Thread by @iyad_elbaghdadi

There's been lots of debates over the years about who controls whom - does the US control Israel, or does Israel control the US?

Here's some thoughts on the US imperial system, its rise and its decline. To do this best I'll have to expand the frame to include the Gulf & its oil 🧵

(I went to sleep late and woke up with a headache. I should get up and pour myself a cup of coffee and start my day, but instead I'm writing this thread about the US imperial system from bed. Sorry team @Kawaakibi.)

@Kawaakibi Okay. Empires are best understood in terms of hierarchy.
- In pre-modernity empires, this was core vs periphery
- In modern colonial empires, it's metropole vs colony

These aren't hard binaries and there are some gradations in between (e.g. semi-core, dominions, etc.)

@Kawaakibi What empire does is organize territories & peoples so that wealth, resources etc are extracted towards the core. Those closer to the core get more benefit (and freedom); those farthest suffer greater extraction (and oppression).

So, what is/was Israel? And the Gulf states?

@Kawaakibi Let me begin by presenting 3 facts. Understand them and you'll understand this a lot deeper

First fact: empires are built on three pillars:
- An economic pillar (wealth extraction)
- A military pillar (coercion)
- A legitimization pillar (justification)

@Kawaakibi This applies to the US empire, but then, the US empire happens to be the most systemic of all empires in history.

This means it is best understood not in terms of territory it occupies but global systems it controls.

@Kawaakibi So, mapping this onto the US empire:
- Economy = dollar hegemony; USD-denominated financialized capitalism
- Military = security hegemony; the US's network of alliances and bases across the world
- Legitimization = "liberal internationalism", the US-led international order

@Kawaakibi Second fact: For the first two decades of its existence, Israel's closest ally wasn't the US, it was France.

At the time, France was fighting its own genocidal settler-colonial war in Algeria, and found common cause with Israel. It was France that helped Israel obtain its nukes.

@Kawaakibi After French colonialism collapsed in Algeria, conditions changed. It was only after 1967 that the US began to see Israel as a very useful ally - at that time within the context of the Cold War.

I list this fact so people can understand that even "special relationships" end.

@Kawaakibi Third fact: Until the fall of the Shah in 1979, the most reliable and promising ally for the US in the Gulf region was not Israel but... Iran.

A large, populous country with a Western-aligned, ambitious yet brutal monarch. Who better to protect US interests in the oil-rich Gulf?

@Kawaakibi Okay. Now hold those three facts in the background. And now I fucking hate that I sound like chatgpt because we spend so much time nowadays talking to AI that we start to pick up its annoying style

@Kawaakibi Anyway. A phase shift happened in the 1970s:
- The US ends the Bretton Woods financial system (the convertibility of USD to gold); the USD becomes a floating fiat currency underwritten by trust/faith in US dominance

@Kawaakibi - The 1973 Oil Crisis, followed by the establishment of the Petrodollar system, effectively ensuring the USD is underwritten by a near infinite supply of energy.
- The 1979 Iran Revolution unseats the Shah, who was, as we said, the West's favored security partner in the region

@Kawaakibi (This is going somewhere, I promise)

@Kawaakibi By 1980:
- The US empire's economic pillar needed secure Gulf oil
- The military pillar lost the ally most capable of that

In this context came the Carter Doctrine (1980): The US will intervene militarily to defend its "national interests" (read: imperial system) in the Gulf.

@Kawaakibi With this, the US needed a new reliable security partner/ally. This is where the relationship with Israel became structural.

By the time Reagan came, the relationship had become "special" and "civilizational". (Note, AIPAC was not a huge force in US politics until the 1980s).

@Kawaakibi Wtf, it's 12 pm and I'm still in bed. I stayed up late with intense anxiety and triggers watching the insane massacres in Lebanon and desperately checking on my Lebanese friends, had nightmares all night. Got up to pray then came back to bed. And still in bed.

@Kawaakibi Sigh, fine, let me skip forward:

Israel since the 1980s became co-constitutive of US empire. Its institutions (military, economic, academic, etc) became *part of the imperial core*. They deeply shaped doctrine, politics, tech, strategy. The US empire was also an Israeli empire.

@Kawaakibi Meanwhile, the Gulf states were gradually folded into the imperial system as "semi-core". Gulf elites were given a privileged yet subordinate position - which lulled them into a sense that this is forever, and made them delay some crucial reforms that it's now too late to start.

@Kawaakibi Anyway, the thing is that the American *people* were never really comfortable with the US being an empire, because the benefits of empire only went to the elites, and it was the common folks who had to fight & die for it in war after war after war halfway across the world.

@Kawaakibi I mean, the US empire's extractive economic system was so efficient that it ended up extracting from & cannibalizing America itself.

So now you have a situation where Americans, on the Left or the Right, *do not want to be an empire*. They're sick of this shit.

@Kawaakibi And the thing is, America can still succeed and thrive post-empire. It will be quite an adjustment for sure, with many bumps along the way. But long-term, America will be fine.

Can't say the same for Israel and some Gulf states.

@Kawaakibi Israel cannot survive outside of this imperial system. And it's spending its last decade (or so) committing massacres and collecting enemies.

As for the Gulf states, some of them can transition towards being normal countries, or playing their size. Others are... ngmi.

@Kawaakibi For some reason I'm reminded of a book I read by Aziz Nesin when I was a kid, called "Zubuk".

I remember this quote: "The dog stands in the shadow of the wagon, and thinks the wagon's shadow is his own".

@Kawaakibi If you've stayed this long and read my groggy thoughts - you'll notice the focus on deeply understanding systems.

If you appreciate that, my team & I are launching an independent media platform focused on systems change. Founder subscriptions are open:
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@Kawaakibi Before I leave you:
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- Our path forward is systems change. This requires deep understanding, and also work. It's a task for architects, not nihilists.

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