The Political Economy of US Militarism

2006, Hossein-Zadeh

In pursuit of their goal of establishing a Jewish state in the “land of Israel,” Zionist leaders have always tried to portray their interests as coinciding or synergetic with the interests of [superpowers], first with those of Great Britain and then with those of the United States. By the same token, they have also always tried to portray opponents of their territorial ambitions not only as the enemies of Israel but also of those powers. But, as just noted, such attempts at manipulation were not very effective during the Cold War atmosphere. In the aftermath of the Cold War era, however, those strategies began to become more effective; not because Zionist strategists suddenly became smarter, or U.S. policy makers suddenly became more susceptible to Zionist influence, but because some powerful interests in the United States, the military-industrial interests, now converged more closely with those of hard-line Zionists in instigating war and convulsion in the Middle East.

As noted earlier, the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War prompted calls in the United States for “peace dividends,” that is, for the curtailment and conversion of part of the military budget to civilian use. The idea behind demands for “peace dividends” was simple: since in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States no longer needed the colossal military apparatus of the Cold War era, part of the military budget could now safely be reallocated toward civilian uses. Frightened by the specter of peace and/or peace dividends, beneficiaries of military spending frantically sought to invent and substitute “new threats” for the “communist threat” of the Cold War era, thereby preempting the realization of peace dividends.

In pursuit of this goal, beneficiaries of war and militarism found a strong, well-established network of politically savvy allies: radical Zionist proponents of 'greater Israel.' Because the interests of these two powerful groups converged over fomenting war and political convulsion in the Middle East, an ominously potent alliance was forged between them— ominous, because the mighty U.S. war machine was now supplemented by the almost unrivaled public relations capabilities of the hard-line pro-Israel lobby in the United States. The alliance is unofficial and de facto; it is subtly forged through an elaborate network of powerful militaristic think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, Project for the New American Century, America Israel Public Affairs Committee, Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East Forum, National Institute for Public Policy, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and Center for Security Policy. The neoconservative militarists in and around the Bush administration serve primarily the interests of this alliance...

'After decades of ever-solidifying ties, Israel is now so closely linked to the United States in concrete ways that it is actually a part of the U.S. military-industrial complex. Israel sells military equipment, with our knowledge, to countries to which the U.S. is restricted by law from selling.. So many arms and types of arms are produced in the U.S. for Israel that it has become quite easy for Israel’s lobbyists in Washington to go to individual congressmen and point out to them how many jobs in a given district depend on this arms industry and on not withholding arms from Israel. In this way, Israel becomes a direct factor in sustaining the U.S. military-industrial complex, in maintaining jobs in the U.S., and in keeping congressmen and other politicians in office'

The convergence and/or interdependence of the interests of the military-industrial complex and those of militant Zionism on war and political convulsion in the Middle East is at the heart of the perpetual cycle of violence in the region: the more the powerful and overlapping lobbies of the military-industrial-Zionist alliance succeed in gearing the U.S. policy in the region to the radical Zionist policies of Israeli leaders, the stronger and bolder Israel becomes, and the more aggressive it will behave in pursuit of its territorial aggrandizement, or in its treatment of the Palestinian people... As the U.S./Israeli policies in the Middle East prompt the frustrated Palestinians and their sympathizers elsewhere to violent reactions, they also provide the U.S. and Israeli policy makers with the pretext they need in order to justify their policies in the region. Such violent reactions to the U.S. and Israeli policies will also make the business of war.. more profitable...

Not surprisingly, soon after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, representatives of the military-industrial-Likud alliance embarked on a joint offensive against a whole host of long-established international institutions and conventions, arms control treaties and, most importantly, the Oslo peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. Instead of those long-established multilateral treaties and conventions, they now called for aggressive American unilateralism, along with an overhaul of the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East in favor of Israel.

As noted above, the military-industrial-Likud interests promote their views and carry out their plans through an extended but tightly knit web of influential think tanks of militaristic lobbying entities. Some of these lobbying think tanks and their major political players have direct Israeli connections. For example, Colonel Yigal Carmon, formerly of Israeli military intelligence, was a cofounder of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). The other cofounder of MEMRI, Meyrav Wurmser, was a member of the Hudson Institute, while her husband, David Wurmser, headed the Middle East Studies Department of the American Enterprise Institute. Richard Perle, a major player in the neoconservative movement, was both a “resident fellow” at the American Enterprise Institute and a trustee of the Hudson Institute. Focusing on two of these influential think tanks, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and Center for Security Policy (CSP), Jason Vest of The Nation magazine convincingly unmasked “the close links among the two organizations, right-wing politicians, arms merchants, military men, Jewish billionaires, and Republican administrations...

It does not follow.. as some critics argue, the U.S.–Israeli relationship represents a case of 'tail wagging the dog,' that is, the U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is shaped by the Israeli/Zionist leaders. Nor do I subscribe to the hoary anti-Semitic canards that are used to put forth a specious case for Jews trying to run the world. While, no doubt, the powerful Jewish lobby exerts considerable influence over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, the efficacy and the extent of that influence depend, ultimately, on the real economic and geopolitical interests of U.S. foreign policy makers. In other words, U.S. policy makers in the Middle East would go along with the demands of the radical Zionist lobby only if such demands also tend to serve the special interests that those policy makers represent or serve—not necessarily the interests of the American people, or collective U.S. 'national interests' in general. The fact that, as pointed out earlier, U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War era was less accommodating to the territorial desires of militant Zionism than in the post–Cold War period is an indication of this point. Another corroborating indication of the point is that as the military-industrial complex has been gaining more and more influence over U.S. foreign policy, that policy has, accordingly, been more and more geared to the wishes of hard-line Zionism because, as has been frequently pointed out in this chapter, the interests of the U.S. military establishment converge with those of militant Zionism over war and political convulsion in the Middle East..

Decontextualization

Huntington’s theory of 'the clash of civilizations' is essentially a subtle version of Richard Perle’s strategy of 'de-contextualization.' Perle, a leading neoconservative militarist (and a prominent advisor of the Likud Party, the hard-line Zionist party of Prime Minister Arial Sharon of Israel) coined the term 'de-contextualization' as a way to explain both the desperate acts of terrorism in general and the violent tactics of the Palestinian resistance to occupation in particular. He argued that in order to blunt the widespread global criticism of the Israeli treatment of Palestinians, their resistance to occupation must be decontextualized; that is, we must stop trying to understand the territorial, geopolitical, and historical reasons that some groups turn to terrorism. Instead, he suggested, the reasons for the violent reactions of such groups must be sought in the arenas of culture and/or religion—in the Islamic way of thinking. Like the 'clash of civilizations' theory, decontextualization strategy has been part of a well-orchestrated effort to divert attention from the root causes of terrorism and attribute it to 'pathological problems of the Muslim mind'