“The Logic of Escalation”: From Red Sea to Iran & Beyond, Will Israel’s Gaza Assault Spark Wider War? Spencer Ackerman interviewed, Ackerman writes the Forever Wars newsletter and is the foreign policy columnist for The Nation. DemocracyNow!, January 17 https://www.democracynow.org/2024/1/17/israel_palestine_regional_war . . . SPENCER ACKERMAN: ... I think that in my 20-plus years of covering the “war on terror,” this is the most dangerous moment in — for the Middle East that I’ve seen professionally. You talk about there being the possibility of a full-blown regional conflict. We’re at least at half-blown now. Consider what the battlefields are and have been in this conflict: Gaza, obviously the most important one, the most devastating to humanity, where the Palestinians are experiencing what could and probably should be understood as a genocide, but also southern Israel, northern Israel, southern Lebanon, northwestern Syria, Beirut, northeastern Syria, Erbil, Baghdad, southwestern Yemen, the Red Sea, Pakistan, as well. This is now a conflict with battlefronts ranging across the region, each of which facing pressure to escalate as their various combatants’ objectives are not fully achieved. We shouldn’t think that absent an active act of deescalation, that this won’t continue spiraling outward throughout 2024. . . . ... So, the United States, while it might say that it’s seeking to contain the conflict, is caught up in the logic of escalation.
And that means we shouldn’t give the Biden administration a pass on this. These aren’t, you know, automatic gravitational forces. These are the accumulations of choices that Biden and his team are making to involve the U.S. more deeply in this spiraling conflict, all of which could be stopped if the United States used its immense influence over Israel to restrain it or stop it from carrying out its collective punishment of Gaza. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We often hear, as well, about the Axis of Resistance, supposedly controlled or financed by Iran, but very little about the Axis of Empire, of the U.K., the United States and Israel in the region. To what degree does this axis have more right to control the affairs of the region than those who are actually from countries there? SPENCER ACKERMAN: Quite well said, Juan. Without ceding any of Iran’s claims to regional hegemony, the United States and its allies act as if they are the representatives of the natural and just order of the Middle East, and not, in fact, Western impositions upon the aspirations of the citizenry, the people of these countries, to determine their own affairs. . . . -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#28527): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/28527 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/103799247/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
