All Normal on the American Front

Posted on by under moralism, Palestine

Sometimes American foreign policy speaks for itself. From “Blinken to Talk to Saudis about Normalizing Ties with Israel,” The New York Times, June 6:

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Monday that he planned to talk to Saudi leaders and other Gulf state officials this week during a visit to Saudi Arabia about the possibility of the kingdom normalizing ties with Israel. The Biden administration supports such a move, but it should not come at the expense of “progress between Israelis and Palestinians” and a two-state solution, he said.

“The United States has a real national security interest in promoting normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia,” Mr. Blinken said at a conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “We believe we can and indeed we must play an integral role in advancing it. Now, we have no illusions that this can be done quickly or easily.”

From “Sparks Fly in Syria Sanctions, Normalization Debate,” Responsible Statecraft, same day:

In early May, the Arab league announced that it would re-admit Syria after a nearly 12-year suspension dating back to the outbreak of the civil war in 2011. In response, a bipartisan group of 35 U.S. lawmakers introduced the “Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act of 2023,” which, among other things, calls for an inter-agency “report of the steps the United States is taking to actively deter recognition or normalization of relations by other governments with the Assad regime.” It also expands the Caesar Act sanctions on the Syrian regime, which have been in place since 2020.

The Biden administration has also stated its opposition to the Arab League’s decision.

As I was saying, sometimes American foreign policy speaks for itself. Not that it makes any sense when it does.

10 thoughts on “All Normal on the American Front”

  1. Of relevance in case you missed it. I broadly agree with Friedman’s internationalist Americanism, but mostly I’m just impressed with his observation of cultural and political details-on-the-ground and putting them into (recent) historical perspective. Makes me want to visit all of these places in the Middle East. He is betting on (and hoping for) the price of Saudi/Israeli rapprochement being a two-state settlement with the Palestinians (and wants to U.S. to push in that direction). We’ll see what happens.

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    • As you can probably guess, I regard “American internationalism” as a plague upon the Earth, and Thomas Friedman as one of its Typhoid Mary’s. I posted those two passages above to draw attention to the incoherence and double standards of American foreign policy. Friedman is Exhibit B of the same phenomenon. I regard his views as delusional and silly.

      Consider the questions he thinks Biden should “once and for all” pose to Netanyahu. First, why does he need to invite Netanyahu to the White House to ask these questions? He doesn’t have a phone?

      At any rate, there is no need to ask such questions, because the answers are obvious, and have been for forty years. To the first of Friedman’s questions, Netanyahu will say (as all Israelis do) that Israel “lacks a partner for peace.” To the second, he will say “none of your business.”

      These claims are bullshit, but Biden lacks the vigor, intelligence, knowledge, and motivation to debate them. And even if he had those traits, what difference would it make? It’s not as though Netanyahu would, on losing a debate with Joe Biden, suddenly concede that Israel had been wrong for the last five decades, fold the occupation up like a camping tent, and cry “Uncle!” He’d just go home, and continue to do what Israel has done since Day 1. The whole scenario Friedman depicts here–the prestige of the White House, the drama of a conversation with The American President–is childish, but so typically American: a badly done movie script masquerading as foreign policy. It’s the aesthetic of “Independence Day” or “Air Force One” begging to be taken seriously as political analysis.

      Friedman makes a big deal about the “shared values” that we once had with Israel…until 2022, when everything supposedly changed. Well, let’s consider. The United States came into existence through a revolutionary war fought against a foreign occupation two years in duration, imposed by the British on a single American city (Boston, between 1774 and 1776). Israel has operated a military occupation over millions of people for 56 of the 75 years of its existence. So the raison d’etre of the United States flatly contradicts three quarters of Israel’s political lifespan. Shared values?

      A secondary rationale for the creation of the United States is enshrined (so to speak) in the First Amendment’s disestablishment of Church and State–a faithful expression of Locke’s views on toleration. But the idea at the center of the First Amendment contradicts the very concept of a “Jewish State”–an explicitly sectarian state that lacks any non-sectarian conception of citizenship. I can see why the Christian Right would resonate to such a regime, but why would the rest of us?

      The moral drama of American history is our rebellion against and repudiation of racism and slavery–in judicial terms, the repudiation of Dred Scott, Plessy vs. Ferguson, and the whole apparatus of Jim Crow. But Israel’s existence is predicated on enforcing the very doctrine–”separate but equal”–that every American schoolchild is taught to repudiate. “Separate but equal” is the essence of Zionist doctrine. Eliminate that, and you either have outright apartheid or you’re left with nothing.

      The one thing we have in common with the Israelis is that we police black people the way they occupy Arabs, and killed and confined the Plains Indians the way they kill and confine the people of Gaza. In other words, we have similar histories of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. But that’s nothing to brag about.

      All of this would be too “radical” for Friedman, the moderate. But that’s because he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Friedman gives no evidence of having spent much time in the West Bank or Gaza. So I can see why he has so little to say about life there. What would he say?

      On Saudi Arabia, let me put the issue this way. Saudi Arabia abolished slavery in 1962. That change was more revolutionary than any change Friedman cites. Yet Saudi Arabia between 1962 and say 2017 was still a cesspool of reaction and barbarism. Imagine that someone went to Saudi Arabia in 1963 or even 1973 or 1983, and said, “My God, this place is unrecognizable now! Reform is here!” How meaningful would that be?

      It’s not more meaningful today. If you read him carefully, Friedman himself practically comes out and admits that. Saudi Arabia is starting from a baseline of totalitarian repression, and making a few cosmetic changes to it, with upper middle class women as the beneficiaries. He throws in some nice pictures of pretty ladies to give us the impression that Saudi society has really changed. I mean, look at these cuties! Could a society with such attractive women really be all that repressive? It sounds like I’m joking, but I’m not. Whenever Western journalists want to prove that some backwards place is “making progress,” they haul out pictures of hot women in short skirts. What further proof could anyone want? Hot girls in cars? Hot girls on the street? Sounds like freedom.

      But how is any of that a fundamental change in the nature of the regime? Friedman agonizes inconclusively over this obvious question, then moves on. He doesn’t answer it, but concludes that whatever the answer, well, we have no choice but to engage with the Saudis. Yes, they dismembered an American journalist, and yes Biden went and kissed their asses anyway. So have a lot of professional athletes–and academics. But it would be “irresponsible” not to kiss some more.

      Why, exactly? Read him with the care you would give to someone who is suggesting that we trust and make common cause with an outright psychopath–an Arab-Muslim Putin with as much blood on his hands as Putin. Is there anything in this article that really answers that question, or even tries? Stop reading him so charitably. This is not a topic that should elicit charity. Read him in a spirit appropriate to the topic: power politics, war, murder, torture, massacre (all things MBS has engaged in). Aside from the presence of MBS’s ass on top of a lot of oil, what reason do we have to treat this piece of shit as an “ally”? Consider how many people the United States has killed in its “internationalist” glory in the last twenty years: 4.5 million, by one count. Why have we spared MBS? How did we kill that many fucking people–hundreds of thousands of innocents–but miss MBS? I’d say: because our leaders have more in common with MBS than they do with the innocents they’ve killed. Actions speak louder than words.

      To return to the point of my post. How is it that relations with MBS are to be “normalized” but those with Assad are to be “anti-normalized” to the point of open warfare with Syria? If we put aside the obscenity of our support for the Israelis, this is the fundamental question to be asked about our foreign policy in the Middle East. We claim to promote good and fight evil. But how exactly do we define these things? We’ve fought one pointless war after another, killed millions of people, made millions of refugees, created gigantic disorder, but: how do the definitions work out so that MBS becomes good, and Assad becomes uniquely evil?

      Those are questions that Thomas Friedman has never asked or answered, because the answers are devastating to the pretensions of “American internationalism.” There is no moral content to our foreign policy at all. It’s just a series of unprincipled, incoherent power grabs running in a million idiotic directions at once. The people who run it have no moral scruples, and know only how to bluff their way through conspicuous pretenses at knowledge. American foreign policy is one of the most dangerous things in the world, run by people who should not be running anything. As far as I’m concerned, the only people worth reading on US foreign policy are the people saying that, and Friedman is definitely not one of them.

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    • I’ll definitely take a look. Though I’m as much interested in what Friedman says is happening elsewhere, especially Saudi Arabia (roughly, political norms are shit, but cultural norms are rapidly trending in the right direction — so what is the overall assessment? for me, thought-provoking).

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  3. I know I’m beating a dead horse at this point, but when the dead horse is the Saudi regime, and our relationship to it, I think it’s excusable. I really should write a series of freestanding posts on the Saudis.

    One thing that deserves challenge but that I was too quick to let go: the idea that Saudi Arabia is experiencing a change in “cultural norms” that contrasts with its political norms. There is no evidence at all of such a change. The distinction presupposes that Saudis generally shared the views of the Saudi regime, and have now changed to a more liberal view. Friedman provides no evidence for that at all, and it’s extremely implausible. Saudi Arabia is and has always been a totalitarian regime. There is no way freely to speak openly to anyone who lives there. So there is no way to get bona fide empirical evidence of “cultural norms.” Before MBS as now, there were plenty of Saudis who chafed under Saudi theocracy, but stayed for one reason or another. Likewise, before MBS and now, there were plenty of Saudis who accepted the basic assumptions of absolutist theocracy.

    Friedman is a particularly unreliable guide here, partly because there is no way to access the relevant evidence, but partly because he obviously wants to keep his access to Riyadh. So he can’t take his criticisms too far. If he did, he would either put his access or his life in danger. That’s what happened to Jamal Khashoggi.

    Saudi Arabia is qualitatively different from Israel in this respect. No real critic of the Saudi regime can enter the country and expect to leave. You have to make a choice: do you want to be an unconstrained critic, or do you want to ratchet back your criticisms to ensure access and safety? You can’t do both. Friedman has taken the second option. But that’s why he’s an unreliable guide to the place.

    Honestly, I think Americans should stop relying on American-born journalists for reporting on the Arab world, and start reading Arabs–people who have lived there, speak the language, know the culture, know the politics, have a stake in the place, and write in English with far greater competence than American journalists have in Arabic (or Hebrew). On Saudi Arabia, the best author I’ve read is Said Aburish.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Said_Aburish

    I honestly find it sad that Friedman’s reputation exceeds his. On the merits, there really is no comparison. American critics find Aburish’s writing too anti-American, but that’s exactly why they need to read it.

    This is from today’s New York Times. The same country that spends its time demonizing Vladimir Putin and Bashar al Assad treats the likes of MBS and Netanyahu like rock stars. And people wonder why anti-Americanism flourishes. To quote Pantera, “Is there no standard any more?”

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    • “It’s not as though Netanyahu would, on losing a debate with Joe Biden, suddenly concede that Israel had been wrong for the last five decades, fold the occupation up like a camping tent, and cry ‘Uncle!'”

      Reminds me of the episode of WKRP in Cincinnati where a character dreams he’s on Firing Line with William F. Buckley, and he makes some devastating reply to Buckley that causes Buckley to reevaluate his entire ideology and career.

      “On Saudi Arabia, the best author I’ve read is Said Aburish.”

      Oh, c’mon. The name “Said Aburish” is clearly just someone trying to spell “Saudi Arabia” while drunk.

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