
Those currently celebrating the US and Israel’s decisive military victories against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and possibly the defeat of Ansar Allah in Yemen may soon discover the pyrrhic nature of “reshaping the Middle East” in the interests of Western civilization.
Military actions enabled by Washington have left Israel more strategically dominant than it has ever been, but it is also now more politically isolated: in significant regions of the world including Europe and East Asia, it is now a pariah state.
Despite the mainstream media pre-emptively censoring the images from their reporting, those who have seen online the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinian civilians, and listened to the first-hand testimonies of doctors, aid workers and UN officials, will not easily forget them: the level of human depravity is almost too deep and vast to grasp. When journalists, UN officials and health workers finally gain access to the war zones this year, the enormous scale of the human slaughter will become even clearer.
These crimes have turned people of goodwill around the world — who traditionally cut Israel much undeserved political slack because of its birth after the Shoah — against the Zionist political project: and they are certainly not antisemites.
What superficially appears to be a series of short-term military victories may soon prove to be a long-term, disastrous political defeat. The lessons from previous conflicts should be bracing for Israel’s cheerleaders.
The first point to make is that military power rarely if ever translates into geo-political influence and positive long-term outcomes. Wars are won politically, or not at all. As the quote attributed to Norman Finkelstein after Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan suggests, “if you ever feel useless, remember it took 20 years, trillions of dollars and 4 US Presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.” The West’s overwhelming military superiority in Afghanistan was no match for the Taliban’s superior political organisation.
The lessons from the defeat of the United States, Australia and allies in Vietnam, where they also had overwhelming military and technological superiority, were clearly not learnt.
Entranced by futuristic weapons gifted by American taxpayers — many of which never work as their marketing teams claim (eg the anti-ballistic missile defences) — has encouraged Israel to share the Pentagon’s belief that there are technological solutions to its political, economic and social challenges. This is a form of technological fetishism and a false promise upon which to build lasting security in a hostile region.
Secondly, military interventions and occupations inevitably produce many unexpected consequences and insoluble problems such as terrorism, insurgency, resistance and white-hot anger. The United States discovered this in Afghanistan as the Soviet Union did before it, and again immediately after declaring “mission accomplished” in Iraq.
Wars and military assaults often go awry and become uncontrollable, even when they appear to be decisively won in the short term. Sometimes, catastrophic military defeats, such as the Tet offensive in Vietnam or the battle of Algiers, prefigure lasting political victories for those opposing Western imperialism.
It would be foolish for Israel to assume that its current territorial expansions into Gaza, Syria and Lebanon, crucially enabled by US military support, will not face future resistance in novel forms yet to be understood or anticipated.
Thanks to the slaughter in Gaza, when that moment comes, and it will, Tel Aviv can no longer assume that the Western world will reflexively look the other way, as it has done until now, nor that it will automatically receive the military procurements it requires to establish and maintain Eretz Israel.
Finally, as the diplomatic and military historian Gabriel Kolko wrote, all vainglorious and limitless ambitions to rule the world are doomed to failure, regardless of the state. Those who seek to control or determine the destiny of humanity are in for surprises and disappointment.
The world, whether it be the global economy or the politics of other countries, is simply too complex for rational management even by the world’s only superpower, let alone its sub-imperial satraps.
In the past, Washington’s strength and wisdom rested on its ability to convince other nations that it was in their vital interests to see the US prevail in its global role. George W. Bush’s unilateralism during the Iraq war, in defiance of international law, undermined this important diplomatic asset. Joe Biden’s enthusiastic support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza constitutes the denouement of Washington’s diplomatic and political outreach. As a result, international law and the inestimable benefits of international society — especially to small and medium-sized powers such as Australia — are in ruins.
Instead, to maintain its imperial pride and superpower status, Washington refuses to acknowledge the limits of its power. With Israel’s encouragement of America’s strident unilateralism, in defiance of an increasingly multipolar world symbolised by China’s economic rise and the expansion of BRICS, recent events are unlikely to end well for either state. Politics is too unpredictable.