[Peace-discuss] Against American lies about the Mideast
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Wed Aug 11 17:10:53 CDT 2010
It's very commonly agreed in foreign policy circles that there are two major
issues in American foreign policy today. One of them is the threat of Iran and
the second one is the unresolved Israel/Palestine conflict. Questions arise
about each of these issues. With regard to Iran, the first question that arises
is, "What, exactly is the Iranian threat?" With regard to Israel/Palestine, the
obvious question is, "Why isn't it resolved?" Actually, there are many problems
in the world where it's difficult even to imagine a solution but this one
happens to be particularly easy. There is almost universal agreement on what the
solution should be, backed by the Arab League, by the Organization of Islamic
States, including Iran, by Europe, by the United Nations, by international law,
in fact, essentially by everyone, so how come it isn't solved? That's the second
question.
Well, there are some straightforward answers to these questions but they do not
enter discussion within Western ideology and doctrine and the answers that are
so simple are quite remote from general conventions. So let me say a few words
about them.
With regard to the threat of Iran, there is a very authoritative answer,
provided by military and intelligence reports to Congress in April 2010. They
say that the threat of Iran is not a military threat. Iran has virtually no
offensive military capacity. Its military spending is very slight, of course a
minuscule fraction of US military spending, but also pretty low by regional
standards. They point out that the goal of Iranian military strategy is to try
to defend the borders of the country and, in case they're attacked, to try to
delay invading forces sufficiently so as to permit a negotiated settlement.
They discuss the question of whether Iran is developing nuclear weapons and say
that, if they are developing nuclear weapons, which they don't know, the goal
would be deterrence to prevent an attack on Iran. That's basically the story.
What then is the threat? Well, the threat is also explained. The primary threat
is that Iran is engaged in destabilizing its neighbors. It's trying to increase
its influence in surrounding countries, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The US is, of course, involved in Iraq and Afghanistan but that is not
destabilizing. That's stabilizing. The US is there to improve stability and, if
Iran tries to have influence in its neighboring countries, that's destabilizing.
Now that's very standard terminology in foreign policy literature and
discussion. I mean it reaches to the point that the former editor of Foreign
Affairs, the main establishment journal, was able to say with a straight face
and with no reaction from anyone that the United States had to destabilize Chile
under Allende ... had to destabilize the government of Chile and overthrow it
and establish a dictatorship in order to bring about stability. It sounds like a
contradiction but it isn't when you understand that "stability" has a meaning.
It means US control. So we had to destabilize the country that was out of US
control in order to bring about stability, and it's the same problem with regard
to Iran. It doesn't follow orders and, therefore, it is destabilizing the
regional situation.
There is another problem with Iran, namely, it supports terrorism. So for
example, you may believe today that you're celebrating National Liberation Day
but, in terms of Western doctrine, what you're celebrating is the success of
terrorism and, in fact, the success of aggression against Israel in Southern
Lebanon ... Iranian aggression ... so you're celebrating Iranian aggression
against Israel in Southern Lebanon and its success and celebrating terrorists
and terrorism (quoting Israeli Labor Party high official Ephraim Sneh). It's not
Liberation Day. You have to understand how to interpret these matters properly
if you want to enter into the framework of imperial discourse. This is not just
the US and Israel. It's Western Europe as well. There are a few exceptions. So
that's the threat of Iran.
The description is not incorrect. Iran does not follow orders. It's trying to
maintain its sovereignty. This is all quite independent of what anyone thinks
about its government. You may have the worst government in the world but that's
not the issue here. The US doesn't care one way or the other what the government
is like. It wants it to follow orders to improve stability. That's the Iranian
threat.
What about Israel and Palestine? Well, there is an official version of that
conflict too. You see it every day in the newspapers. The United States is an
honest broker and neutral arbiter trying to bring together two sides which are
irrational and violent. They won't agree and the United States is trying to
settle the conflict between them. That's why there are proximity talks where the
US mediates between the two irrational opponents, the Palestinians and the
Israelis. That's the official version. You can read it every day. There's also a
reality. I won't run through the whole story but the basic facts are clear.
In 1967, Israel conquered the Occupied Territories and there was a Security
Council resolution calling for settlement of the conflict, UN 242. It called for
Israel to withdraw to its borders and, in return, there should be guarantees for
the security of every state in the region and recognition of every state in the
region within recognized borders. There's nothing in it for the Palestinians.
They are mentioned only as refugees. So that's in essence UN 242, which everyone
agrees is the general framework for political settlement.
Well in 1971, four years later, President Sadat of Egypt offered Israel a full
peace treaty, with nothing for the Palestinians. In return, total withdrawal
from the occupied territories and he really only cared about the Sinai. Jordan
made a similar offer a year later. Israel had to make a decision. Are they going
to choose security or expansion? A peace treaty with Egypt means security. Egypt
was of course the major Arab military force. But they were, at that time,
working hard to expand into Egyptian territory ... into the Sinai, northeast
Sinai, in order to establish a city and settlements and so on. They made what I
think was the most fateful decision in the history of the country. They decided
to prefer expansion to security so they rejected the peace offer. Now the
crucial question always is, "What is the Master going to do?" So, "What will
Washington decide?" And there was a bureaucratic battle in Washington about
this. Henry Kissinger won the internal battle and he was opposed to
negotiations. He was in favor of what he called "stalemate," no negotiations. So
he backed Israel's decision to choose expansion over security and that led very
quickly to the 1973 war, the October war. It was a very close thing for Israel,
and Israel and the United States recognized that they could not simply disregard
Egypt. Then begins a long period of diplomatic interaction ending up at Camp
David a couple of years later, when the United States and Israel essentially
accepted Sadat's 1971 proposal. This is called, in Western doctrine, a great
diplomatic victory for President Carter and Henry Kissinger. In fact, it was a
diplomatic catastrophe. They could have accepted it in 1971, and the cost of
refusal was a very dangerous war and close to nuclear war, a lot of suffering
and misery. Actually what the United States and Israel had to accept at Camp
David was partially, from their point of view, harsher than Sadat's 1971 offer
because, by this time, the issue of Palestinian national rights had entered the
international agenda so they had to accept, at least in words, some form of
Palestinian national rights in the territories from which Israel was supposed to
withdraw.
Meanwhile, in the intervening period, in 1976 there was another crucial event.
In 1976, the major Arab states, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and others, brought to the
Security Council a resolution calling for a settlement of the conflict in terms
of UN 242 -- all the relevant wording of 242 with its guarantees for rights and
so on, but with an addition: a Palestinian state in the occupied territories.
Israel refused to attend the session. The United States vetoed the resolution.
It vetoed a similar one in 1980. Now when the United States vetoes a resolution,
it's a double veto. First of all, it doesn't happen, and secondly, it's vetoed
from history. So if you look at even the scholarly record it's rarely mentioned,
and there certainly isn't anything in the media or general discussion. The
events that I've just described didn't happen. They're not there. You have to
search very hard to find a reference to them. That's one of the prerogatives of
an imperial power. You can control history as long as you have a submissive
intellectual class, which the West does have. I won't go through the rest of the
history but it continues pretty much like that.
Up to the present, the United States and Israel are out of the world. With rare
and temporary exceptions, they have continued to block the political settlement
that has almost universal agreement, which means that, if there were serious
proximity talks today, conducted maybe from Mars, then the two antagonists that
would be brought together would be the United States and the world. You could
have proximity talks between them and, if they could reach an agreement, there
would be a settlement of this problem. Well, that's the factual record. Of
course, historical events are always more complex than a simple description but
these are the basic facts. They're not controversial. There's no serious
question about them but they aren't part of general discourse about these topics
because they lead to the wrong conclusions and, therefore, they're excluded. If
I talk about this in the West in most places, the words are almost
unintelligible. It's not unique to this case. It reveals the extraordinary power
of imperial ideology. Even the simplest, the most obvious, the most crucial
facts are invisible if they do not accord with the needs of power.
I'm by no means the first person to talk about this. George Orwell wrote about
it, for example. He was discussing how in England, a free society, unpopular
ideas can be suppressed without the use of force, just voluntarily, and he gave
a few reasons. The most important one was a good education. He said, if you have
a good education, you have instilled into you the understanding that there are
certain things it wouldn't do to say -- or even to think, for that matter. This
essay of his is not very well known because it wasn't published, maybe proving
his thesis. This was to be the introduction to his book Animal Farm. Everyone
has read Animal Farm. It's about the totalitarian state, the totalitarian enemy
and its evil ways. But, just to prevent too much self-satisfaction, Orwell wrote
an introduction commenting on free England. It was not published. It was found
many years later in his unpublished papers. It is not his greatest essay, but
his point is basically correct. Unpopular ideas can be suppressed without the
use of force and a good education is an effective means to reach this result.
Well, unless we can become capable of thinking the thoughts that are banned by
imperial ideology, understanding of what's happening in the world is going to be
very difficult to attain.
I'll come back to these two crucial issues of foreign policy but first let me
add a little background and what I think is appropriate context. The United
States is, of course, the dominant force in world affairs and has been since the
Second World War. It's very important to understand that there are a number of
aspects of US history which affect policy right to the present and I think are
not sufficiently appreciated. One fact is that the United States is a
settler-colonial society. Settler-colonialism is by far the worst kind of
imperialism because it destroys or eliminates the native population. Part of the
reason, I think, for the more or less reflexive sympathy for Israel in the
United States is the recognition that Israel is pretty much reliving our
history, as a settler-colonial society. We got rid of an indigenous population
and Israel has been doing something similar.
There are lots of ironies involved in this. The original settlers regarded
themselves as the children of Israel. They were returned to the Promised Land.
They were united by a principle that runs through American history right up to
the present. It's called Providentialism. We're fulfilling God's will. Whatever
we do, we're fulfilling God's will. If we exterminate the natives; that must be
God's will. We're trying to do good, of course, we're trying to be benevolent
but sometimes God's purposes are mysterious. You can read discussions by Supreme
Court justices who were very surprised that the Indians were being exterminated
-- as they put it, were like withered leaves of autumn blowing away -- and God's
inscrutable will is leading to this unfortunate consequence. We are benevolent
and work to improve their situation and to be nice to them but they are somehow
kind of withering away. That's Providentialism.
The State of Massachusetts was one of the first places settled by the English
colonists. It got its charter in 1629 from the King of England. The charter was
given to it with the purpose of benevolence to the indigenous population,
helping the indigenous population, rescuing them from paganism. That was the
goal of the commonwealth. In fact, the colony had a great seal with an image
that depicts its goal. The image shows an Indian with a scroll coming out of his
mouth and on the scroll it says, "Come over and help us." So, "Please come here
and help us," and the colonists were trying to help them. Today that's called
humanitarian intervention. They're coming to help them but, for some reason,
they withered away like the leaves of autumn by God's inscrutable will which is
beyond our understanding.
Well, another crucial fact about the United States is that it was founded as an
empire, explicitly. The father of the country, George Washington, defined the
United States as an infant empire, in his words, and his colleagues agreed. The
most libertarian of the founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, predicted that the
newly liberated colonies would extend over the entire hemisphere. They would
create a free hemisphere in which there would be no red, no black, and no Latin.
The red, the Indians, would be driven away, or would wither away or disappear.
The blacks were sort of needed for a while for slavery but, when slavery ends,
they'll go back to where they belong to Africa and later Haiti. As for the
Latins of the south, they're an inferior race so they will gradually be swept
away by a superior race of Anglo-Saxons. To quote a major academic historian on
this topic, Jefferson pictured the United States as the homeland for teeming
millions who would immigrate and reproduce their kind in all parts of North and
South America displacing, not only the indigenous red men, but also the Latin
population, creating a continent that would be American in blood, in language,
in habits, and in political ideology. Well, that was the goal. It wasn't quite
achieved but it was substantially achieved in one or another way. Through the
19th Century, the United States established what is now called its national
territory. That meant exterminating the indigenous population as was recognized
by the more honest leaders, by conquering half of Mexico, and various other, not
too pleasant actions.
Historians of imperialism sometimes talk about what they call the salt water
fallacy. The salt water fallacy means it's called imperialism only if you cross
salt water. So if the Mississippi river had been as wide as the Irish Sea, then
it would have been imperialism but, since it's narrower, it's not called
imperialism. But the people who carried out the conquest had no such illusions.
They understood it to be imperialism whether it crossed salt water or not and
they were very proud of the imperial achievement in establishing the national
territory. By the end of the century, they were facing salt water and they
expanded to conquer Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and so on, and went on to conquer
the Philippines killing hundreds of thousands of people, but always with the
most benevolent of intentions. It was just pure altruism. Tears come to your
eyes in reading the odes to the benevolence of these conquests -- features that
are, again, almost universal in imperial practice. It's hard to find an imperial
power that didn't put forth the same kind of posture.
By the First World War, it was beginning to be recognized that oil was going to
be a fundamental commodity in the coming world picture so Woodrow Wilson kicked
the British out of Venezuela, a major oil producer, and took it over and
supported a vicious dictator. That continued for a long period after Wilson.
Within a few years, Venezuela was the biggest oil exporter in the world. The US
was the major producer but Venezuela was the major exporter with US corporations
running it. and so it continued.
In the Middle East, it was recognized by the 1920s that it was a huge source of
energy so the US did intervene there and managed to take part of the concession
that was mostly British and French, but the US was powerful enough to take
control of part of the concession. During the Second World War, there was
actually a small war going on between the United States and Britain to determine
who would control Saudi Arabia. This was recognized as a future prize and the US
of course won that conflict and took it over. Up until World War II, the United
States was not a major player in world affairs. It controlled the Western
hemisphere and had some forays in the Pacific but the major actors in world
affairs were, primarily, Britain and, secondarily, France. But the Second World
War changed all that. The United States had by far the largest economy in the
world. In fact that was true a century ago, but it was not the major actor in
world affairs. World War II changed that and it was clear that it was going to
emerge from the war as the major world power. The planners in President
Roosevelt's State Department and the Council on Foreign Affairs understood that.
They had extensive meetings running right through the war, from 1939 to 1945, to
plan the post war world, a world in which the US would be the dominant power.
Their plans were quite important and, in fact, were implemented almost as they
described them. The major concept that they developed was the concept of what
they called the Grand Area. The Grand Area would be totally controlled by the
United States. It would include the Western hemisphere, of course, the entire
Far East, and the former British empire, including the Middle East energy
resources. At least that much would have to be part of the Grand Area.
Now, in the early stages of the war, they assumed that Germany would emerge from
the war as a major European power so there would be two worlds, the US world
controlling the Grand Area and the Germans controlling parts of Europe and Asia.
By the time that the Russians started driving the Germans troops back after
Stalingrad, it became clear that Germany was not going to survive the war and
the concept of the Grand Area was expanded to include as much of Eurasia as
possible, at least the core, the economic, political, social, and economic core
of Eurasia, mainly Western Europe, at least that. Actually, there were plans to
go beyond. The British were by 1943 beginning to plan for a post war period in
which the allies would immediately attack Russia and destroy it. Winston
Churchill was particularly committed to this. In fact, in May 1945, when the war
formally came to an end, and he ordered war plans for what was called Operation
Unthinkable: the Wehrmacht, the German army, backed by the Royal Air Force and
the American air force would attack Russia and destroy it. It was never
implemented but that was the goal. The openly stated goal of the atom bomb was
"to subdue the Russians." Those were the words of General Leslie Groves, who was
in charge of the Manhattan project that developed the bomb. In brief, we're
going to subdue you and you can't do anything about it.
There were hopes of expanding the Grand Area to a global area. Well, that didn't
quite happen either but it came pretty close.
What about the Middle East? It was understood that Middle East oil resources are
critical for world control. One leading planner pointed out that control over
Middle East oil would yield substantial control over the world. France was
expelled from the region, the British were gradually reduced to a junior
partner, and the US emerged as the dominant force in controlling Middle East oil
and, therefore, it was hoped, the world.
Now, Western Europe was part of the Grand Area, but it was always understood
that, sooner or later, Europe might pursue an independent path perhaps following
the Gaullist vision of Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals and something had
to be done to prevent that. Well, a number of things were done. One of them was
called NATO. One of its main purposes is to ensure that Europe will be contained
within a US-run military alliance. That leads to consequences right up to the
moment. This concern that Europe might become independent is sometimes tinged
with a certain degree of contempt. Just a few days ago, in fact, the president
of the Council on Foreign Relations, the main government foreign relations
group, Richard Haass, wrote an article called, "Good-bye Europe." Europe, he
says, is no longer a high-ranking power in international affairs and the reason
is it's not violent enough. It's refusing to provide troops to control the world
at an adequate level so, "Good-bye Europe". It can sink into oblivion. No one
really believes that but that's in the background. Well, throughout the sort of
official version of this whole period is called the Cold War. So what was the
Cold War?
You can look at ideology or you can look at facts, at events. The events of the
Cold War are very clear. The primary events of the Cold War were regular
intervention and subversion within the Grand Area, always with the justification
that we were defending ourselves from what John F. Kennedy called the
Ômonolithic and ruthless conspiracy" to control the world, so that's why we have
to intervene. The Russians did the same thing in their smaller domains. In fact,
the Cold War was pretty much a tacit compact between the big super power and the
little super power in which each one was pretty much free to do what it wanted
in its own domains, Russia in Eastern Europe, the US everywhere else, appealing
to the threat of the enemy. Sometimes it got out of control and came very close
to terminal nuclear war but, basically, that was the Cold War structure.
There's another principle which ought to be borne in mind which is one of the
major operative principles in world affairs right up to the present and that is
what we might call the Mafia principle. International affairs are run very much
like the Mafia. The Godfather does not permit disobedience. That's actually
fairly explicit in the Grand Area planning although not in exactly those words.
In the Grand Area, the US was to have "unquestioned power" with "military and
economic supremacy" while ensuring "limitation of any exercise of sovereignty"
by states that might interfere with its global designs. That's the Mafia
principle. Actually, that's the Iranian threat. They're trying to exercise
sovereignty and that's not permitted under the Mafia principle. You can't permit
independence. You must have obedience, and it's understandable. If somebody is
disobedient, maybe some small country or, in the Mafia, some small storekeeper,
if they get away with it, others may get the idea that they can do it too and
pretty soon you have what Henry Kissinger called a virus that spreads contagion.
If a virus might spread contagion, you have to kill the virus and inoculate
everyone else by imposing brutal dictatorships and so on. That's a core part of
Cold War history. If you look at it closely, you see that that's what it
amounted to.
Well meanwhile, the Grand Area was becoming more diversified. In 1950, at the
end of the Second World War, the United States literally had half the world's
wealth and unimaginable security and power. By 1970, that had reduced to about
25% of the world's wealth, which is still colossal but far less than 50%. The
industrial countries had reconstructed and decolonization had taken place. The
world was becoming what was called tri-polar. The US-centered North American
system, Europe based primarily on Germany and France, and the Japan-centered
developing Northeast Asian economy. Today it's gotten more diversified. The
structure is becoming more complex and much harder to control. Latin America,
for the first time in its history, is moving towards a degree of independence.
There are south/south contacts developing. Thus China now is Brazil's leading
trading partner. Also, China is intruding into the crucial Middle East region
and contracting and taking the oil.
There's a lot of discussion these days in foreign policy circles about a shift
in power in the global system with China and India becoming the new great
powers. That's not accurate. They are growing and developing but they're very
poor countries. They have enormous internal problems. There is, however, a
global shift of power: it's from the global workforce to private capital.
There's an Asian production center with China at the heart of it, largely an
assembly plant for the surrounding more advanced Asian countries -- Japan,
Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea -- which produce sophisticated technology, and
parts and components, and send them to China where they're assembled and sent
out to the United States and Europe. US corporations are doing the same thing.
They produce high technology exports to China where they are assembled and you
buy them at home as an iPod or a computer, something like that. They're called
Chinese exports but that's quite misleading. You can see it very clearly if you
look at the actual statistics. So there's a lot of concern about the US debt.
Well actually, most of the US debt is held by Japan not by China. There's
concern about the trade deficit. We purchase so much more from China than we
export to them. Meanwhile the trade deficit with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan
is going down. The reason is that Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan and so forth
are providing materials to China for them to assemble. These are counted in the
United States as imports from China, but that's completely misleading. It's the
Asian production center which is developing and US corporations and regional
advanced economies are deeply involved in it. Meanwhile the share of wealth of
the workforce globally is declining. In fact, it is declining even faster in
China, relative to the economy, than it is elsewhere. So when we look at the
world realistically, there is a global shift of power but it's not a shift to
the Chinese/Indian power displacing the United States. It's a shift from working
people all over the world to transnational capital. They are enriching
themselves. It's essentially an old story but it's taking new forms with the
availability of the global workforce. Capital is mobile and labor is not. It has
obvious consequences.
Now all of this is fine for financial institutions, and corporate managers, and
CEOs. and retail chains, but it is very harmful to populations. That's part of
the reason for many significant social problems inside the United States. I
don't have time to go into them.
To get some real insight into global policy one place to look is at Grand Area
planning during the Second World War and its implementation. Another place to
look is at the end of the Cold War.
So what happened at the end of the Cold War? In 1989 when the wall fell and the
Soviet Union collapsed, there was no more Cold War. What happened? The president
of the United States at the time was George Bush, the first George Bush. and the
Bush Administration immediately produced new plans to deal with the post-Cold
War system. The plans, in brief, were that everything would remain as it was
before but with new pretexts. So there still has to be a huge military force but
not to defend ourselves against the Russians, because they are gone. Rather now,
it was to defend ourselves -- I'm quoting -- against the "technological
sophistication" of third world powers. You're not supposed to laugh. That's what
we need a huge military force for and, if you're a well educated person,
following Orwell's principle, do not laugh. Say, "Yes, we need to defend
ourselves from the technological sophistication of third world powers," It was
necessary to maintain what's called the "defense industrial base." That's a
euphemism for high tech industry. High tech industry does not develop simply by
free market principles. The corporate system can provide for more consumer
choice but high tech develops substantially in the state sector: computers, the
Internet, and so on. It's commonly been done under the pretext of defense. But
with the Cold War over, we still have to maintain the "defense industrial base."
That is the state goal: is supporting high tech industry.
What about intervention forces? Well, the major intervention forces are in the
Middle East where the energy resources are. The post-Cold War plans said that we
must maintain these intervention forces directed at the Middle East, and then
came an interesting phrase: where the serious problems "could not be laid at the
Kremlin's door." The problems, in other words, were not caused by the Russians.
So in other words, quietly, we have been lying to you for 50 years but now the
clouds have lifted and we have to tell the truth, in part at least. The problem
was not the Russians all along. It was what is called radical nationalism,
independent nationalism, which is seeking to exercise sovereignty and control
their own resources. Now, that's intolerable all over the world because of the
Mafia principle. You can't allow that. That's still there so we still need the
intervention forces. Same in Latin America, same everywhere even though there
are no Russians.
Well, what about NATO? That's an interesting case. If you believed anything you
read during the Cold War years, you would have concluded that NATO should have
disappeared. NATO was supposed to be there to protect Europe from the Russian
hordes. OK? No more Russian hordes. What happens to NATO? Well, what happened to
NATO was that it expanded. It's expanding more right now. The details are fairly
well known. They're well studied by good scholarship. Gorbachev, the Russian
Premier, made a remarkable concession. He agreed to let a unified Germany join
NATO, a hostile military alliance. It's quite remarkable. Germany alone had
virtually destroyed Russia twice in a century. Now, he was allowing it to rearm
in a military alliance with the United States. Of course there was a quid pro
quo. He thought that there was an agreement that NATO would become a more
political organization. In fact, he was promised that by the Bush
administration. NATO would be more of a political organization and it would not
expand "one inch to the East." That was the phrase that was used. It would not
expand into East Germany or certainly not beyond. Well, Gorbachev was na•ve. He
accepted that agreement. He didn't realize that the Bush administration had not
put it into writing. It was just a verbal agreement, a gentleman's agreement,
and, if you have any sense, you don't make gentlemen's agreements with violent
super powers. Gorbachev was quite upset when he discovered that the agreement
was worthless. When NATO began immediately to expand into the East, he brought
up the agreement and Washington pointed out that there's nothing on paper, which
is true. There was nothing on paper. It was a gentleman's agreement. NATO
expanded to the East. It expanded into East Germany very quickly and, in the
Clinton years, it expanded even further into Eastern Europe ... later much more.
By now, the secretary general of NATO explains that NATO must expand further
still. NATO must take responsibility for controlling the entire global energy
system, that means pipelines, sea lanes, and sources. Just a few weeks ago,
there was an international meeting headed by Madeleine Albright, Secretary of
State under Clinton. They issued plans called NATO 2020 and they said NATO must
be prepared to operate far beyond its borders without limit, meaning it must
become a worldwide US military intervention force. So that's NATO, no longer
there to defend ourselves from the Russians but their real purpose is to control
the whole world.
Well, let me say a few words about the Israeli/Palestine conflict which
developed within this context. I've said a few words about the history. The
basic record is one of almost total US rejectionism, its refusal to join the
overall accepting of a political settlement which makes sense. There's been one
important exception, a very interesting exception. At the end of his term, in
the year 2000, Clinton recognized that the proposals that he and Israel had put
forth at Camp David had failed. He recognized that those would never be
acceptable to any Palestinians so he, therefore, changed the proposals. In
December of 2000 he produced what he called his parameters, a general framework
for agreement. It was vague but it was more forthcoming. He then gave a speech
in which he said that both sides had accepted the parameters, and both sides had
expressed reservations. They then met, Israel and Palestine, in Taba, Egypt, in
January to try to work out their disagreements and they came very close to a
total settlement. In their last press conference jointly they said that with a
little more time, they could have reached complete settlement. Well, Israel
terminated the negotiations and that was the end of that. That tells you
something. It tells you that with the US pressing both sides to join the world
to permit a political settlement, pretty much along the lines of the
international consensus, it can happen. A lot has taken place since 2001 but I
think those principles remain. I think it's quite striking to see how people who
write the history deal with this. So one of the main books about the
negotiations is by Dennis Ross, Clinton's chief negotiator. He gives a detailed
account of all the efforts of the United States, the neutral arbiter, the honest
broker, to bring the two sides together and he concludes, in the end, it failed
and it was all the fault of the Palestinians. They rejected everything. Ross is
very careful to end this book in December of 2000 just before his primary thesis
was completely refuted. It was completely refuted a few weeks later. He ended
the book there and commentators don't say anything about it. That's discipline.
If you want to be a respected intellectual, you have to understand these things.
You do not expose power, especially if you hope to join the academic world or
diplomacy. So Ross terminates the book before the thesis is refuted, and that's
accepted and is now our history, excluding the crucial reality, just as in the
case of the earlier events that I've described thus far. But in reality it's
there and that still goes on until today. So what does that leave for options
for today for the Palestinians and those concerned with Palestinian rights?
One option is that the United States will join the world as it did for a couple
of weeks in January 2001 and we'll agree to some version of the international
consensus, something like the Taba agreements. Now there's a very common view
expressed by many Palestinian groups and by many others that are sympathetic
with them holding that that's not a possibility and that there's a better
alternative. The better alternative that they're proposing would be for
Palestinian leaders to say that we'll give the key to Israel and they'll take
it. We'll give them all the occupied territories and then there will be a civil
rights struggle, an internal anti-apartheid struggle, and a struggle like that
can be won and we'll get somewhere. There are a lot of quite good people
proposing this but they are failing to notice that there is a third alternative.
A third alternative is that the US and Israel will continue doing exactly what
they're doing, meaning a version of what Ehud Olmert, when he was prime
minister, called convergence. Israel takes over everything within what they call
the separation wall, well, actually an annexation wall. They take over the water
resources, the valuable land, the suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and so on.
Israel also takes over what is called Jerusalem which is actually the huge area
of Greater Jerusalem. It takes over the Jordan Valley, more arable land. And
then it sends corridors through the remaining regions to break them up into
separated cantons. So there's one east of Jerusalem, almost to Jericho,
virtually bisecting and the West Bank, there's are separate ones further north.
Now, what about the Palestinians? They are just left out of this. Very few will
be incorporated in the valuable areas that Israel will take over, so there won't
be any civil rights struggle. There won't be what's called a "demographic
problem": too many Arabs in a Jewish state. The rest of the Palestinians will
leave, or will be left to rot in the hills, apart from a privileged elite.
They're not part of what Israel is taking over. What's left to the Palestinians
they can do whatever they want with. If they want to call it a state, then fine
call it a state. In fact, the first prime minister to make this proposal was
Netanyahu. He's the first Israeli prime minister to say, Yes, there can be a
Palestinian state, that was in 1996. He came into office in 1996. He replaced
Shimon Peres. As Peres left office, he said that there will never be a
Palestinian state. Netanyahu came in and his administration said: Well,
Palestinians can call whatever fragments are left to them a state if they want
or they can call them "fried chicken." That comes right up to the present. Just
a few weeks ago, Silvan Shalom, who is the vice premier and the regional
development minister, responded to Palestinian initiatives about creating the
basis for a state and when asked what he thought about it, he said, That's fine
if they want to call what we leave them a state that's fine. It will be a state
without borders just like Israel, also a state without borders. Of course, we
will have everything of value and they will have fried chicken but that's OK and
that should stop the pressure against us for a diplomatic settlement and
everything will be wonderful.
Well, that's an improvement over the past. If you go back to say 1990, the
position of the Israeli government and the US government, James Baker and George
Bush, was the Palestinians do have a state, namely Jordan, and they cannot have
an additional Palestinian state. That was the official position since 1990. Now,
it's slightly improved. The US and Israel agree that Jordan isn't a Palestinian
state and the Palestinians can have fried chicken, fragments of territory which
the US and Israel will assign. Now that's the alternative.
What about the civil rights struggle, the anti-apartheid struggle? That's not an
alternative. The operative choices are a two-state settlement in accord with the
international consensus and international law, perhaps along the lines almost
reached at Taba, or "fried chicken" while Israel takes what it wants, as it can,
as long as it has unfailing US support.
Well, I will finish by saying just one word about the likely prospects. There
are many analogies made between Israel and South Africa. Most of them are pretty
dubious, I think. For example, Ariel Sharon, the architect of the settlement
policy, called the fragments to be left to the Palestinians "Bantustans," as in
the South African apartheid state. But these are not Bantustans. That's
misleading. It's much worse than South Africa. White South Africa needed the
Black population. That was their workforce. 85% of the population were Blacks so
they had to take care of them just the way slave owners had to take care of
slaves, and so the extreme South African racists provided some support for the
Bantustans. In contrast, Israel does not need the Palestinians, doesn't want
them. So if they wither away like the leaves of autumn, the way the Native
Americans did, then that's fine. If they go somewhere else, that's fine. They're
not going to take any responsibility for them. They don't need them. So it's
worse than apartheid. They're not Bantustans. That analogy doesn't work and many
others don't either, but there is one analogy that I think is correct, and it
never seems to be discussed.
Fifty years ago, White South Africa was beginning to recognize that it was
becoming a pariah state. It was being isolated from the world. It was getting
less support. It was increasingly hated by everyone. At that point, the South
African foreign minister spoke to the American ambassador in South Africa and he
pointed out to him that in the United Nations everyone's voting against us but
it doesn't matter because you and I both know that there's only one vote in the
United Nations. That's yours, and as long as you back us up, it doesn't matter
what the world thinks. That's a recognition of the Mafia principle, realism in
world affairs, and he proved to be correct. If you look at what happened in the
following decades, opposition to South Africa continued to grow and develop. By
about 1980, there was a sanctions and divestment campaign. Western corporations
began pulling out. Sanctions were imposed by the US congress. But nothing
changed. The reason was that Washington kept supporting South Africa. Ronald
Reagan, who was president, violated the congressional sanctions, for a reason:
the war on terror that he declared on coming into office in 1981. He was
conducting his war on terror, and South African Whites were under threat of
terror from the African National Congress, Nelson Mandela's ANC. In 1988,
Washington declared the ANC to be one of the "more notorious terrorist groups"
in the world. It really didn't matter what the rest of the world thought, in
fact, even what the American people thought, or what Congress thought. If you
don't like it, that's fine but we're going to keep on and, by that time, the
late 1980s, White South Africa looked absolutely impregnable. They had won
military victories and were becoming richer. Everything looked fine and they
were very satisfied. Two or three years later, the United States changed its
policy, and apartheid collapsed. When the godfather changes his policy, things
change. The outcome is not very beautiful but it was undoubtedly a major victory
to eliminate apartheid, though there is still a long way to go. Nelson Mandela
also won a personal victory, a bit more slowly. He was removed from Washington's
list of people supporting terror only a year ago, so for the past year he's been
unable to travel to the United States without a special dispensation.
Essentially, that's what happened and I think this could happen with Israel. If
the United States changes policy and decides to join the world, Israel will have
no option but to go along. That shouldn't be the end of the line, any more than
ending apartheid is the end of the line for South Africa. I have always believed
and still think there are better solutions than the international consensus on a
two-state settlement, but in the real world, that is probably an indispensable
first step to any future progress towards a more just outcome.
Now, there is, as I mentioned, a good deal of complexity in the international
system. There are organizations developing that are independent of the United
States. There are countries that are maintaining their own sovereignty like
China, for example, and there is a good deal of diversification. There are even
steps towards a degree of independence within the US-dominated domains. Take
Egypt, the second largest recipient of US military aid, after Israel. There were
meetings a couple of weeks ago about nuclear proliferation, international
meetings. Egypt, speaking for the 118 states of the non-aligned movement, took a
very strong and principled stand on a crucial issue: establishing a nuclear
weapons-free zone in the Middle East. Well, that is very hard for anyone to
object to in principle. It would mitigate or end whatever potential nuclear
threat is posed by Iran, supposedly the main US foreign policy concern. Of
course, it would have to involve Israel and US forces in the region so the US
was kind of stuck. They can't come out against it but they couldn't come out in
favor of it, so they formulated a way to evade the dilemma, counting on the
intellectual classes to conceal what was happening, following Orwell's
principle. The Obama administration stated its support for a nuclear
weapons-free zone but said that this isn't the right time for it. We have to
wait until there is a comprehensive peace settlement. But that can be delayed
indefinitely by US-Israeli rejectionism, as in the past, so the threat of a
nuclear weapons-free zone can be delayed indefinitely too. So far, Washington
has gotten away with this, but the issue can be pressed by popular movements
that take an independent stance.
Now, there are many other points where the prevailing system of domination,
though powerful, is nevertheless vulnerable. There are many possibilities open
to people to influence and determine the fate of the future.
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