tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post5291389780991056235..comments2023-12-15T00:21:39.465-08:00Comments on Porphyrogenitus: Israel's Strategic FailurePorphyrogenitushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01608183887700163336noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3562436.post-27626352794781366812010-06-05T10:21:24.964-07:002010-06-05T10:21:24.964-07:00"Probably the best strategic move Israel coul..."Probably the best strategic move Israel could do now is rename itself 'North Korea' (while not adopting that nation's political ideology)."<br /><br />I think I understand your cynical frustration here, but I also think you're mistaken for at least two more cynical reasons.<br /><br />First, communist political ideology has often been a free pass for various acts of military aggression, mass murder, and slavery. Therefore, it's unrealistic to expect the free pass to come with the NK name alone without the ideology that backs it up.<br /><br />Second, like most states at most times, NK benefits from avoiding picking on racial or religious groups which don't have large, wealthy contingents outside its territory. When states don't benefit from this, as e.g. Britain with the Irish, they can take a disproportionate amount of flak. <br /><br />I don't know why bisecting a national identity group and enslaving a good chunk of it doesn't generate a comparable problem, but it seems that it generally doesn't (Germany, Korea, China...) --- racial (South Africa) or religious identity seems to be required for this phenomenon to occur at full strength.<br /><br />"the Israelis want to not only do the right thing, but what is actually worse be *seen* and *perceived* as doing the right thing"<br /><br />It seems to me that the Israelis want to be granted the amount of slack for coverups and spin that is often granted friendly sovereign actors. Thus in this incident they jam transmissions, confiscate video, selectively release video, and want the international community to lap up the resulting confection. In the larger picture, they are secretive about how the blockade is actually enforced (no clear public guidelines on what's allowed through, e.g.) but want to be able to represent it to the international community as a narrow security-based blockade, without controversy about collective economic punishment. Freely using lethal force to enforce a blockade or to respond to riot-level violence is hardly unheard of in 20th century history, and imposing collective economic punishment isn't either. Supporters of the Israelis, perhaps including you, can make a case for being driven to it. But the Israeli government seems to prefer to make the easy case that they don't need to defend the controversial actual policy, but only the narrow idealized policy. Unfortunately the easiness of that case depends on being given a lot of slack for coverups and spin.William Newmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14336821309402794016noreply@blogger.com