Greetings.
A friend said to me on New Year’s Eve a few nights ago, “so you’re at least nominally a political theorist?” Yes, indeed I am, and more than nominally. While it’s true that I have rejected the many of the conventions and underlying assumptions of my profession (a commitment that arises out of the experience of being a precariat faculty member for a decade or so), I still think and write like a political theorist. For better or worse, of course. This means trying to uncover and analyze, examine and discuss uncommon perspectives, bring them to light and in a sense redeem them from a state of neglect and obscurity. I say this in a spirit of pessimism in part because the truly insightful perspectives are at still outside of the mainstream. We haven’t reached that magical, pivotal moment where in retrospect everything seems to change. So many things have happened over the past three months, and public opinion has changed. But that hasn’t swayed the Biden/Blinken nexus from continuing to support and enable genocide. This is in itself a problem, of course, which leads many of us to the contemplation of more direct (and less electoral) forms of political action. Until that happens, though, we are left with some necessarily pessimistic observations about what might happen in the near future.
The longer Biden enables Israeli genocide without repercussion, the stronger the temptation will be to take up old grievances by doing things like bombing Lebanon, Syria, and even Iran (yikes). Bibi has already gestured in this direction.
The US has bases all over the Middle East. I was reminded of this recently by the excellent and incredibly insightful “Bomb Power” episode of Know Your Enemy. As that episode reminds us, the creation and cultivation of a nuclear arsenal commits the US military to a whole host of troubling policies: secrecy foremost among them, but also an extended logistics/support network. This is in addition to the usual principles or reasons provided for Empire (oil, commerce more broadly, “national interests” and so on). This global overextension should be viewed as a profound vulnerability in the current moment.
The danger will be one of Israel fucking around and the US finding out. Anyone who remembers 1983 will realize this. If we witness a 1983 Beirut-level event, or even one USS Cole-sized, all bets are off. Despite bellicose rhetoric, Reagan had the good sense to avoid this outcome. I’m not so sure about Biden, Blinken, and the national-security Democrats.
To make matters worse, I am going to suggest that the only way forward to a Biden victory in November would be an attack of this kind. Only the most ghoulish of the NatSec apparatus would positively wish or will this to happen, but if it does happen, public opinion will swing back into yellow ribbon territory. This will not benefit Trump.
I don’t see how a Beirut Marine Barracks bombing-level event could possibly help Biden electorally. I don’t think it would help Trump or another theoretical Republican, or another Democratic, POTUS. I just don’t think that there is any “rally ‘round the flag” sentiment to exploit.
A terminally cynical society is not one that I think anyone really wants to live in. Ask a Russian.