By Chris Fry
After Hamas’s October 7, 2023 “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” the Biden White House has repeatedly pressed the absurd claim that it is trying to “restrain” Netanyahu’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Now the genocidal zionist state is expanding its war into Lebanon, with its murderous remote control pager attack and the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah with 2,000 pound bombs. Biden had said that these weapons were being withheld from “israel.’ Biden and Harris still make this absurd claim, even while they block every UN peace resolution in the Security Council, back up israel with a menacing fleet of ships and planes and step up the flow of bombs and cash to the zionist regime.
And when thousands of students and young workers protest this atrocity, here and abroad, and when faculty and staff speak out against it, they face suspensions, expulsions, firings and mass arrests. They are smeared as “antisemitic,” even though many protests are led by Jewish individuals and groups. And Palestinian people are just as Semitic as Jewish people.
On September 30 the U.S. gave the green light to the zionist state’s invasion of Lebanon, a repeat of previous invasions in 1978 and 1983, in 1993 and 1996. For years israeli forces occupied a portion of Lebanese territory until Hezbollah forced their retreat in 2000. Israel waged war on Lebanon again in 2006, culminating in a truce.
Obviously, this new incursion by Netanyahu into Lebanon, which has already cost hundreds of lives, has the assent of the entire U.S, ruling class and their political and military minions.
An important post by the online magazine Worldcrunch appeared on September 27, titled “U.S. Policy In The Middle East Is Getting Tough Again — And The Reason Is China”. Written from a pro-imperialist point of view, it nevertheless reveals a primary motive for the increasingly aggressive U.S. actions in West Asia, and how backing the genocidal zionist war against Gaza, Lebanon, Iran and the Arab population as a whole in a desperate U.S. master plan to maintain hegemony and counter its most dangerous foe – Socialist China.
U.S. war drive focuses on the Middle East
The Worldcrunch article describes the escalating U.S. military presence in the region:
No regime is able to remain in power through repression alone. It has to offer its people some benefits, and link it to their power, so that repression becomes the exception and not the rule.
This is a reference to the famous “carrot and stick” policy that empires have used throughout history to maintain their rule. This article points out that the U.S. has been forced to more and more rely on the “stick” over the “carrot” in the Mideast region.
More than any other region, the Middle East has extremely dense American military deployment. We see such deployment not only in the military bases scattered in the Gulf, Iraq, Syria and Djibouti, but also in the influx of aircraft carriers and strategic bombers which have played an active role in participating in bombing operations in Yemen, Syria and Iraq, and providing direct support for israeli offensive and defensive operations in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.
A September 30 New York Times article reports that with the israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Pentagon is sending more troops to the region:
Defense Department officials said the additional forces would bolster security for the 40,000 U.S. troops already in the region and help with the defense of israel.
A Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, said the deployment would include multiple fighter squadrons. Other officials said they would include F-15, F-16 and F-22 fighter jets as well as A-10 warplanes, adding substantially to American air capability.
The Pentagon declined to say exactly how many more troops were being deployed. But one official put the number at between 2,000 and 3,000.
The 40,000 American troops already in the region are stationed on bases in Iraq, Syria and other countries. The U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, in the Gulf of Oman, is on an extended deployment in the region, and a second aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman, left Norfolk, Va., a week ago for the Mediterranean as part of a regularly scheduled deployment.
So, “israel’s” genocide in Gaza and attack on Lebanon is not contrary to U.S. imperialist policy, but instead is an integral part of the U.S. imperialist domination in Western Asia.
The question then arises: Why is it now necessary for U.S. imperialism to rely on the “stick” over the “carrot”, to vastly mobilize its military to not only back Netanyahu’s atrocities but also to mobilize its forces for its own direct conflict, for its own war in the region? The Worldcrunch post gives its answer in one word – China.
In contrast to the increasing American military presence over the past decade, its economic role in the Middle East has declined relatively, whether as a trading partner, a source of direct investment, or even as a donor, particularly when compared to the rising interests of China.
In 2022, for example, China was the Middle East’s first trading partner in terms of exports and imports. It now imports more than half of the Gulf’s oil exports, and supplies the region’s countries with about 67% of what they import.
Meanwhile, the United States ranks far behind India and a number of European countries, in terms of exports and imports, especially with its expansion in oil production, the most prominent thing the Middle East can offer to the world.
The United States has also become not as attractive a source of direct investment as it used to be. China estimated its cumulative investments in the region at $273 billion in 2022, while cumulative U.S. investments reached $80 billion in 2023.
The article points out that foreign aid to the region by the U.S. now consists almost entirely of bombs and weapons to israel:
But while a report to Congress in 2023 shows that the Middle East and North Africa countries have historically been the largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid with a total of $372.6 billion between 1946 and 2020, the largest part of this aid was directed to support the israeli military. This places such aid in the category of stick rather than carrot.
The authors of the Worldcrunch article make it clear that they, like the rest of the corporate media, do not object at all to this U.S. “stick” policy:
The changes that have affected the weight and role of the United States in the global economy, including the Middle East, do not mean that the American empire is in decline.
The U.S. still maintains its lead in two basic issues: money, with the centrality of the dollar as an international currency on which China itself relies heavily in its trade and investments, and the production of advanced technology, including that for military usage.
This makes the U.S. likely to continue to play a pivotal role in the global economy in the coming years.
But at the same time, if we return to the metaphor with which we began the article, the American stick has become bigger while the carrot is shrinking. And the developments in the Middle East reveal changes that indicate that the United States will use its Navy fleets, Air Force fighter jets, and endless supply of weaponry to address the challenges the world poses to it.
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