The Mutually Reinforcing U.S. and Israeli Empires

Ralph Nader

April 8, 2024

The U.S. government’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s annihilation of Gaza – torrents of heavy weaponry, diplomatic and political cover, and vast majorities in Congress swearing fealty to Netanyahu’s extremist regime – is usually attributed to AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the powerful domestic pro-Israeli government lobby, organized in every Congressional District, with its abundant campaign cash and its many personal contacts in Congress and the Executive Branch.

 

This is only a partial explanation of the US-Israel alliance. A far more formidably entrenched factor is that Israel and the U.S. have overlapping Empires – one in the Middle East and the other globally – with deep common purposes. Here are some examples of how these empires operate in tandem.

Both Empires violate international laws with impunity. The U.S. sends special forces, drones, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, anywhere and anytime it wants – especially the case of Iraq and Afghanistan. National boundaries and sovereignty mean nothing. Similarly, Israel completely dominates the Middle East militarily, bombing, sabotaging, and killing whomever it wants in neighboring countries. It has attacked Lebanon and Syria routinely with its air force, artillery, and invaded Lebanon on the ground, prompting feeble responses it always labels “terrorism.”

Both Empires consider every military operation defensive. They say they never conduct offensive attacks, but when they do, they invariably describe them as self-defense. Israel slaughters Palestinians decade after decade in the Palestinian territories while claiming self-defense. With the second most modern military in the world, backed by the U.S., Israel invades, engages in nightly destruction of Palestinian homes, seizes Palestinian land and water for their colonies, imprisons thousands without charges, including women and children, inflicts collective punishment, operates many checkpoints and imposes embargoes, sieges and blockades. All of these unlawful actions are claimed to be taken in the name of self-defense.

The U.S. has 750 military bases in over 80 countries, 26 military installations in the Middle East, runs the provocative NATO military alliance, and digs into the South China Sea. All this is also claimed to be done in the name of self-defense.

Both Empires have collaborating military-industrial complexes and are major arms exporters. As the chief innovator in weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. and its companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing welcome feedback from the Israeli military on how their weapons fare in its attacks. Palestine has become a major testing ground for the most super-modern surveillance technology. (Check out the book, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World by Antony Loewenstein, 2023).

Both Empires wield “force projection” as atomic bomb powers, though Israel refuses to join the non-proliferation treaty.

Despite their many wars and raids on defenseless populations, both incurred a rare counter-attack (9/11 & October 7) when advance warnings by advisors were ignored (GW Bush and Netanyahu) and military defenses were AWOL. After being attacked, both Empires went berserk and responded with massive killing of civilians by overwhelming invasions.

Both Empires lie repeatedly regarding their tactics and strategies. Recall Rep. Ron Paul’s terse recognition that Bush and Cheney “lied us into invading Iraq.”

Both Empires control the United Nations Security Council with the U.S. veto shielding whatever Israel does. Both occupy or control land that is not theirs, violating international laws.

Both Empires violate their legal duty as occupiers to protect the civilian population’s well-being. Both have restricted humanitarian assistance and critical civilian imports – Israel savagely in Gaza and Palestine, and the U.S. in Iraq under Bill Clinton. Both decline to estimate their aggregate civilian casualties.

Both Empires’ leaders, Biden and Netanyahu, profess to practice their respective religions, though they are violating the basic precepts of both their religions in implementing their violent wars.

Both Empires spend little time pressing for ceasefires, peace negotiations, and the stability of peace treaties. They find such restraints as unacceptable curbs on their freedom to wage war.

Both Empires, contrary to their fundamental juridical documents, in the case of the U.S., our Constitution, operate as elected dictatorships in conducting military and foreign policy. The Congress and the Knesset become supine and surrender to the Executive and, for Israel, the ruling executive coalition. In the U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court has long ruled that no citizens of our country, not even individual members of Congress, “have legal standing to sue” the U.S. government for either initiating illegal wars or engaging in additional illegal tactics like torture or corruption.

To remove the challenges from “We the People” against a lawless government, the Supreme Court has endorsed the “state secrets” doctrine. It authorizes the government to demand the dismissal of constitutional claims, in federal court, based on killings, torture, kidnapping, or otherwise by alleging the defense would require disclosure of national security information.

The Israeli Supreme Court doesn’t worry about the Israeli military machine.

Both Empires have a so-called free mainstream media that mostly toes the Empire party line and knows its permissible place in the overall profit-making power structure. Both have a small independent media that is still able to dissent, however futilely, though the U.S. has no counterpart to the outspoken Israeli newspaper HAARETZ.

There are some differences between the two Empires. Israel attacked the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 171, and mostly got away without consequences. (See, The Intercept article: Fifty Years Later, NSA Keeps Details of Israel’s USS Liberty Attack Secret by Miriam Pensack).

Prosperous Israel persuades the U.S. Congress yearly to provide Israel with billions of dollars, mostly for military arms, and is about to get an additional $14.1 billion – the Biden genocide tax on Americans – as Netanyahu’s terror state continues intensifying his Palestinian Holocaust. (The reported casualty toll is lethally undercounted. See the March 5, 2024 column: “Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza”).

If Biden’s people privately object to some Israeli off-the-wall slaughter of courageous journalists, United Nations staff, aid workers, patients in hospitals, and the starvation of babies, Netanyahu can softly say to Biden and Blinken, “Joe, Tony, why don’t you take up your complaints with OUR Congress.”

 

Unprecedented US War Drills and Naval Deployments Raise Fear of War in Korea

SimoneChun

April 7, 2024

The current US military buildup in the Korean Peninsula has surpassed Cold War levels.

South Korea’s general election will be held on April 10, as candidates compete for the 300 seats in the country’s unicameral National Assembly. The latest polls show a neck-and-neck race between President Yoon Suk-yeol’s right-wing ruling People Power Party (PPP) and the main opposition “liberal” Democratic Party which currently holds a majority. This election will serve as a referendum on Yoon’s repressive “republic of prosecutors” and his administration’s dismal neoliberal economic policies. One critical issue that has been absent in the media coverage of these critical elections is Yoon’s decision to entirely subsume South Korea’s national interests to Washington’s regional objectives, particularly with respect to the Biden administration’s new Cold War with China and the massive expansion of the provocative U.S.-led military exercises in the Korean Peninsula.

Yoon’s complete acquiescence to the demands of Biden’s aggressive new Cold War has earned steady criticism from opposition liberal and progressive parties. Lee Jae-myung, chair of South Korea’s Democratic Party, has criticized Yoon for “Cold War posturing … [that] stokes fear and division,” calling for South Korea to pursue its own national interests rather than allowing itself to be reduced to a “pawn in the plans of others.” Similarly, Cho Kuk, chair of the progressive Rebuilding Korea Party, opposes South Korea’s regression toward Cold War-era diplomatic relations with China and Russia, which he argues are straining relations to the breaking point.

Nevertheless, in spite of the considerable opposition to Washington’s imposition of its new Cold War on South Korea, Yoon has obediently rubber-stamped two years of virtually unabated U.S.-led military exercises at North Korea’s doorstep, putting the South Korean military entirely at Washington’s disposal and thrusting it firmly in the front lines of the new U.S. Cold War. In the continued absence of any meaningful Korea policy, President Biden has failed to mention North Korea in his State of the Union address for the third year running. Despite being the world’s largest military exercises in peacetime, these war games have hardly received any attention in the United States.

The latest U.S.-led military exercise, “Freedom Shield 2024,” mobilized more than 300,000 South Korean troops alongside 10,000 American troops in a staggering series of 48 field maneuvers — double those of last year’s “Freedom Shield.” These combined battle-ready attack and invasion forces carried out airstrikes, tactical live fire drills, and air combat and bombing runs at the North-South Korean border. Per Operations Plan (OPLAN) 5015 between the U.S. and South Korean Army, which envisages a preemptive strike against North Korea, these forces are armed, deployed and poised to cross the border literally at a moment’s notice.

That the United States and South Korea are ramping up provocations against North Korea is nothing new: Every U.S. president since 1945 has been antagonistic toward the North. Donald Trump threatened North Korea “with fire and fury like the world has never seen” while Biden vowed the “end of North Korean regime if it attacks.” But the scope, intensity and frequency of the war drills have been steadily intensifying and now far surpass those held during the Cold War. The past year alone included:

• 250+ days of U.S. and South Korean joint military maneuvers, including almost every day between February and April 2023, compared with 30 days of North Korean military exercises over the entire year;
• 21 instances in which U.S. strategic assets, including nuclear-capable weapon platforms, were deployed to South Korea;
• 10+ UN Command member nations participating in U.S. and South Korean joint military maneuvers, and pledging to provide firepower in the event of hostilities;
• Attainment of a new record as the world’s largest military exercises to date in scale and scope.

South Korea’s defense chief has pledged to “swiftly eliminate North Korean leadership” as a pillar of the military’s three-axis deterrence system against the North, which includes a “Kill Chain” preemptive strike platform designed to destroy North Korea’s ballistic missiles prior to launch as well as selectively “remove” North Korean leadership. To further drive the point home, South Korea’s far right President Yoon Suk-yeol has encouraged frontline troops to “shoot first and ask questions later” in the event of any exchange with the North. For its part, while continuing the customary line that the U.S. harbors no hostile intent toward North Korea, Washington justifies the rapidly expanding U.S. military posture on the Korean Peninsula as purely a “defensive response to North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs” and its “resistance to negotiations.”

Even conservative security analysts dispute Washington’s claim, while experts stress that “neither North Korean conventional forces nor its nuclear weapons pose a significant threat of war on the peninsula.” The combined United States Forces Korea (USFK) and South Korean forces far overshadow those of North Korea, whose entire military budget is $1.47 billion compared to that of South Korea at $43.1 billion, not to mention that of the U.S. at $816.7 billion.

Others draw attention to the fact that, despite Pyongyang’s rhetoric, North Korea’s nuclear platforms are a defensive tool. In his speech to the North Korean legislature this past January, Kim Jong Un reaffirmed the self-defensive posture and stressed, “We will never unilaterally unleash a war if the enemies do not provoke us … there is no reason to opt for war, and therefore, there is no intention of unilaterally going to war.” Even USFK Commander General Paul LaCamera has admitted that the North Korean leader’s priorities are in fact “regime survivability” and “preparing to defend his nation.”

Three important points merit particular attention with respect to the ongoing U.S.-led joint military exercises within the context of U.S. foreign policy in the Korean Peninsula.

First, the driving force of the increasingly offensive U.S.-led joint military exercises is Washington’s “hyper-militarized Indo-Pacific Strategy” in support of its new Cold War against China. While the USFK notes that the military exercises “aim to bolster security and stability not only on the Korean peninsula but also across Northeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific,” Washington’s actions are in fact increasingly destabilizing. In addition to ramping up the scope and frequency of regional military exercises, the U.S. is deploying more than half of its aircraft carriers to the Pacific in the coming weeks — an unprecedented regional concentration of naval power that is being branded as a “show of force” against China and North Korea.

Second, the U.S. quest to leverage an ever-increasing network of global assets in its conflict with China directly drives U.S. military exercises in South Korea. Case in point is the increasing involvement of the United Nations Command (UNC) in the U.S.-led joint military exercises. Despite its name, the UNC is not an organization under the control of the United Nations; it is in fact a U.S.-controlled military alliance organized under the nominal auspices of the “international community.” According to Tim Beal, a preeminent researcher on U.S. imperialism in Asia and the author of Crisis in Korea: America, China and the Risk of War, the U.S. has initiated a rapid “modernization program” for the UNC in order to upgrade it to a key component of the U.S. military architecture in the Indo-Pacific. This effort entails:

• A multi-year push to revitalize the UNC into a “formidable military asset” and induct its member states to take part in military exercises in the Korean Peninsula. Some states such as the U.K. have already been sending combat troops to participate in joint landing exercises.
• Expansion of UNC as part of a U.S. push to frame the UNC as the core of an “expanded and repurposed global alliance structure” that “stretches far beyond the Korean peninsula” to serve Washington’s geopolitical aims.

Third, U.S. military cooption of countries along China’s perimeter requires the seamless management of a network of multinational military assets via the U.S.-controlled UNC, the recent emergence of the U.S.-led Japan-South Korea-U.S. (JAKUS) military alliance, and carving out a greater role for NATO in East Asia that has, in Tim Beal’s words, uncomfortable “echoes of the European imperialisms of the past” along with Washington’s parallel efforts to create a NATO-like bloc in Asia. South Korea, the U.S. military outpost closest to China, is a critical linchpin in the network of U.S. “force-multipliers,” serving as a frontline launch pad for any U.S.-led war in East Asia. The U.S. has retained continuous wartime operational control of the South Korean military since the Korean War in 1950, and ensures that South Korea’s 600,000 troops and 3.1 million reservists — Washington’s principal regional instrument against China — are constantly combat-ready as the first wave in any such conflict. In his hearing at the U.S. House Armed Services Committee on March 20, USFK Commander General LaCamera bluntly admitted that the strategic value of the USFK in fact lies in the fact that it serves as a “counterweight to China and Russia.” As a result, South Korea is being swept up in Washington’s intensifying hegemonic war, even though there is, in author Kim Sung-hae’s words, “no inherent reason why Korea should be an enemy of China or Russia.”

The U.S. is using North Korea as a pretext for its new Cold War against China, and, with its control of 40 percent of the world’s nuclear stockpile, is even willing to risk nuclear war to further its geopolitical aims. As Noam Chomsky puts it, “U.S. policy is very provocative. Nuclear war ends everything, but the United States always plays with fire.” It is in fact the U.S., not North Korea, that not only fans the flames of confrontation between North and South Korea, but appears to be actively planning for the possibility of a new war in the Korean Peninsula — an inconvenient truth that is absent from Western media amid fearmongering about Pyongyang.