The Lead

When the Bad Guys Panic, Time for Some Calm Miracles

by David Shavin (EIRNS) — Jan. 18, 2024

The word has gone out in the West. When your vaunted Ukrainian counteroffensive flopped, when Russia didn’t fold up and blow away, when it turns out your farms and factories don’t do so well, when coal, natural gas, and nuclear are suppressed, and when China keeps insisting upon building long-term, science-driven projects—well, it’s just time to look into your crystal ball, push the panic button, and announce to anyone within earshot that full-scale war with thermonuclear powers is just around the corner. Take your pick, two years, five years, whatever. The point is, populations are supposed to shut the f— up and let the smart fellas throw everything into whatever military-financial drive that might keep the doors open a little while longer.

NATO’s highest military figure, the Chairman of its Military Committee Adm. Rob Bauer told his assembled yesterday that “the tectonic plates of power” in the world “are shifting.” We’re in a permanent emergency, and NATO countries need to be on red alert for full-scale war. “[W]e need a war-fighting transformation of NATO.” There’s to be no walking away from Ukraine’s war, as it “will determine the fate of the world.” One after another, the governments of the U.K., Germany, Sweden, etc., have discovered that there’s no need to account for their abject economic and strategic mistakes and failures—just sound the alarm.

Which brings us to the Blinken-Netanyahu show and the “breakaway ally scenario.” NBC put out extensive material over the last 48 hours, going into detail on U.S. Secretary of State Blinken’s grand scheme. Saudi Arabia is to lead moderate Arabs to “rebuild” Gaza, with Israel’s military controlling all the borders, and a “reformed Palestinian Authority”—it even has the initials RPA!—allowed to administrate civilian matters. The Saudi coalition gets a guarantee from Israel that everything is on the path to a Palestinian state. All this scheming, but Netanyahu tells Blinken that there is no way a Palestinian state will be allowed. Israel’s “Gallant Plan” allows for moderate Arabs to send the money, but no state and not even a “reformed Palestinian Authority” on a short leash.

Meanwhile, Israel’s President told the assembled at Davos yesterday that no sane Israeli could even consider a solution for Gaza. The only reality is wiping out Hamas—and, by the way, “the war is not only between Israel and Hamas. The world has to face it point blank: There is an empire of evil emanating from Iran.” Iran’s activities are going to “undermine any peace process and any stability in the world.” So, after we’re allowed to wipe out Hamas, you’re probably going to be disappointed, as we still can’t discuss peace without dealing with Iran to the east and Lebanon to the north.

Is this just an unfortunate situation where the best diplomacy in the world can’t win our irascible Israeli allies over to what is in their best interests? Are they so psychologically traumatized that Washington has to turn to the world community, shrug, and say, “Well, we tried our best”?

The mystery of the “breakaway ally scenario” is no different from that of the classic “hard-cop/ soft-cop” routine. Of course, as anyone could figure, at any moment all Washington had to do with Israel—or, for that matter, Ukraine—is to cut off the funding and the weapons. That such a simple action is not done is the tell, is the signal that the hard cop and the soft cop are on the same team. It’s a lose-lose proposition for the whole region, as Arab countries get weakened, compromised, or toppled for once again getting snookered by the West with no actual Palestinian state—and that’s the upside. It assumes that all the gamesmanship doesn’t spill over into full-scale warfare.

Last spring, China had performed a diplomatic miracle in establishing a basis for Saudi Arabia and Iran, and for the region’s Sunni and Shi’a populations, to see a pathway to cooperation and economic development. British imperial methods gamble on instilling fear and rage—in a Jewish population from the Nazi genocide, in an Islamic population from decades of raw materials looting, but also the present genocide in Gaza—to overwhelm the force of humanity and civilization.

Certainly, it has worked more than once. But the Western leaders are in panic mode. There’s no need to join them. The undeniable climate change in the Global Majority of the world, centered around the BRICS-Plus, intimates that what may look like semi-miracles in the demoralized West are indeed possible. Your tools for waging peace are here and here.