Yves here. Michael Hudson gives critically important historical detail on how the US got so deeply in bed with Israel and other unsavory allies like jihadists and Banderites in Ukraine. The US realized in the wake of Vietnam that it would never be able to field a large army, since that would require a draft, which was politically toxic. So we would have to rely on proxies to do our dirty work. As Hudson put it, \u201c- you really need a country whose spirit is one of hatred towards the other\u201d. <\/p>\n
Hudson was party to how Scoop Jackson brought Zionists into the government under the sponsorship of Herman Kahn in the early 1960s.<\/p>\n
By Nima of Dialogue Works. Originally published at his channel<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
NIMA: So nice to have you back, Richard and Michael. And let me just manage this. And let\u2019s get started with the main question here that would be: why is the United States not interested in putting an end to the conflict in the Middle East and in Ukraine? Which we know in both of these cases, they\u2019re capable of doing this.<\/p>\n
And before going to the answer of this question, I\u2019m going to play a clip that the foreign minister of Lebanon istalking with Christiane Amanpour about his point of view and why they couldn\u2019t reach a ceasefire.<\/p>\n
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: \u2026on Israel, I spoke with Lebanon\u2019s Foreign Minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, who\u2019s in Washington to meet with American officials and he joined us for his first interview since the latest escalations. Foreign minister welcome back to the program.<\/p>\n
ABDALLAH BOU HABIB: Thank you. Thank you.<\/p>\n
CHRISTIANE: Things have reached a major crisis in your country since we last spoke.<\/p>\n
And I want to ask you, you are in the United States right now. You know that several of the administration officials agree with Israel\u2019s ground incursion into your country. What do you make of that as you\u2019re in Washington trying to get support for a ceasefire?<\/p>\n
ABDALLAH: Well, they also agreed on the Biden-Macron statement that calls for a ceasefire and that calls also the implementation for 21 days ceasefire. And then Mr. Hochstein would go to Lebanon and negotiate a ceasefire. And they told us that Mr. Netanyahu agreed on this. And so we also got the agreement of Hezbollah on that.<\/p>\n
And you know what happened since then. That was the day we saw you in New York.<\/p>\n
CHRISTIANE: I know. And you were talking about going into the Security Council for this ceasefire. And barely 24 hours later, the head of Hezbollah was assassinated. Are you saying Hassan Nasrallah had agreed to a ceasefire just moments before he was assassinated?<\/p>\n
ADBALLAH: He agreed, he agreed. Yes, yes. We agreed completely; Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire by consulting with Hezbollah. The Speaker, Mr. Berri, consulted with Hezbollah and we informed the Americans and the French that was what happened. And they told us that Mr. Netanyahu also agreed on the statement that was issued by both presidents.<\/p>\n
DIMA: Yeah. Here is the question here, because if you remember with the assassination of Ismail Haniyehwhile they were talking with Ismail Haniyeh, negotiating with Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar, they assassinated him. And right after they reached some sort of agreement with the government in Lebanon and just Hezbollah said, okay, we\u2019re going to go with that plan, they assassinated him. And the question right now is here, why is this with the United States, Michael? Go ahead.<\/p>\n
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the United States doesn\u2019t want to seek fire because it wants to take over the entire Near East. It wants to use Israel as the cat\u2019s paw. Everything that\u2019s happened today was planned out just 50 years ago back in 1974 and 1973. I sat in on meetings with Arad, who became Netanyahu\u2019s chief military advisor after heading Mossad. And the whole strategy was worked out essentially by the Defense Department, by neoliberals, and almost in a series of stages that I\u2019ll explain. Scoop Jackson is the main name to remember. Scoop Jackson was the ultra right wing neo-con was sponsored them all. And he was the head of the Democratic National Committee in 1960 and then worked with military advisors. I was with Herman Khan, the model for Dr. Strange Love, at the Hudson Institute during these years, and I said in on meetings and I\u2019ll describe them, but I want to describe how the whole strategy that led to the United States today, not wanting peace, wanting to take over the whole Near East, took shape gradually. And this was all spelled out \u2013 I wrote a book about the meetings that I had a work college with the White House and various Air Force and Army think tanks back in the 1970s.<\/p>\n
The starting point for all the U.S. strategy here was that democracies no longer can field a domestic army with a military draft. America is not in a position able to really field enough of an army to invade a country and without invading a country you can\u2019t really take it over. You can bomb it but that just is going to incite resistance. But you can\u2019t take it over. The Vietnam War showed that any attempted draft would be met by so much anti-draft resistance taking the form of an anti-war statement that no country whose leaders have to be elected can ever take that role again. Now it\u2019s true that America sent a small army into Iraq, and there are 800 U.S. military bases around the world, but this wasn\u2019t a fighting army \u2013 it was an army of occupation without really much resistance of the kind that Ukraine is experiencing with Russia for instance, as we\u2019re seeing there. That situation in the Near East is very different.<\/p>\n
The anti war students showed that Lyndon Johnson in 1968 had to withdraw from running for election because everywhere he\u2019d go there would be demonstrations against him to stop the war. No such demonstrations are occurring today needless to say. So I won\u2019t call the U.S. or the European Union democracies, but there is no government that has to be elected that is able to send their own soldiers into a big war. And what that means is that today\u2019s tactics are limited to bombing, not occupying countries. They are limited to what the Israeli forces can drop the bombs on Gaza and Hezbollah and try to knock out things, but neither the Israeli army, nor any other army, would really be able to invade and try to take over a country in the way that armies did in World War II.<\/p>\n
Everything has changed now and there can\u2019t be another occupation by the United States of foreign countries,given today\u2019s alliances with Russia and Iran and China. So, this was recognized 50 years ago and it seemed at that time that the U.S.-backed wars were going to have to be scaled down \u2013 but that hasn\u2019t happened. And the reason is the United States had a fallback position: it was going to rely on foreign troops to do the fighting as proxies instead of itself. That was a solution to get a force.<\/p>\n
The first example was to create the Wahhabi Jihad fighters in Afghanistan; al-Qaeda. Jimmy Carter mobilized them against the secular Afghan interests and Carter justified this by saying, \u201cWell, yes, they\u2019re Muslims but after all, we all believe in God.\u201d<\/p>\n
So the answer to the secular state of Afghanistan was Wahhabi fanaticism and jihads, and the United States realized that in order to have an army that\u2019s willing to fight to the last member of its country \u2013 the last Afghan, the last Israeli, the last Ukrainian \u2013 you really need a country whose spirit is one of hatred towards the other, aspirit very different from the American and European spirit. Well, Brzezinski was the grand planner who did all that. The Sunni Jihad fighters became America\u2019s foreign legion in the Middle East and that includes Iraq, Syria and Iran and also Muslim states going up to Russia\u2019s border.<\/p>\n
And the aim of the United States was oil was the center of this policy. That meant the United States had to secure the Near East and there were two proxy armies for it. And these two armies fought together as allies down to today. On the one hand, the al-Qaeda jihadis, on the other hand, their managers, the Israelis, hand inhand.<\/p>\n
And they\u2019ve done other fighting so that the United States doesn\u2019t have to do it. The foreign policy has backed Israel and Ukraine, providing them with arms, bribing their leaders enormous sums of money, and electronic satellite guidance for everything they\u2019re doing. But the United States has been able to avoid all the APROGRAM???(10:20) \u00a0President Biden keeps telling Netanyahu, \u201cWell, we\u2019ve just given you a brand new bunker, cluster bombs and huge bombs \u2013 please drop them on your enemies, but do it gently. We don\u2019t want you to hurt anybody when you drop these bombs.\u201d Well, that\u2019s the hypocrisy \u2013 it\u2019s a good cop bad cop. Biden and the United States for the last 50 years has posed as a good cop criticizing the bad cops that it\u2019s been backing. Bad cop ISIS and al-Qaeda, bad cop Netanyahu.<\/p>\n
But when all of this strategy was being put together, Herman Khan\u2019s great achievement was to convince the U.S.Empire builders that the key to achieving their control in the Middle East was to rely on Israel as its foreign legion. And that arms-length arrangement enabled the United States to play the role, as I said, of the good cop. Designating Israel to play its role, and Israel has organized and supplied al-Nusra, al-Qaeda while the United States pretends to denounce them. And it\u2019s all part of a plan that\u2019s been backed by the military, the State Department, and the National Security Operation.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s why the State Department has turned over management of U.S. diplomacy to Zionists, seemingly distinguishing Israeli behavior from U.S. empire building. But in a nutshell, the Israelis have joined al-Qaeda and ISIS as troops, as America\u2019s foreign legion.<\/p>\n
NIMA: Richard, can you hear us? Richard. Can you hear us?<\/p>\n
RICHARD D. WOLFF: I can.<\/p>\n
NIMA: Yeah. Go ahead, Richard.<\/p>\n
RICHARD: I was fading in and out.<\/p>\n
NIMA: Can you hear us right now?<\/p>\n
RICHARD: Yes, now I can.<\/p>\n
NIMA: Yeah. As you were talking about, the question was: why is the United States not interested in putting an end to the conflicts in the Middle East and in Ukraine? And Michael was pointing out the endgame of the United States in this type of behavior. And what\u2019s your take right now?<\/p>\n
RICHARD: Well, I think in the case of Ukraine, at this point, it is merely a kind of vague, left-over desire to weaken Russia. It isn\u2019t working very well, so my guess is it\u2019ll be over pretty soon. And in the case of Israel, I think, Michael is right, that this is a deal: the Israelis, hopefully, will give the Americans some kind of leverage over what happens in the Middle East, that they wouldn\u2019t have if they didn\u2019t have Israel. Otherwise I do not understand why the United States allows its policies to be made by Mr. Netanyahu. We have the strange situation that the people holding back Mr. Netanyahu are Israelis, not Americans, which given that it\u2019s two different countries is rather strange, Americans feel more difficulty in opposing Netanyahu than Israelis do. But I don\u2019t want to take away from the fact that there is a mutuality of interest in shaping the Middle East and hoping to be able to do it.<\/p>\n
But I don\u2019t think this is working very well. And I think my suspicion is that they are going, particularly after the election, to do a lot of rethinking about all of this, because this is not going well.<\/p>\n
NIMA: Yeah. And Michael, INFLUENCE???(14:25)<\/p>\n
MICHAEL: Yeah, I think we can explain it more of the context. Because after I mentioned that the U.S.realized it needs foreign troops, it also realized that the only kind of full-scale war that democracy could afford is atomic war. And the problem is that that only works against adversaries that can\u2019t retaliate.<\/p>\n
But in recent years, U.S. military policy has been so aggressive that it\u2019s driven other countries to band together and back their allies with nuclear powers. So all of the countries of the world now are associated with nuclear backups. And we\u2019ve discussed that before.<\/p>\n
The result is that today\u2019s military alliances mean that any attempt to use nuclear weapons is going to risk a full-scale nuclear war that\u2019s going to destroy all the participants and the rest of the world as well. So what is left for the United States? Well, I think there\u2019s only one form of non-atomic war that democracies can afford, and that\u2019s terrorism. And I think you should look at Ukraine and Israel as the terrorist alternative to atomic war. I think Andrei Martyanov recently has explained that that\u2019s the alternative to atomic war. And this, unless NATO-West is willing to risk atomic war, which it doesn\u2019t seem to be willing to, then terrorism is the only alternative left to it. And that is the basis of the regime change plans that the United States has in countries bordering Russia, China, and other countries that it views as adversaries. That\u2019s what we\u2019re seeing in Ukraine and above all in Israel, as it\u2019s fight against the Palestinian population in Gaza.<\/p>\n
The whole idea of the Ukrainians and Israelis is to bomb civilians, not military targets, but civilians. It\u2019s a fight literally to destroy the population under an ideology of genocide. And that is absolutely central. It\u2019s not an accident \u2013 it\u2019s built in, built in to the program. And Lebanon, even though it\u2019s largely Christian, is part of that.<\/p>\n
So the other weapon that the United States has is economic. And that\u2019s oil and grain \u2013 it was decided way back in 1973-74. That was right the time of the oil war, when oil prices were quadrupled in response to the United States quadrupling its grain prices. So the United States said, well, \u201cthe way to avoid a war, terrorism, regime change, is just to starve countries into submission \u2013 either by cutting off their food supply or cutting off their oil supply. Because without oil, how can they run their industry, heat their homes and produce electricity?\u201d<\/p>\n
And oil is the largest private sector monopoly in the country. The seven sisters controlled the oil trade ever since World War I, and England have been their coordinator.<\/p>\n
And after the oil war, Saudi Arabia promised \u2013 sort of was told, \u201cyou can raise your oil prices as much as you want, but you have to keep all of your expert earnings in the United States. You can buy treasury bills, you can buy corporate bonds, you can buy stocks, but you cannot use more than a portion of it for your own development; you have to turn it over to the U.S. financial sector. So Saudi Arabia became the key and the result was the petrodollar that was put into U.S. banks and just increased the liquidity, the whole growth of third world debt that exploded in the 1970s, leading to the debt crisis of the \u201880s was all of that. And basically the United States realized, \u201cokay, we want to extend control to conquer the Near East, conquer countries that have vital raw materials; we want to use the World Bank to make sure that global South countries don\u2019t feed themselves \u2013 we\u2019ll give money for plantation export crops, not for food.\u201d<\/p>\n
The condition of foreign Latin America and Africa being an ally of the United States was not to grow their own grain and food, but to depend on U.S. grain export. You know, that\u2019s the sort of economic plan that goes together with the military plan to be the organizing force of the American empire.<\/p>\n
RICHARD: Let me introduce a couple of other considerations, just to add to the stew here. It is my understanding that many forces in the American political establishment interpret the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, \u201890 and \u201991 as the fruit of a long-term U.S. policy that included the arms race and other mechanisms where the Soviet Union could not afford the level of military activity that the United States could afford, but for political and military reasons could not afford not to do it.<\/p>\n
And so the Soviet Union tried to ride that either-or and collapsed between the demands of the nuclear arms race, the cost of their occupation of Afghanistan. They couldn\u2019t do it. And they scrimped here and there and they didn\u2019t fulfill quite the consumer growth plan that they had promised their people and they couldn\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n
If you believe that that\u2019s what went on, then you might try to understand that what they\u2019re doing with Russia now is the same policy. In other words, it\u2019s again the arms race, but this time not to fight in Afghanistan, but to fight in Ukraine. Fight them there, draw them out, cost them a fortune and assume that they cannot manage all that they\u2019re doing and that it\u2019s much easier for you, being a richer \u2013 much, much richer \u2013 country to do this than it is for them.<\/p>\n
And the big mistake here was not to understand that the Russians were acutely aware of what their shortcomings were and have worked very hard in the last 25 years not to be in that position again. There\u2019s an aphorism in military thinking: \u201cEverybody fights the last war.\u201d That you got to fight this one, not the last one. The winner of the last one thinks they found the magic bullet. The loser of the last one realizes they have to do something different. Russia is surprising everybody by the extent of its military capability and its military preparation. They\u2019re winning the war in Ukraine because of it. That\u2019s a miscalculation here.<\/p>\n
Okay, that\u2019s the first thing. And I suspect that not only is Ukraine re-running the old strategy, but that they hope that by imposing a kind of arms race on the Middle East, partly an arms race between Israel and the Arabs and the Islamics, but also arms races where they could between Shiite and Sunni.<\/p>\n
Remember, the war in Iraq and Iran, by splitting them up, by buying off Abu Dhabi or Dubai, or all of the machinations that are going on \u2013 they hope that they can fund their ally -Israel- and exhaust all the enemies of Israel, forcing them eventually into some sort of deal with Israel. And Israel has to be very, very careful: it needs to appease the United States to make these deals, but it also has to try to make sure these deals don\u2019t work out, because it wants to be the American agent in that part of the world.<\/p>\n
And so my last point. Here\u2019s another similarity between Israel and Ukraine: Mr Zelenskyy in the Ukraine, and Mr. Netanyahu in Israel have no hope of prevailing, given the odds against them \u2013 the sheer numbers. And let\u2019s remember, Americans are not understanding: it\u2019s not just now that Israel is at war with Hamas \u2013 whom they have not yet defeated in the Gaza \u2013 and they are at war with Hezbollah on the West Bank and in Lebanon, bu they are at war with the Houthis in Yemen and they are at war with the Iranians behind all of that, and they are at war, more or less, with the Lebanese.<\/p>\n
And then there are the Shiite militias, which are very close to Iran, and are very powerful in both Iraq and Syria. Well, I got news for you: that\u2019s too many enemies. The Houthis recently showed they can send missiles into Israel. My guess is all of the others I\u2019ve just named either can also do that already or will soon be able to do that.<\/p>\n
Israel can\u2019t fight five wars at the same time. It\u2019s a small country. God knows what has happened to its economy, which has effectively shut down in order to fight a war. Their only hope is to bring the United States in; it\u2019s the only hope for Ukraine. Otherwise, Ukraine will lose quickly and Israel will lose slowly.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how it looks to me and that\u2019s for me what governs the hysteria around trying to figure out what to do. But it leaves me also with a question: Why is Israel unable or unwilling to cut deals? My sense is, the Egyptians would cut them. And my sense is, many of its neighbors would at least in principle be willing to sit down and at least try to reach some. And then Israel, instead of expanding geographically would go up, build high rises. What are you doing? Stealing land from Palestinian peasants. What are you doing? Is your future agricultural? Don\u2019t be silly \u2013 it isn\u2019t; it doesn\u2019t need to be.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s as if we were suddenly confronted with Luxembourg demanding pieces of Belgium or Netherlands or France or something because they had to expand. They\u2019ve been perfectly happy building vertical rather than horizontal. For many, many, many decades longer than Israel has been concerned. So what is this?<\/p>\n
Anyway, I thought these would be, you know, I\u2019m trying to learn how to think about this in ways that are not constricted by the way the mainstream media analysts do, which is useless.<\/p>\n
MICHAEL: Well Richard, you\u2019ve described exactly what\u2019s going on and you\u2019ve shown how fighting to the last Ukrainian is now being superseded by fighting to the last Israeli. Why are they doing this? Well, the answer is: If they were peace \u2013 if Egypt and the other countries that you mentioned were to make a peaceful arrangement with Israel \u2013 then there\u2019d be no war. And with no war, how could the United States take over the other countries in the region? The U.S. policy, as I said, 50 years ago, and I\u2019ll go into that more now, was based on the U.S. actually taking over all of these countries, again using Israel as the battering ram, as what the army called \u201cAmerica\u2019s landed aircraft carrier\u201d there. Well, all this began to take place in the 1960s with Henry \u201cScoop\u201d Jackson.<\/p>\n
It initially, Israel didn\u2019t really play a role in the U.S. plan. Jackson simply hated communism, he hated the Russians, and he had got a lot of support within the Democratic Party. He was a senator from Washington State, and that was the center of military-industrial complex.<\/p>\n
He was called, nicknamed, \u201cThe Senator from Boeing,\u201d for his support for the military-industrial complex. And the military-industrial complex backed him for becoming chair of the Democratic National Committee. Well, he was backed by Herman Kahn \u2013 as I said, the model for Dr. Strangelove \u2013 who became the key strategist for U.S.military hegemony and the Hudson Institute \u2013 no relation to me, an ancestor discovered the river we were both named after. They used the Hudson Institute and its predecessor, the Rand Corporation, where Herman came from, as it\u2019s major long-term planner.<\/p>\n
And I was brought in to discuss the dollar exchange rate and the balance of payments. My field was international finance. Well, Herman set up the institute to be a training ground for Mossad and other Israeli agencies. There were numerous Mossad people there, and I made two trips to Asia, as I mentioned, with Uzi Arad, who became, as I said, the head of Mossad.<\/p>\n
So we had discussions about just what was going to happen for the long term, and they were about just what\u2019s happening today. Herman told me over dinner one night that the most important thing in his life was Israel. And that\u2019s why he couldn\u2019t get military information even from U.S. allies, like Canada, because he said he wouldn\u2019t pledge allegiance to their country or even the United States, when he swear loyalty to any other country. And he described the virtue of Jackson for Zionists was precisely that he was not Jewish, but a defender of the dominant U.S. military complex and an opponent of the arms control system that was underway. Jackson was fighting all the arms control \u2013 \u201cwe\u2019ve got to have war.\u201d And he proceeded to stuff the State Department and other U.S. agencies, with neo-cons, who was planned from the beginning for a permanent worldwide war, and this takeover of government policy was led by Jackson\u2019s former senate aids.<\/p>\n
These senate aids were Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearl, Douglas Fife, and others who were catapulted into the commanding heights of the State Department and more recently the National Security Council. The Jackson-Vanik amendment to the U.S. Trade Act of 1974 became the model for subsequent sanctions against the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n
The claim was it limited Jewish immigration and other human rights. So right then, the State Department realized: here is a group of people who we can use as the theoreticians and the executors of the U.S. policy that we want \u2013 they both want to take over all of the Arab countries.<\/p>\n
On one occasion, I\u2019ve brought my mentor, Terrence McCarthy, to the Hudson Institute, to talk about the Islamic worldview, and every two sentences, Uzi would interrupt: \u201cNo, no, we\u2019ve got to kill them all.\u201d And other people, members of the Institute, were also just talking continually about killing Arabs.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think there were any non-Jewish Americans that had that visceral hatred of Islam that the Zionists had, or also the visceral hatred of Russia, specifically for anti-Semitism of past centuries, most of which was in Ukraine and Kiev, by the way.<\/p>\n
Well, that was 50 years ago, and these sanctions that Jackson introduced, the U.S. Trade, became the prototypes for today\u2019s sanctions against all the countries that the neo-cons viewed as adversaries. Joe Lieberman was in the tradition of the Jackson Democrats \u2013 the word for them \u2013 the pro-Zionist Cold War hawks with this hatred of Russia, and that made Israel the cat\u2019s paw for these Cold Warriors.<\/p>\n
They were completely different from most of my Jewish friends, who I grew up with in the 1950s. The Jewish population that I know were all assimilated \u2013 they were successful middle-class people. That was not true of the people Jackson brought in. They did not want to be assimilated, and they said just what Netanyahu said earlierthis year, that \u201cthe enemy of Zionism are the secular Jews who want to assimilate \u2013 you can\u2019t have both.\u201d This policy of the 1970s has split Judaism into these two camps: assimilationists, who are for peace and the Cold Warriors, who were for war. And the Cold Warrios were nurtured and financed by the United States \u2013 the Defense Department gave a big grant of over $100 million to the Jackson Institute to help work out essentially race-hatred military policies to use to spur this anti-Islamic hatred throughout the Near East. It\u2019s not a pretty sight.<\/p>\n
There are not many people around today that were there then, and to remember how all of this was occurring, but what we\u2019re seeing is, as I said, a charade that somehow what Israel is doing is \u201call Netanyahu\u2019s fault, all the fault of the neo-cons there,\u201d and yet from the very beginning they were promoted, supported with huge amounts of money, all of the bombs they needed, all the armaments they needed, all the funding they needed, and Israel is a country whose economy needs foreign exchange in order to keep its currency solvent. All of that was given to them precisely to do exactly what they\u2019re doing today. So when Biden pretended to say, \u201ccan\u2019t there be two-state solution?\u201d No, there can\u2019t be a two-state solution because Netanyahu said, \u201cwe hate the Gazans, we hate the Palestinians, we hate the Arabs \u2013 there cannot be a two-state solution and here\u2019s my map,\u201d before the United Nations, \u201chere\u2019s Israel: there\u2019s no one who\u2019s not Jewish in Israel \u2013 we\u2019re a Jewish state\u201d \u2013 he comes right out and says it.<\/p>\n
This could not have been said explicitly 50 years ago. That would have been shocking, but it was being said by the neo-cons who were brought in from the beginning to do exactly what they\u2019re doing today. To act as America\u2019s proxy, to conquer the oil-producing countries and make it part of greater Israel as much of a satellite of the United States that England or Germany or Japan have become. The idea that they will continue the U.S.policy to receive all the support they need has become a precondition for their own solvency that, as Richard has just said, looks like it\u2019s not working anymore. It isn\u2019t solvent \u2013 there\u2019s no solution to the black hole that Israel\u2019s painted itself into.<\/p>\n
And yet, there\u2019s no willingness to have a single state because Biden and the entire national security council -Congress, and the military, and especially the military industrial complex, says there cannot be any common living between Palestinians and Israelis anymore than there can be in Ukraine, Ukrainians speakers and Russian speakers in the same country. It\u2019s exactly the same, it\u2019s following exactly the same policy and all of this is planned and sponsored by the United States and funded with enormous amounts of money.<\/p>\n
NIMA: Yeah, Richard.<\/p>\n
RICHARD: Yeah, let\u2019s take a look at this from the Israeli Zionist perspective because it takes two to tango:whatever the American goals were, they also have to somehow mesh with what the Israelis -at least those in power- are trying to do or else it doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n
Put yourself in the position of a Zionist: you\u2019ve left the European Asian origins. You\u2019ve left and you\u2019ve resettled thanks to the Balfour Declaration and the British Imperialists. They gave you other people\u2019s land there in the Middle East in Palestine. Fundamental recognition: the independent existence of a state of Israel is fragile.<\/p>\n
It is logical to understand, if you\u2019re a Zionist, that given the disagreement of large numbers of Jews around the world with the whole idea of a country and the fact that the majority of Jews of the world didn\u2019t go to Israel even when they could have. They know that their support from the rest of the Jewish community is mixed.<\/p>\n
They also know that the only country that could sustain them, that they could rely on after the war in Europe \u2013 the Second World War \u2013 was the United States. It was certainly the one they would want to rely on, because it came out of the war basically richer than it went in with no competitor. Why would you choose England or France, even if it were possible, if you could have the United States? Okay, now they have to worry \u2013 and I believe they do, deeply \u2013 that sooner or later, the United States, for its own reasons, will realize that the better bet for the future is on the Arabs, not the Israelis, because the Arabs are many and the Israelis are few, and the wealth gap between them is not working in Israel\u2019s favor. It\u2019s going the other way.<\/p>\n
A few weeks ago I learned about a meeting that was held not so long ago. In Beijing, the Chinese government invited all of the factions involved in the Palestinian movement to send representatives for a meeting to unite them all \u2013 that included Hamas, Hezbollah, and a whole bunch of others. And they had those meetings in the sponsorship of China. That\u2019s got to worry Mr. Netanyahu, that\u2019s got to worry him a lot.<\/p>\n
Why? Not because of some fanciful motion that the Chinese would enter. They\u2019re not going to do that. But that the Chinese, in their complicated negotiation with the United States, will eventually come to agreements by sacrificing somebody else and getting along with each other that way.<\/p>\n
How do I know it? Because it\u2019s the subtext of half of Europe\u2019s anxiety \u2013 that Europe will be the fall guy, that Europe will be carved up in the interests of the United States and China, much as Europe carved up Africa in the interests of its conflicts. So now the Israelis desperately need\u2026 what?<\/p>\n
They need an ongoing economic, political, and military support from the United States. And they will be willing to do anything and everything to secure it. If you remember, not that many years ago, there were heavy rumors that the Iran-Contra scandal was brokered by Israelis; that secret support for the apartheid regime in South Africa was coming from Israel. Recently there was a claim \u2013 I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s true \u2013 that the Russians discovered a Israeli mercenary operation within the Ukrainian army. Okay, I\u2019m not surprised at any of that. That\u2019s what a country like Israel offers: it will be the bad guy; it will say the unsayable; it will advocate for the United States; it will take the heat, including the rage of the Arab world and the rage of the Islamic world. Because if it weren\u2019t focused on Israel, where the hell do you think it would be focused? Here. 9\/11 happened here. It was celebrated around the Islamic world for that reason. So there\u2019s what the French would call \u201cun mariage de convenance.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a marriage of convenience here between the Zionists who feel that they are dependent on the United States \u2013 and they are. That\u2019s why their major push diplomatically in the United States of their personnel is not in the Jewish community \u2013 they don\u2019t get the support they want \u2013 it\u2019s in the evangelical community. They found that scriptural arrangement in which when Jesus returns, he has to find the Jews in charge of the Holy Land. Oh good, the Jews discovered that in that New Testament story they could build an alliance. The biggest festivals every year of Israeli films are held in mega-churches of the Protestant faith in this country, not in synagogues. What the hell is going on? The Israelis are desperate to have support here. And they\u2019re constantly frightened \u2013 the very evangelicals who they counted on are going more towards Trump , and they\u2019re worried about that. Right?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the irony: the Jews go more the other way, the Jews seem more interested in helping Ukraine, the secular, the non-Zionists. So this is a constantly shifting scenario. But my guess is, and Michael, maybe you know about this, my guess is that there are voices \u2013 no matter how strong Henry Jackson was or his progeny had become -that there are also voices pretty high up that keep wondering out loud whether the United States isn\u2019t betting on the wrong horse in the Middle East. And whether maybe there\u2019s someone you can find to do the job better than the Israelis Zionists.<\/p>\n
The minute that happens, Mr. Netanyahu disappears. And the person who worries a lot about that is Mr. and Mrs. Netanyahu.<\/p>\n
MICHAEL: Well, you\u2019ve described exactly the dynamics that are as work.<\/p>\n
And for the last few weeks, Nima has had numerous guests on who have been explaining that the opponents of all this are the U.S. military, because every war game, according to his guests, that has been done, the U.S. loses in the Near East. Every war game that it does in Ukraine against Russia, the U.S. loses.<\/p>\n
So obviously there is an opposition right now between the army \u2013 we\u2019ll call them the realists \u2013 who say that if you really want to extend the war, it\u2019s not going to work. But against them are, as you point out, not only a logic of the American Empire, but a virtual religion, a religion of hatred. Zionism has been Christianized \u2013 it\u2019s accepted all of the hatred of the other that has taken place. And U.S. military strategists don\u2019t want to put an end to the war in Asia and Ukraine, because if there was an end, as I said, then the status quo remains. And the United States couldn\u2019t take over these countries as satellites. Peace would mean dependent country \u2013 Iraq would be regain of independence; Syria would; Iran would be left alone to be independent \u2013 that would not give the United States personal direct ownership of the oil.<\/p>\n
And if you look at the neo-cons, they had a virtual religion. I met many at the Hudson Institute; some of them, or their fathers, were Trotskyists. And they picked up Trotsky\u2019s idea of permanent revolution. That is, an unfolding revolution \u2013 what Trotsky said began in Soviet Russia was going to spread to other countries, Germany and the others. But the neo-cons adopted this and said, \u201cNo, the permanent revolution is the American Empire \u2013 it\u2019s going to expand and expand and nothing can stop us for the entire world.\u201d<\/p>\n
So what you have is a more or less realistic military -if not at the top, which is sort of a political appointee, at least the generals who have actually done the war games \u2013 is realism against a religious fanaticism that has been back because fanatics are more willing to die to the last Israeli or the last Ukrainian than realists who look at the situation and try to do what, let\u2019s say, President Xi and China talks about: the win-win situation. Well already, when this split began to occur in the 1970s, I actually heard discussions of the idea that: let\u2019s rethink World War II, that it was really fought over was \u201cwhat kind of socialism is going to be after the war? Is it going to be national socialism -Nazism- or democratic socialism emerging out of the dynamics and self-interest of industrial capitalism?\u201d Well, much of the government was backing from 1945, the minute of peace, the American government began supporting Nazism. We talked before about this.<\/p>\n
The government recruited Nazi leaders and put them, if not in America, throughout Latin America, to fight the communists. As soon as the United States decided, \u201cwe\u2019ve got to destroy the Soviet Union,\u201d they found the Nazis to be the fighters who were willing to die for their belief. Not sit and think, \u201cis what I\u2019m doing rational? Is it going to work?\u201d So one of the problems with Israel is, just as Richard has discussed, that it\u2019s not taking a path that is going to lead to the survival of Israel as an economic state. It\u2019s already been put on rations by the United States economically, financially and militarily, just as England was put on rations after World War II and all of Europe was put on rations after World War I. Trotsky wrote an article -America and Europe- and said, \u201cAmerica has put Europe on rations.\u201d Right around 1921, he wrote that.<\/p>\n
So again, you could say that the Nazi spirit has won -the spirit of trying to extend an empire by\u201dit\u2019s us or them\u201d -it\u2019s a spirit of hatred and a spirit of terrorism, personally by assassination and anti-war crimes, is the alternative to well-to-atomic war. The Americans realize \u201cwell, we really don\u2019t want atomic war, but we can come as close as we can to it by terrorism.\u201d And that\u2019s why the United States today is backing an openly Nazi regime in Ukraine and similar terrorists in Israel to make essentially West Asia part of greater Israel over time. That is a mentality and almost a religious war that we\u2019re in.<\/p>\n
RICHARD: Again, let me extend it a little bit, and let me pick up on something you said, Michael, earlier at the beginning, which I agree with: that the anxiety in the United States is a long drawn-out land war for fear that the American population will not tolerate it beyond a few months or something like that.<\/p>\n
Well, the Israelis can\u2019t survive where they are without these military explosions. We\u2019ve had the Yom Kippur war, the \u201967 war, the \u201973 war \u2013 I mean, we keep having wars, every one of which is justified -at least on the Israelis side- by the need for peace and security, which clearly these wars do not secure.<\/p>\n
And so they have another one. And now they have the biggest and the worst one ever. And why is there any reason to believe it\u2019s not going to continue? And what are they doing about it? Well, they\u2019re widening the war,they\u2019re doing much more terrible destruction in Gaza, and now they\u2019re widening it to Hezbollah and to Yemen, they\u2019re bombing and all of that. Okay.<\/p>\n
The only way they can not be producing their own demise \u2013 literally organizing the cooperation, first among all the Shiite communities, and then eventually beyond that with the Sunni and the broader Islamic communities -their only hope in that eventuality to bring the United States in. As I\u2019ve said, just like Mr. Zelensky has no hope unless he brings\u2026 Even this latest business with getting the authority to send missiles deep into Russia, that\u2019s not going to work either \u2013 the Russians have hidden those, their missiles, or moved them further away so they can\u2019t be reached. So there\u2019s nothing left.<\/p>\n
There is nothing left, but to bring the United States in. And yet your argument is: the United States looks at that situation and says, \u201cWe can\u2019t do that. It\u2019s not that we don\u2019t have missiles \u2013 we do. It\u2019s not that we can\u2019t do much damage \u2013 we can.\u201d Well, we can\u2019t make a quick winning of this war.<\/p>\n
Lord knows we couldn\u2019t do it in the poorest countries on Earth, like Afghanistan and Vietnam. Be sure as hellare not going to do it in Europe or for that matter in the Middle East, which means that the only success of the Israelis is to bring the U.S. in and the U.S. can\u2019t go in because of the constraints it feels.<\/p>\n
And that means that at some point something\u2019s got to give here, and wouldn\u2019t the logical thing be to expect that the United States will have an epiphany moment in which it decides that Arabs are better allies for us than Israelis. And that if that requires purging the highest levels of government of neo-cons, well, we know after World War II, they know how to purge if they want to purge \u2013 they can do that and go after them as Jews, if that\u2019s there, or as Zionists, or as mistaken advisors. There\u2019s lots of ways of doing it. It\u2019s just that a decision has to be made.<\/p>\n
And maybe, I think if that\u2019s what I heard you say, the obvious hesitancy of Lloyd Austin to authorize anything \u2013 to almost openly now be a voice saying, \u201cdon\u2019t go there, don\u2019t do that\u201d to his fellow advisors of Mr. Biden, suggested maybe we have a point in what we\u2019re saying here.<\/p>\n
MICHAEL: Well, you\u2019ve said it wonderfully, Richard \u2013 that\u2019s exactly the point.<\/p>\n
What does it mean to bring the United States in? It\u2019s not going to send troops, because you can just imagine how the American troops, either in Ukraine or in Israel, were just\u00a0 \u2013 many of them would die. You can imagine what that would do to the Democratic administration that would be sending it there. So they can\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve tried terrorism and the result of terrorism is to align the whole rest of the world against us. But still, we\u2019re in a pre-revolutionary situation. The rest of the world is appalled by the terrorism that it sees, by the breaking of all of the rules of war and rules of civilization that the United Nations wrote into its original articles of agreement and is not following. So what you\u2019re seeing is a whole breakdown of the ability of the rest of the world to enforce civilization. And of course, the hope of you and me is that somehow there would be right-thinking people in the U.S. government.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t see many people in Congress supporting the candidacy of Jill Stein, who\u2019s against the war. I don\u2019t see Congress being reasonable. I think that the State Department and the National Security Agency and the Democratic Party leadership, with its basis in the military-industrial complex, is absolutely committed to \u201cif we can\u2019t have our way, then who wants to live in such a world.\u201d Well, you remember how President Putin, when threatened with American atomic war and people were saying, well, would Russia really retaliate atomically? And what Putin said was, \u201cwell, who wants to live in a world without Russia after all?\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, the neo-cons and the Senate and the House of Representatives and the President and the Press and the campaign donors to both parties say, \u201cwell, who wants to live in a world where we can\u2019t control? Who wants to live in a world where other countries are independent, where they have their own policy? Who wants to live in a world where we can\u2019t siphon off their economic surplus for us? If we can\u2019t take everything and dominate the world, well, who wants to live in that kind of a world?\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the mentality we\u2019re dealing with. And I\u2019m watching what China is doing and Iran is doing: they kept hoping, for instance two days ago, when Iran sent missiles to the United States missiles against one of the airfields in Israel that had the F-16s and other airplanes, it let the United States know -and warned Israel- that Iran\u2019s going to blow up your airfield. You better get all the airplanes in the air.<\/p>\n
Well, Iran said, \u201coh, we don\u2019t want to upset anybody. Can we just show them that a war doesn\u2019t make sense?\u201dWell, and then now there\u2019s an argument in Israel saying, \u201cwait a minute, these airplanes that you didn\u2019t blow up are now going to be flying over Iran and dropping bombs on us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The country that does the first strike is going to get an advantage \u2013 we had a chance to wipe out the air force so they could stop bombing Lebanon, stop bombing Gaza Strip and other countries and stop bombing us and we didn\u2019t do it because we wanted to keep showing the world that we\u2019re the good guys.<\/p>\n
Well, it\u2019s like you\u2019re a good guy naked walking right up against the Nazi tanks that are coming right at you in World War II, or today in the Ukraine \u2013 that\u2019s really the problem.<\/p>\n
RICHARD: If we\u2019re right, then why isn\u2019t\u2026 or are we missing it? Where\u2019s the evidence that the United States understands it\u2019s being pulled in a direction it really doesn\u2019t want to go. Just to pick up on your last point, Michael, hear me out for a minute.<\/p>\n
The United States understands\u2026 let\u2019s suppose they understand it the way you do, that they got the notification -and I picked up on that too- that the Iranians told the United States beforehand that they were going to do it, giving them the time to let the Israelis know.<\/p>\n
Okay, where are the Americans who are saying \u201cthey did us a service,\u201d because had they not, had they not, had they wrecked the Israeli Air Force or whatever, then the Israelis would have come to us requiring us to give them even more immediate massive support \u2013 and this isn\u2019t good; this is dangerous.<\/p>\n
The next step will be for the Iranians to target us. Look, the Houthis who are, if I understand correctly, supported by Iran, have been rocket-missiling American warships. Okay, it\u2019s getting close, it\u2019s getting close that you\u2019re drawn in and then your own internal politics will make you respond and then you\u2019re in, and then the Israelis have won, they\u2019ve got you in there. And now it has its own logic, its own escalatory mechanisms and you\u2019ve got what everybody thought you were committed never to do: a land war in Asia that cost you your own troops. Every president after Vietnam said they would never do that again.<\/p>\n
There were some who even said it after Korea, because they understood. So I would be more comfortable that we\u2019re onto something, if I could see some sign that there are American voices that sense one or another version of this that we could point to.<\/p>\n
MICHAEL: Well, I think there has been a change of consciousness, but it\u2019s been mainly on the Arab and Persian side. I think now that they didn\u2019t shoot down the airplanes. Now, I think the Iranians are saying \u201cno more Mr. Nice Guy.\u201d They made it clear exactly what they can do to retaliate; they\u2019ve said that if Israel tries to attack them or if the United States tries to attack them, they\u2019re going to wipe out the American military bases in Iraq and Syria, which they\u2019ve already shown they can pinpoint and do very well. I think in Iran\u2019s mind, what they\u2019ve achieved is showing the rest of the world, saying \u201cthe United States has been trying to goad to the war for the last half year, just as the United States has been trying to goad to Russia in the war in Ukraine,\u201d and Putin has been able to resist that because he\u2019s the longer he takes \u2013 he\u2019s winning the war; Europe is being pulled apart.<\/p>\n
Well, similarly, the Iranians can say: \u201cthe United States would have attacked us and said we\u2019re only defending the poor little Israel because of the Iranian attack. But now that the Iranians did the attack -without killing civilians, first of all only bombing the military sites- whereas the Israeli wants to kill people; they want to kill Arabs, because they hate them. Iranians only hit military sites, not at the population. So now there\u2019s no question, I think, that the whole rest of the world \u2013 China, Russia, the global South, the global majority, is not going to fall.<\/p>\n
It has deprived the United States military and state department from the ability to claim that they are responding to Iran\u2019s unprovoked attack on Israel and to the Gaza, unprovoked attack on Israel that after 100,000 gazhians were killed, a few Israelis were killed.<\/p>\n
And Russia\u2019s unprovoked attack on the Ukrainians who were killing the civilians in Luhansk and Donetsk. They\u2019ve deprived the United States of any pretense of having any ideology or foreign policy besides terrorism and destruction and violating every civilized rule of war that is under land international law for the last few few centuries.<\/p>\n
So the United States is in a war against civilization and the rest of the world is realizing that. And so you\u2019re right, where is the voice in the United States saying, you know, but you and I are saying why somebody like us in a position of authority? Well, we\u2019re on a name of the show, not in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t have any money coming to us from the military industrial complex, from the non-government organizations that the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy Fund were by ourselves and people who think like that find themselves obliged to resign<\/p>\n
from the State Department, resigned from the CIA like a recovering, resigned from the army like the guests that Neemus had, Colonel McGregor and Scott Redder, they\u2019ve been excluded from the discussion. That\u2019s the tension that the world\u2019s in today and that\u2019s what makes it so violent.<\/p>\n
Are these people really, will the Americans really force atomic war by saying, oh, we\u2019re only using tactical weapons? That\u2019s really the question. The Americans are taking a position against the most basic principles of civilization. What are other countries going to do about it? Are they going to realize the threat?<\/p>\n
Or are they going to say, let\u2019s explain to you what your self-interest is America. Your self-interest is doing what Richard suggests, work with the Arab countries, work with us. When when situation?<\/p>\n
Who are the Americans, who, with their donors backing them, who are going to say, yes, we prefer saving civilization to making money this week and next week for living in the short term. The American point of view is short term. The rest of the world is taking a longer term position. Who\u2019s going to win?<\/p>\n
Well, the irony is if the history is any guide, they will make a war and then it will drag on and then all of these arguments that we\u2019re making now will find their voices and will have it, you know, will have the argument and then the hard decisions will be made.<\/p>\n
The problem is that there are many dimensions of the United States, waltzing itself into a dead end and that has its own dangers and dynamics when there is no way out. If it is correct that after Netanyahu bombed the Beirut, his polling numbers in Israel improved dramatically, which I read they did.<\/p>\n
That is a very serious fact because it means that one cannot see this as just a right-wing government doing X, Y, and Z. One has to see a right-wing government that has been able to bring its people along with it at least so far, which is what we have to say about the Democrats and Republicans in this country who have done that too.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s frightening because that suggests there are some more steps that they\u2019re going to be able to take and they probably will and we will be left as I have been in the last two weeks, I don\u2019t mind telling you, genuinely frightened about where this is going and<\/p>\n
how close we are coming to something unspeakably stupid and unspeakably destructive.<\/p>\n
The only thing that I can say is that the glib disinterest in all these questions, evidence by what comes out of Trump\u2019s mouth or Harris\u2019s mouth or Vance\u2019s or Walces, these people are all pretending that the Paks Americana is alive and well and that we can talk endlessly<\/p>\n
about border incursions and the ingestion of cats and dogs and other minor matters because the big ones aren\u2019t a problem and you and I and all three of us have just spent a long time dealing with all the other problems that they don\u2019t feel the need to talk about ever Sir Sri Lanka board<\/p>\n
Hi I\u2019m light in Azarala, we\u2019re sitting right here in New York underneath the bomb, you know, there\u2019s a good one to live in the world once it\u2019s followed. You use the word right wing and it\u2019s very humorous that the anti-war candidates in Europe are all called right wing.<\/p>\n
It used to be lip wing, Austria has just had an election where the right winger won opposing the war in Ukraine. We\u2019ve had three German elections, the right wing is one basically all three, proposing the war in Ukraine, the German government is some, you know, their true Naziism and said<\/p>\n
we\u2019re going to ban the AFJ for opposing the war, they\u2019re calling it a right wing government. So you\u2019re having the Nazis in Europe banning the anti-war parties and yet they\u2019re anti-war is followed right wing and the Nazis are called Democrats and the social Democrats, that\u2019s what\u2019s so amazing.<\/p>\n
The whole language is part of this, the world being turned inside out. Not only that, everybody is saving democracy from everybody else, you know, it\u2019s the deterioration. Anyway, yes. Well, I know you and I like the word \u201calacharty.\u201d Yes. But unlike you, I reserve it for only in Russia, they have oligarchs. We have captains of industry. Yes.<\/p>\n
So nice to come to this and then thank you so much for being with us today, Richard and Michael. That was so great to talk with you. Okay. Thank you also. And it\u2019s a pleasure to be part of this ongoing three-way conversation. Yeah. You\u2019ve got to have 200,000 views of this name.<\/p>\n
By the way, I don\u2019t interfere because I do find that you do talk to each other. It\u2019s just perfect. It doesn\u2019t need me to be there. Yeah, it\u2019s just going well. Thank you so much. Okay. Bye bye. Bye bye. But [Music]<\/p>\n
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