[Peace-discuss] Strategic assets & liabilities

[C. G. Estabrook]

An interesting blog/article, e.g.:

"...Israel and the US have long supplied Turkey with sophisticated military
equipment. Yet, as Medvedev arrived, the typically pro-Western Turkish military
announced that it had installed anti-aircraft batteries on the Syrian border as
'a message' to deter Israel or the US from entering Turkish airspace during a
potential attack on Syria or Iran...

"And so the longstanding rule in the Middle East that 'what we say goes' is
beginning to change, with resistance to US dictates increasing as its global
power declines. Syrian President Bashar Assad recognized this fact over the
weekend during the visit of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to Syria as
the Israel Defense Forces declared a massive military drill and Hezbollah
expressed its readiness for war in response. He urged the US and Europe to
accept the Lula-Erdogan deal and 'pleaded with the West to restrain the Jewish
state,' saying, 'the West must understand that the region has changed,' and that
the use of Israel as an attack dog to terrorize and beat the region into
submission is 'no longer acceptable.'"

On 6/12/10 12:01 PM, David Green wrote:
> http://rationalmanifesto.blogspot.com/2010/06/third-world-diplomatic-cooperation-and_05.html
>
>
>In other words, to respond again to Judt's notion of S.A. and Israel as
> "strategic liabilities," the point is that the resources of Saudi Arabia and
> the military of Israel make them assets, which is axiomatic. The actions of
> their leaders can make those leaders strategic liabilities, in a worst-case
> scenario. It's inconceivalbe that S.A. would not be an asset, because that's
> where the oil is. And if Turkey becomes a liability--that is, if their
> leaders don't do what we want them to--then it becomes even less likely that
> Israel, whatever its outrageous actions, would become a liability. "As
> planners have acknowledged, such an approach leaves the US and its allied
> regimes "militarily strong but politically weak." It is natural that a power
> in such a position would not be willing to entrust its hegemony with the
> whims of the natives and its power of persuasion and would instead prefer
> violence. In the Middle East, the US relationship with Israel has served
> just this purpose. As elsewhere in the world, the danger has always been that
> an independent, nationalist movement would take root, challenging US
> dominance and emboldening others to follow suit, a threat that has not been
> taken lightly in Washington. As they constantly puzzle over the inability of
> the United States to secure support for its objectives among the locals,
> planners and strategists have inevitably reverted to the use of brutal,
> overwhelming violence instead - a solution easily supplied by Israel. "The
> Lula-Erdogan agreement represents an important and major defeat for these
> longstanding efforts to suppress democracy and freedom in the third world."
> DG

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