Middle East Monitor — Majority of Israeli Jews Believe They Are ‘Chosen People’

This finding marked a key feature in the way that the conflict is moving in the international arena and the polarisation between Israel and US on the one hand and European allies on the other. “The tense political relations between both Israel and the European Union, and recently between the EU and Washington as well, can also be delineated by religious beliefs,” said the poll’s authors. “Israelis and Americans view Europe as godless and decadent, but for the Brahmins in Brussels, Israel and the United States are drifting into fundamentalist Crazyland.”

Religious wars. The problem with all types of exceptionalism is that exceptionalism leads to fanaticism and devaluing other people.

The melding of American exceptionalism with Israeli exceptionalism is especially troubling in a region of Islamic exceptionalism.

Europe is not immune to exceptionalism either, for example, Western exceptionalism, which is sometime equated and white exceptionalism.

MintNews Press
Majority of Israeli Jews Believe They Are ‘Chosen People’

Middle East Monitor

Patrick Armstrong — Why the U.S. Seeks to Hem in Russia, China and Iran

The bitter reality is that U.S. foreign policy has no definable objective other than blocking the initiatives of others because they stand in the way of the further expansion of U.S. global interests. This impoverished strategy reflects Washington’s refusal to accept the passing of its relatively brief post–Cold War moment of unipolar power.

There is an error all too common in American public opinion. Personalizing Washington’s regression into the role of spoiler by assigning all blame to one man, now Donald Trump, deprives one of deeper understanding. This mistake was made during the steady attack on civil liberties after the Sept. 11 tragedies and then during the 2003 invasion of Iraq: namely that it was all George W. Bush’s fault. It was not so simple then and is not now. The crisis of U.S. foreign policy—a series of radical missteps—are systemic. Having little to do with personalities, they pass from one administration to the next with little variance other than at the margins.

Let us bring some history to this question of America as spoiler. What is the origin of this undignified and isolating approach to global affairs?..

My quibble with the analysis is that it begins post WWII. The problem really begins with European imperialism and European rivalries, in particular between Britain and various Continental powers.  This lead to WWI and the terms of peace imposed at the instigation of Britain led to the rise of Hitler.

The British Empire was replaced with the Anglo-American Empire post WWII, and the outlook and agenda remains the same.

The big picture cannot be seen independently of European and American history, which includes global history owing to imperialism and colonialism. While the age of imperialism may be over, the age of empire is not. Imperialism and colonialism have morphed into neo-imperialism and neocolonialism, and this is on track for another great war — as previously in the Western tradition, which history reveals.

Consortium News
Why the U.S. Seeks to Hem in Russia, China and Iran

Patrick Armstrong

Richard Sale — Ideology and Hillary’s Foreign Policy

It's about much more than Hillary.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Ideology and Hillary’s Foreign Policy

Richard Sale