions” any state that does not comply with US policies. Some forty countries, representing a third of the world’s population, are subject to such “sanctions”. These can also result in the weakening of the currencies of countries with which the American state prohibits trade. They can also translate into freezing US dollars held by the various sanctioned countries.
However, to maintain the dollar as the world reserve currency, it is imperative to neutralize economically strong states, as well as states that might be tempted to put forward their currency or that would more generally want to trade with each other in their respective national currencies. As we will now see, these facts explain why the United States wants to exercise control in the Middle East.
An extension of the United States
The interconnections between the US and Israeli elites (it is the same Establishment), and the similarity of interests and policies explain the symbiotic relationship between the United States and Israel. The distances taken by American leaders concerning Israel are artificial and not very credible. It is a simple sharing of roles. They want to make people believe that they are for a ceasefire, that they are working day and night on it, that they are for the transport of food by building a port area in Gaza, and that they are against the regionalization of the “conflict,” but they are financing the Zionist state as much as possible so that it can accomplish the dirty work hoped for by Washington: attack Iran. Biden politely advises Israel to limit (not stop) the loss of civilian life, while the goal of the campaign against Gaza and Lebanon is to kill as many as possible!
However, it will be recalled that in a confidential memo revealed by General Wesley Clark, the USA considered intervening in seven countries: Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Iran. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAnNJW9_KYA) Only Iran had so far avoided the attack. This is what Israel is now working on.
The status of the extension of a great power resembles that of a proxy. Using a proxy is not new. The USA used the Mujahideen against the USSR in Afghanistan, the Contras against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, Al Qaeda to attempt regime change in Syria, ISIS to control eastern Syria and northern Iraq, and the Kurds to fight ISIS. They are using Ukraine to weaken Russia and soon Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Japan, and Australia to fight China. It is in this context that Israel has the designated role of fighting Iran.
A Clash of Civilizations?
For Western peoples to be mobilized in this deadly enterprise, the American state is banking on Russophobia, Sinophobia, and Islamophobia. The so-called clash of civilizations is a false theory, but it can be made true if everyone believes in it.
But why do they want to dominate the Middle East? For oil? Why would the United States want to seize the Middle East’s oil and gas resources when they are now self-sufficient? It is really about ensuring that oil is sold in US dollars and that the United States has control over the tap that supplies the rest of the world. It is a project of control and of putting others in a state of dependence. And if the US spares Saudi Arabia, it is because the latter has until recently given pride of place to petrodollars. It is not for nothing that they want to extend the “Abraham” Accords to include the Saudis.
The Americans and Saudi Arabia got involved in the attempt to overthrow Bashar Al Assad when the latter approved the Iranian pipeline project instead of the Saudi pipeline project. It is therefore necessary to render Iran’s oil resources unusable because they could possibly be sold without using the US dollar.
The Americans have managed to put an end to the sale of Russian oil and gas in Europe that could be sold in rubles, and they occupy a third of Syria as well as part of Iraq. All that is missing is the destruction of Iran’s oil installations. The United States would be happy to see their Israeli extension bomb them, especially since one of the main importers is China.
“Money talks”
But why do they want to keep sales of oil resources in US dollars at all costs? It is to ensure that the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency. If this currency does not have this advantage, it will lose its value. Inflation will be rampant. Interest rates will have to be raised to attract investors to US Treasury bonds. This will slow down the economy and increase the percentage of debt to GDP.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that by 2052, the country’s debt will be equivalent to 185% of GDP and nearly a third of government revenues will be devoted to debt servicing.
https://www.crfb.org/papers/analysis-cbos-july-2022-long-term-budget-outlook
This will put the United States in a situation approaching default.
Investors will be alarmed and the US dollar will continue to fall, which will increase inflation, to the point where investors will want to sell their Treasury bonds, which would weaken the dollar even more and push the US into hyperinflation.
The fear of de-dollarization therefore haunts the United States and this is why it seeks to maintain its economic hegemony by force, against Russia, China and Iran. Europe has already been brought to its knees.
This fear is not unfounded. The BRICS+ meeting in Kazan in October 2024 is a concrete example of the grouping of countries that no longer tolerate US hegemony, its disregard for laws, its violence, and its demagogy.
Conclusion
The mainstream media’s thinking does not go very far in explaining the “conflicts” in the Middle East. There is talk of a “humanitarian catastrophe” caused by a war between Israel and Hamas, while Israel is primarily bombing Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in an unprecedented murderous madness. Even the use of the word “genocide” to describe the massacres is surrounded by an official taboo. The management of the New York Times goes so far as to forbid its journalists from using the word. Generally speaking, in the West, the vast majority of public figures do not dare to venture into this territory. Are we, by chance, under the influence of a ban from lobbies supporting American propaganda?
Except for a few honest voices in alternative media, the international community has remained reserved, while the Biden/Harris tandem finances the genocide, supplies the deadly bombs and lets the famine imposed by the State of Israel go on throughout the Gaza Strip. Although Biden and Harris (it would probably be worse with Trump) are willingly supporting Netanyahu’s genocide, Western leaders are taking refuge in complete silence or verbal evasion to cover up the horror. Yet this is the first genocide to be broadcast live around the world. How does the international community manage to remain silent in the face of this criminal enterprise?
However, to end it, we need more than anger and moral condemnation. We need to understand what is at stake. We are facing an imperialist power panicked by the prospect of its downgrading and ready to do anything to preserve its dominant status. Explaining the genocide currently underway in Gaza by simply invoking the existence of a pro-Israel lobby risks making us forego an educated geopolitical assessment going to the heart of the matter: the United States-Israel tandem forms a single entity.