Yve here. Richard Wolff and Michael Hudson continue their discussion of Israel\u2019s prospects and US culpability, here with a focus on Israel as a colonial project. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Today is October 9th and we\u2019re having Michael Hudson and Richard Wolff talk about what\u2019s going on in the Middle East. Richard and Michael, let me show you an article that shows the spending of the United States on the conflict in the Middle East helping Israel. It\u2019s almost $22.76 billion. And in this graph, you\u2019re witnessing that in 2024, if you look at this graph, it\u2019s $17.9 billion. And directly to Israel and the rest would be the conflicts that the United States went to the Red Sea to help Israel and other operations in that region. And here is what Matt Miller said to the press when he was asked about this helping, this aid that goes to Israel.<\/p>\n
SAID ARIKAT: Taxpayers paid for almost $23 billion in the last year alone \u2013 that\u2019s almost $3000 for each and every Israeli. So we have absolutely no leverage, no pressure \u2013 you cannot tell them do this or not do this?<\/p>\n
MATT MILLER: So, we made very clear to the government of Israel what we believe are the best outcomes along a number of different vectors in the region. But as you\u2019ve heard me say before, they are ultimately a sovereign country and have to make their own decisions.<\/p>\n
SAID ARIKAT: Yes, but I understand a sovereign country that received from American taxpayers $22 billion dollars.<\/p>\n
MATT MILLER: Well first of all, that number is not correct, it conflates a number of different things. It\u2019s not correct. I don\u2019t have the exact number, but I know the number you are referring to.<\/p>\n
MATT LEE: So what does the U.S. government think that it has given Israel since October 7th?<\/p>\n
MATT MILLER: So we give them $3.3 billion a year and there was additional money that was appropriated in the supplemental. The reason it\u2019s hard to answer that question definitively is\u2026<\/p>\n
MATT LEE: Like you don\u2019t want to. That\u2019s why it\u2019s hard to answer.<\/p>\n
MATT MILLER: No, there are different ways of looking at it.<\/p>\n
MATT LEE: I know there are. I\u2019ve been through all of this.<\/p>\n
MATT MILLER: There\u2019s money that is appropriated, there is money that is allocated and then not actually delivered for years to come.<\/p>\n
MATT LEE: Look, there are private educational organizations that have come up with estimates. This building, at least, which is in charge of arms transfers \u2013 at least, many of them \u2013 hasn\u2019t seen fit to come up with an update since July of last year.<\/p>\n
MATT MILLER: Yeah, I just don\u2019t have the update, I\u2019m just telling you that number, you can look at that number and see how it conflates a number of things, including direct U.S. military spending to combat the Houthis attacking international shipping, which is included in that number, which is obviously not either.<\/p>\n
MATT LEE: It can\u2019t be that difficult to separate what has been given to them post- October 7th in terms of things that were not approved before then under the MOU. Stuff that went to them specifically for the Gaza operation, and now Lebanon.<\/p>\n
MATT MILLER: So it depends how you look at it \u2013 is it the amount that\u2019s been allocated to them, is it the amount that\u2019s been delivered to them, is it the amount that is gonna be delivered \u2026<\/p>\n
MATT LEE: I\u2019ll take any of them now.<\/p>\n
MATT MILLER: No, but that\u2019s the point is when you ask the question it\u2019s a difficult one \u2013 I don\u2019t have the numbers here at my fingertips, obviously. I\u2019m just pointing out that the number that Said referred to \u2026<\/p>\n
MATT LEE: Someone\u2019s got to have the number some place?<\/p>\n
SAID ARIKAT: The numbers were Brown University\u2019s numbers, not mine. But, you know, it doesn\u2019t matter what the actual figure is, we give them a lot of money, we give them a great deal of leverage, you know, we give them obviously a great deal of political coverage in the U.N. and many other places and so on. And to suggest that this huge and lengthy partnership really does not exact any kind of leverage with the Israelis \u2013 don\u2019t you question that?<\/p>\n
MATT MILLER: That\u2019s not what I said. The thing that I said is that we\u2019re a sovereign country with our interests, they\u2019re a sovereign country with their interests.<\/p>\n
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Yeah. Richard, he\u2019s saying that he doesn\u2019t answer the question. He says that Israel is a sovereign country. What\u2019s your answer to that question?<\/p>\n
RICHARD WOLFF: Iraq was a sovereign country when the United States invaded it. Afghanistan was a sovereign country when the United States invaded it. Vietnam was a sovereign country when the United States invaded it. It didn\u2019t give a damn whether that was a sovereign country or not. It didn\u2019t respect its sovereignty for one second.<\/p>\n
It just \u2013 as part of the war in Ukraine \u2013 seized $300 billion worth of Russian gold. Its sovereignty meant absolutely nothing. Come on. The answer to talk about sovereignty is a transparent fakery, as is all the mumbo jumbo about how to estimate the numbers. The question was about leverage, if you provide a lot of money.<\/p>\n
The question was clear and it had nothing to do with quarrels about estimating the amount of money. This is a government that wants the freedom to do in the Middle East what it has always done, namely operate a colonial regime without telling the people of the United States anything other than fairy tales about respect for different religions, and the importance of Jerusalem, and other nonsense that future spokespersons at the State Department will no doubt repeat in the same mumbo jumbo style of Mr. Miller that we just saw.<\/p>\n
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Michael?<\/p>\n
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, if Israel were a sovereign country, it would no longer be an American ally because the whole war that the United States is fighting, not only in the Near East, but also in Ukraine, is a war against sovereignty. That\u2019s what this whole world war between the U.S. and NATO countries against the global majority \u2013 China, Russia and other BRICS countries \u2013 it\u2019s a war to make a unipolar U.S. control to prevent the whole rest of the world being sovereign.<\/p>\n
So the whole issue of sovereignty is silly \u2013 and obviously if you look at where the armaments of Israel are coming from \u2013 quite apart from money. These are American bombs being dropped on Gaza and on Lebanon. These are American ships that are supporting it. It is American money that\u2019s also supporting it. And that doesn\u2019t even account for the Israel bonds by non-governmental authorities. So the whole idea of sovereignty is irrelevant. You can look at this war against sovereignty, and especially against sovereignty \u2013 as Richard just mentioned \u2013 of Iraq and Libya, to use Israel as an American satellite to prevent the Near East from becoming sovereign, in control, not only of its own oil, but in control of the export money that it makes from this oil.<\/p>\n
RICHARD WOLFF: Also, just an additional word. The United Nations allows Palestine to have a seat \u2013 I don\u2019t remember exactly what the status is \u2013 but they have a seat to participate in at least some degree, and at least a large part of the world would assign \u201csovereignty\u201d to the Palestinians based on all of the historic notions of what sovereignty entails. Clearly the United States does not respect the sovereignty of the Palestinians. So, once again, this use of the notion of sovereignty is extraordinarily selective. My goodness!<\/p>\n
I mean, for me, the most impressive thing about the little clip you showed us was the fact that we live in a society where a collection of, what I assume to be, perfectly reasonable intelligent journalists sit there and ask such questions and don\u2019t quarrel about the absurd refusal to answer. And they don\u2019t quarrel about the absurd invocation of sovereignty. But they allow the conversation to absorb many minutes of quarreling about the details of the statistics.<\/p>\n
Both Michael and I are economists. We work with statistics all the time. If you do, you know that they are loosely constructed numbers that have a million qualifications about them. And that if you don\u2019t know the details of how they are gathered and how they are assembled and how they are edited, you really can do virtually anything with them.<\/p>\n
You know, there\u2019s an old statement among statisticians: \u201cThe statistics don\u2019t lie, but the statisticians surely do.\u201d Because they pick and choose which ones to gather, which ones to assimilate, which ones to edit.<\/p>\n
This is childish manipulation, and the thing that most impresses me is that the journalists, they are complicit with this mumbo jumbo theatric. And they oughtn\u2019t to be. They ought to have a bit more of a spine, a bit more of that part of the journalistic tradition which says, \u201cask the hard questions that these politicians are trained to evade and avoid.\u201d<\/p>\n
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, Richard\u2019s talking about the sovereignty of journalism. And I think we talked before about what John Kerry said at the World Economic Forum. He said, \u201cOur first amendment stands as a major block to our ability to be able to hammer disinformation out of existence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sovereignty for journalism is what WikiLeaks did, which is why its leader was imprisoned for so many years. We don\u2019t have sovereignty of the Press anymore than nations have sovereignty, and you could look at the whole part of the American Cold War attempt to prevent other nations from having political sovereignty as the attempt to make sure that the U.S. has unique unipolar sole sovereignty over the narrative. Is the Middle East War, the Israeli War, all about the captives that were made October 7th, a year ago? I think there are now a few dozen. Or is it about the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians? Not a word about the Palestinians captive in Israeli jails.<\/p>\n
Again, the narrative is all from a very strange perspective. It\u2019s like the famous Hiroshige painting, a big tree in the foreground and the city far away in the background, the little tree in the foreground has priority over everything else. That\u2019s the news that we get from the Near East, Ukraine and the rest of the world. Not sovereignty.<\/p>\n
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Richard, can I ask a question? The main question right now in terms of what\u2019s going on in the Middle East is the way that Netanyahu is behaving right now. And when you look at his behavior, what is Israel\u2019s endgame under Netanyahu? How can we define that?<\/p>\n
RICHARD WOLFF: Well, I must say with all regret and sadness, I will tell you what I have concluded watching all of this over the last, particularly this last, year. And I conclude by referring to a saying that has been raised by Israeli leaders, at least as far back as David Ben-Gurion.<\/p>\n
And that is to say that the whole story can be summed up by saying that \u201cthe Jewish people, a people without land, were finally given a land without people.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a quote, I didn\u2019t make that up. That\u2019s a quotation repeated many times: From the Jordan to the Mediterranean, from the river to the sea, a people without land \u2013 i.e. Jewish people \u2013 were given a land without people. Notice the little move there, the move at the end to suggest that people were given something that no other people already had, even though everybody who\u2019s taken five minutes to look at the history of that part of the world knows that it has been densely populated for thousands of years by a whole host of people.<\/p>\n
So the reality was, it wasn\u2019t empty. It\u2019s a little bit like what I discovered when I was just beginning as a college teacher and I had occasion to talk about the early period of the American economy, when we were still a colony.<\/p>\n
And I discovered that a significant percentage of my students understood the Europeans who came here to have discovered a land without people, which they then proceeded to inhabit, moving from the East Coast across, until they finally reached the Pacific Ocean in the West.<\/p>\n
When I reminded them, well, it wasn\u2019t empty, then yes, they remembered from their western movies that there were these \u201csavages\u201d who were around somewhere, but who became quickly disposed of.<\/p>\n
Well, if you know the history, it took centuries before you could herd those native people that you didn\u2019t kill into the reservations they still occupy in significant numbers across the United States. Okay, the Israeli story seems to me to be summarized and carried forward by Mr. Netanyahu as exactly what I said. They want to establish that the area we now call Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank are a land that had no people and is therefore now to be settled by a growing Jewish population. And the job of the Palestinians is to choose one of the following three options: leave or die.<\/p>\n
Those are the options, and the Israelis become the agents of leaving or dying, and they\u2019re trying both. And they\u2019ll rely on either one of them to solve the problem, to fulfill the idea that it is a land without people that can now be settled by the people who don\u2019t have enough land.<\/p>\n
By the way, this notion of \u201cland hunger\u201d is a replication of what the Nazis called Lebensraum: room to live. The Nazis moved east in Europe to get it; the Israelis move west to get it. But that\u2019s what this has become, and it will take a radical change of the mentality of the Israelis to change it.<\/p>\n
Last point: when you\u2019re an aggressor, and you\u2019re also a settler-colonialism, which is what this is, nothing is more common than justify what you are doing on the grounds that you must do it, because the savages \u2013 that\u2019s the people that are already there \u2013 are intent on doing that to you. And it doesn\u2019t matter whether they are or not, you must tell that story because it justifies what you are doing. And I\u2019ll illustrate it with a story, and excuse me if I told you this story before, but near where the University of Massachusetts is located is a town called Deerfield, Massachusetts. And it has an old part, which is the colonial houses that were built there back in the 17th and 18th century. And they have redone these houses to look in the way that they did in Colonial America. So it\u2019s become a tourist attraction. It\u2019s known as \u201cOld Deerfield.\u201d<\/p>\n
And if you go there, as I have done, and you walk through the old village, and you look at the reconstructed housing, you will notice in front of each of them a plaque. And if you read the plaque, which tourists do, it says things like, here was the Jones family or the Smith family, and they came in 1702 and blah, blah, blah, and then on the night of the 14th of April, the savages attacked them. And I remember the first time I saw this. I said to myself, without thinking much, \u201cwhat a remarkable thing \u2013 the Europeans come from thousands of miles away, they take the land, they take the coast, they fish the water, they attack the local people, they push them off the land. And they refer to them as the savages. What an amazing move! It\u2019s the Europeans who were savage, who had the guns to be savage with. But you need to call them savages because what you are doing is so savage, it has to be justified as self-defense against savages. And so you call the other what you are. In psychology, this is so common, it\u2019s called projection. And every psychological practitioner knows about it and tries to treat it.<\/p>\n
But in our political discussion of Israel and the Palestinians, we all pretend we know nothing about any of that.<\/p>\n
MICHAEL HUDSON: What Richard has just explained is what really was meant by a land without a people. What are people? They are humans. And the Israeli leadership, again and again, has said that the Palestinians are not human: they are sub-humans.That is exactly what the Ukrainians are saying about the Slavic people. The Slavic people are not humans; the Islamic populations are not human. In both cases, they are called sub-human and a different species. And this kind of thinking goes way back to the United States at the late 19th century. The U.S. leaders thought of America as creating a new civilization. And that new civilization, somehow in the 1930s they began to absorb Nazism. And it was as if the new countries with their ethnicity were evolutionary, biological, new species. And the Americans were a new species.<\/p>\n
The Israelis are claiming to be a new species, exterminating the sub-humans, so that there won\u2019t be inter-marriage, like there was between the Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals 40,000 years ago. That treatment is exactly what was the feeling in the United States that I experienced in the 1960s. The Catholic Church sent me to New Mexico to discuss how to raise up the Indian tribes. There was an official from the Bureau of Indian Affairs who began talking about the \u201cIndian problem.\u201d And I jumped up and said to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, \u201cthe Indian problem is the problem that they are Indians.\u201d And that\u2019s how the Israelis and the Ukrainians think about everybody who\u2019s not them. When we\u2019re talking about a political group of settlers \u2013 or in America, of Empire builders \u2013 claiming to be a new species, cleaning out the biology of these inferior races. This is Nazism. And that\u2019s really what the fight is all about.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why we\u2019re now in a civilizational fight between the NATO-U.S.-West and its allies of like-thinking people who treat their adversaries as sub-humans. Or, as Biden says, it\u2019s Democracy against Autocracy. The Autocracy are considered to be sub-humans, a different civilization, and all this somehow has genetically become a new species. And what the rest of civilization \u2013 the global majority \u2013 is trying to say, is \u201cNo, we\u2019re all humans.\u201d Americans have said, like I said, \u201cNo, you\u2019re not humans.\u201d That\u2019s basically the position in this Cold War II.<\/p>\n
RICHARD WOLFF: You see it also in this very sad tendency: I cringe when I watch a video clip of the President of the United States, in this case, Mr. Biden, referring to the leader of the People\u2019s Republic of China as a thug. What are you doing? What kind of childish behavior is this? Mr. Putin doesn\u2019t refer to Mr. Biden as a thug. He doesn\u2019t do that. One doesn\u2019t do. You don\u2019t see too many leaders, even in private \u2013 let alone in a public interview \u2013 doing such things. What is this demonization of the \u2013 here we go \u2013 it\u2019s \u201cthey\u2019re all savages?\u201d<\/p>\n
So if you disagree with the United States, if your idea of a European security architecture, which is what they\u2019re actually trying to figure out, how are we going to be secure each in our national boundary without threatening one another? That\u2019s what they mean by a \u201csecurity architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n
How are we going to work that out? Russia has to feel secure. Ukraine has to feel secure. They have to be able to function. Okay, that\u2019s a problem. We will have disagreements. We won\u2019t see it the same way. We\u2019ll have to make some compromise. But, suddenly: \u2018No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We are the good and the noble and the vanilla, and they are the terrible evil empire.\u2019 What is this? This is not just a quibble about words. Behind these words lies what Michael was just talking about. This notion that, really, this is a war of good against evil and in the name of the good, you can do what?<\/p>\n
Palestinians who know something about the Christian Bible like to remind us about all the times in the Old Testament especially, when there are all these discussions about God telling people to slay this group and kill all of them and murder the children and \u2026 whoa. There you have already the beginnings of a justification.<\/p>\n
Yes, yes, I know the Bible is full of other contradictory sentiments about loving your neighbor and turning the other cheek and all the rest of it. But if you cherry pick, you can become the exponent of \u201cI\u2019m good, they\u2019re evil, I am called to get rid of them\u201d \u2013 literally. There\u2019s a quote from an Israeli defense force person in the press recently explaining to a reporter how good he feels when he\u2019s asked about bombing mosques and hospitals. He looks at the guy and he says, \u201cBut we\u2019re winning, we\u2019re winning.\u201d Wow. He\u2019s winning. He\u2019s not asking what he\u2019s winning \u2013 he\u2019s just winning.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s the struggle of good and evil when you think like that. In the name of that stuff, we have 5,000 years of slaughter and we\u2019ll have more if we don\u2019t outgrow it.<\/p>\n
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Michael, here comes the question that how we can -with the situation that you\u2019re having in Ukraine together with what\u2019s going on right now in the Middle East and in my opinion, if Donald Trump wins, we\u2019re going to have a big fight between the United States and China.<\/p>\n
How can we make peace affordable for each and every player in this political arena or national political arena? Michael.<\/p>\n
MICHAEL HUDSON: The only way to solve the problem in Ukraine is by war. You can\u2019t have peace without war.<\/p>\n
Some people say that war doesn\u2019t settle problems, but sometimes the only way of settling a problem such as the U.S. and NATO and Ukraine trying to attack Russia is by war. And that\u2019s why you mentioned the costs of this war before, at the beginning.<\/p>\n
I think that the whole idea of what\u2019s happening in the Ukraine is the American planners said, \u201cLook at what really broke the Soviet Union\u2019s power \u2013 it was the war in Afghanistan. It drained Russia. They had to spend all of their economic surplus on the military and send their population to fight in Afghanistan. Finally, this created such austerity and poverty and impoverishment that the leaders of the Soviet Union themselves decided it didn\u2019t work.\u201d They somehow expect that if the war in Ukraine is supposed to go on as long as it can, not to be settled, but just to continue to drain Russia until its economic surplus is spent on fighting the war and the population says, I guess, what the Russians were saying in the 1980s: \u201cWe want to have blue jeans like the Americans have. We want a consumer society and we can\u2019t because it\u2019s a military society.\u201d<\/p>\n
So the American idea in Ukraine is to spend as much as it takes from our side to keep the war going as long as possible and outspend Russia until the discontent in Russia reaches a degree where you can bring in a new Russian Yeltsin [unclear]. Well, Putin is also strategizing and said, well, he is not in any hurry to just march in and end the war quickly in Ukraine by marching to the deeper and beyond. He\u2019s willing to go slow because there\u2019s something that he says that is beyond the short-term cost of the military budget.<\/p>\n
And that is the longer the war in Ukraine takes, the more it\u2019s breaking up Europe. You\u2019ve seen the last three German elections where the anti-war parties beat the Christian Democrats and the social Democrats. You\u2019ve seen last week\u2019s election in Austria. Again, the anti-war party won and as we noted before, the anti-war parties today are on the right, not the left. But we\u2019re seeing the idea of the real costs both from the American vantage point and the global majority\u2019s (the BRICS) vantage point- the cost is going to be how is all of this going to end up? What is the structure of the world economy to be? And the fight in Israel and Ukraine is just a sideline, a particular chapter, venue, in this much broader war. And the real way of looking at the cost is, \u201cWho is going to support what countries?\u201d Will the cost of the Ukraine war essentially, as Putin believes, end up dividing Europe, breaking up the European Union and paving the way for \u2013 in 30 years, I think Putin said \u2013 for there to finally be a restoration of the German and the European linkage with Russia and the global majority by which time in his hope, the whole world will be under a unipolar rule of law. That\u2019s how to think of the costs that we\u2019re undertaking now and what the war is all about.<\/p>\n
RICHARD WOLFF: Yeah, let me come at this from a slightly different perspective that might be of interest to folks. Capitalism as a system has built into its structure an imperative to grow. Every capitalist understands that unless they can expand their business and thereby get their hands on bigger profits, they run the risk of being competed out of existence by somebody who can and will do that. And so they all have to grow. And we know that this has become internalized by the political leaders of all capitalist countries.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll use the example that they teach in elementary school: If an economy is like a pie, and different people and different groups have different pieces, if you grow the pie, everybody\u2019s piece can get bigger and we will all be happy.<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t grow the pie, then a growth in some requires a diminution in the others and then we will be at each other\u2019s throats. Very old idea, been around for centuries.<\/p>\n
And in capitalism, that idea, together with the way capitalism works, means that countries with employers and employees and enterprises that produce and compete in markets have a drive to grow. That\u2019s why it\u2019s a national emergency if the statistics show the GDP isn\u2019t growing fast enough. Oh my god, alarm, alarm.<\/p>\n
Okay, now let\u2019s stop and take a step back. For ecological reasons and climate change reasons, we now know we\u2019ve got to stop growing \u2013 it\u2019s threatening our survival. The people of the world have already figured it out because the birth rate of our planet is now zero. We\u2019re not growing anymore. The United States, Asia. Only in Africa is there a net positive birth rate, and it\u2019s shrinking there too. Okay, now we have a problem that a long-repressed part of the world, the global south, wants to have its standard of living be where it should have been two centuries ago. They\u2019re not waiting anymore. So they are demanding a bigger piece of the pie. This, of course, threatens the United States because it can\u2019t grow the way it wants to because it now has a serious competitor. China and the BRICS is already a richer entity than the United States and the G7. Okay, here\u2019s then a solution. We question \u2013 don\u2019t everybody yell \u2013 we question capitalism. Why don\u2019t we change to a system that doesn\u2019t have a built-in imperative to grow, because it\u2019s killing us? It\u2019s killing us ecologically, but it\u2019s also killing us because the genuine and deserved demand of the global south for a place in the sun to raise their families, have an education, be decently cared for, medically and so on, is not going to be stopped \u2013 with or without a world war. All right, so let\u2019s accommodate: Give them a bigger piece and rearrange \u2013 in the way that socialists have always advocated \u2013 to a much less unequal distribution of the resources of the world. That way we can stop growing, thereby meet our ecological danger and do away with the competition that threatens a war between a rising standard of living in the global south and a resharing that the rest of us here in the global north will have to undergo. But we do so because it saves our planet, and it saves us from war, and that\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a plan, but it requires the taboo be broken. Employer-employee is not the only way to organize the production and distribution of goods and services. It\u2019s the capitalist way. It was what we got when we got rid of the lords and serfs, and masters and slaves \u2013 we replaced it with employers and employees. But we can do better than that and we are at a point where we have to. And so the issue of a socialism beyond capitalism comes right back on the agenda. It never really left, it just needs a little goosing from those of us who see it to make it become, again, what we\u2019re all talking about and struggling to figure out how to achieve.<\/p>\n
MICHAEL HUDSON: What Richard described is occurring on a number of planes. He talks about the drive of capitalism is to grow. Well, that\u2019s certainly the dynamic of industrial capitalism, but somehow that hasn\u2019t been the drive of the United States recently. Richard, how do you grow by out competing your rivals? You cut costs, you make things cheaper, or less expensively, and better. But the United States has been losing its race. It\u2019s true. Last month the US GDP is going to grow and next month it\u2019s going to really grow because the hurricanes hit South Carolina and now they\u2019re going to hit Florida. That\u2019s going to be a big jump in GDP. It\u2019s not going to increase America\u2019s dominance or competitiveness.<\/p>\n
The American idea of growing today \u2013 I think certainly the neo-con idea, the Democratic and Republican idea \u2013 isn\u2019t the kind of growth Richard is talking about capitalism. It\u2019s a purely exploitative growth: America can only grow by arranging the international economic order in a way that siphons off the real growth in other countries \u2013 China, Russia, the global south \u2013 and taking their economic surplus and transferring it to itself.<\/p>\n
This is not a growth of part of the production sector of the economy. It\u2019s a growth of the circulation sector of the economy. Marx drew those two distinctions \u2013 production, circulation, which is part of the distribution. The American growth has been parasitic. The NATO-U.S. unity is like a parasite on the body of the global majority and they call that growth for the United States in Europe, but it\u2019s parasitism. All of that, as Richard just said, we\u2019re facing the overhead of global warming. How do you prevent it? Well, China has taken the lead according to yesterday\u2019s Wall Street Journal in cutting way back carbon emissions, way back coal, and by taking the lead and creating solar power and atomic power. The U.S. position is to oppose the importation of Chinese solar panels because that\u2019s not their philosophy. The oil lobbyists are now backing both political parties in the United States to make sure that any agreements \u2013 like the Paris Agreement that America signed \u2013 will not be followed in practice.<\/p>\n
You have the United States and Europe pushing the growth and pollution. You have the green party in Germany saying that coal is the fuel of the future. It\u2019s coal and cutting down the forests. It\u2019s not oil, it\u2019s not gas, it\u2019s not power. It\u2019s simply that. And you achieve this global fix-up by war.<\/p>\n
Somehow the anti-war party is supposed to be a key precondition catalyst for all of this environmental change. You\u2019re having this bizarre conflation of ideas in the U.S.- NATO, as opposed to the rest of the world, just as Richard has pointed out.<\/p>\n
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Richard, do you want to add something?<\/p>\n
RICHARD WOLFF: No, no.<\/p>\n
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Right now, Michael, in your opinion, when it comes to the Biden administration, it seems that they\u2019re trying to put some sort of pressure on Netanyahu. But in your opinion, why are they not successful? Why are they not successful in their attempts to put pressure on Netanyahu?<\/p>\n
Last time we talked here, you said that the United States is running the show. Richard, I want you to comment on this as well. I had some sort of division between the analysts like you and Richard and other analysts. Some of you are believing that the United States is running the show in the Middle East and the other ones are thinking that the Israeli lobby in the United States is running the show. Who\u2019s running the show with these endless wars?<\/p>\n
MICHAEL HUDSON: I think we talked last week about this very topic. Netanyahu is doing just what the United States wants. The dream of Netanyahu is the same dream of the US neo-cons: war with Iran. Because if you can conquer Iran, then you just close up everything between Israel and Iran. You take up Syria, Iraq; you move down into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. You take over the whole Near East.<\/p>\n
Obviously, Netanyahu is doing what the United States wants, because the United States is giving it the bombs every week to drop, giving it the money every month so that it can continue.<\/p>\n
So what we\u2019re seeing is a good cop-bad cop pretending. The United States doesn\u2019t want to be blamed by the whole-world abhorrence for what is happening in Israel. So it pretends to say, \u201cThat\u2019s not us; we want to be the good guys; we told him to be gentle when he dropped his bombs and not kill anybody.\u201d But he\u2019s killing people. And we keep giving him bombs and telling him to be gentle with it. Well, what can we do? We don\u2019t have control \u2013 he\u2019s a \u201csovereign country\u201d as you played at the beginning. So all of this is just a charade.<\/p>\n
RICHARD WOLFF: Yeah, I would argue very similarly. I don\u2019t see this great struggle between the two as anything more than poorly staged theater that is not. Yeah, maybe for some people around the world, it\u2019ll be convenient to believe that they can hold on. But I would look at it in a long-term strategic way, as follows: For many, many years now \u2013 for basically the post World War two period \u2013 this has worked very well, this alliance between the United States and Israel, for them. It has allowed Israel to go from a poor, largely agricultural backwater to an important modern economic power; to grow its population far beyond what it could have internally by itself. And it has allowed the United States to have \u2013 right in the middle of the Middle East \u2013 its own special agent dependent on it, loyal to it. I don\u2019t want to go over all of the murky ways that Israel played strange intermediation roles when it came to the survival of apartheid in South Africa; when it came to the funding of the Iran Contras Central America. The hands of Israeli operatives are present in many of those \u2013 they were a loyal service. They operate a very good intelligence system in the Middle East, as the killings of Nasrallah and others have shown us. They\u2019re probably better than what the United States could do, so that\u2019s a service they can provide, that the United States either couldn\u2019t or doesn\u2019t want to be caught doing. So it\u2019s all the Israelis who get the bad rep.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s perhaps the most important: The Israeli economy is dead, it\u2019s finished. It will take a long, long time to recover from what it is doing. An enormous portion of its adult manpower is busy in the military. They\u2019re not working at their factories or their offices, or anywhere else.<\/p>\n
Large numbers of people have left the country \u2013 that\u2019s not reported on, but I know it to be the case \u2013 etc, etc. That Israel is going to be dependent on help from the United States economically, enormously, in the years ahead. So the United States has a proven, reliable agent who will need them in the future, and is therefore not in a position to deny the United States anything that it suggests it wants. I don\u2019t see the United States having no leverage, as that journalist did.<\/p>\n
The United States has plenty of leverage, and the reason it\u2019s not using the leverage is there\u2019s no reason to. Or let me put it differently: Where they\u2019re using the leverage, we don\u2019t know about it. Because they don\u2019t want us to, and the Israelis dare not reveal the leverage if the Americans don\u2019t want it, for all the reasons I\u2019ve just given.<\/p>\n
If there were no Israel, the United States would look for an alternative agent in the Middle East. And whoever you might imagine could play that role, they\u2019ve decided that such an agent, if there is one, would be less reliable, less pliable, that you would operate less leverage than the one you have.<\/p>\n
Does the AIPAC and the other domestic supporters of Israel inside the United States have influence? Sure they do. Professor Mearsheimer and his colleagues have demonstrated that for many years with countless studies. But I don\u2019t think that would be enough, anywhere near enough, to explain what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n
This is an alliance which has served the interests of those who run Israel and those who run the United States. And that\u2019s why they preserve it. It\u2019s not to have nothing to do with leverage. They have leverage. That\u2019s why they preserve it. And the only thing holding back the Israelis, when they disagree with the United States, is the fact that they know that that leverage is there. They\u2019re not going to take that chance. The biggest problem for the Israelis is the very large portion of Jews in the United States who do not support Netanyahu, who do not support the policies now.<\/p>\n
And the way they handle that is to focus their foreign policy, not on the Jews in the United States, who are in the main, unreachable by that. But instead to go after the fundamentalist Christians, to build up the idea that Jesus is coming back, and that in order for him to come back, Jerusalem, the Holy Land, has to be in the hands of the Jews. The Bible says that somewhere. They fasten on that. And so that\u2019s where the Israeli government has its film festivals and its exchanges and its tourism. I mean, that\u2019s all dead. They\u2019ve not earned any money on tourism for the last year, and none is likely to have happened. But those are Christians that are going over there hosted by the Jews in a very careful campaign, so that they get the support they need for Mr. Biden to do what he wants to do.<\/p>\n
This is an agreed plan by both of them to maximize the freedom they have to do what they are doing. And the people who want to drive a wedge between the two of them, unless you have something very powerful, that\u2019s not going to happen. There\u2019s too much that pulls them together. You\u2019re certainly not going to shame them by saying that \u201cMr. Biden doesn\u2019t want you to invade\u2026\u201d and you invade it anyway. As Michael correctly says, this is a theater. This is a theater \u2013 that is how they manage the deal that they have.<\/p>\n
It is like a good cop-bad cop deal, or any kind of deal where the two sides include in their deal the pretense they both contribute to, that that deal isn\u2019t going on.<\/p>\n
MICHAEL HUDSON: I agree with what Richard said.<\/p>\n
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Yeah, recently we had finally \u2013 just to finalize this session \u2013 recently we had Emmanuel Macron finally saying something against war. And he said that we have to control the arms and aid going to Israel in order to put some sort of pressure on Netanyahu. And after that Netanyahu responded to him, \u201cShame on you\u201d and \u201cHow you can say that,\u201d and all of that.<\/p>\n
How do you see the situation in the European Union changing toward Israel, or we are still having the same old policy toward Israel and its attitude?<\/p>\n
RICHARD WOLFF: Well, let me speak a little bit to Emmanuel Macron and I\u2019ll quote the American filmmaker Michael Moore who last night when asked about the election made the following sentence: \u201cDonald Trump is toast.\u201d That was Michael Moore\u2019s statement. He did correctly predict that Trump would win in 2016, so people should be careful before they dismiss what Michael Moore has to say. I make no prediction so I\u2019m not doing that. Mr. Macaroon, as my French family refers to him, as President Macaroon. He is, in other words, a cookie.<\/p>\n
He is toast \u2013 there is no question \u2013 he is political toast. He was never a serious politician. He proved that before he became president and just in case anyone missed it, he proved it again while he was president. He had the distinction of being a sitting president when earlier this year the national elections in France, divided among the three major parties, and his party \u2013 the party of the sitting president \u2013 came in third out of three. That\u2019s his achievement. Goodbye, Mr. Macron. But he is desperate. Everything he does is guided by the last minute desperation of someone who has no base. He is hated by the old conservatives. He is hated by the socialist party of which he was once both a member and a minister. The man was minister of education, if I\u2019m remembering correctly, in the last socialist government.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s hated by all of them because he is such a flip-flopper, finger-in-the-wind to see which way the politics wind is blowing. So now he has his last desperate effort. He\u2019s going to appeal largely to the people on the political right \u2013 who are against Israel\u2019s position for a whole host of reasons \u2013 and the people that are on the left \u2013 who are against Israel\u2019s position for a whole host of different reasons \u2013 and try somehow to attract them. But they already hate him. They do not trust him. There is no reason. I would like to remind you that less than a year ago Mr. Macron was the leading European politician advocating for European troops to land in Ukraine and fight alongside the Ukrainians against the Russians, prompting Mr. Putin to make one of his statements, that \u201cif other leaders in the West were thinking along these lines, he wanted to make it crystal clear that this would be an attack on Russia which Russia would respond to with any and all means at its disposal.\u201d You\u2019d have to be dead not to understand what he was saying. Now, this man wants to stop killing people in the Middle East. It\u2019s not serious, and to the chagrin, not just of Mr. Macron, but of all French people, no one is taking him seriously.<\/p>\n
And in that he was helped, because Mr. Netanyahu not only chastised him for saying these things, but went on to say \u2013 and I didn\u2019t make this up, I\u2019m virtually quoting Mr. Netanyahu \u2013 that \u201con the side of Israel is civilization, and on the other side is barbarism.\u201d Well that\u2019s our conversation a few minutes ago. There we have it again: \u201cSavages and the good people.\u201d And Mr. Macron \u2013 in the mind of Mr. Netanyahu \u2013 just crossed over the bridge from the good guys to the bad guys, and next we\u2019ll be hearing him referred to as \u201ca thug.\u201d<\/p>\n
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Michael.<\/p>\n
MICHAEL HUDSON: What can I add to that? Richard\u2019s described the situation perfectly. All I can do is paraphrase and that\u2019s not much of a discussion.<\/p>\n
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Thank you so much for being with us today, both of you, and hope we can keep these talks and great pleasure as always talking with both of you. See you soon. Thank you.<\/p>\n
RICHARD WOLFF: Thank you. Same here.<\/p>\n
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Bye bye.<\/p>\n
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