PREFACE

My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress ... —that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned to give them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly.
— HOWARD ZINN, A People's History of the United States


The title of this book is taken from a declassified document in which one of America's chief architects of Cold War policy elucidates in a top secret report how strategy should be carried out in, in this case, East Asia. The unvarnished honesty in the quote by George Kennan (on page ix) is an adequate picture of the mentality that has driven how the United States has conducted its affairs across the globe, especially in the Third World. What would commence in Korea, Vietnam, and Indochina not long after the report was filed serves as verification that this kind of thinking was both representative and taken quite seriously among planners. As one traces the basic contours of American foreign relations, George Kennan's remarks are summoned repeatedly. Given this relative consistency, the validity of the frequent argumentation and dispute over America's various foreign undertakings—past and present—is naturally called into question.

Discussion of American involvement in the Middle East, and in particular its connection with Israel, is no less the subject of debate. But as in most cases, there is an inversely proportional relationship between facts and opinion: where one predominates, the other plays a marginal role. While legitimate disputes can and do exist, on balance the fundamental historical record is rather clear, and if attended to can narrow the space for contention.

The purpose of this project is to provide an introduction to US foreign policy that is connected with world history, American history, and current events. Its objective will be to link three normally isolated subjects into a single narrative. Moving from the general to the particular, the subjects are: the advent of the European nation-state, the birth and growth of the United States into a world power, and America's eventual intervention in the Middle East and its "special relationship" with Israel. Placing these histories in a cohesive chronology allows us to see patterns of how political, economic, and military power tend to be wielded in the international arena. Much of what we see in the news concerning warfare, conflict, and human rights abuses is the result of policy. But without a sense of history, each episode can be (and usually is) successfully explained away by heads of state and commentators as being exceptional, with the attendant avalanche of contemporaneous details. History allows consistency and continuity to emerge.

In other words, what plagues discussion of US foreign relations and their contact with the Middle East is lack of context. America's association with Israel, specifically, can only be understood within the when, why, and how of Washington, DC, coming to play the role it does in the region. If we proceed with that simple line of inquiry—virtually nowhere to be found in the televised discourse—US interests there raise a number of questions, including: How and why did the United States become a superpower projecting its influence across the globe? And what were the circumstances in the Middle East prior to Uncle Sam's arrival? As we trace these chronicles to their origins we arrive at the genesis of the nation-state.

In examining foreign policy and international relations, our investigation stands to benefit from surveying at least the foundations of how nations came to be and why world maps require at least four colors of ink (and one for the water). The parallel evolution of the state and the global capitalist economy is the subject of Chapter 1. Once we have a rudimentary sense of this evolution, the behaviors of particular countries should appear as a continuation of this historical process, a process that could just as well not have been initiated, and not as something that is simply given and intrinsic to humanity's needs. Countries are relatively new creations, and were forged in the fires of inconceivable European violence and destruction. They are not predetermined, indispensable, or necessarily permanent.

Our study is primarily concerned though with a specific nation- state, one that is an offshoot of the original community of modern states (Western Europe), and one that ended up surpassing its fore bears in size, power, and prestige. In Chapter 2 we examine this trajectory, from the Founding Fathers to the Cold War. The United States, originally a British colony in the New World, followed a path that, in less than 150 years, delivered it to global supremacy. In taking stock of the sweep of America's expansion, certain regularities of behavior become discernible throughout its foreign policy history. It is in these currents and courses of action that one can begin to comprehend what the country's leadership has valued, pursued, and avoided over the eras. By the time the United States gets to the Middle East after World War II, rough and general forecasts can be made with reasonable safety.

Chapter 3 sets the stage for the rest of the book, containing a review of how the modern Middle East emerged as a geopolitical subsystem divided into European-style nation-states, how Israel entered the regional scene, and how the Palestine-Israel and Arab-Israeli conflicts developed.

Chapter 4 is an account of US involvement in the Middle East, the establishment of Washington's firm alliance with Israel, and what these configurations have meant for the area. A continuation of the first three chapters, this chapter looks first at US replacement of British and French primacy in the region, American corporate oil interests there, and the pursuit of Washington's strategic concerns by way of the various concepts covered in Chapter 2. The US-Israeli relationship then becomes the focus of this chapter, examining the role the Jewish state has played as a client in the service of American regional designs.

After tracing the background of US hegemony in the Arab Middle East, the book continues to narrow in scope in Chapters 5 and 6 by taking two particular issues surrounding US sponsorship of Israel which further illustrate the larger aspects of our study of American state power. The peace process, as a view into the arena of diplomacy, is outlined from the beginning of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories (1967) to the Bush II administration. A second outline is performed on the recent controversy over the degree of influence the domestic pro-Israel lobby in Washington holds over US foreign policy with respect to the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors. Particular attention here is paid to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's work The Israel Lobby (2007) and the responses it generated.

My hope is that Straight Power Concepts will serve as both a map for those looking to see US-Middle Eastern relations in a less mystified/controversial and more rational/historical light, and also as perhaps a rough method of approach for those looking to study similar subjects. The pervasive uncertainty among Americans regarding their country's foreign policy, especially as it pertains to the Middle East, is confirmation that history has been left out of the picture, despite the unremitting news coverage and commentary. We keep watching—ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, FOX—but we are not being informed. Most Americans are disillusioned with the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, it is a reasonable guess that if the population had been routinely shown what was happening in these places in precise detail—the kind of detail that is seldom spared when the stakes are between low and nonexistent, pick a topic—withdrawal would have been prompt. (Armed with a basic education before the fact, it is difficult to imagine deployment at all.) The same sort of principle obtains concerning the larger picture of our foreign policy. If we knew the realities, new ones would presumably take their place, in accordance with popular demands. It has been my ambition in this project to contribute to what the major news networks and commentators, either unwittingly or with the strictest discipline, are remiss in confronting.

Gregory Harms
December 2009

©2010 Gregory Harms