KHALIDI, MEARSHEIMER, & ENERGY WARS

NOVANEWS

I just listened in on a press briefing hosted by the Institute for Middle East Understanding. Yousef Munayyer of The Palestine Center moderated the discussion. The discussants were Rashid Khalidi and John Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer correctly called the peace process a “charade,” and commented that there’s “not a whole lot of difference” between Rabin and Netanyahu–within a small spectrum of opinion, differences are magnified. Both Mearsheimer obliquely and Khalidi more directly discussed the forces within American society that prevent a just resolution of the conflict.

Mearsheimer correctly pointed out the influence of the Lobby. Khalidi added that the Christian Zionists are another force preventing a just resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, since they represent 1/4th, perhaps 1/3rd, of the Republican Party’s base. This points are obviously true but insufficient. Policies aren’t made on the basis of popular opinion. Popular opinion is mobilized behind policies. So I asked Khalidi what other forces block a settlement of the conflict, beyond mass constituencies and the Lobby, and suggested that both the arms industry and the oil industry benefit from continued conflict and instability in the Middle East, and Israel contributes to that instability–hence they have no interest in pushing for resolution, and an interest in continued low-to-high-grade conflict.

I have to say that Khalidi’s answer—given that he is not inattentive to the political economy of the Middle East—was disappointing. He incisively pointed out that very few sectors of organized domestic power seem to have any interest in a resolution of the conflict, but then said that while perhaps the arms industries benefit from continued conflict, he did not know how they could influence the presidency.

From Open Secrets: “The sector has leaned Republican in the past, but ultimately its contributions tend to go to whoever is in power…The sector also has a formidable federal lobbying presence, having spent $136.5 million in 2009 — down from a high of $150.8 million the previous year.” One of the biggest contributors is Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin makes the F-35 that Obama just “gave” to Israel (Obama’s gift was from American taxpayers to Lockheed Martin, which is having a bit of trouble with the F-35, while Obama, a loyal footman of empire, is just doing his job: shoveling cash into the coffers of the core of the military-industrial complex).

Khalidi also made three more points. One, he said that American oil companies want stability in the Middle East. Two, he said that their chief interests are the maintenance of authoritarian governments amongst the petro-states, as in Saudi Arabia. Three, he said that the conflict in Iraq was displeasing to them. Point one is questionable. It’s indisputable that Middle East energy conflicts have meant momentous profits for the key energy firms operating in the Middle East.

For those wishing to make the argument that the energy majors want stability and not conflict in the Middle East, one has to assume that they are managed by people studiously unaware of their own companies’ interests, in contravention of their corporate charters. I do not think that’s a reasonable assumption. Point two is true but misses something: casting the need to maintain dictatorships in the Middle East as a question of “protecting Israel” is an easier sell than casting it as “maximizing profits for oil companies.” The detractors of this thesis point out that oil is fungible. Partially true, and the question since ’67 has not been—except perhaps in consideration of long-term geo-political planning which are harder to suss out—control over flows of oil. The point is control over flows of profits. Point three likewise does not hold. Look at Exxon’s stock price since 2002 (click to make sure it shows the 10-year graph). With BP, the pattern is less clear due to the spill, but the trend line from 2002 to 2008 is unmistakable. Look at Chevron.

Notice the pattern, put it all together, and then we have an understanding not of why the Lobby pushes for apartheid, politicide, and ethnic cleansing—Zionism is a powerful force, and directs the logic of Israeli society and its allies in the United States—but rather why other capital sectors tolerate those policies which go against what Mearsheimer would call the “National Interest.” It’s not good enough to enumerate the Jewish neo-cons pushing for war against Iraq in 2002, which just substitutes ethnicity for class and structure as explanatory factors. We have to ask why, again and again, central sectors of the American economy tolerate massively expensive energy wars. The answer is simple. They make good blood-loot off of those wars, and that’s why they’re fought, and that’s why no one stomps on the Lobby. You don’t kill the Golden Goose. You pamper it.

Khalidi and Mearsheimer in turn gave unsatisfactory answers to the question on everyone’s mind: how to move forward. Certainly the tactics are sound: Boycott, Divestment, and direct Sanctions on Israel. But the question of mobilizing political and social forces in the US around those tactics got short-shrift. Without a clear assessment of the class nature of the conflict we are fighting, we cannot begin to arrive at a strategy for resolving it. We cannot target policies if we cannot target their purveyors, proponents, and quiet supporters.

That last category goes beyond the Lobby to the central accumulation regime in the United States: the oil firms and the military-industrial complex. The solidarity movement cannot take them down alone. Nor do they need to be taken down to resolve the conflict. But they will have to be restructured. Their profits will be gouged. And their managers will not be thrilled with that prospect, and will resist it. It’ll be tough work. Why this is so upsetting to some confuses me. When you have a mountain in front of you, the solution is to think about the ascent, not to hallucinate a foothill and wonder why it proves so damnably difficult to reach its peak.

Technorati Tags: Bichler, Israel, John Mearsheimer, Nitzan, Palestine, Rashid Khalidi, Zionism

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