Henry Kissinger is supposed to have said that nations have no permanent friends, only interests. However, even interests can change; the world is never static.
We’ve always backed Israel, as a key ally. Yet marriages can end when one partner changes, and Israel has changed. Of the essence in this story has been a concept of resolving the Middle East mess such that neighbors can coexist peacefully. Something in America’s interest. But that idea has fallen into a black hole.
Also key here was the idea of Israel as a good guy among baddies, the only democracy in a region of autocracies, whose very origin was an answer to the horror of the Holocaust. But now Israel perpetrates a Holocaust of its own. Too huge to be justified as self-defense, vitiating its moral standing.
Most of the world sees this, making our continued support of Israel harmful to our interests. Indeed, our actually supplying weapons used in its crimes against humanity earns us international opprobrium. Undermining us in dealing with other issues throughout the world.
We cannot plausibly hold the moral high ground on matters like Ukraine, opposing Russia’s atrocities, while turning a blind eye toward Israel’s. Too much of the world already had a jaundiced view of America, seeing us as hypocritically mouthing moralistic platitudes while acting from brutal self-interest. Not entirely true, yet it’s propelled by our stance today toward Israel. Though it’s hard to see what self-interest, if any, we’re serving there.
If nations don’t have eternal friends, nor do they have permanent enemies. Looking at Israel’s war against Gaza Palestinians and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, we might take for granted that they’re enemies. As though that were somehow a fact of nature, ordained forever.
But it’s a matter of choices made. A long string of them, going back a long time. Yet I ask myself: what are they really fighting about? The land, you might answer. But why must it be a battleground? Is it not big enough to accommodate all of them? In practical fact, it actually is. They could all comfortably live there, as cooperative neighbors, raising each other up instead of killing each other. If only they could see clear to do so.
Instead they choose war. And to what end? What interests are being served? Israel’s foes behave as though they can someday expel all the Jews from the land. Israel behaves as though it can somehow disappear all Palestinians, or at least batter them into permanently submissive quietude. Neither will ever happen. Neither side has a strategic vision that makes any sense.
Then look at Russia and Ukraine. Putin, trying to justify his invasion, invokes deep historical ties between the two, perversely making that a pretext to obliterate Ukraine as a separate nation and absorb it, kicking and screaming, into Russia. Previously, Ukrainians did feel great cultural affinity with Russia. That’s over. Now they feel total hatred. Showing again how such relationships can change.
Putin also cast his Ukraine aggression as grounded in some notionally ineluctable enmity between Russia and the West. The idea that we somehow “provoked” Russia’s invasion is nonsense. NATO exists at all only because Russia is a threat. It was true that during the Cold War, the Soviets and the West had real reasons for being foes. But that ceased in 1991, with the dissolution of the USSR and the whole “world communism” project. We then made some efforts at welcoming Russia into the broader community of normal modern nations. Far too half-heartedly, I felt at the time, which has proven true. Here again there was no cosmic reason we had to be enemies. But given Russia’s subsequent behavior, there’s ample reason now.
What I’ve written is true of most wars. I am no pacifist; there are things worth fighting for. Mainly, stopping those making war for bad reasons. It’s typically self-harm; gaining nothing but pain.
True of Russia’s Ukraine war. And China’s coming Taiwan aggression, which will impose vast cost in human suffering and material terms, with China gaining nothing but a permanent festering wound upon its body. Xi Jinping imagines he’ll be a heroic figure polishing China’s national glory. Instead he’ll be a great historic villain, both shaming and harming China.
How much better for China to just recognize Taiwan’s independence, so the two can move forward peaceably side-by-side.*
I don’t think this essay is starry-eyed Pollyanna talk. Rather, the most pragmatic rationalism. Everyone would be so much better off. But alas the world seems rushing headlong in the opposite direction.
* Turkey’s Erdogan once propounded the foreign policy mantra “Zero problems with neighbors.” How commendably sensible. Long since forgotten now.
