Translated from GegenStandpunkt 4-2023
War requirements in Eastern Europe and the Middle East,
“chaos” in Washington:
A new episode in the struggle
between “global leadership” and “America first!”Yet another first in Washington, DC. This time, Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is being removed from office at the instigation of some hardliners in his own party. After all, he didn’t dare follow through on his announced total opposition to the Biden administration’s budget to its ultimate conclusion. By proposing a short-term increase in the federal debt ceiling, he balked at a government shutdown, which would have resulted in the closure of numerous federal agencies, the suspension of various payments owed by the federal government to its civil servants, and maybe even the downgrading of the credit rating of US government debt. In the eyes of the these hardliners, he has revealed himself to be just another creature of the bipartisan swamp that good Republicans should be rigorously draining. The no confidence vote against McCarthy brought by the so-called “hardcore Trumpist” Matt Gaetz has resulted in his removal from office; this is followed by four weeks in which the House of Representatives is “condemned to inaction” until the Republicans can agree on a replacement – widely regarded as another sad peak in the dysfunctional division that has plagued American politics for more than a decade.
Yet there hasn’t been this much bipartisan agreement in Washington since the so-called “day of chaos on Capitol Hill.” The accusation leveled at the Gaetz faction by the Biden administration and congressional Democrats, including the left-wing Democratic “Squad,” is seconded by the vast majority of Republicans, including Republican heavyweight Newt Gingrich, who nearly 30 years ago brought about the first significant government shutdown in US history. And he in turn is supported by the overwhelming majority of the mainstream media: what Gaetz and Co. have wrought here is a mortal sin not even comprehensible in partisan terms, a wanton violation of every precept of good democratic government leadership. Democratic politicians are, first and foremost, obliged to preserve the American government’s ability and freedom to act. Americans from all political camps, at all levels of the social hierarchy and across all religious divides can agree on this: they want to see, above all, the vigorous exercise of sovereignty by their rulers. It’s understandable that American politicians put this type of entitled attitude in the mouths of their citizens; after all, it’s nothing but a call for the very legislative freedom they themselves insist on. And that’s also the main and general compliment they always pay to themselves when they enact something the citizens have to obey: They have once again accomplished what is popularly called “getting things done for the American people.” The crime of Gaetz’s sub-faction is all the more serious because “the things” that the American state currently has to “get done” concern two hot war fronts – and one that is becoming increasingly hotter. It is precisely such issues – in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and far-off Asia – that fall under the abstract and general injunction to “do something!” And it is precisely such cases that show the essence of a functioning American democracy: the superpower’s indisputable military capability in theaters of war around the world. In general opinion, the attention-seeking self-promoters on the far right obviously don’t care about the business of politics.
Nevertheless, progress is being made. The whole circus is forcing all sides into a direct confrontation on precisely the political issue that has divided American foreign policy makers long before Trump, and which is also, and especially, at stake on the current war fronts: What does it mean to be an American world power? The intensifying debate over the American budget makes the dispute over American imperialism as concrete as it is urgent.
I. The Biden administration’s need for military action: The necessity and benefits of American leadership in defending the world order
1.
The Biden administration is definitely not experiencing “war weariness.” Despite all the concerns, including those within the administration itself, about paltry progress amid devastating losses, it views the wearing down of the Ukrainian army in wearing down the Russian army as a stall in an offensive that must neither come to a halt nor be the last. Biden insists that Russia has long since “failed and continues to fail” in that it has failed at its war aim of a lightning fast regime change and a political turnaround in the whole of Ukraine. Yet the American war goal is still far from being reached: the restoration of the “rules-based world order,” of which America claims to be the highest enforcement authority, and the necessary ruin of Russia as a military power capable of such violations in the first place. For all this, Russia has not yet lost enough, especially since Putin neither acknowledges his failure nor gives up his will to wage war, but rather believes he can endure the war of attrition in Ukraine longer than the Western sponsors and their protégé. To refute such certainty of victory in practical terms, Ukraine is being rearmed accordingly, with the next relevant aid package being presented to the US Congress. In addition, work is continuing on closing stubborn gaps in the global economic strangulation of Russia and on its global political isolation, that is, on the practical obligation of the entire world of states to contribute to its defeat. For Biden, the war therefore remains of decisive epochal importance for the world order – a world war that, although it is only supposed to be fought in Ukraine and leaves the country looking accordingly, obliges the whole world to participate and demands the corresponding military, economic, and diplomatic effort from America itself.
This makes those who see the war in Ukraine in exactly the same light all the more concerned that America might now be distracted by the war of its closest ally in the Middle East, allowing the treasures from its considerable arsenal of weapons and the unfortunately limited “bandwidth” of its military and diplomatic attention to be diverted elsewhere. In fact, for Biden, Israel’s war needs are just as compelling as Ukraine’s; he immediately takes Israel’s war program as an urgent call for the protective deterrent power that only the US can provide. His response is fitting: a few billion dollars in additional weapons for the Israeli army, and two US aircraft carriers, complete with their entourages, within reach of the theater of war. The demonstration of American military readiness is complemented by a considerable diplomatic offensive aimed at compelling all other powers in the region to remain silent so that Israel can satisfy its security needs; which in this case means that all alternatives must be effectively ruled out. Experts have coined a phrase to describe what the Biden administration is doing in this case: America is “returning” to the Middle East after having “neglected” the region, and in particular the Israeli-Palestinian problem zone, for several years – as if America, with its withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, no longer really had the region on its radar. In any case, America is now proving that it has not given up its claims to order in the region one bit; and the military resources it is deploying and the diplomatic efforts it is making clearly demonstrate its desire to be present in the region as the indispensable, insurmountable force for order that it has always wanted to be recognized as. Everything Biden is doing and saying in this regard is apparently more than enough to prompt concerned voices at home and abroad to ask very early on whether “the wars in Israel and Ukraine are more than the United States can take on at the same time.” Biden responds to this with the reassuring statement:
“For God’s sake! We are the United States of America! The most powerful nation not only in the world, but also in world history! We can take care of both and still maintain our international defense capabilities.” (Biden on 60 Minutes, October 15, 2023
The White House’s willingness and readiness to “take care” of things militarily is easily enough for two wars and much more. According to Biden, however, it must also be enough for that. To make sure no one is confused, Biden presents the scenario in all its necessary starkness:
“We’re facing an inflection point in history. One of those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come. That’s what I’d like to talk with you about tonight... The terrorist group Hamas unleashed pure unadulterated evil in the world … The assault on Israel echoes nearly 20 months of war, tragedy and brutality inflicted on the people of Ukraine, people that were very badly hurt since Putin launched his all-out invasion. We’ve not forgotten the mass graves, the bodies found bearing signs of torture, rape used as a weapon by the Russians, and thousands and thousands of Ukrainian children forcibly taken into Russia, stolen from their parents. It’s sick. Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common. They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy – completely annihilate it. Hamas’ stated purpose for existing is the destruction of the state of Israel and the murder of Jewish people... I know these conflicts can seem far away, and it’s natural to ask: Why does this matter to America? So let me share with you why making sure Israel and Ukraine succeed is vital for America’s national security. You know, history has taught us that when terrorists don’t pay a price for their terror, when dictators don’t pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and death and more destruction. They keep going. And the cost and the threats to America and the world keep rising. So if we don’t stop Putin’s appetite for power and control in Ukraine, he won’t limit himself just to Ukraine. Putin’s already threatened to remind, quote, remind Poland that their western land was a gift from Russia. One of his top advisers, a former president of Russia, has called Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania Russia’s Baltic provinces. These are all NATO allies. For 75 years, NATO has kept peace in Europe. And has been the cornerstone of American security. And if Putin attacks a NATO ally, we will defend every inch of NATO, which a treaty requires and calls for. We’ll have something that we do not seek. Make it clear – we do not seek to have American troops fighting in Russia or fighting against Russia. Beyond Europe, we know that our allies, and maybe most importantly our adversaries and competitors, are watching. They’re watching our response in Ukraine as well. And if we walk away and let Putin erase Ukraine’s independence, would-be aggressors around the world would be emboldened to try the same. The risk of conflict and chaos could spread in other parts of the world: in the Indo-Pacific, in the Middle East, especially in the Middle East. Iran is supporting Russia in Ukraine, and it’s supporting Hamas and other terrorist groups in the region. And we’ll continue to hold them accountable, I might add... American leadership is what holds the world together. American alliances are what keep us, America, safe. American values are what make us a partner that other nations want to work with. To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, it’s just not worth it...” (Biden’s speech to the nation, October 19, 2023)
Ultimately, there are not two wars demanding America’s military attention, but only one great, far-reaching battle against one great, many-headed enemy: an insatiable will to destroy, directed against humanity and the only political system that treats people like human beings. In this battle, everything is connected; no theater of war is merely local. Here and there, the deployment of superior American force is necessary – the best proof of American determination is to use it. What is needed, then, is an American intervention that every enemy can and must relate to. The two main fronts in the great battle against anti-democratic evil may be far from the American homeland, but none of them are far away. This is apparently less because the bad guys are “going further and further” and more because they don’t have to go far to encounter the USA. With its alliances, the US is already everywhere. It can only withdraw, “isolate” itself. And that is precisely out of the question. In doing so, America would not only abandon its partners and “the people,” but also itself:
“What would happen if we walked away? We are the essential nation... And as I walked through Kyiv with President Zelensky, with air raid sirens sounding in the distance, I felt something I’ve always believed more strongly than ever before: America is a beacon to the world, still, still. We are, as my friend Madeleine Albright said, the indispensable nation. Tonight, there are innocent people all over the world who hope because of us. Who believe in a better life because of us. Who are desperate not to be forgotten by us. And who are waiting for us.” (ibid)
This is the voice of a president for whom national power and global responsibility, national self-interest and service to the world, national security and global victim protection fit together seamlessly. It’s true that US foreign policy also involves relationship with other states, which it confronts with its own interests and resources, resulting in alliances and rivalries of varying breadth and intensity, which in turn leads to more or less extensive interventions into the internal affairs of foreign powers and how they treat their citizens. But such textbook definitions of foreign policy are far too petty, profane, and indecent for this US president – and, as is well known, not only for him. Indeed, he sees it the other way around: the American state has a directly personal relationship with all people around the world. Not as just any foreign state from which they can expect this or that, but as the promised land – as a universal promise of salvation that differs from that of the Old Testament God only in that it is given to all people. From this relationship with the people of all countries, it derives its position toward their states – as the first and true addressee of what they claim to be and fulfill for their peoples. This is extremely high-flown rhetoric.
It is, however, quite appropriate. It reflects the singular relationship in which America actually tangibly positions itself to all other state powers in the world. On the one hand, America recognizes them as equals: as sovereign powers that claim their peoples as their own; as subjects with equal rights and obligations under a global legal order that makes no exceptions, not even for America. At least in principle. On the other hand, America sees this order as one that can only have the binding force of a true world order through its own unquestionably superior power. Therefore, it is only right and proper for America that not only the people of the world relate to it as a singular exception, but also and especially their governments. They should treat America’s superior power as a condition of their own interests and ambitions, its supremacy as essential to their own sovereignty, and thus America as a licensor that grants their self-interests and places their use of force under its reservations. No sovereign power on earth misunderstands this as a demand to act in accordance with the wishes and needs of its own citizens and to regard the supranational rules of the rule-based world order as sacrosanct. Rather, they understand the USA’s power to uphold order exactly the way they experience it in practice: as the imperative to satisfy America’s interests in its world order by ruling over their land and peoples according to America’s desires. What this means for them and what it means for America depends on the circumstances. As the sole guarantor of an intact world order, America always reserves for itself the freedom to define which cases of sovereign uses of violence – either external or internal – challenge its authority over the world order. As freely as America may wield its definitions of enemies and its means of power, it will not forego the requirement that its recurring interventions be recognized as the enforcement of a supranational, universally valid legal framework. Even situation-specific adjustments to the legal framework and even the exceptions that America allows itself – e.g., a global war on terror might require a bit of flexibility in such matters – have a “rule-based” and supranational character in that America always demands universal recognition of its right to do so. When America acts as a world order-making power, it always does so with the demand that all other countries have to relate to the intervention as participants in the world order that America per se protects when it takes action.[1]
2.
No question: the redemption of this right to world order doesn’t go without saying – especially in the current cases in which it should be asserted. And even if America isn’t wasting any opportunities here, it is perhaps the clearest expression of America’s special claim to world order that Biden articulates so emphatically in his speech that he addresses the states of the world only secondarily. Here, an American president is speaking first and foremost to his own citizens; it is above all to them that he feels the need to provide clarification. Biden counters the “war weariness” in the country, which he partly answers and partly anticipates, with an explanation of why supporting partners in their wars, while it undoubtedly costs America a lot, is definitely worth it for America. To do so, he chooses language that every good businessman – and ultimately every hard-working American sees himself as one – understands:
“That’s why tomorrow I’m going to send to Congress an urgent budget request to fund America’s national security needs, to support our critical partners, including Israel and Ukraine. It’s a smart investment that’s going pay dividends for American security for generations, help us keep American troops out of harm’s way, help us build a world that is safer, more peaceful and more prosperous for our children and grandchildren.” (ibid)
Every American who grew up with “family values” knows this much: whenever children and grandchildren are mentioned, it’s about fundamentals. It’s about expectations that Americans and others must believe in, both literally and figuratively. But that’s precisely the beauty of the many alliances to which America is committed, and that is precisely what makes them so “smart”: then others are killing and dying for America’s security. They spare America the necessity of using its own living and material powers as comprehensively as its claims on the world actually extend.
As passionately and dramatically as Biden addresses his citizens, he expects little in the way of a response or even understanding from them. A president is there to lead, after all. Nevertheless, he is dependent on a response – from members of Congress, on whose majority approval the government’s practical ability to wage war actually depends – even if it is “only” to support wars in which America officially remains a non-belligerent party. And given an extremely narrow Democratic majority in the Senate and an almost equally narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives, this includes dependence on representatives in the House who are on the other side of the notorious national divide. But here, of all places, is where the national divide cuts across party lines. The vast majority of Republican members of Congress in fact approve of the necessity and usefulness of both theaters of war for the purpose of enforcing the validity of the American-dominated world order. They regularly, though not always, approve the relevant aid packages for Kiev, supplemented by the – potentially superfluous, but all the more insistent – admonition to keep a tight rein on things. The government must ensure that the friendly arms deliveries and funds do not flow into dark channels, but directly into the trenches, so that a leading Republican senator can continue to take stock with delight:
“It’s the best money we ever spent.” (Senator Lindsey Graham)
II. The “America first!” faction insists on American supremacy and nothing else
1.
A small faction of hardcore Trump supporters in Congress has been sensing “war weariness” in Ukraine for quite some time – and they can’t simply be ignored. Firstly, because this small faction has none other than Donald Trump behind them, who in turn has the support of the vast majority of Republican voters; secondly, and most acutely, because this faction has a disproportionately large voting weight thanks to the current majority in the House of Representatives. The need for their approval to raise the debt ceiling gives them the opportunity not only to register their opposition to further military aid for Ukraine in the manner of a powerless opposition, but also makes it impossible to bypass them.
The crew around Matt Gaetz made their objections clear back in spring 2023 with a “Ukraine fatigue resolution,” which declared that military support for Ukraine was weakening America. It pointed to the enormous scale of the – meticulously documented – military gifts to Ukraine to date which had led to alarmingly low levels in the USA’s own weapons arsenal. Even more intolerable, they argued, was the fact that America has to rely on foreign allies – especially South Korea – to maintain its own military strike capability. While this is possible, the fact that America needs to do so is evidence of an intolerable dependence; it shows that America is not in control of its own security.
Gaetz explains the danger that the adventure in Ukraine poses to the US as follows:
“‘President Joe Biden must have forgotten his prediction from March 2022, suggesting that arming Ukraine with military equipment will escalate the conflict to ‘World War III.’ .. We must suspend all foreign aid for the War in Ukraine and demand that all combatants in this conflict reach a peace agreement immediately,’ Congressman Gaetz said.” (Gaetz’s website, February 9, 2023) “I think that it’s preposterous to lash the future of the United States of America to the future of Ukraine. Quality of life doesn’t fundamentally change for my constituents based on which guy in a track suit runs Crimea.” (Gaetz in the New York Times, May 19, 2023) “Why would you pick Ukraine? Why not extend NATO to Russia and make it an anti-China alliance?... Are we really thinking that we’re more afraid of the broke-down tanks from Russia than the fact that China is building a secret military base on the island of Cuba, 90 miles away from the United States? … If we had to pick Russia or Ukraine for NATO, one could reasonably make the argument that Russia probably provides more benefit long term.” (Gaetz in Newsweek, July 12, 2023) “Mr. Gaetz insisted that he and the other opponents of Ukraine aid were not isolationists, citing their hard-line rhetoric against China as evidence. ‘I don’t want my grandchildren speaking Mandarin,’ he said.” (New York Times, May 19, 2023)
Russia is therefore, on the one hand, too dangerous due to its strength to risk a military confrontation with; on the other hand, it is ultimately too weak to pose any serious threat to America. If Russia were to conquer parts of Ukraine, this would by no means be detrimental to America. In any case, it would not lose a valuable partner; Ukraine is simply too weak to be of any use to America against its enemies. His suggestion that Russia should be seen primarily as a valuable tool in the fight against China doesn’t need to be taken seriously; the rejection of the entire premise of the American proxy war in Ukraine and all the equations that the US government is applying there, however, is meant very seriously. For these American politicians, this war is really just a local conflict. They have coined the term “territorial conflict” for it, which is not meant to imply a violation of a core principle of the rules-based world order, but rather a warlike settling of scores whose significance in no way extends beyond the local arena, let alone to America. Both opponents are simply too insignificant for that – both are ridiculous gangsters.
For the carnage to be classified under the column “irrelevant to America,” it apparently doesn’t matter that Ukraine’s military capabilities and political orientation are the work of the American-led West. This doesn’t obligate America to anything, or rather, it obligates it to make sure that America’s partners are strengthening its military power instead of straining it. It certainly doesn’t obligate America to the standpoint that it has a world order to defend, that as its protecting power with a monopoly on violence it must act when a country as powerful as Russia attempts to revise it. Admittedly, the standpoint on order that is being rejected has always included the freedom to not take cases of war as challenges to the American world order in the first place if one believes that they are not worth it. And even national borders are by no means always sacred to the USA, as long as America sees a benefit in diminishing the power of a country it defines as disruptive. But it’s already breaking quite a taboo to not even relate such an explicit anti-American revision of a state so extensively propped up by the USA to America itself – especially when it’s being done by Russia, a power that has traditionally been defined and treated across party lines as a challenge to American world power that must be countered or, ideally, eliminated. Of course, this has nothing to do with friendliness toward Russia or even only opposition to the encirclement and retrenchment of Russian power; here, too, Gaetz’s “Russia in NATO” mind game shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Rather, it is simply that, for this faction, there is too little to break in Ukraine if Russia breaks it; conversely, Russia gains too little from this to jeopardize the only decisive factor in America’s global “role”: its supremacy, its unrivaled superiority.
From the perspective of the “America first!” faction, this is threatened solely by the adversary that possesses the necessary power and size to endanger America as the strongest, dominant power on the globe. America must not allow itself to be distracted from this epochal confrontation with its rival China by the Ukrainian skirmishes with Russia, especially not when this secondary theater of war is consuming so many American resources of violence, and indeed without any imminent prospect of an unambiguously clarifying American ability to win.
2.
This faction agrees with the Biden administration that China poses a unique threat to America that far surpasses the Russian challenge, and that the outcome of this contest of strength will determine the future of American supremacy. But it seems to have a slightly different definition of what exactly America has to defend when it comes to defending its superiority against China.
The benefits to be gained from the world order are absolutely undisputed: as always, they rhyme with a uniquely potent national capitalism, whose protagonists use the world’s resources and markets to enrich themselves and provide the US state with a uniquely potent national currency; thus also with an incomparably productive source of state power with which America can oblige the whole world to provide precisely these benefits. US politicians have always referred to the associated dominance as “global leadership.” For the alternative imperialists, this has always been a very ambiguous term: if it is meant to express America’s status and claim to be a militarily and economically unrivaled superior power, to be the licensor and capital provider to the world’s nations, then it is perfectly acceptable. It becomes problematic as soon as it is meant to express more, namely an American responsibility – even a “burden” – toward those it leads. It doesn’t escape even these critics that, in this case too, the term is by no means meant as a retraction, but rather as a justification of American claims in the world. But even the suggestion that American world dominance requires any justification at all is suspect to them. America’s unique success, its unparalleled strength, already fully justifies it; this testifies more than any sense of global responsibility – and not just to Calvinist fanatics – to what a blessed people Americans are. Even more problematic is the idea that its success would not only give the country an unassailable lead over its competitors, including the freedom to use them as it sees fit, but also, of all things, an obligation to their interests. And when America consolidates this responsibility in firm alliances that offer protection, assistance, and more to its competitors, then these are highly suspicious costs, self-imposed shackles on its use of the world. “America first!” or – in the word of its critics – “isolationism” has never had anything to do with decoupling from the world. Rather, this doctrine expresses a suspicion that is very much inherent in the traditional American view on world order, which Biden has reaffirmed: Is the leadership that America imposes on the world being exploited by those it leads? Is the order, already considered at home to be the greatest gift a state can give its citizens, also being given to the whole world at America's expense? “America first!” is therefore an extremely constructive criticism of the costs – in terms of money, weapons, and soldiers’ lives – of the global freedom of American power, not of its global exercise. It is an insistence on the benefits of the world order that no president has ever lost sight of or abandoned for the sake of his allies. The hostile manner in which this position is presented does not alter its constructive nature.
However, it is well known that he has been advocating this position for quite some time. The fact that the current Democratic president is also neglecting American competitive success and thus betraying the American people may be newsworthy, but it has lost none of its sting. Since Trump, what this denunciation implies for a government program is no longer a matter of speculation. As the genuinely oppositional standpoint that “America first!” is, it has been asserted for several years now, and is now being asserted in an immediate showdown.
III. A budget dispute that urgently requires a decision
1.
The approaching deadline for the debt ceiling increase, which Congress must approve so the federal government can finance its agenda through additional borrowing, provides both the opportunity and the necessity for this confrontation. This gives the small group of hardliners leverage to assert their objections to the government program as an ultimatum: no new money without deep cuts. These cuts affect almost every element of Biden’s agenda and ultimately everything that critics want to associate with it – from immigration and energy policies to student loans and the issue of “critical race theory.” The same thing is discovered at every point: a skewed moral compass, essentially a lack of will to embrace the unique greatness of the USA. The incomplete sealing off of the southern border is taken as evidence that the government no longer wants the people it has – a great replacement is underway. In social programs large and small, a relativization of the principle that success proves you right is being discovered. Every aspect of a green energy policy testifies to a hatred of the nation’s means of success, so much so that even for these proponents of the “might makes right” principle, every rusting industrial city represents the fact that the government apparently prefers Paris over Pittsburgh – where decline was apparently wanted. An extremely vivid example of the same thing is now also being discovered in America’s proxy war in Ukraine; the associated costs invite bold comparisons: “We send money and weapons to the Ukrainians, while at home our children are dying from drugs from Mexico?” “We protect Ukrainian territory from a Russian invasion, but we can’t even protect our own borders from the immigrant invasion?” Even the poor social situation of many Americans, whose social benefits Congressional Republicans are currently seeking to cut, can be used as evidence to accuse the Biden administration of apparently no longer wanting the one solution to the problems of all Americans: American sovereignty and American supremacy, freedom at home and freedom in ruling the world.
The clearest expression of the Washington leadership’s degeneracy is found in the extremely high national debt. First, this represents a pathetic failure to lead society to success or to simply allow it to have the success that would justify the spending; the government has clearly not earned anywhere near the money it is treating itself to through additional debt. Secondly, its continued insistence on the freedom to incur even more debt demonstrates a lack of willingness to commit to this success; apparently, the government wants to continue its documented failure. Thirdly, it is thereby ensconcing itself in the financial dependence that is seen in, of all things, in the nation’s proven freedom to incur such debt; the government is thus granting itself a freedom that it is taking away from the taxpayers’ famous children and grandchildren. In this respect, the level of debt represents a recklessness that is directed not at – as it is supposed to be – foreign competitors, but at the country’s own citizens. Fourthly, this reflects the equally intolerable situation that the government gets away with this even when it is dependent on the approval of the Republican opposition. The opposition is clearly failing in its duty to oppose, is not pursuing the fundamental opposition it constantly invokes as necessary, and is thus allowing the Democrats the freedom they take for their treasonous policies... None of this can be inferred from the debt level, but it is obviously too powerful an image to be ignored. In short: Washington is not experiencing the divisive confrontation that is really needed, but rather one big irresponsible “uniparty” that does not want to pay its bills – a swamp in which the strength of the nation is sinking. The Gaetz crew is fighting against this freedom of action on the part of the government. It sees this freedom as a violation of the first and last commandment of good governance. So an uncompromising obstruction will take place until Washington’s policies once again serve the people and the debts incurred by the state definitively serve the people’s right to superiority and nothing else. This is also a way to combine the functioning of democracy with the imperialist strength of the nation.
2.
In the midst of this demonstration of uncompromising opposition in the name of the people, Hamas launches its attack on Israel. Israel’s military response and the imminent deadline for raising the debt ceiling bring all sides back to the main issue – the question of what the foreign policy of the world power should look like at this “turning point in history.”
For the “America first!” faction, Israel, unlike Ukraine, is not merely an ally that lives at America’s expense; the country is too much a product of the USA for that. Its fight against Hamas and its ongoing war to establish a state are not a “forever war” in which America is hopelessly entangled, nor are they a distraction from the main front where America's supremacy must be defended – this ally is far too strong and far too successful in a region that is far too important to the US for that.[2]
Israel’s special position for the American world power, the indisputable nature of its security needs for the USA, are for Biden – despite all the difficulties in detail – a prime example of the aforementioned clarification that this war, also and especially this war, cannot be contained or limited in any way. What’s at issue for America in Israel is what’s at issue all over the world. Biden is presenting Congress with a comprehensive “security package” that bundles together all four theaters of war where the essentials of America’s national security are on the line, so they cannot be played off against each other: Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, even the southern border. The entire package is justified with the same imperialist self-image that drives the Gaetz faction to the barricades: America’s sacred duty to global leadership. In contrast, the “America first!” faction insists that things that don’t belong together shouldn’t be lumped together: Israel first, Ukraine must wait.
The confrontation that is once again bringing Washington to the brink of a shutdown in mid-November revolves around the edifying topic of where, for what purpose, and in what order America’s unique arsenal of weapons should be used by its foreign partners. Shortly before the new shutdown deadline, enough Republicans and Democrats agree to postpone a decision on the budget and its financing for a few months, and a decision on further arms aid for Israel and Ukraine for a few weeks. A little more time to settle a dispute in which neither side sees any prospect of agreement – that’s what the spirit of bipartisan cooperation has achieved, at least for the time being.
[1] Unlike their governments, too many people misunderstand this American claim as a promise to come to the rescue wherever states violently oppress foreign populations and their own; America is never spared accusations of selectivity and double standards, e.g.: “But where is America in Sudan, Congo?” or “America says it wants to end an occupation in Ukraine, but it supports one in the Gaza Strip!” Such condemnations reinforce precisely the standard that America wants to apply to itself: its claimed right to bring order to the world, which is then its “pax Americana,” as the duty of a benevolent hegemon.
[2] See “Israel 2019: An exemplary imperialist democracy with a Zionist mission,” especially Chapter III: “The ‘unique alliance’ with America and its progress under Trump” from GegenStandpunkt 4-2019.