風蕭蕭_Frank
以文會友
猶太複國主義者：美國的麻煩製造者
邁克爾·哈德森 2024年10月7日
https://michael-hudson.com/2024/10/zionists-the-usas-trouble-makers/
理查德·D·沃爾夫和邁克爾·哈德森：中東局勢動蕩，烏克蘭瀕臨崩潰！美國會采取行動嗎？
NIMA：很高興再次見到你們，理查德和邁克爾。讓我來主持一下。我們先來談談最關鍵的問題：為什麽美國對結束中東和烏克蘭的衝突不感興趣？我們都知道，在這兩個地區，美國都有能力做到這一點。
在回答這個問題之前，我想播放一段黎巴嫩外長與克裏斯蒂安·阿曼普爾的對話，他談到了自己的觀點以及雙方未能達成停火協議的原因。
[視頻片段開始]
克裏斯蒂安·阿曼普爾：……我采訪了黎巴嫩外交部長阿卜杜拉·布·哈比卜，他目前正在華盛頓會見美國官員。這是自最近局勢升級以來，他首次接受我們的采訪。外交部長，歡迎您再次來到節目。
阿卜杜拉·布·哈比卜：謝謝。謝謝。
克裏斯蒂安：自從我們上次通話以來，貴國的局勢已經發展到非常嚴重的危機程度。我想問您，您現在身在美國。您知道，一些美國政府官員支持以色列對貴國的地麵入侵。您身在華盛頓，努力爭取各方支持以達成停火協議，對此您有何看法？
阿卜杜拉：他們也同意拜登-馬克龍的聲明，該聲明呼籲停火，並呼籲實施為期21天的停火。之後，霍赫斯坦先生將前往黎巴嫩，就停火進行談判。他們告訴我們，內塔尼亞胡先生同意了這一點。我們也得到了真主黨的同意。你知道之後發生了什麽。那天我們在紐約見到了你。
克裏斯蒂安：我知道。你當時正在談到要向安理會提交停火協議。結果不到24小時，真主黨領導人就被暗殺了。你是說哈桑·納斯魯拉在被暗殺前不久同意了停火嗎？
阿卜杜拉：他同意了，他同意了。是的，是的。我們完全同意；黎巴嫩在與真主黨協商後同意了停火。議長貝裏先生與真主黨進行了磋商，我們也把情況告知了美國和法國。他們告訴我們，內塔尼亞胡先生也同意了兩國總統發表的聲明。
[視頻片段結束]
尼瑪：是的。問題就在這裏，因為如果你還記得的話，伊斯梅爾·哈尼亞在卡塔爾與真主黨談判期間被暗殺。
就在他們與黎巴嫩政府達成某種協議，真主黨表示“好，我們就按這個計劃來”之後，他們又暗殺了他。
現在的問題是，為什麽美國也參與其中，邁克爾？請繼續。
邁克爾·哈德森：嗯，美國不希望停火，因為它想控製整個近東。它想利用以色列作為傀儡。今天發生的一切都是50年前，也就是1973年和1974年策劃好的。我曾旁聽過烏齊·阿拉德的會議，他曾任摩薩德局長，後來成為內塔尼亞胡的首席軍事顧問。
整個戰略基本上是由國防部和新自由主義者製定的，而且幾乎是分階段進行的，我稍後會解釋。
[亨利·馬丁]“斯庫普”·傑克遜是需要記住的關鍵人物。斯庫普·傑克遜是極右翼新保守主義者，他資助了所有這些計劃。他曾於1960年擔任民主黨全國委員會主席，之後與軍事顧問合作。
這些年，我與赫爾曼·卡恩（《奇愛博士》的原型人物）在哈德遜研究所共事，我參加了一些會議，我會描述這些會議的內容，但我更想描述的是，導致美國如今不願和平、想要控製整個近東的整個戰略是如何逐步形成的。
這一切都被詳細闡述過了。我寫了一本書，記錄了我在20世紀70年代與戰爭學院、白宮以及空軍和陸軍各個智庫舉行的會議。
美國所有戰略的出發點在於，民主國家已無法通過征兵製組建一支國內軍隊。美國無力組建足夠強大的軍隊入侵他國，而沒有入侵，就無法真正占領他國。你可以轟炸他國，但這隻會激起抵抗。你無法占領他國。
越南戰爭表明，任何征兵嚐試都會遭到強烈的反征兵抵製，這種抵製會演變為反戰情緒，因此，任何領導人必須由選舉產生的國家都無法再次承擔征兵的角色。
誠然，美國確實向伊拉克派遣了一支小規模軍隊，而且美國在全球擁有800個軍事基地，但這並非一支作戰軍隊——而是一支占領軍，幾乎沒有遭到任何抵抗。
例如，烏克蘭與俄羅斯之間的衝突就是個例子，正如我們在那裏看到的。近東的情況則截然不同。
反戰學生運動表明，1968年林登·約翰遜不得不退出總統競選，因為他所到之處都會爆發反對他、要求停止戰爭的示威遊行。毋庸置疑，如今已不會再發生此類示威遊行。
因此，我不會稱美國或歐盟為民主國家，但沒有任何一個需要通過選舉產生的政府能夠派遣自己的軍隊參與大規模戰爭。
這意味著，如今的戰爭策略僅限於轟炸，而非占領。以色列軍隊隻能向加沙和真主黨投擲炸彈，試圖摧毀目標，但無論是以色列軍隊還是其他任何軍隊，都無法像二戰時期那樣入侵並占領一個國家。
如今一切都變了，鑒於美國與俄羅斯、伊朗和中國的聯盟關係，美國不可能再占領他國。
五十年前人們就認識到了這一點，當時似乎美國支持的戰爭必須縮減規模。但這種情況並沒有發生。原因在於美國還有後備方案：依靠外國軍隊作為代理人作戰，而不是親自出戰。這是一種獲得軍事力量的辦法。
“第一個例子是阿富汗瓦哈比聖戰分子的出現，他們後來發展成為基地組織。吉米·卡特動員他們對抗阿富汗的世俗利益，並以‘沒錯，他們是穆斯林，但歸根結底，我們都信仰上帝’為借口。”
因此，對付阿富汗世俗政權的答案是瓦哈比狂熱主義和聖戰。美國意識到，要想擁有一支願意戰鬥到最後一人——最後一名阿富汗人、最後一名以色列人、最後一名烏克蘭人——的軍隊，就必須建立一個充滿仇恨的國家，一個與美國和歐洲精神截然不同的國家。
布熱津斯基正是這一切的幕後策劃者。遜尼派聖戰分子成為了美國在中東的“外籍軍團”，其勢力範圍包括伊拉克、敘利亞和伊朗，以及一直延伸到俄羅斯邊境的穆斯林國家。
美國的目標，石油，是這項政策的核心。這意味著美國必須確保近東的安全，為此它扶植了兩支代理軍隊。這兩支軍隊至今仍是盟友，並肩作戰。一方麵是基地組織聖戰分子，另一方麵是他們的幕後操縱者——以色列人，他們沆瀣一氣。
他們替美國打仗，使美國不必親自出手。
美國的外交政策支持以色列和烏克蘭，向他們提供武器，用巨額資金賄賂他們的領導人，並為他們的一切行動提供電子衛星製導。
拜登總統不斷對內塔尼亞胡說：“我們剛剛給了你一個全新的掩體、集束炸彈和巨型炸彈——請把它們扔向你的敵人，但要輕柔一些。我們不希望你在投擲這些炸彈時傷及任何人。”
這就是虛偽之處——一味粉飾太平。過去50年來，拜登和美國一直扮演著“好警察”的角色，批評它所支持的“壞警察”。“壞警察”包括ISIS和基地組織，以及內塔尼亞胡。
然而，在這一切戰略的製定過程中，赫爾曼·卡恩的偉大成就，在於他成功說服了美國的帝國主義擴張者們，讓他們相信控製中東的關鍵在於依靠以色列作為其外援。
正如我所說，這種保持距離的安排使得美國得以扮演“好警察”的角色，指定以色列來執行其任務。而以色列則組織並資助了努斯拉陣線和基地組織，美國卻假裝譴責他們。這一切都是軍方、國務院和國家安全局共同支持的計劃的一部分。
正因如此，國務院才將美國外交的管理權移交給了猶太複國主義者，表麵上將以色列的行為與美國的帝國主義擴張區分開來。但簡而言之，以色列人已經加入了基地組織和伊斯蘭國的陣營，成為了美國的“外籍軍團”。
尼瑪：是的。正如你剛才提到的，問題是：為什麽美國對結束中東和烏克蘭的衝突不感興趣？邁克爾指出了美國這種行為的最終目的。你現在的看法是什麽？
理查德·沃爾夫：嗯，我認為就烏克蘭而言，目前美國隻是出於一種模糊的、殘存的削弱俄羅斯的願望。這種願望並不奏效，所以我估計很快就會結束。至於以色列，我認為邁克爾說得對，這是一筆交易：以色列人或許能給美國在中東局勢上提供一些籌碼，如果沒有以色列，美國就無法獲得這種籌碼。否則，我無法理解。
為什麽美國允許內塔尼亞胡先生製定其政策？我們現在麵臨的是一個奇怪的局麵：製約內塔尼亞胡先生的是以色列人，而不是美國人。考慮到這是兩個不同的國家，這確實很奇怪，美國人比以色列人更難反對內塔尼亞胡。但我不想否認雙方在塑造中東格局方麵存在共同利益，並且都希望能夠實現這一目標。
但我認為這種合作方式並不奏效。我懷疑，尤其是在大選之後，他們會對這一切進行大量的反思，因為目前的情況並不樂觀。
尼瑪：是的。邁克爾呢？
邁克爾：是的，我認為我們可以更多地了解背景。因為在我提到美國意識到需要外國軍隊之後，它也意識到，民主國家唯一能夠承受的全麵戰爭就是核戰爭。問題在於，這種策略隻對那些無法進行報複的對手有效。
但近年來，美國的軍事政策過於激進，迫使其他國家聯合起來，支持擁有核武器的盟友。因此，現在世界上所有國家都擁有核武器後備力量。我們之前也討論過這個問題。
結果是，如今的軍事聯盟意味著，任何使用核武器的企圖都將麵臨全麵核戰爭的風險，這場戰爭不僅會摧毀所有參戰國，還會波及整個世界。那麽，美國還能怎麽辦呢？我認為，民主國家能夠承受的非核戰爭形式隻有一種，那就是恐怖主義。我認為，應該把烏克蘭和以色列視為核戰爭之外的恐怖主義選擇。安德烈·馬爾季亞諾夫最近也解釋過，這就是核戰爭之外的選擇。除非北約西方願意冒著爆發核戰爭的風險（而他們似乎並不願意），否則恐怖主義就成了他們唯一的選擇。這正是美國在與俄羅斯、中國以及其他被其視為敵對國家的鄰國推行政權更迭計劃的根源。我們在烏克蘭，尤其是在以色列，目睹了這一切，以色列正在對加沙地帶的巴勒斯坦民眾發動戰爭。
烏克蘭人和以色列人的全部意圖就是轟炸平民，而不是軍事目標。這是一場以種族滅絕意識形態為指導，旨在徹底摧毀民眾的戰爭。這絕對是核心所在。這並非偶然——而是計劃的一部分。黎巴嫩雖然基督教人口眾多，但也身處其中。
因此，美國擁有的另一件武器是經濟武器。那就是石油和糧食——這早在1973-74年就已決定。那正是石油戰爭時期，為了應對美國將糧食價格提高四倍的局麵，石油價格也隨之翻了四倍。於是美國說道：“避免戰爭、恐怖主義和政權更迭的辦法，就是讓其他國家挨餓屈服——要麽切斷他們的糧食供應，要麽切斷他們的石油供應。因為沒有石油，他們怎麽維持工業運轉、供暖和發電呢？”
而石油是美國最大的私營壟斷企業。自第一次世界大戰以來，七姐妹石油公司一直控製著石油貿易，而英國則是她們的協調者。
石油戰爭結束後，沙特阿拉伯被承諾——或者說是被告知——“你可以隨意提高油價，但你必須把所有利潤都留在美國。你可以購買國債、公司債券和股票，但其中用於自身發展的資金不能超過一部分；你必須把剩下的交給美國金融部門。” 因此，沙特阿拉伯成了關鍵人物，其結果是石油美元湧入美國銀行，增加了流動性，導致20世紀70年代第三世界債務激增，最終引發80年代的債務危機。基本上，美國意識到，“好吧，我們想要擴大控製範圍，征服近東，征服那些擁有重要原材料的國家；我們想要利用世界銀行確保全球南方國家無法自給自足——我們會給種植園出口作物提供資金，而不是用於糧食生產。”
拉丁美洲和非洲作為美國盟友的條件並非是自己種植糧食，而是依賴美國的糧食出口。你知道，這種經濟計劃與軍事計劃相輔相成，共同構成了美國帝國的組織力量。
理查德·沃爾夫：我再補充幾點，讓情況更加複雜。據我了解，美國政治體製中的許多勢力將蘇聯在1989、1990和1991年的解體解讀為美國長期政策的結果，該政策包括軍備競賽和其他機製，使得蘇聯無力承擔美國所能承擔的軍事行動規模。
出於政治和軍事原因，他們別無選擇。
因此，蘇聯試圖在這種非此即彼的困境中掙紮，最終在核軍備競賽的需求和占領阿富汗的巨額開支之間崩潰。他們無能為力。他們不得不四處節省開支，未能完全兌現對人民承諾的消費增長計劃，最終還是失敗了。
如果你相信事情就是這樣，那麽你或許可以試著理解，他們現在對俄羅斯采取的策略與此如出一轍。換句話說，這又是一場軍備競賽，但這次不是為了在阿富汗作戰，而是為了在烏克蘭作戰。在那裏與他們交戰，將他們拖出戰線，讓他們付出慘重的代價，並假設他們無力應對所有軍備競賽，而對於你們這個比他們富裕得多的國家來說，這樣做要容易得多。
而最大的錯誤在於沒有意識到俄羅斯人非常清楚自身的不足，並且在過去25年中為此付出了巨大的努力，以避免重蹈覆轍。軍事思想中有一句格言：“每個人都在打上一場戰爭。” 你必須打好眼前的這場戰爭，而不是上一場。上一場戰爭的勝利者認為他們找到了製勝法寶，而上一場戰爭的失敗者則意識到他們必須另辟蹊徑。俄羅斯的軍事實力和軍事準備程度令所有人感到驚訝。他們之所以能在烏克蘭戰爭中獲勝，正是因為這一點。這才是真正的誤判。
好的，這是第一點。我懷疑，烏克蘭不僅在重演舊戰略，而且他們還希望通過在中東地區製造某種軍備競賽——部分是以色列與阿拉伯國家和伊斯蘭國家之間的軍備競賽，部分是什葉派與遜尼派之間的軍備競賽——來達到目的。
記住，伊拉克和伊朗戰爭，通過分裂兩國，收買阿布紮比或迪拜，或者其他種種陰謀詭計——他們希望以此資助他們的盟友以色列，並耗盡以色列的所有敵人，最終迫使他們與以色列達成某種協議。以色列必須非常非常謹慎：它需要安撫美國才能達成這些協議，但同時也必須竭力確保這些協議無法成功，因為它想成為美國在該地區代理人。
最後一點，以色列和烏克蘭之間還有另一個相似之處：鑒於他們所處的劣勢——人數上的懸殊——烏克蘭的澤連斯基和以色列的內塔尼亞胡都沒有獲勝的希望。別忘了，美國人根本不明白：以色列現在不僅與哈馬斯交戰——他們在加沙地帶尚未擊敗哈馬斯——還與約旦河西岸和黎巴嫩的真主黨交戰，此外，他們還在也門與胡塞武裝交戰，與幕後黑手伊朗交戰，而且或多或少也與黎巴嫩交戰。
還有與伊朗關係密切、在伊拉克和敘利亞勢力強大的什葉派民兵。我得告訴你：敵人太多了。胡塞武裝最近展示了他們能夠向以色列發射導彈。我估計我剛才提到的其他勢力要麽已經具備這種能力，要麽很快就能做到。
以色列不可能同時打五場戰爭。它隻是個小國。天知道為了打仗，以色列的經濟實際上已經停滯了。他們唯一的希望就是尋求美國的幫助。這是烏克蘭唯一的希望。否則，烏克蘭會迅速戰敗，而以色列則會慢慢失敗。
在我看來，情況就是這樣，這也是我所看到的，圍繞著如何應對的種種猜測和恐慌的根源所在。但這同時也讓我產生了一個疑問：為什麽以色列無法或不願達成協議？我的感覺是，埃及會同意。而且我的感覺是，以色列的許多鄰國至少在原則上願意坐下來，至少嚐試達成一些協議。然後，以色列不會選擇擴張領土，而是向上發展，建造高樓大廈。你們在做什麽？從巴勒斯坦農民手中竊取土地。你們在做什麽？你們的未來是農業的嗎？別傻了——不是；也不需要是。
這就像我們突然麵臨盧森堡要求割讓比利時、荷蘭或法國的土地一樣，因為他們需要擴張。他們一直樂於向上發展，而不是橫向擴張。而且這種情況持續了幾十年，比以色列關注擴張的時間要長得多。所以，這到底是怎麽回事？
總之，我想這些應該是……你知道，我正在努力學習如何用一種不受主流媒體分析人士思維局限的方式來思考這個問題，他們的思維方式毫無用處。
邁克爾：理查德，你準確地描述了正在發生的事情，你也指出了“戰鬥到最後一個烏克蘭人”的理念現在是如何被“戰鬥到最後一個以色列人”的理念所取代的。他們為什麽要這樣做？答案是：如果他們追求和平——如果埃及和你提到的其他國家能夠達成和平協議
如果美國與以色列結盟，就不會有戰爭。如果沒有戰爭，美國又如何能接管該地區的其他國家呢？正如我之前所說，50年前美國的政策（我稍後會詳細闡述），是基於美國實際上接管所有這些國家，再次利用以色列作為攻城槌，也就是美軍所說的“美國登陸的航空母艦”。這一切始於20世紀60年代，與亨利·“斯庫普”·傑克遜有關。
最初，以色列在美國的計劃中並沒有扮演什麽角色。傑克遜憎恨共產主義，憎恨蘇聯，他在民主黨內獲得了大量支持。他是華盛頓州的參議員，而華盛頓州正是軍工複合體的中心。
由於他對軍工複合體的支持，他被戲稱為“波音參議員”。軍工複合體支持他擔任民主黨全國委員會主席。嗯，他得到了赫爾曼·卡恩的支持——正如我所說，他是《奇愛博士》的原型——卡恩後來成為美國軍事霸權和哈德遜研究所的關鍵戰略家——我跟他沒有任何關係，我的祖先發現了我們倆名字都來源於的那條河。他們利用哈德遜研究所及其前身蘭德公司（赫爾曼的母公司）作為主要的長期規劃機構。
我被請來討論美元匯率和國際收支平衡問題。我的專業是國際金融。赫爾曼把哈德遜研究所設立為摩薩德和其他以色列機構的訓練基地。那裏有很多摩薩德人員，正如我提到的，我曾兩次與烏茲·阿拉德（??後來成為摩薩德局長）一起前往亞洲。
所以我們討論的不僅是未來長期的發展方向，還有當下正在發生的事情。一天晚上吃飯時，赫爾曼告訴我，他生命中最重要的事情就是以色列。正因如此，他甚至無法從美國的盟友，比如加拿大，那裏獲得軍事情報，因為他說他不會效忠加拿大，甚至不會效忠美國，盡管他已經宣誓效忠了另一個國家。他還說，傑克遜對猶太複國主義者的“優點”恰恰在於他不是猶太人，而是美國軍事巨頭的捍衛者，以及當時正在進行的軍備控製體係的反對者。傑克遜反對一切軍備控製——“我們必須打仗。”於是，他開始往國務院和其他美國機構安插新保守主義者，這些人從一開始就計劃發動一場永久性的世界大戰，而這場對政府政策的掌控正是由傑克遜的前參議院助手們主導的。
這些參議院助手包括保羅·沃爾福威茨、理查德·珀爾、道格拉斯·費夫等人，他們被提拔到國務院的要職，最近又進入了國家安全委員會。 1974年美國貿易法的傑克遜-瓦尼克修正案成為後來對蘇聯實施製裁的藍本。
其理由是該修正案限製了猶太人的移民和其他人權。於是，國務院立刻意識到：我們可以利用這些人作為美國政策的理論家和執行者——而他們想要占領所有阿拉伯國家。
有一次，我帶我的導師特倫斯·麥卡錫去哈德遜研究所，討論伊斯蘭世界觀。結果，烏茲每說兩句話就打斷他：“不，不，我們必須把他們都殺了。”研究所的其他成員也一直在談論殺阿拉伯人。
我不認為當時有哪個非猶太裔美國人像猶太複國主義者那樣對伊斯蘭教懷有如此根深蒂固的仇恨，或者像他們那樣對俄羅斯懷有如此根深蒂固的仇恨，尤其是對過去幾個世紀以來俄羅斯的反猶主義，順便一提，這些反猶主義大多發生在烏克蘭和基輔。
嗯，那是50年前的事了，傑克遜推行的這些製裁措施，也就是美國貿易製裁，成為了如今新保守主義者對所有被視為敵對國家的製裁的雛形。喬·利伯曼繼承了傑克遜民主黨人的傳統——姑且這麽稱呼他們——這些親猶太複國主義的冷戰鷹派對俄羅斯懷有同樣的仇恨，這使得以色列成為了這些冷戰分子的傀儡。
他們與我20世紀50年代一起長大的大多數猶太朋友截然不同。我認識的猶太人都已經融入主流社會——他們都是成功的中產階級。但傑克遜引進的那些人並非如此。他們不願被同化，他們也像內塔尼亞胡今年早些時候所說的那樣，認為“猶太複國主義的敵人是那些想要同化的世俗猶太人——魚與熊掌不可兼得”。20世紀70年代的這項政策將猶太教分裂成兩大陣營：主張和平的同化派和主張戰爭的冷戰派。而冷戰派正是由美國扶持和資助的——國防部向傑克遜研究所提供了超過1億美元的巨額撥款，用於製定本質上帶有種族仇恨色彩的軍事政策。
過去，這種仇恨曾被用來煽動整個近東地區的反伊斯蘭情緒。這景象令人不忍直視。
如今，經曆過那段曆史的人寥寥無幾，很難記得當時的情形。但正如我所說，我們現在看到的，不過是一場鬧劇，仿佛以色列的所作所為都是“內塔尼亞胡的錯，都是新保守主義者的錯”。然而，從一開始，他們就得到了大力扶持，獲得了巨額資金、所需的炸彈、武器和資金。以色列是一個需要外匯來維持貨幣償付能力的國家。所有這一切都是為了讓他們做今天正在做的事情而提供的。所以，當拜登假裝說“難道不能采取兩國方案嗎？”時，這簡直是自欺欺人。不，不可能有兩國方案，因為內塔尼亞胡在聯合國大會上說過：“我們恨加沙人，我們恨巴勒斯坦人，我們恨阿拉伯人——不可能有兩國方案，這是我的地圖，”他說，“這就是以色列：以色列沒有非猶太人——我們是一個猶太國家”——他直言不諱。
這在50年前是不可能被如此直白地說出來的。這會令人震驚，但當時說這話的是那些從一開始就被拉攏進來的新保守主義者，他們的目的正是做他們今天正在做的事情。他們充當美國的代理人，征服產油國，使之成為“大以色列”的一部分，就像英國、德國或日本那樣，成為美國的衛星國。他們認為，為了獲得所需的一切支持，他們會繼續執行美國的政策，這已經成為他們自身生存的前提條件，但正如理查德剛才所說，這套方法現在看來已經行不通了。它無力回天——以色列把自己逼入的這個黑洞無解。
然而，他們卻不願意建立一個統一的國家，因為拜登和整個國家安全委員會——國會、軍方，尤其是軍工複合體——都認為巴勒斯坦人和以色列人之間不可能有任何共同生活，就像烏克蘭不可能讓烏克蘭語者和俄語者在同一個國家共存一樣。情況完全一樣，遵循著完全相同的政策，而這一切都是由美國策劃和資助的，並投入了巨額資金。
尼瑪：是的，理查德。
理查德·沃爾夫：是的，讓我們從以色列猶太複國主義者的角度來看待這個問題，因為合作需要雙方配合：無論美國的目標是什麽，它們都必須與以色列人——至少是那些掌權者——正在做的事情有所契合，否則就行不通。
設身處地地想一想，如果你是一個猶太複國主義者：你已經脫離了歐洲和亞洲的起源。你們離開故土，又在巴勒斯坦重新定居，這都要感謝《貝爾福宣言》和英國帝國主義者。他們把原本屬於其他人的土地給了你們，那片土地位於中東。一個根本性的認知是：以色列國的獨立存在是脆弱的。
如果你是一名猶太複國主義者，那麽你就能理解，鑒於世界各地大量猶太人反對建國，而且即便有機會，世界上大多數猶太人也沒有去以色列。他們知道，他們在其他猶太社群中的支持並不均衡。
他們也知道，二戰後唯一能夠維持他們生活、能夠依靠的國家是美國。這當然是他們想要依靠的國家，因為美國戰後比戰前更加富裕，而且沒有競爭對手。如果可以選擇美國，為什麽還要選擇英國或法國呢？即使有可能，又何必呢？好了，現在他們不得不擔心——而且我相信他們確實很擔心——美國遲早會出於自身原因意識到，未來更好的選擇是阿拉伯人，而不是以色列人，因為阿拉伯人數量眾多，而以色列人數量稀少，而且兩國之間的財富差距對以色列不利。情況恰恰相反。
幾周前，我了解到不久前在北京舉行的一次會議。中國政府邀請了巴勒斯坦運動的所有派別派代表參加一次旨在團結各方的會議——其中包括哈馬斯、真主黨以及其他許多組織。這些會議是由中國讚助的。這肯定會讓內塔尼亞胡先生感到擔憂，非常擔憂。
為什麽？並非因為中國會參與其中。他們不會那樣做。但我相信，在與美國錯綜複雜的談判中，中國最終會通過犧牲他人來達成協議，從而彼此和睦相處。
我怎麽知道呢？因為這正是歐洲一半焦慮的潛台詞——歐洲會成為替罪羊，歐洲會像當年歐洲為了自身衝突瓜分非洲一樣，被美國和中國的利益瓜分殆盡。所以
現在以色列人迫切需要……什麽？
他們需要美國持續的經濟、政治和軍事支持。為了獲得這種支持，他們會不惜一切代價。如果你還記得，就在幾年前，曾有傳言說伊朗門事件是由以色列人幕後操縱的；據說以色列秘密支持了南非的種族隔離政權。最近又有傳言——我不知道真假——說俄羅斯人發現了以色列在烏克蘭軍隊內部的雇傭兵行動。好吧，我對這些都不感到驚訝。這就是像以色列這樣的國家所能提供的：它會扮演壞人；它會說出那些不該說的話；它會為美國搖旗呐喊；它會承受一切壓力，包括來自阿拉伯世界和伊斯蘭世界的憤怒。因為如果這些壓力不集中在以色列身上，你覺得它們會集中在誰身上？就在這裏。9·11事件就發生在這裏。正因如此，它才在伊斯蘭世界被人們所慶祝。所以，這就是法國人所謂的“權宜婚姻”。
這裏存在著一種權宜婚姻，一方是自認為依賴美國的猶太複國主義者——而他們確實依賴美國。這就是為什麽他們在美國的外交努力主要集中在福音派群體，而不是猶太社區——因為他們得不到想要的支持——而是福音派群體。他們找到了聖經中的安排：耶穌再來時，必須找到猶太人掌管聖地。哦，太好了，猶太人發現他們可以利用新約聖經中的這個故事建立聯盟。每年以色列電影節規模最大的活動都在美國的新教大型教堂舉行，而不是在猶太教堂。這到底是怎麽回事？以色列人迫切需要在這裏獲得支持。他們一直感到恐懼——他們原本指望的福音派人士正越來越傾向於特朗普，他們對此感到擔憂。對吧？
諷刺的是：猶太人的態度恰恰相反，他們似乎更熱衷於幫助烏克蘭——那些世俗的、非猶太複國主義者。所以，局勢瞬息萬變。但我猜，邁克爾，也許你也知道，無論亨利·傑克遜的勢力多麽強大，或者他的後代多麽成功，總有一些高層人士一直在公開質疑，美國在中東是不是押錯了寶。他們也在質疑，是否能找到比以色列猶太複國主義者更合適的人選。
一旦這種情況發生，內塔尼亞胡先生就會消失。而最擔心這一點的，正是內塔尼亞胡夫婦。
邁克爾：嗯，你描述的正是這種動態。
過去幾周，尼瑪邀請了許多嘉賓，他們都解釋說，這一切的反對者是美國軍方，因為據這些嘉賓所說，美國在近東進行的每一次軍事演習都以失敗告終。在烏克蘭與俄羅斯進行的每一次軍事演習，美國也都以失敗告終。
顯然，目前軍方內部存在著一種對立——我們姑且稱他們為現實主義者——他們認為，如果真的想延長戰爭，那行不通。但正如你所指出的，反對他們的不僅是美利堅帝國的邏輯，更是一種近乎宗教的仇恨宗教。猶太複國主義已經基督教化——它接受了所有針對“他者”的仇恨。美國軍事戰略家不想結束在亞洲和烏克蘭的戰爭，因為正如我所說，如果戰爭結束，那麽現狀就會維持下去。而美國無法將這些國家變成其衛星國。和平意味著依賴型國家——伊拉克將重獲獨立；敘利亞也將如此；伊朗將被允許保持獨立——但這不會讓美國直接擁有石油。
如果你觀察新保守主義者，你會發現他們幾乎把這當成一種宗教。我在哈德遜研究所遇到過很多新保守主義者；他們中的一些人，或者他們的父輩，是托洛茨基主義者。他們接受了托洛茨基的“不斷革命論”。也就是說，一場不斷展開的革命——托洛茨基認為，始於蘇俄的革命將會蔓延到其他國家，比如德國等等。但新保守主義者卻接受了這一觀點，並宣稱：“不，真正的‘不斷革命’是美利堅帝國——它將不斷擴張，沒有任何東西能夠阻止我們征服世界。”
所以，我們看到的是一種或多或少務實的軍事力量——即便最高層並非如此（最高層基本上是政治任命的），至少那些真正參與過戰爭演習的將軍們是務實的——這種務實與宗教狂熱的對抗，因為狂熱分子比務實主義者更願意為最後一個以色列人或最後一個烏克蘭人而死。務實主義者會審視局勢，並努力實現習近平主席和中國所倡導的雙贏局麵。事實上，早在20世紀70年代這種分裂開始出現時，我就聽到過這樣的討論：讓我們重新思考第二次世界大戰，它實際上
爭論的焦點在於“戰後社會主義會是什麽樣的？是國家社會主義——納粹主義——還是從工業資本主義的動態和自身利益中湧現出來的民主社會主義？” 事實上，從1945年和平伊始，美國政府就開始支持納粹主義。我們之前也討論過這個問題。
美國政府招募納粹領導人，並將他們派往拉丁美洲各地，即便不是在美國，也是為了對抗共產主義。一旦美國下定決心“必須摧毀蘇聯”，他們發現納粹分子是那些願意為信仰獻身的戰士。他們不會坐下來思考“我這樣做是否理性？它是否可行？” 因此，正如理查德所討論的，以色列的問題之一在於，它沒有走上一條能夠確保以色列作為一個經濟國家生存下去的道路。美國已經在經濟、金融和軍事上對歐洲實行了配給製，就像二戰後英國實行配給製，一戰後整個歐洲實行配給製一樣。托洛茨基寫了一篇文章——《美國與歐洲》——說：“美國已經對歐洲實行了配給製。” 這篇文章大約寫於1921年。
所以，可以說納粹精神已經獲勝——這種試圖通過“非我即敵”的思維來擴張帝國的精神——是一種仇恨和恐怖主義精神，通過暗殺和反戰罪行等手段，成為避免核戰爭的替代方案。美國人意識到“我們其實並不想要核戰爭，但我們可以通過恐怖主義盡可能地接近它。” 這就是為什麽美國今天支持烏克蘭一個公開的納粹政權和以色列類似的恐怖分子，目的是最終將西亞地區納入“大以色列”的版圖。這是一種心態，幾乎可以說是一場宗教戰爭，我們正身處其中。
理查德·沃爾夫：我再補充一點，邁克爾，我想接上你剛才說的，我同意你的觀點：美國民眾的焦慮源於一場曠日持久的地麵戰爭，他們擔心美國民眾無法忍受這種戰爭超過幾個月。
以色列人如果沒有這些軍事衝突，根本無法生存下去。我們經曆了贖罪日戰爭、1967年戰爭、1973年戰爭——我的意思是，我們一直在打仗，每一場戰爭——至少在以色列方麵——都以維護和平與安全為由，但顯然這些戰爭並沒有帶來和平與安全。
所以他們又發動了一場戰爭。而現在，他們麵對的是有史以來規模最大、最慘烈的戰爭。我們有什麽理由相信戰爭不會繼續下去？他們又在做什麽呢？好吧，他們正在擴大戰爭範圍，在加沙造成了更加慘重的破壞，現在又將戰火蔓延到真主黨和也門，他們轟炸等等。好吧。
他們避免自取滅亡的唯一辦法——首先是組織所有什葉派社群之間的合作，然後最終擴展到遜尼派和更廣泛的伊斯蘭社群——他們唯一的希望就是讓美國介入。正如我所說，就像澤連斯基先生除非……否則毫無希望。即使是最近爭取授權向俄羅斯境內發射導彈的舉動，也行不通——俄羅斯人已經把導彈藏起來了，或者轉移到更遠的地方，使其無法觸及。所以，已經沒有任何希望了。
除了讓美國介入，別無他法。然而你的論點是：美國看到這種情況會說，“我們做不到。不是我們沒有導彈——我們有。也不是我們殺傷力不夠——我們能殺傷力足夠。”好吧，我們不可能速戰速決。
上帝知道，即使在地球上最貧窮的國家，比如阿富汗和越南，我們也做不到。更何況是在歐洲，或者中東，我們肯定做不到。這意味著以色列唯一的成功就是讓美國介入，而美國卻因為自身受到的種種限製而無法介入。
這意味著，總有一天，雙方必須做出讓步。難道不應該期待美國突然頓悟，意識到阿拉伯人比以色列人更適合做我們的盟友嗎？如果這意味著要清除政府高層的新保守主義者，那麽，二戰後我們知道，如果他們想清除，他們知道如何做到——他們可以這樣做，並以猶太人的身份（如果真有猶太人的話）、猶太複國主義者的身份，或者以“誤入歧途的顧問”的身份來對付他們。有很多方法可以做到。關鍵是要做出決定。
也許，我想，如果我沒理解錯你的意思，勞埃德·奧斯汀在授權任何事情上的明顯猶豫——他現在幾乎公開地對拜登先生的其他顧問說“別去那裏，別那樣做”——表明我們在這裏所說的或許有道理。
邁克爾：嗯，理查德，你說得太好了——這正是關鍵所在。
什麽
讓美國介入意味著什麽？美國不會派兵，因為你可以想象，無論是在烏克蘭還是在以色列，美軍的處境都會很糟糕——很多人會犧牲。你可以想象，如果民主黨政府派兵前往那裏，會造成怎樣的後果。所以他們不能這麽做。
他們嚐試過恐怖主義，而恐怖主義的結果??是讓全世界都與我們為敵。但即便如此，我們仍然處於革命前夕的局麵。世界其他國家對恐怖主義感到震驚，對聯合國最初在其協定中製定的所有戰爭規則和文明規則的踐踏感到震驚。因此，你現在看到的是世界其他國家維護文明的能力徹底崩潰。當然，你我都希望美國政府中能有一些頭腦清醒的人。
我沒看到國會裏有多少人支持吉爾·斯坦的候選資格，她反對戰爭。我覺得國會不會講道理。我認為國務院、國家安全局和民主黨領導層，他們根植於軍工複合體，絕對奉行“如果我們不能如願以償，誰還想生活在這樣的世界裏”的信條。你還記得嗎？當美國以原子彈威脅俄羅斯時，人們都在問，俄羅斯真的會進行核反擊嗎？普京總統的回答是：“畢竟，誰還想生活在一個沒有俄羅斯的世界裏呢？”
新保守主義者、參議院、眾議院、總統、媒體以及兩黨的競選捐款人都在說：“誰願意生活在一個我們無法掌控的世界？誰願意生活在一個其他國家獨立自主、擁有自己政策的世界？誰願意生活在一個我們無法攫取其經濟盈餘的世界？如果我們不能攫取一切、主宰世界，誰願意生活在這樣的世界裏？”
這就是我們現在麵臨的心態。我一直在關注中國和伊朗的動向：比如，兩天前，伊朗向美國發射導彈襲擊以色列一處停放著F-16戰鬥機和其他飛機的機場，他們仍然抱有僥幸心理。伊朗此舉意在向美國發出警告，提醒以色列伊朗即將炸毀他們的機場。他們最好趕緊讓所有飛機升空。
伊朗說：“哦，我們不想得罪任何人。我們能不能讓他們明白，戰爭毫無意義？” 然後以色列那邊又有人說：“等等，你們沒炸掉的那些飛機現在要飛到伊朗上空，轟炸我們了。”
先發製人的國家會占上風——我們本來有機會摧毀伊朗空軍，讓他們停止轟炸黎巴嫩、加沙地帶和其他國家，也停止轟炸我們，但我們沒這麽做，因為我們想繼續向世界展示我們是正義的一方。
這就好比二戰時期，或者今天在烏克蘭，你是一個赤身裸體的好人，徑直走向納粹的坦克——這才是問題的症結所在。
理查德·沃爾夫：如果我們是對的，那為什麽……或者說，我們是不是忽略了什麽？有什麽證據表明美國明白自己正被拉向一個它並不想去的方向？邁克爾，我先就你剛才說的這一點補充一下，請聽我說完。
美國明白……假設他們和你理解的一樣，他們收到了通知——我也注意到了這一點——伊朗事先告知了美國他們的行動計劃，給了美國時間通知以色列。
好吧，那些說“他們幫了我們一個大忙”的美國人呢？因為如果他們沒有這麽做，如果他們沒有摧毀以色列空軍或其他什麽，那麽以色列就會來找我們，要求我們立即提供更大規模的支持——這可不是什麽好事，這很危險。
下一步伊朗就會把目標對準我們。你看，如果我沒理解錯的話，胡塞武裝得到了伊朗的支持，他們一直在用導彈襲擊美國軍艦。好吧，情況越來越接近了，越來越接近了，你會被卷入其中，然後你自身的內部政治會迫使你做出反應，然後你就真的卷進去了，然後以色列人就贏了，他們把你拖進了泥潭。現在它有了自己的邏輯，自己的升級機製，而你卻麵臨著所有人都以為你永遠不會做的事情：一場在亞洲進行的地麵戰爭，這場戰爭讓你損失了自己的軍隊。越戰之後，每一位總統都說過他們永遠不會再這樣做。
甚至在朝鮮戰爭之後，有些人也說過同樣的話，因為他們明白。所以，如果我能看到一些跡象表明，有美國人意識到了某種類似的事情，我們可以指出來，我會更安心一些。
邁克爾：嗯，我認為人們的意識已經發生了變化。
雖然目前主要還是阿拉伯和波斯方麵的問題，但我認為現在他們沒有擊落飛機。現在，我認為伊朗人是在說“不再當好人了”。他們明確表示會采取怎樣的報複行動；他們說，如果以色列或美國膽敢攻擊他們，他們將摧毀美國在伊拉克和敘利亞的軍事基地，而他們已經證明自己能夠精準打擊這些目標。我認為在伊朗看來，他們已經向世界其他國家表明，“過去半年裏，美國一直在試圖挑起戰爭，就像美國在烏克蘭戰爭中一直試圖挑起俄羅斯的戰爭一樣”，而普京之所以能夠抵製住這種挑釁，是因為他拖得越久，就越能贏得這場戰爭；歐洲正在被撕裂。
同樣地，伊朗人可以說：“美國會攻擊我們，然後說我們隻是因為伊朗的襲擊才去保衛可憐的以色列。但現在伊朗發動了襲擊——首先，他們沒有殺害平民，隻是轟炸了軍事目標——而以色列人卻想殺人；他們想殺阿拉伯人，因為他們仇恨阿拉伯人。伊朗人隻襲擊了軍事目標，沒有傷及平民。所以現在毫無疑問，我認為，世界其他地區——中國、俄羅斯、全球南方國家、全球大多數國家——都不會屈服。這使得美國軍方和國務院無法再聲稱他們是在回應伊朗對以色列和加沙的無端襲擊，那次襲擊導致10萬加沙人喪生，少數以色列人也喪生。還有俄羅斯對烏克蘭的無端襲擊，烏克蘭人在盧甘斯克和頓涅茨克殺害平民。”
這讓美國失去了任何……美國假裝除了恐怖主義和破壞之外，還有任何其他意識形態或外交政策，並且違反了過去幾個世紀以來陸路國際法所規定的所有文明戰爭規則。
所以，美國正在與文明開戰，世界其他國家也意識到了這一點。你說得對，在美國，誰會像你我一樣發出這樣的聲音？為什麽像我們這樣身居要職的人會站出來說話？好吧，我們是在尼瑪的節目上，而不是在《紐約時報》或《華爾街日報》上；我們沒有來自軍工複合體的任何資金，也沒有來自國務院和國家民主基金會資助的非政府組織的資金；我們孤立無援，而那些持有這種觀點的人卻不得不從國務院辭職，像麥戈文那樣從中央情報局辭職，像尼瑪節目邀請的嘉賓——麥格雷戈上校和斯科特·雷德——那樣從軍隊辭職——他們被排除在討論之外。這就是這種緊張局勢的根源。當今世界局勢如此動蕩，暴力事件也隨之而來。
這些人真的……美國人真的會以“哦，我們隻使用戰術武器”為由，挑起原子戰爭嗎？這才是問題的關鍵——美國人的立場違背了文明最基本的原則。其他國家會作何反應？他們會意識到威脅嗎？還是會說：“美國，讓我來告訴你你的自身利益是什麽：你的自身利益在於采納理查德的建議——與阿拉伯國家合作，與我們合作，這是雙贏的局麵。”
究竟是誰，在捐助者的支持下，這些美國人會說：“是的，我們寧願拯救文明，也不願為了短期利益而賺取金錢。”美國的視角是短期的；而世界其他國家則著眼於長遠——誰會最終獲勝？
理查德·沃爾夫：諷刺的是，如果曆史可以借鑒，他們會發動戰爭，然後戰爭會曠日持久，屆時我們現在提出的所有這些論點都會得到回應，爭論會展開，最終才會做出艱難的決定。
問題在於，美國在很多方麵都陷入了死胡同，而當沒有出路時，這本身就存在著危險和動態。如果內塔尼亞胡轟炸貝魯特後，他在以色列的支持率大幅上升（我看到有報道確實如此），那將是一個非常嚴肅的事實，因為它意味著我們不能僅僅把這看作是一個右翼政府在做X、Y和Z。我們必須看到，這是一個右翼政府至少到目前為止能夠團結民眾的政府，而這正是我們對這個國家的民主黨和共和黨所要說的。他們也這麽做了。
這很可怕，因為這意味著他們還能采取更多措施，而且他們很可能會這麽做。坦白說，我們會像過去兩周一樣，真正地感到恐懼，害怕事情會朝著多麽愚蠢、多麽可怕的方向發展。
具有破壞性。
我唯一能說的是，特朗普、哈裏斯、萬斯或沃爾茲的言論都表明，他們對所有這些問題都漠不關心，而且態度輕率……這些人都在假裝“美國治下的和平”（Pax Americana）依然存在，我們可以沒完沒了地談論邊境入侵、吞食貓狗以及其他一些瑣事，因為真正的大問題根本不存在。你我，還有我們三個，都花了很長時間處理他們根本不想談的其他問題……這真是令人匪夷所思。
邁克爾：我們現在就坐在紐約，就在炸彈之下，你知道，誰想在世界末日之後繼續生活下去。
你用了“右翼”這個詞，歐洲的反戰候選人都被稱為右翼，這真是太諷刺了——以前都是左翼。奧地利剛剛舉行了一次選舉，反對烏克蘭戰爭的右翼候選人贏得了選舉。德國已經舉行了三次選舉，右翼基本上三次都反對烏克蘭戰爭——德國政府終於暴露了他們真正的納粹本質，宣布“我們要取締反對戰爭的AFG”，他們還稱之為右翼政府。所以，歐洲的納粹分子取締了反戰政黨，而反戰政黨卻被稱為“右翼”，納粹分子則被稱為“民主黨人和社會民主黨人”。這真是太不可思議了——整個語言體係都卷入其中——世界顛倒了。
理查德·沃爾夫：不僅如此，每個人都在互相“拯救”民主。你知道，民主正在衰落……總之，是的，是的。
邁克爾：嗯，我知道你和我喜歡“寡頭政治”這個詞。
理查德·沃爾夫：是的。但與你不同的是，我隻在俄羅斯使用這個詞——他們有寡頭；我們有實業家。
邁克爾：是的。
尼瑪：很高興來到這裏，非常感謝理查德和邁克爾今天能和我們一起。和你們聊天真是太棒了。
理查德·沃爾夫：好的。也謝謝你們。我很榮幸能參與到這場持續進行的三方對話中。
邁克爾：尼瑪，你這段視頻的觀看量應該有20萬吧。
尼瑪：順便說一句，我不會插手，因為我覺得你們倆的對話很完美，不需要我在場。是的，一切都很順利。非常感謝。
理查德：好的。再見。
Zionists the USA's Trouble Makers
NIMA: So nice to have you back, Richard and Michael. And let me just manage this. And let’s get started with the main question here that would be: Why is the United States not interested in putting an end to the conflict in the Middle East and in Ukraine? Which we know in both of these cases, they’re capable of doing this.
And before going to the answer of this question, I’m going to play a clip that the foreign minister of Lebanon is talking with Christiane Amanpour about his point of view and why they couldn’t reach a ceasefire.
[Video Clip begins]CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: … I spoke with Lebanon’s Foreign Minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, who’s in Washington to meet with American officials and he joined us for his first interview since the latest escalations. Foreign minister, welcome back to the program.
ABDALLAH BOU HABIB: Thank you. Thank you.
CHRISTIANE: Things have reached a major crisis in your country since we last spoke. And I want to ask you, you are in the United States right now. You know that several of the administration officials agree with Israel’s ground incursion into your country. What do you make of that as you’re in Washington trying to get support for a ceasefire?
ABDALLAH: Well, they also agreed on the Biden-Macron statement that calls for a ceasefire and that calls also for the implementation of a 21 days ceasefire. And then Mr. Hochstein would go to Lebanon and negotiate a ceasefire. And they told us that Mr. Netanyahu agreed on this. And so we also got the agreement of Hezbollah on that. And you know what happened since then. That was the day we saw you in New York.
CHRISTIANE: I know. And you were talking about going into the Security Council for this ceasefire. And barely 24 hours later, the head of Hezbollah was assassinated. Are you saying Hassan Nasrallah had agreed to a ceasefire just moments before he was assassinated?
ADBALLAH: He agreed, he agreed. Yes, yes. We agreed completely; Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire by consulting with Hezbollah. The Speaker, Mr. Berri, consulted with Hezbollah and we informed the Americans and the French that [that is] what happened. And they told us that Mr. Netanyahu also agreed on the statement that was issued by both presidents.
[Video Clip ends]NIMA: Yeah. Here is the question here, because if you remember, with the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh while they were talking with Ismail Haniyeh, negotiating with Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar, they assassinated him.
And right after they reached some sort of agreement with the government in Lebanon and just Hezbollah said, okay, we’re going to go with that plan, they assassinated him.
And the question right now is here, why is this with the United States, Michael? Go ahead.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the United States doesn’t want a ceasefire because it wants to take over the entire Near East. It wants to use Israel as the cat’s paw. Everything that’s happened today was planned out just 50 years ago back in 1973 and 1974. I sat in on meetings with Uzi Arad, who became Netanyahu’s chief military advisor after heading Mossad.
And the whole strategy was worked out essentially by the Defense Department, by neoliberals, and almost in a series of stages that I’ll explain.
[Henry Martin] “Scoop” Jackson is the main name to remember. Scoop Jackson was the ultra right wing neo-con was sponsored them all. And he was the head of the Democratic National Committee in 1960 and then worked with military advisors.
I was with Herman Kahn, the model for Dr. Strange Love, at the Hudson Institute during these years, and I said in on meetings and I’ll describe them, but I want to describe how the whole strategy that led to the United States today, not wanting peace, wanting to take over the whole Near East, took shape gradually.
And this was all spelled out. I wrote a book about the meetings that I had a War College and the White House and various Air Force and Army think tanks back in the 1970s.
The starting point for all the U.S. strategy here was that democracies no longer can field a domestic army with a military draft. America is not in a position to really field enough of an army to invade a country, and without invading a country you can’t really take it over. You can bomb it but that just is going to incite resistance. But you can’t take it over.
The Vietnam War showed that any attempted draft would be met by so much anti-draft resistance taking the form of an anti-war [sentiment] that no country whose leaders have to be elected can ever take that role again.
Now it’s true that America sent a small army into Iraq, and there are 800 U.S. military bases around the world, but this wasn’t a fighting army – it was an army of occupation without really much resistance of the kind that Ukraine is experiencing with Russia for instance, as we’re seeing there. That situation in the Near East is very different.
The anti-war students showed that Lyndon Johnson in 1968 had to withdraw from running for election because everywhere he’d go there would be demonstrations against him to stop the war. No such demonstrations are occurring today, needless to say.
So I won’t call the U.S. or the European Union democracies, but there is no government that has to be elected that is able to send their own soldiers into a big war.
And what that means is that today’s tactics are limited to bombing, not occupying, countries. They are limited to what the Israeli forces can drop the bombs on Gaza and Hezbollah and try to knock out things, but neither the Israeli army, nor any other army, would really be able to invade and try to take over a country in the way that armies did in World War II.
Everything has changed now and there can’t be another occupation by the United States of foreign countries, given today’s alliances with Russia and Iran and China.
So, this was recognized 50 years ago and it seemed at that time that the U.S.-backed wars were going to have to be scaled down . But that hasn’t happened. And the reason is the United States had a fallback position: it was going to rely on foreign troops to do the fighting as proxies instead of itself. That was a solution to get a force.
“The first example was the creation of Wahhabi jihadists in Afghanistan, who later became al-Qaeda. Jimmy Carter mobilized them against secular Afghan interests and justified it by saying, ‘Well, yes, they’re Muslims, but after all, we all believe in God.'”
So the answer to the secular state of Afghanistan was Wahhabi fanaticism and jihads, and the United States realized that in order to have an army that’s willing to fight to the last member of its country — the last Afghan, the last Israeli, the last Ukrainian — you really need a country whose spirit is one of hatred towards the other, a spirit very different from the American and European spirit.
Well, Brzezinski was the grand planner who did all that. The Sunni Jihad fighters became America’s foreign legion in the Middle East and that includes Iraq, Syria and Iran and also Muslim states going up to Russia’s border.
And the aim of the United States was, oil was the center of this policy. That meant the United States had to secure the Near East and there were two proxy armies for it. And these two armies fought together as allies down to today. On the one hand, the al-Qaeda jihadis, on the other hand, their managers, the Israelis, hand in hand.
And they’ve done the fighting so that the United States doesn’t have to do it.
The foreign policy has backed Israel and Ukraine, providing them with arms, bribing their leaders with enormous sums of money, and electronic satellite guidance for everything they’re doing.
President Biden keeps telling Netanyahu, “Well, we’ve just given you a brand new bunker, cluster bombs and huge bombs – please drop them on your enemies, but do it gently. We don’t want you to hurt anybody when you drop these bombs.”
Well, that’s the hypocrisy – it’s a good cop, bad cop. Biden and the United States for the last 50 years has posed as a good cop criticizing the bad cops that it’s been backing. Bad cop ISIS and al-Qaeda, bad cop Netanyahu.
But when all of this strategy was being put together, Herman Kahn’s great achievement was to convince the U.S. Empire builders that the key to achieving their control in the Middle East was to rely on Israel as its foreign legion.
And that arms-length arrangement enabled the United States to play the role, as I said, of the good cop, designating Israel to play its role, and Israel has organized and supplied al-Nusra, al-Qaeda while the United States pretends to denounce them. And it’s all part of a plan that’s been backed by the military, the State Department, and the National Security Operation.
And that’s why the State Department has turned over management of U.S. diplomacy to Zionists, seemingly distinguishing Israeli behavior from U.S. empire building. But in a nutshell, the Israelis have joined al-Qaeda and ISIS as troops, as America’s foreign legion.
NIMA: Yeah. As you were talking about, the question was: why is the United States not interested in putting an end to the conflicts in the Middle East and in Ukraine? And Michael was pointing out the endgame of the United States in this type of behavior. And what’s your take right now?
RICHARD WOLFF: Well, I think in the case of Ukraine, at this point, it is merely a kind of vague, left-over desire to weaken Russia. It isn’t working very well, so my guess is it’ll be over pretty soon. And in the case of Israel, I think, Michael is right, that this is a deal: the Israelis, hopefully, will give the Americans some kind of leverage over what happens in the Middle East, that they wouldn’t have if they didn’t have Israel. Otherwise I do not understand why the United States allows its policies to be made by Mr. Netanyahu. We have the strange situation that the people holding back Mr. Netanyahu are Israelis, not Americans, which given that it’s two different countries is rather strange, Americans feel more difficulty in opposing Netanyahu than Israelis do. But I don’t want to take away from the fact that there is a mutuality of interest in shaping the Middle East and hoping to be able to do it.
But I don’t think this is working very well. And I think my suspicion is that they are going, particularly after the election, to do a lot of rethinking about all of this, because this is not going well.
NIMA: Yeah. And Michae?
MICHAEL: Yeah, I think we can more of the context. Because after I mentioned that the U.S. realized it needs foreign troops, it also realized that the only kind of full-scale war that democracy could afford is atomic war. And the problem is that that only works against adversaries that can’t retaliate.
But in recent years, U.S. military policy has been so aggressive that it’s driven other countries to band together and back their allies with nuclear powers. So all of the countries of the world now are associated with nuclear backups. And we’ve discussed that before.
The result is that today’s military alliances mean that any attempt to use nuclear weapons is going to risk a full-scale nuclear war that’s going to destroy all the participants and the rest of the world as well. So what is left for the United States? Well, I think there’s only one form of non-atomic war that democracies can afford, and that’s terrorism. And I think you should look at Ukraine and Israel as the terrorist alternative to atomic war. I think Andrei Martyanov recently has explained that that’s the alternative to atomic war. And this, unless NATO-West is willing to risk atomic war, which it doesn’t seem to be willing to, then terrorism is the only alternative left to it. And that is the basis of the regime change plans that the United States has in countries bordering Russia, China, and other countries that it views as adversaries. That’s what we’re seeing in Ukraine and above all in Israel, as it’s fight against the Palestinian population in Gaza.
The whole idea of the Ukrainians and Israelis is to bomb civilians, not military targets, but civilians. It’s a fight literally to destroy the population under an ideology of genocide. And that is absolutely central. It’s not an accident – it’s built in, built in to the program. And Lebanon, even though it’s largely Christian, is part of that.
So the other weapon that the United States has is economic. And that’s oil and grain – it was decided way back in 1973-74. That was right the time of the oil war, when oil prices were quadrupled in response to the United States quadrupling its grain prices. So the United States said, well, “the way to avoid a war, terrorism, regime change, is just to starve countries into submission – either by cutting off their food supply or cutting off their oil supply. Because without oil, how can they run their industry, heat their homes and produce electricity?”
And oil is the largest private sector monopoly in the country. The seven sisters controlled the oil trade ever since World War I, and England have been their coordinator.
And after the oil war, Saudi Arabia promised – sort of was told, “you can raise your oil prices as much as you want, but you have to keep all of your expert earnings in the United States. You can buy treasury bills, you can buy corporate bonds, you can buy stocks, but you cannot use more than a portion of it for your own development; you have to turn it over to the U.S. financial sector. So Saudi Arabia became the key and the result was the petrodollar that was put into U.S. banks and just increased the liquidity, the whole growth of third world debt that exploded in the 1970s, leading to the debt crisis of the ‘80s was all of that. And basically the United States realized, “okay, we want to extend control to conquer the Near East, conquer countries that have vital raw materials; we want to use the World Bank to make sure that global South countries don’t feed themselves – we’ll give money for plantation export crops, not for food.”
The condition of foreign Latin America and Africa being an ally of the United States was not to grow their own grain and food, but to depend on U.S. grain export. You know, that’s the sort of economic plan that goes together with the military plan to be the organizing force of the American empire.
RICHARD WOLFF: Let me introduce a couple of other considerations, just to add to the stew here. It is my understanding that many forces in the American political establishment interpret the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, ‘90 and ’91 as the fruit of a long-term U.S. policy that included the arms race and other mechanisms where the Soviet Union could not afford the level of military activity that the United States could afford, but for political and military reasons could not afford not to do it.
And so the Soviet Union tried to ride that either-or and collapsed between the demands of the nuclear arms race, the cost of their occupation of Afghanistan. They couldn’t do it. And they scrimped here and there and they didn’t quite fulfill the consumer growth plan that they had promised their people and they couldn’t do it.
If you believe that that’s what went on, then you might try to understand that what they’re doing with Russia now is the same policy. In other words, it’s again the arms race, but this time not to fight in Afghanistan, but to fight in Ukraine. Fight them there, draw them out, cost them a fortune and assume that they cannot manage all that they’re doing and that it’s much easier for you, being a richer – much, much richer – country to do this than it is for them.
And the big mistake here was not to understand that the Russians were acutely aware of what their shortcomings were and have worked very hard in the last 25 years not to be in that position again. There’s an aphorism in military thinking: “Everybody fights the last war.” That you got to fight this one, not the last one. The winner of the last one thinks they found the magic bullet. The loser of the last one realizes they have to do something different. Russia is surprising everybody by the extent of its military capability and its military preparation. They’re winning the war in Ukraine because of it. That’s a miscalculation here.
Okay, that’s the first thing. And I suspect that not only is Ukraine re-running the old strategy, but that they hope that by imposing a kind of arms race on the Middle East, partly an arms race between Israel and the Arabs and the Islamics, but also arms races where they could between Shiite and Sunni.
Remember, the war in Iraq and Iran, by splitting them up, by buying off Abu Dhabi or Dubai, or all of the machinations that are going on – they hope that they can fund their ally -Israel- and exhaust all the enemies of Israel, forcing them eventually into some sort of deal with Israel. And Israel has to be very, very careful: it needs to appease the United States to make these deals, but it also has to try to make sure these deals don’t work out, because it wants to be the American agent in that part of the world.
And so my last point. Here’s another similarity between Israel and Ukraine: Mr Zelenskyy in the Ukraine, and Mr. Netanyahu in Israel have no hope of prevailing, given the odds against them – the sheer numbers. And let’s remember, Americans are not understanding: it’s not just now that Israel is at war with Hamas – whom they have not yet defeated in the Gaza – and they are at war with Hezbollah on the West Bank and in Lebanon, bu they are at war with the Houthis in Yemen and they are at war with the Iranians behind all of that, and they are at war, more or less, with the Lebanese.
And then there are the Shiite militias, which are very close to Iran, and are very powerful in both Iraq and Syria. Well, I got news for you: that’s too many enemies. The Houthis recently showed they can send missiles into Israel. My guess is all of the others I’ve just named either can also do that already or will soon be able to do that.
Israel can’t fight five wars at the same time. It’s a small country. God knows what has happened to its economy, which has effectively shut down in order to fight a war. Their only hope is to bring the United States in; it’s the only hope for Ukraine. Otherwise, Ukraine will lose quickly and Israel will lose slowly.
That’s how it looks to me and that’s for me what governs the hysteria around trying to figure out what to do. But it leaves me also with a question: Why is Israel unable or unwilling to cut deals? My sense is, the Egyptians would cut them. And my sense is, many of its neighbors would at least in principle be willing to sit down and at least try to reach some. And then Israel, instead of expanding geographically would go up, build high rises. What are you doing? Stealing land from Palestinian peasants. What are you doing? Is your future agricultural? Don’t be silly – it isn’t; it doesn’t need to be.
It’s as if we were suddenly confronted with Luxembourg demanding pieces of Belgium or Netherlands or France or something because they had to expand. They’ve been perfectly happy building vertical rather than horizontal. For many, many, many decades longer than Israel has been concerned. So what is this?
Anyway, I thought these would be, you know, I’m trying to learn how to think about this in ways that are not constricted by the way the mainstream media analysts do, which is useless.
MICHAEL: Well Richard, you’ve described exactly what’s going on and you’ve shown how fighting to the last Ukrainian is now being superseded by fighting to the last Israeli. Why are they doing this? Well, the answer is: If they were peace – if Egypt and the other countries that you mentioned were to make a peaceful arrangement with Israel – then there’d be no war. And with no war, how could the United States take over the other countries in the region? The U.S. policy, as I said, 50 years ago, and I’ll go into that more now, was based on the U.S. actually taking over all of these countries, again using Israel as the battering ram, as what the army called “America’s landed aircraft carrier” there. Well, all this began to take place in the 1960s with Henry “Scoop” Jackson.
It initially, Israel didn’t really play a role in the U.S. plan. Jackson simply hated communism, he hated the Russians, and he had got a lot of support within the Democratic Party. He was a senator from Washington State, and that was the center of military-industrial complex.
He was called, nicknamed, “The Senator from Boeing,” for his support for the military-industrial complex. And the military-industrial complex backed him for becoming chair of the Democratic National Committee. Well, he was backed by Herman Kahn – as I said, the model for Dr. Strangelove – who became the key strategist for U.S. military hegemony and the Hudson Institute – no relation to me, an ancestor discovered the river we were both named after. They used the Hudson Institute and its predecessor, the Rand Corporation, where Herman came from, as it’s major long-term planner.
And I was brought in to discuss the dollar exchange rate and the balance of payments. My field was international finance. Well, Herman set up the institute to be a training ground for Mossad and other Israeli agencies. There were numerous Mossad people there, and I made two trips to Asia, as I mentioned, with Uzi Arad, who became, as I said, the head of Mossad.
So we had discussions about just what was going to happen for the long term, and they were about just what’s happening today. Herman told me over dinner one night that the most important thing in his life was Israel. And that’s why he couldn’t get military information even from U.S. allies, like Canada, because he said he wouldn’t pledge allegiance to their country or even the United States, when he swore loyalty to another country. And he described the virtue of Jackson for Zionists was precisely that he was not Jewish, but a defender of the dominant U.S. military complex and an opponent of the arms control system that was underway. Jackson was fighting all the arms control – “we’ve got to have war.” And he proceeded to stuff the State Department and other U.S. agencies with neo-cons, who was planned from the beginning for a permanent worldwide war, and this takeover of government policy was led by Jackson’s former senate aids.
These senate aids were Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearl, Douglas Fife, and others who were catapulted into the commanding heights of the State Department and more recently the National Security Council. The Jackson-Vanik amendment to the U.S. Trade Act of 1974 became the model for subsequent sanctions against the Soviet Union.
The claim was it limited Jewish immigration and other human rights. So right then, the State Department realized: here is a group of people who we can use as the theoreticians and the executors of the U.S. policy that we want – they both want to take over all of the Arab countries.
On one occasion, I’ve brought my mentor, Terrence McCarthy, to the Hudson Institute, to talk about the Islamic worldview, and every two sentences, Uzi would interrupt: “No, no, we’ve got to kill them all.” And other people, members of the Institute, were also just talking continually about killing Arabs.
I don’t think there were any non-Jewish Americans that had that visceral hatred of Islam that the Zionists had, or also the visceral hatred of Russia, specifically for anti-Semitism of past centuries, most of which was in Ukraine and Kiev, by the way.
Well, that was 50 years ago, and these sanctions that Jackson introduced, the U.S. Trade, became the prototypes for today’s sanctions against all the countries that the neo-cons viewed as adversaries. Joe Lieberman was in the tradition of the Jackson Democrats – the word for them – the pro-Zionist Cold War hawks with this hatred of Russia, and that made Israel the cat’s paw for these Cold Warriors.
They were completely different from most of my Jewish friends, who I grew up with in the 1950s. The Jewish population that I know were all assimilated – they were successful middle-class people. That was not true of the people Jackson brought in. They did not want to be assimilated, and they said just what Netanyahu said earlier this year, that “the enemy of Zionism are the secular Jews who want to assimilate – you can’t have both.” This policy of the 1970s has split Judaism into these two camps: assimilationists, who are for peace and the Cold Warriors, who were for war. And the Cold Warrios were nurtured and financed by the United States – the Defense Department gave a big grant of over $100 million to the Jackson Institute to help work out essentially race-hatred military policies to use to spur this anti-Islamic hatred throughout the Near East. It’s not a pretty sight.
There are not many people around today that were there then, and to remember how all of this was occurring, but what we’re seeing is, as I said, a charade that somehow what Israel is doing is “all Netanyahu’s fault, all the fault of the neo-cons there,” and yet from the very beginning they were promoted, supported with huge amounts of money, all of the bombs they needed, all the armaments they needed, all the funding they needed, and Israel is a country whose economy needs foreign exchange in order to keep its currency solvent. All of that was given to them precisely to do exactly what they’re doing today. So when Biden pretended to say, “can’t there be two-state solution?” No, there can’t be a two-state solution because Netanyahu said, “we hate the Gazans, we hate the Palestinians, we hate the Arabs – there cannot be a two-state solution and here’s my map,” before the United Nations, “here’s Israel: there’s no one who’s not Jewish in Israel – we’re a Jewish state” – he comes right out and says it.
This could not have been said explicitly 50 years ago. That would have been shocking, but it was being said by the neo-cons who were brought in from the beginning to do exactly what they’re doing today. To act as America’s proxy, to conquer the oil-producing countries and make it part of greater Israel as much of a satellite of the United States that England or Germany or Japan have become. The idea that they will continue the U.S. policy to receive all the support they need has become a precondition for their own solvency that, as Richard has just said, looks like it’s not working anymore. It isn’t solvent – there’s no solution to the black hole that Israel’s painted itself into.
And yet, there’s no willingness to have a single state because Biden and the entire national security council – Congress, and the military, and especially the military industrial complex, says there cannot be any common living between Palestinians and Israelis anymore than there can be in Ukraine, Ukrainians speakers and Russian speakers in the same country. It’s exactly the same, it’s following exactly the same policy and all of this is planned and sponsored by the United States and funded with enormous amounts of money.
NIMA: Yeah, Richard.
RICHARD WOLFF: Yeah, let’s take a look at this from the Israeli Zionist perspective because it takes two to tango: whatever the American goals were, they also have to somehow mesh with what the Israelis -at least those in power- are trying to do or else it doesn’t work.
Put yourself in the position of a Zionist: you’ve left the European Asian origins. You’ve left and you’ve resettled thanks to the Balfour Declaration and the British Imperialists. They gave you other people’s land there in the Middle East in Palestine. Fundamental recognition: the independent existence of a state of Israel is fragile.
It is logical to understand, if you’re a Zionist, that given the disagreement of large numbers of Jews around the world with the whole idea of a country and the fact that the majority of Jews of the world didn’t go to Israel even when they could have. They know that their support from the rest of the Jewish community is mixed.
They also know that the only country that could sustain them, that they could rely on after the war in Europe – the Second World War – was the United States. It was certainly the one they would want to rely on, because it came out of the war basically richer than it went in with no competitor. Why would you choose England or France, even if it were possible, if you could have the United States? Okay, now they have to worry – and I believe they do, deeply – that sooner or later, the United States, for its own reasons, will realize that the better bet for the future is on the Arabs, not the Israelis, because the Arabs are many and the Israelis are few, and the wealth gap between them is not working in Israel’s favor. It’s going the other way.
A few weeks ago I learned about a meeting that was held not so long ago. In Beijing, the Chinese government invited all of the factions involved in the Palestinian movement to send representatives for a meeting to unite them all – that included Hamas, Hezbollah, and a whole bunch of others. And they had those meetings in the sponsorship of China. That’s got to worry Mr. Netanyahu, that’s got to worry him a lot.
Why? Not because of some fanciful motion that the Chinese would enter. They’re not going to do that. But that the Chinese, in their complicated negotiation with the United States, will eventually come to agreements by sacrificing somebody else and getting along with each other that way.
How do I know it? Because it’s the subtext of half of Europe’s anxiety – that Europe will be the fall guy, that Europe will be carved up in the interests of the United States and China, much as Europe carved up Africa in the interests of its conflicts. So now the Israelis desperately need… what?
They need an ongoing economic, political, and military support from the United States. And they will be willing to do anything and everything to secure it. If you remember, not that many years ago, there were heavy rumors that the Iran-Contra scandal was brokered by Israelis; that secret support for the apartheid regime in South Africa was coming from Israel. Recently there was a claim – I don’t know if it’s true – that the Russians discovered a Israeli mercenary operation within the Ukrainian army. Okay, I’m not surprised at any of that. That’s what a country like Israel offers: it will be the bad guy; it will say the unsayable; it will advocate for the United States; it will take the heat, including the rage of the Arab world and the rage of the Islamic world. Because if it weren’t focused on Israel, where the hell do you think it would be focused? Here. 9/11 happened here. It was celebrated around the Islamic world for that reason. So there’s what the French would call “un marriage de convenience.”
There’s a marriage of convenience here between the Zionists who feel that they are dependent on the United States – and they are. That’s why their major push diplomatically in the United States of their personnel is not in the Jewish community – they don’t get the support they want – it’s in the evangelical community. They found that scriptural arrangement in which when Jesus returns, he has to find the Jews in charge of the Holy Land. Oh good, the Jews discovered that in that New Testament story they could build an alliance. The biggest festivals every year of Israeli films are held in mega-churches of the Protestant faith in this country, not in synagogues. What the hell is going on? The Israelis are desperate to have support here. And they’re constantly frightened – the very evangelicals who they counted on are going more towards Trump , and they’re worried about that. Right?
It’s the irony: the Jews go more the other way, the Jews seem more interested in helping Ukraine, the secular, the non-Zionists. So this is a constantly shifting scenario. But my guess is, and Michael, maybe you know about this, my guess is that there are voices – no matter how strong Henry Jackson was or his progeny had become – that there are also voices pretty high up that keep wondering out loud whether the United States isn’t betting on the wrong horse in the Middle East. And whether maybe there’s someone you can find to do the job better than the Israelis Zionists.
The minute that happens, Mr. Netanyahu disappears. And the person who worries a lot about that is Mr. and Mrs. Netanyahu.
MICHAEL: Well, you’ve described exactly the dynamics that are as work.
And for the last few weeks, Nima has had numerous guests on who have been explaining that the opponents of all this are the U.S. military, because every war game, according to his guests, that has been done, the U.S. loses in the Near East. Every war game that it does in Ukraine against Russia, the U.S. loses.
So obviously there is an opposition right now between the army – we’ll call them the realists – who say that if you really want to extend the war, it’s not going to work. But against them are, as you point out, not only a logic of the American Empire, but a virtual religion, a religion of hatred. Zionism has been Christianized – it’s accepted all of the hatred of the other that has taken place. And U.S. military strategists don’t want to put an end to the war in Asia and Ukraine, because if there was an end, as I said, then the status quo remains. And the United States couldn’t take over these countries as satellites. Peace would mean dependent country – Iraq would be regain of independence; Syria would; Iran would be left alone to be independent – that would not give the United States personal direct ownership of the oil.
And if you look at the neo-cons, they had a virtual religion. I met many at the Hudson Institute; some of them, or their fathers, were Trotskyists. And they picked up Trotsky’s idea of permanent revolution. That is, an unfolding revolution – what Trotsky said began in Soviet Russia was going to spread to other countries, Germany and the others. But the neo-cons adopted this and said, “No, the permanent revolution is the American Empire – it’s going to expand and expand and nothing can stop us for the entire world.”
So what you have is a more or less realistic military -if not at the top, which is sort of a political appointee, at least the generals who have actually done the war games – is realism against a religious fanaticism that has been back because fanatics are more willing to die to the last Israeli or the last Ukrainian than realists who look at the situation and try to do what, let’s say, President Xi and China talks about: the win-win situation. Well already, when this split began to occur in the 1970s, I actually heard discussions of the idea that: let’s rethink World War II, that it was really fought over was “what kind of socialism is going to be after the war? Is it going to be national socialism -Nazism- or democratic socialism emerging out of the dynamics and self-interest of industrial capitalism?” Well, much of the government was backing from 1945, the minute of peace, the American government began supporting Nazism. We talked before about this.
The government recruited Nazi leaders and put them, if not in America, throughout Latin America, to fight the communists. As soon as the United States decided, “we’ve got to destroy the Soviet Union,” they found the Nazis to be the fighters who were willing to die for their belief. Not sit and think, “is what I’m doing rational? Is it going to work?” So one of the problems with Israel is, just as Richard has discussed, that it’s not taking a path that is going to lead to the survival of Israel as an economic state. It’s already been put on rations by the United States economically, financially and militarily, just as England was put on rations after World War II and all of Europe was put on rations after World War I. Trotsky wrote an article -America and Europe- and said, “America has put Europe on rations.” Right around 1921, he wrote that.
So again, you could say that the Nazi spirit has won -the spirit of trying to extend an empire by”it’s us or them” – it’s a spirit of hatred and a spirit of terrorism, personally by assassination and anti-war crimes, is the alternative to well-to-atomic war. The Americans realize “well, we really don’t want atomic war, but we can come as close as we can to it by terrorism.” And that’s why the United States today is backing an openly Nazi regime in Ukraine and similar terrorists in Israel to make essentially West Asia part of greater Israel over time. That is a mentality and almost a religious war that we’re in.
RICHARD WOLFF: Again, let me extend it a little bit, and let me pick up on something you said, Michael, earlier at the beginning, which I agree with: that the anxiety in the United States is a long drawn-out land war for fear that the American population will not tolerate it beyond a few months or something like that.
Well, the Israelis can’t survive where they are without these military explosions. We’ve had the Yom Kippur war, the ’67 war, the ’73 war – I mean, we keep having wars, every one of which is justified -at least on the Israelis side- by the need for peace and security, which clearly these wars do not secure.
And so they have another one. And now they have the biggest and the worst one ever. And why is there any reason to believe it’s not going to continue? And what are they doing about it? Well, they’re widening the war, they’re doing much more terrible destruction in Gaza, and now they’re widening it to Hezbollah and to Yemen, they’re bombing and all of that. Okay.
The only way they can not be producing their own demise – literally organizing the cooperation, first among all the Shiite communities, and then eventually beyond that with the Sunni and the broader Islamic communities – their only hope in that eventuality to bring the United States in. As I’ve said, just like Mr. Zelensky has no hope unless he brings… Even this latest business with getting the authority to send missiles deep into Russia, that’s not going to work either – the Russians have hidden those, their missiles, or moved them further away so they can’t be reached. So there’s nothing left.
There is nothing left, but to bring the United States in. And yet your argument is: the United States looks at that situation and says, “We can’t do that. It’s not that we don’t have missiles – we do. It’s not that we can’t do much damage – we can.” Well, we can’t make a quick winning of this war.
Lord knows we couldn’t do it in the poorest countries on Earth, like Afghanistan and Vietnam. Be sure as hell are not going to do it in Europe or for that matter in the Middle East, which means that the only success of the Israelis is to bring the U.S. in and the U.S. can’t go in because of the constraints it feels.
And that means that at some point something’s got to give here, and wouldn’t the logical thing be to expect that the United States will have an epiphany moment in which it decides that Arabs are better allies for us than Israelis. And that if that requires purging the highest levels of government of neo-cons, well, we know after World War II, they know how to purge if they want to purge – they can do that and go after them as Jews, if that’s there, or as Zionists, or as mistaken advisors. There’s lots of ways of doing it. It’s just that a decision has to be made.
And maybe, I think if that’s what I heard you say, the obvious hesitancy of Lloyd Austin to authorize anything – to almost openly now be a voice saying, “don’t go there, don’t do that” to his fellow advisors of Mr. Biden, suggested maybe we have a point in what we’re saying here.
MICHAEL: Well, you’ve said it wonderfully, Richard – that’s exactly the point.
What does it mean to bring the United States in? It’s not going to send troops, because you can just imagine how the American troops, either in Ukraine or in Israel, were just – many of them would die. You can imagine what that would do to the Democratic administration that would be sending it there. So they can’t do that.
They’ve tried terrorism and the result of terrorism is to align the whole rest of the world against us. But still, we’re in a pre-revolutionary situation. The rest of the world is appalled by the terrorism that it sees, by the breaking of all of the rules of war and rules of civilization that the United Nations wrote into its original articles of agreement and is not following. So what you’re seeing is a whole breakdown of the ability of the rest of the world to enforce civilization. And of course, the hope of you and me is that somehow there would be right-thinking people in the U.S. government.
I don’t see many people in Congress supporting the candidacy of Jill Stein, who’s against the war. I don’t see Congress being reasonable. I think that the State Department and the National Security Agency and the Democratic Party leadership, with its basis in the military-industrial complex, is absolutely committed to “if we can’t have our way, then who wants to live in such a world.” Well, you remember how President Putin, when threatened with American atomic war and people were saying, well, would Russia really retaliate atomically? And what Putin said was, “well, who wants to live in a world without Russia after all?”
Well, the neo-cons and the Senate and the House of Representatives and the President and the Press and the campaign donors to both parties say, “well, who wants to live in a world where we can’t control? Who wants to live in a world where other countries are independent, where they have their own policy? Who wants to live in a world where we can’t siphon off their economic surplus for us? If we can’t take everything and dominate the world, well, who wants to live in that kind of a world?”
That’s the mentality we’re dealing with. And I’m watching what China is doing and Iran is doing: they kept hoping, for instance two days ago, when Iran sent missiles to the United States missiles against one of the airfields in Israel that had the F-16s and other airplanes, it let the United States know -and warned Israel- that Iran’s going to blow up your airfield. You better get all the airplanes in the air.
Well, Iran said, “oh, we don’t want to upset anybody. Can we just show them that a war doesn’t make sense?” Well, and then now there’s an argument in Israel saying, “wait a minute, these airplanes that you didn’t blow up are now going to be flying over Iran and dropping bombs on us.”
The country that does the first strike is going to get an advantage – we had a chance to wipe out the air force so they could stop bombing Lebanon, stop bombing Gaza Strip and other countries and stop bombing us and we didn’t do it because we wanted to keep showing the world that we’re the good guys.
Well, it’s like you’re a good guy naked walking right up against the Nazi tanks that are coming right at you in World War II, or today in the Ukraine – that’s really the problem.
RICHARD WOLFF: If we’re right, then why isn’t… or are we missing it? Where’s the evidence that the United States understands it’s being pulled in a direction it really doesn’t want to go. Just to pick up on your last point, Michael, hear me out for a minute.
The United States understands… let’s suppose they understand it the way you do, that they got the notification -and I picked up on that too- that the Iranians told the United States beforehand that they were going to do it, giving them the time to let the Israelis know.
Okay, where are the Americans who are saying “they did us a service,” because had they not, had they not, had they wrecked the Israeli Air Force or whatever, then the Israelis would have come to us requiring us to give them even more immediate massive support – and this isn’t good; this is dangerous.
The next step will be for the Iranians to target us. Look, the Houthis who are, if I understand correctly, supported by Iran, have been rocket-missiling American warships. Okay, it’s getting close, it’s getting close that you’re drawn in and then your own internal politics will make you respond and then you’re in, and then the Israelis have won, they’ve got you in there. And now it has its own logic, its own escalatory mechanisms and you’ve got what everybody thought you were committed never to do: a land war in Asia that cost you your own troops. Every president after Vietnam said they would never do that again.
There were some who even said it after Korea, because they understood. So I would be more comfortable that we’re onto something, if I could see some sign that there are American voices that sense one or another version of this that we could point to.
MICHAEL: Well, I think there has been a change of consciousness, but it’s been mainly on the Arab and Persian side. I think now that they didn’t shoot down the airplanes. Now, I think the Iranians are saying “no more Mr. Nice Guy.” They made it clear exactly what they can do to retaliate; they’ve said that if Israel tries to attack them or if the United States tries to attack them, they’re going to wipe out the American military bases in Iraq and Syria, which they’ve already shown they can pinpoint and do very well. I think in Iran’s mind, what they’ve achieved is showing the rest of the world, saying “the United States has been trying to goad to the war for the last half year, just as the United States has been trying to goad to Russia in the war in Ukraine,” and Putin has been able to resist that because he’s the longer he takes – he’s winning the war; Europe is being pulled apart.
Well, similarly, the Iranians can say: “the United States would have attacked us and said we’re only defending the poor little Israel because of the Iranian attack. But now that the Iranians did the attack -without killing civilians, first of all only bombing the military sites- whereas the Israeli wants to kill people; they want to kill Arabs, because they hate them. The Iranians only hit military sites, not the population. So now there’s no question, I think, that the whole rest of the world -China, Russia, the global South, the global majority- is not going to fall. It has deprived the United States military and state department from the ability to claim that they are responding to Iran’s unprovoked attack on Israel and to the Gaza, unprovoked attack on Israel that after 100,000 Gazans were killed, a few Israelis were killed. And Russia’s unprovoked attack on the Ukrainians, who were killing the civilians in Luhansk and Donetsk.
They’ve deprived the United States of any pretense of having any ideology or foreign policy besides terrorism and destruction and violating every civilized rule of war that is under land international law for the last few few centuries.
So the United States is in a war against civilization, and the rest of the world is realizing that. And so you’re right, where is the voice in the United States saying what you and I are saying, why somebody like us in a position of authority? Well, we’re on a Nima’s show, not in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal; we don’t have any money coming to us from the military-industrial complex, from the non-government organizations that the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy fund; we’re by ourselves and people who think like that find themselves obliged to resign from the State Department, resign from the CIA like McGovern, resign from the army like the guests that Nima’s had – Colonel McGregor and Scott Redder – they’ve been excluded from the discussion. That’s the tension that the world’s in today and that’s what makes it so violent.
Are these people really… will the Americans really force atomic war by saying, “oh, we’re only using tactical weapons?” That’s really the question – the Americans are taking a position against the most basic principles of civilization. What are other countries going to do about it? Are they going to realize the threat? Or are they going to say, “let’s explain to you what your self-interest is America: your self-interest is doing what Richard suggests – work with the Arab countries, work with us, it’s a win-win situation.”
Who are the Americans, who, with their donors backing them, who are going to say, “yes, we prefer saving civilization to making money this week and next week for living in the short term.” The American point of view is short term; the rest of the world is taking a longer term position – who’s going to win?
RICHARD WOLFF: Well, the irony is if the history is any guide, they will make a war and then it will drag on and then all of these arguments that we’re making now will find their voices and will have it, you know, will have the argument and then the hard decisions will be made.
The problem is that there are many dimensions of the United States, waltzing itself into a dead end and that has its own dangers and dynamics when there is no way out. If it is correct that after Netanyahu bombed Beirut, his polling numbers in Israel improved dramatically, which I read they did.
That is a very serious fact because it means that one cannot see this as just a right-wing government doing X, Y, and Z. One has to see a right-wing government that has been able to bring its people along with it at least so far, which is what we have to say about the Democrats and Republicans in this country who have done that too.
And that’s frightening because that suggests there are some more steps that they’re going to be able to take, and they probably will, and we will be left as I have been in the last two weeks, I don’t mind telling you, genuinely frightened about where this is going and how close we are coming to something to unspeakably stupid and unspeakably destructive.
The only thing that I can say is that the glib disinterest in all these questions, evidenced by what comes out of Trump’s mouth or Harris’ mouth or Vance’s or Wolz’s… these people are all pretending that the Pax Americana is alive and well and that we can talk endlessly about border incursions and the ingestion of cats and dogs and other minor matters because the big ones aren’t a problem and you and I and all three of us have just spent a long time dealing with all the other problems that they don’t feel the need to talk about ever… it’s remarkable.
MICHAEL: We’re sitting right here in New York, underneath the bomb, you know, whoever wants to live in the world once it’s fallen.
You used the word right wing, and it’s very humorous that the anti-war candidates in Europe are all called right wing – it used to be left wing. Austria has just had an election where the right winger won opposing the war in Ukraine. We’ve had three German elections, the right wing is one basically all three for opposing the war in Ukraine – the German government has found, you know, their true Naziism and said “we’re going to ban the AFG for opposing the war,” they’re calling it a right wing government. So you’re having the Nazis in Europe banning the anti-war parties and yet the anti-war is called “right wing” and the Nazis are called “Democrats and the social Democrats”. That’s what’s so amazing – the whole language is part of this – the world being turned inside out.
RICHARD WOLFF: Not only that, everybody is saving democracy from everybody else. You know, it’s the deterioration… anyway, yes, yes.
MICHAEL: Well, I know you and I like the word “oligarchy.”
RICHARD WOLFF: Yes. But unlike you, I reserve it for only in Russia – they have oligarchs; we have captains of industry.
MICHAEL: Yes.
NIMA: So nice to come to this and then thank you so much for being with us today, Richard and Michael. That was so great to talk with you.
RICHARD WOLFF: Okay. Thank you also. And it’s a pleasure to be part of this ongoing three-way conversation.
MICHAEL: You’ve got to have 200,000 views of this Nima.
NIMA: By the way, I don’t interfere because I do find that you two talk to each other, it’s just perfect, it doesn’t need me to be there. Yeah, it’s just going well. Thank you so much.
RICHARD: Okay. Bye bye.
