Politics Middle Eastern power shifts

let us for a moment consider the unbelievable stupidity of benjamin netanyahu.

the general assembly vote exposed the situation--the us was only able to pressure canada, panama, the czech republic and some micronesian vassals into supporting it and israel. so the game is now fully exposed globally--the us conflation of the israeli right/far right with israel as a whole, an entire policy edifice since 1967, the persistence of rigid cold war thinking--all of it.

the rationale offered by these countries? the palestinians are "walking away from the peace process."

even if you leave aside the emptiness of that term---the next day bibi announces the construction of 3000 new settler houses in east jerusalem.

on what fucking planet does that make ANY sense?

obviously, the focus has narrowed entirely to retaliation. any appreciation of the new situation is out the window.

this is the sort of incompetence that enables a perspective to be taken on the last bush administration...it's almost suicidal.

over the course of the day, editos have started showing up in the states that liken bibi to a drunk driver and suggest that it may be time to cut the israeli right loose. can you imagine a bigger disaster for the status quo?

we'll see what happens...but at the moment one can only marvel at the idiocy.

 

I don't think I can agree with your assessment of the US's limited soft power on this matter.

Overall, Obama had a significantly more moderate approach towards Israel than Dubya ever did. He's resisted various calls by Israel for a US-supported military offensive on Iran, he has been much firmer on the Jewish settlements issue, and has, at least in appearance, restricted the use of the US government's international soft power for Israel's cause.

I do believe the only reason he still had his UN ambassador vote against Palestine, was the continuing reality that any inkling of an anti-Israel (or not pro-Israel) position is still an instant political suicide that would have Congress racing up and down Capitol Hill to get his ass impeached.

Had the US leveraged the full extent of its soft power on the Palestine vote, I believe a much larger number of countries would have voted against Palestine.

Or become chickenshits and abstained, like Germany did.

Fucking Guido.

 

Hilarious BBC article on the Arab/Jewish/Secular disagreements in the holy land.

Source: BBC News - The Middle East conflict at 35,000 feet

 

This made my night!

Thanks, remixer.

 

And it plays out in the election, where twelve parties won seats in the Israeli parliamentary last week

 

A month after the election and Netanyahu still cant form a governing coalition.

Is this the fall of Likud and the rise of the new centrist party led by a former journalist?

He's got two more weeks before the likelihood of new elections being called.

Upstart parties frustrate Netanyahu's coalition-building| Reuters

 

I suppose we can take bets on how long the current coalition will last -- it sure doesn't look so stable. It's interesting, though, that with a conflagration next door in Syria, spillover into Lebanon, tension with Iran, and unrest in Egypt, the Israeli electorate chose to get its domestic house in order and address some longstanding domestic issues. I guess they take foreign crises as a given so they weren't so hopped up about them in this last election.

 

on the topic of Lebanon, i'm keen to see where hezbollah's allegiance stands if things get a little nastier and the syrians decide to strike the main part of Tripoli.

With so many regional players in this game, this isnt going to be short, easy or clean.

 

the obama administration's spinelessness with respect to israel continues to...well...not surprise. there are moments of heroic opposition to bibi's more lunatic attempts to create support (iran) and a strange geopolitical silence on the idea that the united states should do something regarding syria....which remains a very peculiar situation insofar as this nebulous entity called the international community is concerned, something as visible as libya on the one hand and as invisible as the eastern congo on the other. i'd be interested in learning of a decision, if there was one, to let syria bleed itself to death. bibi has floated the idea that the asad regime would transfer missles to hezbollah in lebanon...i am not sure i see how this is rational.

what do you make of the syria situation?
what do you think should happen insofar as this international community fiction is concerned?

i say fiction because, well, what is it?

for example, there was lately some rattling about in mali because france made recourse to it in order to legitimate what france was doing...the strategic problems with which seem self-evident...taking nation-state boundaries as meaningful in the sahara seems absurd even to a relative dilletante such as i am...i mean there was continuous war involving khaddafi across southern libya/northern chad for years....which was at the time relatively invisible to the "international community"....now, there's this alqeada thing to tack on in order to force something....so the logic of the "war on terror"....but i digress...the point is that this "international community" seems a strange sort of molecule, forming itself in some situations, not being able to do it in others, even as the arguments for forming itself tend to use the language of humanitarian crisis to justify the process...but syria has clearly created one, and turkey (for example) is obviously, to say the least, concerned...the obvious question, then, is whether there is one of the major post-45 colonial powers (this obviously includes the united states) that has some interest in acting...in which case the "international community" becomes a justification and little more than that. this was not the idea behind an international community, was it?

so there's been no direct action with respect to syria.
at the same time, it's obvious that proxies are being used to funnel arms.
so maybe the war in syria is now a source of profits for weapons manufacturers and a "humanitarian crisis" insofar as institutions on the ground are concerned for real, but as a potential justification for some kind of action on the other (this at the level of public discourse, such as it is) but there's been no player in the old great game willing to drive any actual actions...

but should there be actions?

what do you think?

 

I think we have no idea what we're doing and just stumbling around randomly from crisis to crisis. I'm not sure that's any better than being firm and resolute and activist and wrong. I haven't seen any overarching strategic thinking, philosophical guidelines or much of anything other than being very reluctant to use force other than drones - which in itself may not be a bad decision but standing alone is counterproductive in many ways.

And RB, there is no such thing as an international community. Thinking that there is can be dangerous.

 

<Ultimate derp was here>

 

Remixer Are you sure you're in the right thread?

 

...

Fuck.

 

After all of the tension in the past weeks, the situation has finally culminated in complete instability.

The latest escalation seems like a point of no return to me. I can only see today's massacre of hundreds, if not thousands, of pro-Morsi protesters turn into a huge recruitment drive for the terror cells in Egypt and its neighbouring countries.

I would be very curious to find out what America's behind-the-scenes involvement was.

It will be very interesting to see how Egypt's domestic conflicts evolve from here on out. The security and stability of the Suez Canal will be of major concern for governments and companies across Eurasia; it will certainly be a concern of mine.

And next to Egypt, the situation in Syria seems to be going in favour of the al-Assad regime.

 

it is peculiar. at one level, it's clear that the military dictatorship wants to eliminate the mb as a political force--it had been tolerated under mubarak, had developed an extensive patronage system, and was (obviously) positioned to capitalize on 25 january in fast elections. they benefited from the "not mubarak, no more state of emergency" orientation of 25 jan...and they fucked up while in power. clearly the military could not control them to their liking and did not see a way to avoid more mb governments after morsi was given the hook by a military coup.

at the same time, the cretins in washington understand the mb as a "terrorist organization" it seems. i don't get it, really...or didn't until i watched some foreign affairs committe hearings on c-span. don't get me started.

my ex is in cairo. her boyfriend is a journalist. there have been several journalists killed today. i hope they're ok.

once the military started down this road of trying to crush the mb there was no turning back.
the way they've justified it seems really really fucked up---as a "war on terror"

from what i've gathered via twitter feeds mostly at this point, lots of 25jan people are traumatized by the violence.

i had a feeling that morsi might end up like kerensky.
clearly this is not over.

and the united states' role(s)...not obvious. but i am also curious.

 

Appearances over the past months suggest the military rulers were anticipating a backlash from the progressive liberals against the Muslim Brotherhood's obvious religious inclinations and how this would influence their policy-making. I don't think it's much of a stretch that the military rulers took the anti-/pro-Morsi clashes as an opportunity to seize powers, with the belief that the liberal movement would be willing to accept all of their actions as long as it served their anti-MB agenda.

It is safe to assume that they either vastly miscalculated the extent of acceptance their actions would receive from the left, or some serious behind-the-scenes politics went on that convinced them this massacre is a good idea. An impulse decision is extremely doubtful.

While America's involvement is not clear at all, the resulting disenfranchisement of the Muslim political movements will result in high conversion to militancy... which in turn makes the US military-industrial complex cream itself as their viability and necessity in the face of all these new terrorists is further cemented.

Baraka_Guru Honestly, I doubt very much that Canada will do more than issue an official condemnation of the violence, or actually exert some political pressure. It is quite sad. Sometimes all the stupid shit that happens on this planet makes me want to volunteer for that one-way trip to colonize Mars.

roachboy I sincerely hope they're both okay. The chaos in Cairo is definitely not to be taken for granted.

 

525 dead as of this morning.

there is no justification for this.

fuck scaf.