Israel's Proxy War?
by M. Shahid Alam
It has been apparent to all but the purblind – a defect in understanding assiduously
cultivated by America’s mass media – that the war United States is ready to wage
against Iraq has almost nothing to do with its security.
In an age when the people believe that their voices must be heard, the United States
must sell its wars the way corporations sell their products. In the past, the people were
asked to lay down their lives for visions of glory; now, governments appeal to their
self-interest. The first Gulf War had to be fought to protect American jobs. If Saddam
Hussain stayed in Kuwait, he would raise the price of oil, and Americans would lose
their jobs.
The argument this time is different. It had to be weightier than any fear of losing jobs.
This new war seeks regime-change; it involves greater risks. American forces must
invade Iraq, defeat the Iraqi army, occupy Baghdad, and stay around, even
indefinitely. Americans understand that "regime-change" is serious business. They
would not back this war unless Iraq threatened American lives. That explains why the
war against Iraq had to supersede the war against terrorism, and why Saddam
replaced Osama as the new icon of America’s loathing.
This substitution was quite easily executed. Most Americans take the President at his
word when he talks about foreign enemies; this trust comes more easily when a
Republican occupies the White House. George Bush told Americans that Saddam
Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction, and he had to be stopped before
he could transfer them to Al-Qaida. (Why hadn’t he done this already?) For many
Americans, it was an open an d shut case. Saddam had to be removed.
The flaws in this argument did not matter. If Saddam hadn’t used WMDs during the first
Gulf War – when his army was being pummeled – why would he use them now? The
CIA warned that a war, or the threat of it, would increase the risk of Iraq using WMDs.
Others, like Scott Ritter, a former chief weapons inspector for the UN, pointed out that
Iraq did not have any WMDs that mattered. More than 90 percent had been destroyed
by inspectors; if any escaped, they would be past their shelf life. At least initially, few
Americans gave any credence to these doubts, though that has been slowly changing.
Why then is United States straining to go to war against Iraq?
The most popular theory on the left is that this war is about oil. According to one
version of this theory, the White House, a captive of oil interests, wants to corner Iraq’s
oil for American oil corporations. I do not find this credible. The power brokers in United
States would not allow a single industry lobby, even a powerful one, to drag the
country into a war which could hurt all of them, and perhaps badly, if the war plans
went awry and produced a spike in oil prices. At the least, it is doubtful if oil interests,
on their own, can account for the unobstructed rush to a mad war.
There is another oil theory. It argues that the American economy needs cheaper oil;
this will save tens of billion dollars. Once Saddam has been removed, and Iraq’s oil
supply restored to levels that existed before the first Gulf War, the oil prices will come
down substantially. It is hard to reconcile this theory with a US-imposed sanctions
regime that has drastically curtailed Iraq’s oil output for the past twelve years. If there
were concerns that Saddam might use the oil revenues for a military build-up, that
could be addressed by an inspections regime and selective economic sanctions.
There is also a third oil theory, one offered recently.[1] It maintains that this war
preempts the Euro threat to the hegemony of the dollar. By pegging oil to the dollar,
OPEC has been a key player in the arrangements that have maintained the dollar as
the currency of international reserve. In October 2000, Saddam Hussein offered the
first challenge to this system by switching Iraq’s dollar reserves to Euro. If OPEC follows
Iraq’s lead it could spell trouble for the dollar. This can only be stopped by dismantling
the OPEC, and this demands war against Iraq.
An OPEC challenge to the dollar sounds seems naïve at best. This is hardly the kind of
revolutionary action we can expect from an OPEC packed with client states like Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and UAE; the oil price hike of 1974 could only occur in
the backdrop of the Cold War. A precipitate dethronement of the dollar could produce
consequences for United States and the world economy which would make the East
Asian financial crisis of 1997 look like a storm in a teacup. Not even the EU would push
for such results. On the other hand, there is a small chance that the war itself might
validate this theory – if it convinced OPEC that the war aims to dismantle the oil cartel.
If it isn’t oil, then, is this civilizational war, a war of the Christian West against Islam?
This conjecture flies in the face of some obvious facts. First, this is America’s war. It is
opposed by two key Western allies, France and Germany; and apart from Britain and
Israel, the support of other Western countries lacks depth. More to the point, the
overwhelming majority of Westerners outside the United States oppose this war. In
United States itself, the anti-war sentiment has grown rapidly, and the most recent polls
indicate a majority against the war if it happens without the support of the United
Nations.
Is it then America’s war against Islamists? Even that is doubtful. Apart from the
right-wing Christian extremists, led by the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson,
nearly all Christian denominations have come out against the war. Everyone would
agree that Al-Qaida constitutes the most serious Islamist threat to United States; they
had proved it on September 11, 2001. And yet, we are ready to push this threat aside
in order to wage war against one of the most decidedly secular of Arab states, one that
spent ten years waging war against ‘fundamentalist’ Iran? Why not Wahhabi Saudi
Arabia which supplied 16 of the 19 hijackers of September 11. Why not Shiite Iran?
Their turn too will come, one hears neoconservative voices, to be followed by Syria,
Egypt and Pakistan.
Why then is United States ready to wage this war against Iraq, ostensibly against its
own best interests? Most sensible people agree that this is a war whose consequences
cannot be controlled, or even foreseen. It may destabilize friendly regimes, bringing
radical Islamists to power in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It may disrupt oil supplies,
causing a price hike at a time when the global economy already weak and vulnerable
to shocks. It may force Saddam to use his chemical and biological weapons – if he has
them – leading United States to nuke Baghdad or Basra. It may fuel global terrorism for
years to come, leading to attacks on American interests globally.
These anomalies quickly melt away if we are willing to entertain a seldom-aired
hypothesis. This may not be America’s war at all, much less a war of the West against
Islam or Islamists. Instead, could this be Israel’s war against the Arabs fought through a
proxy, the only proxy that can take on the Arabs? This will most likely provoke derisive
skepticism. Could the world’s only superpower be persuaded to fight Israel’s war? Is it
even possible? Could the tail wag this great dog?
Consider first Israel’s motives. Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Pakistan do
not threaten the United States; but they are a threat to Israel’s hegemonic ambitions
over the region. This conflict between Israel and her neighbors was written into the
Zionist script. A Jewish state could only be inserted into Palestine by resort to a
massive ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. After such inauspicious beginnings, Israel
could only sustain itself by keeping its neighbors weak, divided, and disoriented. It has
since waged wars against Egypt in 1956; against Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 1967;
against Iraq in 1981; against Lebanon, since 1982; and against Palestinians
continuously since 1948.
Israel’s contradictions have deepened since the mounting of the second Intifada.
When the Palestinians rejected the Bantustans offered at Oslo, Israel chose Ariel
Sharon, a war criminal, to ratchet its war against Palestinian civilians. Faced with
Apaches, F-16s, tanks and artillery, in desperation, the Palestinians turned increasingly
to suicide bombings. Sharon’s brutal war was not working, and Israel’s losses began to
catch up with Palestinian casualties. In April 2002, Israeli tanks reoccupied the
Palestinian towns, destroyed Palestinian civilian infrastructure, increasingly placing
Palestinians under curfews, sieges, destroying their workshops, stores, hospitals,
orchards and farms. This was the new strategy of slow ethnic cleansing through
starvation.
This slow ethnic cleansing is only a stopgap. The most serious threat which
Palestinians pose is demographic: their growing population could soon turn the Jews
into a minority inside greater Israel. Since the Palestinians won’t live under an Israeli
apartheid, the Likud, with growing popular support, is turning to Israel’s second option.
If the apartheid plan were to fail, Israel would engage in large-scale ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians, more massive than the ones implemented in 1948 and 1967.
But Israel cannot do this alone. This ethnic cleansing can only be implemented in the
shadow of a major war against the Arabs, a war to Balkanize the region, a war to bring
about regime-change in Iraq, Syria and Iran, a war that only United States can wage.
Israel needs United States to wage a proxy war on behalf of Israel.
It should be clear that Israel has the motive; but does it also possess the capability to
pull this off? Is it possible for a small power to use a great power – the only
superpower, in this case – to wage its own wars. Historically, great powers have often
waged wars through lesser proxies; but that does not mean that this relationship can
never get inverted.
What makes this eminently possible is the way an indirect democracy – in particular,
democracy in United States – works. The demos elect candidates picked by powerful
lobbies, ethnic, industry and labor lobbies; once elected, the officials work for the
lobbies. By far the most powerful political lobby in this country works for Israel, led by
American Israel Public Action Committee (AIPAC). There is scarcely a member of the
Congress whose election campaigns have not been funded by AIPAC; several are
funded quite heavily.[2] The power of the pro-Israel lobby in United States, however,
does not start or end with AIPAC. The result of this massive power is a Congress
packed with Israeli yes-men. No member of the Congress has dared to contradict Israeli
interests and remained in office. Just last year, two members of Congress, Earl Hilliard
and Cynthia McKenny, were defeated by pro-Israeli money because they had stepped
out of line.
Consider some of the achievements of the pro-Israeli lobby over the years. First, an
estimate of the cost of Israel to US taxpayers. Since 1985, without debate or demurral,
the Congress has sheepishly voted an annual foreign aid package of $3 billion to
Israel, nearly two thirds of this in outright grants, and constituting one-third of all US
foreign assistance. When estimated in 2001 constant dollars, the total foreign aid to
Israel since 1967 adds up to $143 billion.[3] That amounts to a transfer of $28,600 for
every Jewish citizen of Israel.
The official aid is only a small part of the cost of Israel to the US economy. We need to
account for loan guarantees and write-offs, bribes paid to Egypt and Jordan in support
of our Israeli policy, subsidies to Israel’s military R&D, boost in oil prices (attributed to
US support for Israel in the 1967 war), losses due to trade sanctions imposed on
Israel’s enemies, etc. When Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington,
added up all these costs, he concluded that since 1973 Israel has cost the United
States about $1.6 trillion.[4] In per capita terms, this amounts to $320,000 for every
Jewish citizen of Israel.
The US record on vetoes cast in UN Security Council constitutes another major
achievement of the pro-Israel lobby. The US has cast 73 vetoes out of the 248 cast by
all permanent members of the Security Council. On 38 occasions, these vetoes were
cast to shield Israel from any criticism directed against its violation of human rights of
Palestinians or the territorial rights of its neighbors. On another 25 occasions, US
abstained from such a vote.[5] This does not include the votes cast by United States –
along with Israel, Tuvalu and Nauru – against UN General Assembly resolutions
criticizing Israeli violations of human rights or Security Council resolutions. It would be
difficult to maintain that the strategic interests of United States always demanded such
a consistent voting record on Palestine.
I am aware that the notion of an Israeli proxy war against Iraq will be greeted with
skepticism by not a few. I hope to have established that Israel possess in abundance
both the motive and capability for such a war. There is some evidence that it has
demonstrated this capability in the past also. In the words of Lloyd George, then Prime
Minister of Britain, the Zionist leaders promised that if the Allies supported the creation
of "a national home for the Jews in Palestine, they would do their best to rally Jewish
sentiment and support throughout the world to the Allied Cause. They kept their
word."[6] It is doubtful if Zionist influence now is weaker than it was in 1917.
This is not to argue that the pro-Israeli lobby is the only reason for the projected US war
against Iraq. At present, there are several forces in United States that are pushing for
this war. Prominent among these indigenous forces are the oil corporations, the arms
manufacturers, the aerospace industry, and the right-wing Christian evangelists.
However, it is doubtful if these indigenous groups, on their own, could have pushed
United States so decisively towards the present catastrophic confrontation with the
Islamic world. Certainly, the intellectual justifications for this hazardous confrontation
have come almost entirely from the pro-Israeli lobby. And their intellectual input may
have been vital.
Notes:
[1] sierratimes.com
[2] wrmea.com
[3] counterpunch.org
[4] csmonitor.com
[5] middleeastinfo.org
[6] Lilienthal, Alfred M., "What price Israel" (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953): 20-21.
M. Shahid Alam is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University. His
last book, "Poverty from the Wealth of Nations," was published by
Palgrave in 2000.
Buy the related book (s) now:
Source:
by courtesy & © 2003 M. Shahid Alam
Copyright © 2003 Media Monitors Network. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
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