Our own leaders have deceived themselves into believing that these relationships are critically important to the U.S. when they are at best dead weight and at worst serious liabilities.
It’s tempting to believe that the KSA and Israel each have something, some mysterious hold, over US elite policymakers that makes them subvert US interests in order placate their demands. What could that be I wonder?
How are they able to demand America’s constant attention at great cost to American taxpayers, while nearly all of, say Latin America, wallows in US neglect, if not outright hostility? It seems to me a question that should deserve an answer.
I suspect it’s all for domestic politics and vanity “presidential legacy” projects.
The Saudis dangle Israeli normalization in front of Biden who starts salivating about what a big domestic political win that would be or how he would display it in his presidential library and he just nods through the rest and forgets about prior campaign rhetoric.
I suspect that American policymakers want to be manipulated.
"Please don't throw us into that briar patch!"
EDIT: what you describe sounds like a surefire way to lead to the Thucydides' Trap, where whiny clients demand and get ever more US engagement, to their own benefit and to the detriment of the US. Eventually, the US gets mired in unresolvable conflicts that we can neither win nor leave.
It’s tempting to believe that the KSA and Israel each have something, some mysterious hold, over US elite policymakers that makes them subvert US interests in order placate their demands. What could that be I wonder?
How are they able to demand America’s constant attention at great cost to American taxpayers, while nearly all of, say Latin America, wallows in US neglect, if not outright hostility? It seems to me a question that should deserve an answer.
I suspect it’s all for domestic politics and vanity “presidential legacy” projects.
The Saudis dangle Israeli normalization in front of Biden who starts salivating about what a big domestic political win that would be or how he would display it in his presidential library and he just nods through the rest and forgets about prior campaign rhetoric.
I suspect that American policymakers want to be manipulated.
"Please don't throw us into that briar patch!"
EDIT: what you describe sounds like a surefire way to lead to the Thucydides' Trap, where whiny clients demand and get ever more US engagement, to their own benefit and to the detriment of the US. Eventually, the US gets mired in unresolvable conflicts that we can neither win nor leave.