Spinor Info

There is no other way of describing it: Russia now engages in open aggression against Ukraine. Whatever one’s thoughts are about Ukrainian nationalism or the wisdom of breaking up the territory of the old Russian empire into semi-viable successor states, such open aggression should be condemned without reservation. Russia being a nuclear superpower, Puting can do whatever the hell he wants, but that doesn’t mean that we should stay silent.

Curiously, the NATO Web site where these pictures were published is intermittently unavailable. Given this morning’s breaking news about coordinated cyberattacks originating from Russia and aimed at US banks, I would not be surprised if NATO’s Web site itself were itself subjected to something like a DoS attack by Russia, which might explain the intermittent outages.

I know, I know. Non-existent weapons of mass destruction. The War on Terror used to “rendition” innocent people to tyrannical third countries for “enhanced interrogation”. The TSA sniffing travelers’ shoes at American and select foreign airports. Waterboarding. Guantanamo. And behind it all, American exceptionalism.

All of these are valid points. The record of the “last remaining superpower” has been far from impeccable. Sometimes they go to far. Sometimes they succumb to some idiotic ideology. Sometimes they place profit ahead of people’s rights. Sometimes, their behavior on the world scene is governed not by altruism but by petty domestic politics.

All of that is true. Still… When I look at the end result, I still prefer Pax Americana over any of the possible alternatives. Much prefer. (What would those alternatives be anyway? Pax Europae? Pax Sovietica? Pax Islamica? Pax Christiana? Pax Sinensis?) When I look around the world today, at places like Ukraine. Iraq. Syria. The Gaza strip. Egypt. Libya. Mali. Somalia. Iran. Afghanistan. I much prefer the peace imposed by the United States, even if it is done by imperial decree. Even if it means more missteps and misdeeds.

Tonight, as he announced that he authorized the United States military conduct air strikes in Iraq to protect refugees from ISIS/ISIL, President Obama said, among other things, the following words: “America has made the world a more secure and prosperous place.”

And it has. Even after all the missteps, all the misdeeds, all the wrongdoings are accounted for. Even after I accept that Iraq was their mess to begin with, they broke the place, the least they can do is to fix it. Moreover, the United States is probably the only major power in the history of the world that has repeatedly deployed its might and risked the lives of members of its military, not to serve its own imperial interests but to help fix a broken world.

I am reading posts on Facebook and elsewhere, using heated language to advocate either the Israeli or the Palestinian cause in the current conflict.

I don’t think calling Israel’s actions “mass murder” is any more helpful than calling Hamas “terrorists”. They are both inflammatory terms that are designed to create the impression of no moral ambiguity (i.e., whichever side happens to be your side, they will be “right” and the other side will be “wrong”) in what is really in many ways a morally ambiguous situation.

On that front, I am equally appalled by Israel’s apparent indifference to the Palestinian civilian death count and by Hamas’s apparent determination to harm anyone on the other side of the Gaza border so long as it is a Jew. But while moral outrage may be used to fire up the troops, wars are not about moral outrage. They are about tangible things such as land or resources.

Fact: Israel’s physical security demands that Israel do not relinquish military control over Palestinian territories. Hence, an independent Palestinian state, potentially hostile to Israel, is unacceptable.

Fact: Israel’s water security also demands control over the resources of the West Bank. Once again, this means that an independent Palestinian state, potentially hostile to Israel, is unacceptable.

Fact: Israel defines itself as an ethnic/religious Jewish state, but it also maintains the institutions of a representative liberal democracy. Thus, its very existence as a Jewish state hinges on it maintaining a majority Jewish population. There are already concerns voiced about the higher rate of population growth among Arab Israelis. Annexation of Palestinian territories would create an instant Arab majority in Israel; maintaining a Jewish state would then necessarily mean giving up on the notion of democracy, replacing it instead with an apartheid regime, which is clearly abhorrent to most Israelis. Hence, annexing Palestinian territories is an option that, for Israel, is unacceptable.

Which leads to the sad conclusion that politically for Israel, the least undesirable of all possible options is the status quo. No Palestinian state but no outright annexation either, and if it keeps a few million Palestinians forever in limbo, well, that’s just too bad. And they’ll continue to use their military to ensure that the occupied territories never get too far out of hand, never pose an existential security risk to Israel.

Of course I’d argue that the status quo itself will eventually become unacceptable to Israel in the long run, but I am not sure what that means other than the fact that at that time, Israel will have run out of options.

Mind you, Israel could give up on the idea of being a sovereign Jewish ethnic/religious nation state and instead, accept the notion of a Jewish-Arab federal republic. Could it work, especially considering the enmity between Jews and Palestinians after decades of struggle (and I am of course just counting the time since the establishment of the modern state of Israel)? Unlikely. Yet even this unlikely option may be preferable to no option at all, as that would ultimately lead to the destruction of the state of Israel, the loss of countless Jewish lives, and a new diaspora for whom the words, “L’Shana Ha’ba’a b’Yerushalayim” would once again represent an unattainable dream.