US Elites Need Middle East War to Preserve Regional Hegemony - Economist
15:38 GMT 19.10.2023 (Updated: 16:07 GMT 19.10.2023)
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Hamas’ surprise October 7 assault across the “impregnable” Iron Wall barrier separating Israel from Gaza has sparked the deadliest escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict since the Second Intifada of 2000-2005. Veteran US economist Michael Hudson tells Sputnik why neocons threaten to turn the crisis into a new 9/11 moment for Washington.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict continues to intensify, with the Israeli military continuing large-scale air and artillery strikes on Gaza, with the operation designed, in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s words, to “wipe out Hamas,” but threatening to unleash an unprecedented humanitarian crisis across the blockaded 365 square kilometer strip of territory.
The United States on Wednesday vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for “humanitarian pauses” to the bombing to provide aid to Gaza’s residents, citing Israel’s “inherent right of self-defense as reflected in Article 51 of the UN Charter.” A Russian proposal demanding an immediate ceasefire and halt to attacks on civilians was rejected by the US and its allies.
Up to one million Palestinians have been displaced inside Gaza, complementing about half a million Israelis displaced in southern Israel. Nearly 5,000 people have been killed in the escalation to date, with over 17,000 more wounded, many of them women and children.
The crisis also threatens to turn into a major regional conflagration amid the deployment of US carrier strike groups to the region in support of Tel Aviv, Israeli preemptive attacks against Hezbollah militia forces in Lebanon, IAF airstrikes against Syria, and warnings by Iran – the Jewish state’s regional arch-rival, that “other actors” could enter the fray if the crisis continues.
19 October 2023, 04:49 GMT
Palestinian-Israeli Crisis: Ploy for US Neocons’ Ambitions?
But the Palestinian-Israeli conflict itself could very well be mere filler behind US neocons’ broader plans for the Middle East, says veteran economist, former Wall Street analyst, and Professor Michael Hudson. The present conflict merely masks an attempt by the US to “attack Syria and Iran” and “take over the whole Near East. That’s what this whole fight nominally about Israel is all about,” Hudson believes.
“I’ve heard American generals talk to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s main economic advisor, Uzi Arad, when we worked together at the [Hudson] Institute. The American generals would tell him, ‘You’re our landed aircraft carrier there. We’re using Israel. We can always use that to make sure that we control the Near East and its oil supplies.’ Well, that was in about 1974 and that’s almost 50 years ago. And it’s still the mentality of the United States,” the academic told Sputnik’s New Rules podcast.
“They want to do to Syria and Iran what they’ve done to Iraq,” the economist warned, pointing to recent saber rattling in this direction by high profile neocons in Washington, from top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell to longshot GOP presidential candidate and neocon favorite Nikki Haley.
In the aftermath of 9/11, Hudson recalled, instead of going after against those deemed to be responsible for the terrorist attacks, the US invaded Iraq.
Similarly, “right now, today they’re not really responding against Hamas or Lebanon. Biden’s telling Israel, ‘you better not invade because you’re going to be on the losing end if you try to invade Gaza.’ Rather, they may “really moving the whole naval armada” to the region “to finally take out [President Bashar] Assad in Syria and use ISIS [Daesh]*,” who effectively serve as “America’s foreign legion,” and to target Iran. “This is probably going to lead Iran to fight back and you’ll have the whole Near East going up in flames,” Hudson warned.
Pointing to the rapid breakdown of the US-led "international rules-based" order, Hudson stressed that the world today is seeing the rapid “militarization” of what is fundamentally economic conflict centered on neoliberalism and US attempts to maintain its hegemony over other countries.
'Deliberately Risking World War III'
Commenting on the effort by countries including Russia, China, and Iran to create a new, multipolar, interconnected Eurasia, Hudson emphasized that the US is intentionally triggering and escalating regional conflicts, including in the Middle East, amid its global loss of power.
“The United States is deliberately risking and even triggering World War II, because it realizes that [it] is losing its military power. NATO is literally out of weapons right now because of the war in Ukraine. The United States’ national security establishment is thinking ‘If we’re going to have a war, a World War III, we’re never going to be in a stronger position than right now. Our position is weakening, so if we’re going to blow up the world, let’s do it now, because we’re going to lose even more heavily if we do it in the future,’” Hudson said, outlining the neoconservative thought process.
“They think that right now maybe Russia has already tied up its army in Ukraine and there’s nothing it can do to come to the aid of Syria if the United States moves against Syria, and once it moves against Syria, the neocons in the national security establishment have already said, ‘First we go to Iraq, then Syria, and then Iran is where we’re all aiming all of this.’ They’ve spelled it all out in national security reports. This is not sleepwalking [into war, ed.]. This is a very conscious plan that the leading neocons, [Under Secretary of State] Victoria Nuland’s group, have all put together. And they are actually trying to trigger it all,” Hudson explained, pointing to US plans to "secure" Iran’s oil to continue try to assure the current exploitative unipolar system’s survival.
“GDP is basically based on electricity and power consumption: oil, gas, and electricity. This is actually all spelled out visibly. That’s what the United States is doing, and it has let the whole world know that ‘Yes, we do have a plan to exploit you. What are you going to do about it? Because if you defend yourself, we’re going to do to you what we did to Iraq, what we are doing to Syria, what we did to Iran, what we did to Ukraine. Do you really want to go through that?’ That’s the gauntlet that the United States has thrown down. And I think other countries are saying ‘We’re not going to be a part of that. We’ve got to go our own way,’” the observer said.
Can US Fight and Win a Three-Front War?
Sources told US legacy media this week that the Biden administration is preparing to unveil a $100 billion all-in-one supplemental funding request to Congress for money to finance the Israeli, Ukrainian and Taiwanese flashpoints, plus the US-Mexico border, with Ukraine and Israeli funding reaching about $60 billion and $10 billion, respectively.
The attempt to link the funding together comes amid growing opposition among the House GOP to continue funding the Ukraine quagmire, as well as growing calls among rebel Republicans to break bills down to individual issues.
And while Washington might be able to declare a “war on three fronts,” Hudson says “there’s also no question that it’ll lose” – whether in Ukraine, in a new war of aggression in the Middle East, or a battle against China over Taiwan or in the South China Sea.
“I remember during the Vietnam War, when I was working with [venerated military strategist and systems theorist] Herman Kahn at the Hudson Institute. We would meet with the leading generals that were planning the Vietnam War. I’d have dinner with them, and they sounded like they were leading a peace march, [saying] ‘We can’t possibly win, this is awful, there is no way we can with to get out.’ They knew that they were losing, and that it’s the politicians who overruled the army that had this illusion of world dominance,” Hudson recalled.
“You’ve having the same thing today. The army knows that the US will lose, but the politicians say ‘We’re America, we’re always going to win!’ It’s almost a religious fervor that you’re finding on the part of the US National Security Council and the CIA, the Deep State. They really believe that God is on their side. This is what you had in the Middle Ages, where you had each country thinking that God’s on their side. But that’s not the same thing as military strategy, as working out a game plan,” Hudson concluded.
19 October 2023, 06:41 GMT
* Daesh (ISIS/IS/ISIL) is a terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries.
