De-Zionisation of the US

United States President Barack Obama’s speech about the Iran nuclear deal at American University on August 5 marks a decisive feature in his Obama Doctrine that one might venture to call and consider ‘de-Zionising the American empire’.
Does this speech, and a whole array of presidential remarks before and after it, mark a pivotal departure from past US policy towards Israel? And if so, what would that imply for the region at large?
Geoffrey Aronson, among many other observers, has already made the poignant remark that this speech marks a significant turning point in the US-Israeli relationship. Israeli commentators, however, have been far more emphatic in their concern about what it could mean.
Indications are that the Obama Doctrine may entail a particularly significant component of treating Israel like any other client state – like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, etc. That possibility may account for the fact that Israel is now showing such hysterical public manifestations of separation anxiety from its ally.
It is crucial to keep in mind that the rise of such critical thinking against the inordinate Israeli influence on US policies predates the election of Obama, and thus, today has much wider and deeper constituencies.
A pragmatist to the bone of his political character, Obama would have never ventured so resoundingly to express his position against Israel and its lobbies and strike this deal with Iran, were he not quite sure of their deep-rooted presence in the US’ diplomatic core.
This possible development, of course, does not mean that the members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) are going to collect their belongings and move to Israel.
They will, in fact, fight this potential transition even more violently than they are now fighting the Iran deal in Congress.
The fight will continue until Israeli think-tankers from Washington and New York to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem figure out how to secure a corner office for themselves in the Obama Doctrine and the emerging geopolitics contingent on it.
Neither Obama nor any other US president will ever abandon Israel. It houses the largest US military base in the region and is central in the operation of the ‘empire’.
What Obama may have initiated (as a key component of his Obama Doctrine) is to reduce Israel to a vassal, on par with any other vassals it has in the region – ranging from Egypt to Saudi Arabia to Pakistan.
Obama will continue to care for Israel, but as an emperor cares for one among many of his vassals – nothing more or less. Each one of these vassals has a function to play. On this chessboard, Israel might be the rook, or even the queen, in the US’ fancy military footwork.
But they each have a singular function: To safeguard the king from being checkmated. There are serious implications for the Palestinian cause if this possible ‘de-Zionisation of the American empire’ were fully to bloom.
Obama will have, in effect, dropped the Palestinian issue at the doorstep of the Israelis. Obama’s state department is already on record for having declared it will not ‘protect Israeli settlements against boycott’.
The president is also on record for having said he is looking for “other options” now that Netanyahu has pledged there will be no Palestinian state on his watch.
When we put these two statements together, it is clear that not only the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, but also the dead-end of the two-state delusion, are Israel’s problem and not his.
The implications of this for the Palestinian national liberation are hard to exaggerate. The ‘de-Zionisation of the US empire’ is not something necessarily good or bad for the region at large.
If we are right to read this possible move as integral to the Obama Doctrine of empire by proxy, this means far less US hard power, far more smart power, and far more phantom liberty for specific players like Iran, Israel, or Saudi Arabia to do as they will, while they remain operative within their limited role to protect the king, the emperor, the empire.
This article has been excerpted from:‘De-Zionising the US empire’.
Courtesy: Aljazeer.com