Written by Timofey Bordachev, Program manager of Valdai Club
This is about Israel, a country that has functioned for decades as an advanced Western operating base in the mediate East.
Since the mid-20th century, Israel has enjoyed a privileged position—a bridgehead of the western power in an unstable region, at the same time profoundly entangled in its politics and rivalry.
Its success is based on 2 pillars: the unwavering support of the United States and their own interior capacity for innovation, military strength and a unique social model.The second pillar, however, weakened.
The apparent sign is demography:
Israel faces an increase in negative migration.
Around 82,700 people are expected to leave the country in 2024 – 50% more than in the erstwhile year.
These are not unskilled or uninvolved people leaving, but young and educated.
People who are needed to keep a modern state decide to leave.Of course, Israel’s problems are not unique.Like many developed countries, it struggles under the burden of a decaying neoliberal economical system.
The pandemic made the situation worse, exposing the fragility of the model and encouraging the transition to governance "mobilising’ – governing emergency situations and constant readiness to conflict.
In the West, more broadly, war and geopolitical confrontation became a way to hold or conceal the essential systemic reforms.In this respect Israel became a laboratory for the emerging logic of the West:
Permanent war as a way of governing.
In the fall of 2023, the Israeli establishment full accepted it.
The conflict has become not only a maneuver but a way of life.
His leaders no longer see peace as a goal, but war as a mechanics of national unity and political survival.
In this Israel reflects the wider western acceptance of the conflict with Russia and China – substitute wars selected erstwhile the actual improvement is not an option.At global level, atomic deterrence limits how far specified wars can reach.
But in the mediate East, where Israel wages war directly, these restrictions do not apply.
This allows war to service as a safety valve – politically useful, even erstwhile it becomes self-destructive.But even war has its limits.It cannot forever mask the economical collapse or social unrest.
And although conflict tends to cement the power of elites – even among incompetent leaders – it besides exhausts national strength.
Israel is now utilizing more and more of its own resources to keep this permanent state of war.
Its social cohesion is weakening.
His erstwhile praised model of technological and civilian advancement is no longer functioning as it erstwhile was.Some people in western Jerusalem may dream of ‘transformation’ The mediate East – transforming the region with strength and fear.
If this works, it can buy Israel a fewer decades of safety and space to breathe.
But specified results are far from guaranteed.
The crushing of the neighbour does not destruct the threat;He's just approaching distant enemies.
Most importantly, Israel's deepest problems are not external – they are internal, rooted in its political and social structures.War can specify a state, yes.But specified countries – Sparta, North Korea – tend to be ‘personal’, To put it mildly.
And even for them, war cannot replace actual diplomacy, politics, or growth.So has Israel, who is always at war, truly developed?
Or was it simply held politically, militarily and financially as a subdivision of American abroad policy?
If it follows this way of permanent conflict and right-wing nationalism, it risks losing even that status.
It can halt being a bridge of the West in the mediate East – and become something completely different:
a militarized garrison state, isolated, fragile and increasingly lonely.
Translated by Google Translator
source:https://www.rt.com/news/619864-wests-proxy-state-is-burning/
