As an American, the US participation in the Ukrainian conflict as well as the Palestinian genocide are beyond reproach. Many describe them as proxy wars, but I’m not there yet.
During the Cold War, there was the Afghanistan, Vietnam, South America, Cuba, etc. These were proxy wars because there was a clear adversary on the other side. The Soviet Union.
Now, who is that? Russia? China? Who is “our enemy”? I see it was war is good for business and projection of power.
Am I wrong?
I mean Saudi Arabia also does all those things, most of them far better than Israel ever could due to geography, and at a far lower cost. If Isreal snapped out of existence tomorrow, between Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Greece European and North American power projection in the Middle East and North Africa remains almost entirely unchanged.
Honestly the military benefits of supporting Isreal while real are definitely not as important as the domestic political benefits to the US, which is to say that the conservatives like Isreal because it provides a nice place to deport all the Jews to while also maintaining precedent for an enthnostate with race based citizenship, and the Democrats like it because they get a lot of gifts, friends, and in their minds potential voters, all for doing exactly what the conservatives want them to do.
Saudi Arabia is kept in line by Israel’s presence in the region. OPEC was once a thorn in the US’s side and now they’re under control, and Israel was key for that.
Israel was critical for disempowering OPEC in the Yom Kippur War. We would not have gotten where we are today, with OPEC firmly under control, without Israel’s critical role in the conflict.
Israel isn’t the only reason OPEC has been brought to heel, but it was the last time OPEC ever used an oil embargo afaik
The spice must flow.
An unsinkable aircraft carrier is a destabilizing force, what are you talking about?
Politically, major outside military forces like aircraft carriers tend to be viewed at a stabilizing force in the local region, but more to the point Redrum and I were talking about Isreal’s primarily being useful politically rather than militarily to destabilize and break up leftist and Soviet groups in the region.
The presence of a Sword of Domacles hanging over the heads of every country in the region does have political uses, not just military ones.