Foreign Affairs Why Israel Isn’t Really a ‘Protectorate’ Washington should work with the Jewish state when doing so serves U.S. interests.  (Photo by Nathan Howard-Pool/Getty Images) Conservative influencers like Steve Bannon have labeled Israel a U.S. “protectorate,” depicting it as a vassal state rather than an autonomous power in its own right, a charge that recently got under the skin of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Washington’s foreign policy establishment avoids that characterization, preferring instead the comfortable rhetoric of “strategic partnership” and “shared values.” But a clear-eyed examination of the relationship suggests something more complicated—and more problematic—than either framework suggests. A protectorate, in traditional terms, describes a dependent state that maintains nominal sovereignty while relying on a great power for security guarantees, diplomatic backing, and financial support. The patron power, in exchange, expects certain behaviors and alignment with its strategic interests. Does this describe the U.S.–Israel relationship? In some respects, yes. Israel receives approximately $3.8 billion annually in U.S. military aid—the largest such commitment to any country—a sum that ballooned following Hamas’s atrocities on October 7, 2023. Moreover, Washington provides diplomatic cover at the United Nations, where it has repeatedly vetoed Security Council resolutions critical of Israeli actions. American military intervention in the region, from the 1991 Gulf War to the 2003 Iraq invasion, has consistently served to eliminate or weaken Israel’s regional adversaries. But here’s where the protectorate framework breaks down: Unlike traditional protectorates, Israel frequently acts against explicit American preferences without meaningful consequences. A true protectorate doesn’t expand settlements when its patron objects, doesn’t conduct military operations that complicate its patron’s regional diplomacy, and doesn’t cultivate direct relationships with the patron’s legislature in a bid to bypass executive authority. In light of these frequent deviations from U.S. strategic interests, Bannon’s description should be seen as aspirational and normative, a rhetorical effort to prompt President Donald Trump to put Israel in its place. But the reality is more perverse. The United States provides the material benefits of a protector—security guarantees, military aid, diplomatic backing—while Israel retains the autonomy of a fully sovereign state. Washington bears the costs and regional blowback of supporting Israeli policies while often lacking or failing to exert leverage to shape those policies in ways that serve broader American interests. This inverted relationship reflects the unique domestic politics surrounding Israel in American policy circles. Thanks to effective lobbying, strategic political contributions, and the cultivation of bipartisan support, the defense of Israel became one of the few lasting points of foreign policy consensus in an otherwise polarized Washington. Politicians from both parties have competed to demonstrate their pro-Israel credentials, creating an environment where questioning the relationship was largely taboo. The result has been a foreign policy captured by special interests rather than guided by the national interest. American taxpayers subsidize Israeli military capabilities while American diplomats manage the regional fallout. U.S. credibility in the Muslim world suffers while Israel pursues policies—from settlement expansion to disproportionate military responses—that complicate American diplomatic initiatives. As more Americans have become aware of this dynamic, the taboo against questioning the “special relationship” has broken down. Defenders of the relationship argue that Israel provides intelligence sharing, technological cooperation, and a democratic anchor in a turbulent region. These benefits are real but often overstated. Israel’s intelligence regarding Iran or regional militant groups can be valuable, but it comes filtered through Israeli strategic priorities that don’t always align with American ones. Israeli military technology contributes to U.S. capabilities, but at what diplomatic cost? The fundamental question is whether supporting Israel’s actions—not merely its existence, but its ongoing policies in the occupied territories and the region broadly—serves American strategic interests in the Middle East and beyond. Does it enhance U.S. security, facilitate counterterrorism cooperation, stabilize oil markets, advance American economic interests, and grow Washington’s soft power? Or does it complicate all of these objectives? A realist approach to the relationship would acknowledge Israel as a capable regional power that no longer requires the level of American support established during the Cold War. It would condition aid on behavior that serve mutual interests rather than treating the relationship as unconditional. It would recognize that American and Israeli interests, while sometimes aligned, are not identical—and that treating them as such serves neither country well in the long run. This was the view put forward by Vice President J.D. Vance at a recent Turning Point USA event, when university students in the audience questioned the U.S.–Israel relationship. Israel is not a U.S. protectorate in the traditional sense because it retains too much autonomy. But neither is it a normal ally, because the relationship involves too much American commitment with too little American influence. This worst-of-both-worlds arrangement persists not because it serves the American national interest, but because domestic political realities make it nearly impossible to recalibrate. Until Washington can have an honest conversation about what it gains and loses from this relationship—and what a more balanced partnership might look like—American policy in the Middle East will continue to be constrained by commitments that serve narrow constituencies rather than broader strategic objectives. The question isn’t whether the United States should abandon Israel, but whether it can develop a mature relationship based on mutual interests rather than one-sided obligations. That would serve both countries better than the current fragile arrangement, which increasingly resembles a patron state captured by its supposed client. Fortunately, U.S. leaders including Vance are beginning to strike the right balance in thinking about this unique bilateral relationship. The post Why Israel Isn’t Really a ‘Protectorate’ appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs Britain’s SDP Leader: Neoconservatism as a Movement Is ‘Dead’ William Clouston, leader of the Social Democratic Party of the United Kingdom, sat down with The American Conservative, to talk about foreign interventionism, neoconservatism, energy politics and the return of English nationalism.  William Clouston, leader of the Social Democratic Party of the United Kingdom, sat down with The American Conservative at SDP’s annual conference. SDP seems to be the only party which is attempting to merge foreign policy realism, a polite form of nationalism, and social-democratic politics, an unusual mix in the circle of European populist parties, which are often more nativist at home and interventionist abroad. Thanks for talking to TAC. You’re in an odd and unenviable position to bridge a genuine social-democratic path for Britain in a world upended by rising empires and return of spheres of influence. What should be the contours of a British grand strategy? Grand strategy is not a framing I find terribly useful in relation to Britain’s present situation. Our position is necessarily more humble than that. To survey the past 25 years of British policy is to consider a series of grave errors—involvement in self-defeating wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan, wilful neglect of domestic energy security and manufacturing capacity, and, recently, a failure even to secure our national border. An intelligent response to re-emerging multipolarity and inevitable instability is, in my view, to focus on national resilience and capability. In particular, we must prioritize rebuilding domestic industrial capacity. This is not to ignore Britain’s geostrategic role nor its responsibility to our international partners. Britain must be a good and dependable ally to the United States, to the western, central and southern European nations, and to our friends and trading partners throughout the world.   I would pursue much closer cooperation with the world’s democratic nation-states in the face of (and at times because of) the United Nations. In my opinion the observations made by Portugal’s Franco Nogueira in the 1960s regarding the UN’s innate anti-Western bias remain true. A persistent faultline in international diplomacy is the tendency of authoritarian regimes to use rights-based political concepts invented by the West as a means of attacking the West. You see hints of this in international climate policy and its blatant use in the baseless claims for slavery reparations. It must be resisted. I would advocate withdrawal, via parliamentary disincorporation, from the entire international legal architecture on asylum on the grounds that it denies nation-states the right to control their borders. In failing to control its borders, the UK state breaches the social contract with the citizens. As a result, trust in the government is collapsing. I have long believed that in the face of civilizationally destructive open borders, the West urgently needed a single state to prove it could actually reassert border control. The Trump/Vance administration appears to have done so. It deserves great credit for that, and it should serve as a beacon to the West. In the 2016 Brexit vote, the British public showed the desired direction of travel but the British political establishment failed to step up. In the defense sphere, after decades of foreign adventurism and disastrous attempts to impose our values on other societies by force, we need to focus on homeland defense—while attempting to continue to protect our international interests. A comprehensive overhaul of defense procurement is also required. Modern threats to our way of life are not exclusively military in nature: terrorism, organized crime and cyber-attack are evolving with speed and sophistication. Much of the threat may be homegrown. I believe that Britain’s security challenges are as likely to be internal as external. The American right has moved beyond the ideas of crusades in the Middle East and civilizing mission, but it appears that for all the talk, the British right is still rhetorically stuck in a bizarre, unoriginal admixture of Thatcherite market economic and mid-aughts crusading neoconservatism. Is that sustainable after Trump’s moves in Gaza or the peace process in Ukraine? The urgent political turn involves a rotation away from free-market fundamentalism towards economic nationalism—away from cheap imports and huge trade deficits, and towards domestic productivity. This requires an end among our elites to an indifference to what is made where and by whom—and to who owns what. Future national economic resilience requires a total shift in thinking. This adaptation has already taken place in the USA, embodied by Trump and Vance and long promoted by thinkers like Oren Cass and Robert Lighthizer. Alas, at present, the Social Democratic Party (SDP), although relatively small in size, represents its sole political vehicle in Britain. True, there are some who promote this view within Britain’s establishment parties—such as Lord Glasman in Labour and the Tory Nick Timothy—but they are totally outnumbered and too often ignored.  Domestically, the UK is still trapped in the final vestiges of an economic paradigm which can be traced back to Thatcherism—a point I made in a recent interview with Lord Charles Moore, author of Margaret Thatcher’s authorized biography. The state can’t balance its budget, can’t control its borders, is addicted to mass immigration, and hasn’t had a goods trade surplus since 1983. The model doesn’t work, but the establishment on the British political right is having difficulty in recognizing this.  This is not a sustainable position.  I occasionally point out that I don’t know what Reform UK’s international trade policy is – because they don’t know. On a brighter note, aggressive interventionist neoconservatism in Britain is largely dead as an organic movement. Attempts to impose our values on foreign societies by force and now, rightly, regarded as utterly futile. While we do see saber-rattling in the opinion pages of some newspapers, these voices are now a largely discredited minority. Tell us about your energy independence platform, arguably the central public policy of your party?  The energy sector is the master industry upon which all others depend. All successful economies require abundant, affordable energy, and yet Britain has the highest energy prices in the industrial world. Our system is unreliable, produces too little power at too high a price, and is too reliant on imports.  Britain pioneered civil nuclear power—its postwar energy expansion comprised 19 plants and 41 reactors. Now, we have an energy crisis and import gas to keep the lights on. In September 2025 the SDP published a research paper called “Energy Abundance” to diagnose our problems and to suggest intelligent remedies. The causes of this crisis are clear: the abandonment of state planning in 1989, a flawed privatization (natural monopolies are not good candidates for privatization), the deliberate throttling of oil and gas production, and finally, the rise of ideology in the form of net zero and costly unreliable renewables.  We calculate that this combination of policy failures has reduced UK economic output by over £3,070bn since 2004. Economic problems tend to have underlying cultural causes. This is true in the case of energy. Basically, our elites have traded our prosperity for their own self-righteousness.  First, they became indifferent to the need for reliable domestically generated power. They shrugged off what is a central duty of the state and hoped markets would magically do the job for them. Secondly, they pretended that the shift to expensive, intermittent, unreliable renewables was not a prime cause of deindustrialization. Evidently, it is, and the economic harm is considerable—you can’t tax a closed factory. Thirdly, having bet the bank on net zero, our elites have structured our energy system to require huge imports of natural gas. We’re now importing over 40 percent of our energy. How do we pay for that? As the trade balance shows, it’s not by exporting things. As the party of the patriotic state, the SDP is calling time on this crisis. Our remedy is straightforward: to take control of the energy system. First, we build a new fleet of state-owned hydrocarbon power stations within five years: 40GW of gas, 20GW of coal. Second, over the coming decade, we pursue a new 40GW fleet of state-owned nuclear power stations. All of this is to flood the grid with enough supply to roll out step 3: the establishment of a permanent price fix of 10p per kWh, for consumers and industry. This innovative idea would significantly raise national output by permanently locking in low energy prices: along with providing an affordable price, such a fix would ensure long-term confidence by investors and industry in the UK’s operating environment. In sum, the SDP solution to the energy crisis is to use brute force—the sort of thing a competent state is capable of. And we have a saying within our party: If brute force isn’t working, you’re not using enough. In international relations, a key problem is (a) an entity either grows small and suffers the fate of Hungary or Ireland, pressed on all sides by massive empires and financial interests, or (b) grows in size and becomes imperial itself for the sake of competing with other interests, thereby diluting democratic norms. Like many former empires, Britain suffers from a problem of diminishing size and influence. Some are reversing that fate by various means—Turkey and Russia, for example. Might CANZUK be a solution to that? Instantly [creating a bloc with] a joint navy, and manpower, and combined GDP that will be among the largest?  I view Anglo-Western civilisation as a rich and distinct cultural phenomenon worthy of both appreciation and protection. And as someone with British, Canadian, Australian, and American family members, I am personally attracted to the CANZUK concept. I support largescale cooperation between these democratic Anglosphere states. There is much to be gained in developing even closer trade, defence and security ties, as the recent AUKUS trilateral partnership demonstrates. Indeed, our future probably depends upon them. However, I do not take the prospects of the development of a joint federation or confederation very seriously.  Talk of a “joint navy and combined GDP” strikes me as flawed as the type of 1950s utopian thinking which gave rise to the EU.   Strong nation-states are in a better position to protect the interests of their citizens than weak federations.  Furthermore, those promoting CANZUK often cite freedom of movement as a key goal, but I consider such an aim to be totally unachievable. In the present environment, I could not envisage a state like Australia granting full freedom of movement to every citizen of the United Kingdom. Such a decision would prompt vast flows—including huge numbers of unassimilated and culturally challenging minorities. (The British security service MI5 monitors around 40,000 due to Islamist terror threats.)  As one of the few Western states with an effective national border, I believe the Australians would be very foolish to agree to it. Is rising English ethnonationalism a threat to the Union? There is no doubt that the English have, finally, been culturally stirred. It has long been complacently assumed that English interests are safe and require no special attention. Indeed, until recently the sense of English nationhood was so merged with Britishness that they could be taken as practically synonymous. When England won the football world cup in 1966, the public flew more British union flags than English crosses of St George, and no one thought this unusual. They would now.   For the English, there have been downsides to this merging of identities. For decades national pride in the Celtic nations has been culturally warranted, whereas Englishness has been subtly forbidden. The Scots, the Irish and the Welsh could celebrate their national saints’ days with vigour and without any backlash or cultural disapproval. Despite being the majority, the English have had no such licence. Furthermore, the denigration of Britain’s imperial past has fallen squarely on English shoulders—despite the historic record showing enthusiastic participation in the imperial and colonial project from the Celtic nations.   Constitutionally, the establishment of new national parliaments and assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by the Blair Labour government has left England dangling with no parliament granted or planned. Some say that England is too big to have its own parliament within the UK structure, but by that logic England is too big for the union. Is rising English ethnonationalism a threat to the Union? I’d answer that any population denigrated by their own elite to the extent the English have been would eventually react. And they have done so. Today, we find ordinary towns and villages throughout the land campaigns such as “Raising the Colours” in which the Cross of St George is flown in public places throughout. In England, this is very unusual.  However, as I said in my speech to the SDP Conference in London last month, putting English flags on lampposts is not merely a demand for recognition, but a justified revolution against the disprivileging of the majority. As in so many other areas, progressives consistently fail to recognise their role in the cultural mobilisation they have caused. I do not believe the union will split.  Instead, it will culturally fragment, as much within England along religious and ethnic lines as between England and the fringe. Full legal separation of the UK is a formidable task. Brexit was very difficult, but unscrambling the UK egg would be close to impossible. Many of us—myself included—have family on both sides of the Scots border, and are literally Brits in the sense of being Anglo-Scots.  The same is true of Wales and to some extent Northern Ireland, although the latter has a different path available to it.  The political philosopher John Gray has predicted that the UK will hold together, and I think he is right. Celtic nationalists crave independence but can’t make their fiscal sums add up. The English population tend to respond with indifference to, say, Scottish independence, but that is partly due to a lack of strategic awareness of what such a thing might entail. The real bargain is quite straightforward. The English taxpayer subsidises Scotland and, in return, secures a safe northern realm. Financial transfers ensure England’s strategic security. Why? Because in theory a fully independent Scotland could completely diverge from the UK security system. In extremis it could grant Russia or China a naval base in Scapa Flow (the natural naval harbour in Orkney). Scotland is integral to England’s security. Seen like that, the union must hold.   One further but notable impediment to English ethnonationalism as a threat to the union is that I can presently see no route in which English independence would be secured. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all have substantial long-established separatist political parties. England has none. And it has no viable route to any vote on the matter. The post Britain’s SDP Leader: Neoconservatism as a Movement Is ‘Dead’ appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs The North Korean Conundrum The world has changed since 2019. Donald Trump’s recent swing through Asia was largely harmonious, as he struck a positive tone in his dealings with everyone from South Korea’s very progressive president, Lee Jae Myung, to Japan’s very conservative prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, to Xi Jinping, who looks more and more like he will rule the People’s Republic of China for life, or at least as long as he wishes to.  One person Trump did not meet, despite rumors, was Kim Jong Un. Kim has signaled an openness to this outcome at some point, but as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit drew nearer, those rumors faded. Understanding why this has not happened—indeed, why Kim has largely ignored the U.S. since 2019—means understanding the world at large and how it has changed since the Hanoi summit.  When Trump walked away from the Hanoi summit, and from Kim Jong Un, in 2019, he sounded optimistic that there would be more opportunities. There has been an impasse, and Kim had indeed arrived expecting more than Trump was prepared to offer—keeping much of his nuclear program intact in exchange for the almost complete lifting of sanctions. The Americans arrived expecting negotiations, and Kim effectively expected capitulation. Trump therefore seemed to assume that eventually Kim would have to moderate his position and try again, because all roads to international acceptance traveled through the U.S., and escaping its sanctions was essential for North Korea. Likewise, Trump probably thought that leaving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran in 2018 would be the prelude to another deal, one more favorable to the U.S., or perhaps one that imposed more exacting standards on Tehran for its aggressive regional behavior and opaque nuclear program.  Neither outcome has come to pass so far, and for reasons far bigger than developments in either Pyongyang or Tehran. North Korea has had a more complex relationship with what we will call, for the sake of convenience, the “international community” than many realize, having championed the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) during the Cold War and never being so firmly in the orbit of either the USSR or the PRC as it might have seemed. The Cold War’s end, along with that of the NAM’s relevance, coincided with the failing health of national founder Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994. With that, and with South Korea’s emergence as a global diplomatic player after the 1988 Olympics, North Korea retreated inside itself, focusing on deterrence and internal stability. The former of these developments culminated, starting in the mid-2000s, with a functional nuclear program; the latter with Kim Il Sung passing his leadership to his son Kim Jong Il in 1994, and Kim Jong Il passing it to Kim Jong Un upon his death in 2011.  But the developments above also took place as North Korea acceded to the United Nations in 1991, and, despite its reputation as a “rogue state” in the years that followed, North Korea has continuously declared itself to be a member in good standing of the international community, a sovereign nation worthy of governing its own affairs, and a committed opponent of foreign interference.  Indeed, when one looks at the regime’s actions in the decades leading up to Hanoi, reaching deals with the outside world, only to violate their spirit (such as with the Agreed Framework of 1994 and Leap Day Deal of 2012), it seems fairly clear that the regime had a goal of breaking out of its isolation—first self-imposed for the sake of stability following Kim Il Sung’s death, then imposed from outside by U.S.-led sanctions—to restore the regime’s place of prominence in the world but without having to make major concessions regarding its weapons programs.  With Trump, Kim thought he had such an opportunity. Failure in 2019 did not change his opinion about the suitability of this goal; it only made him look for different routes to obtaining it.  Within the security communities of the U.S. and its major partners in Europe and Asia, concern has been growing in recent years about the emerging alternative “global order”, this one helmed by China but supported by Russia (and even, to an extent, India, though its vision likely differs from the other two). BRICS is in the process of expanding. Beijing has set up a series of alternative institutions to compete with those of the UN. “Non-Aligned Movement” as a term is passé, but the countries it once consisted of are still out there, still feeling underrepresented by the UN and other G7-adjacent institutions, and have more recently been rebranded as “the Global South.” When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, it laid bare the Euro-American order’s powerlessness to prevent such actions, and when G7 countries rallied to speak out for Kiev and bolster its defenses, but did not do the same for Gazan civilians who died at Israeli hands after October 7, many voices in the Global South rose with chants of hypocrisy.  Whether Ukraine and Gaza, or Israel and Russia, are clear parallels is beside the point. Beijing’s rise and its tight relationship with Moscow is cause for alarm in many European, North American, and East Asian capitals, but in capitals across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia it is a sign that the U.S.-led order is no longer the only game in town. Kim Jong Un recognized this early, which made him comfortable supporting Putin’s Ukraine campaign and swearing off relations with South Korea. And he was not alone—hardliners in Iran were vindicated by the collapse of the JCPOA. The late President Ebrahim Raisi did not seek an amended version of it, but instead invested his diplomatic energies in growing closer to Xi and Putin.  In time, Kim may see an opportunity to serve as a voice for nations of the Global South, just as his grandfather did. For now, what we do know is that he feels comfortable with his current arrangement with China, and especially Russia, and has no need for the South Koreans. Meeting Trump during his APEC stopover, when the South Koreans were hosting, would have validated Seoul, albeit indirectly, something Kim has very little interest in doing.  Some North Korean state media announcements suggest that Kim may be willing to meet Trump eventually—the odds are certainly higher than under Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, whom he almost certainly would have seen as instruments of the old global order that despises him. But if and when they do meet, Trump should be prepared for what he is getting: an emboldened member in good standing of the alternative emerging order, and one who will not negotiate the terms of his own disarmament. Trump and his cabinet should modify their objectives accordingly and set realistic goals. Negotiating complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization (CVID) was unrealistic in 2019. It’s absurd now. The post The North Korean Conundrum appeared first on The American Conservative.

He couldn't accept it. The post The iconic band Stewart Copeland was asked to join: “I’m not that guy” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

from SGT Report: THE CHARLIE KIRK, MAGA VS ZIONIST TYRANNY BATTLE LINE ARE BEING DRAWN. Pick your side. Jason Bermas joins me to discuss the latest horrifying developments. ACT NOW BEFORE THEY’RE GONE! – Get the DarkForce Binoculars for 92% OFF! Visit https://mcgtac.com/sgt while supplies last. ————– Protect Your Retirement with a PHYSICAL Gold and/or Silver IRA […]

from Your News: A significant and growing share of young Americans—more than one in three under age 45—now believe political violence can be justified under certain circumstances, according to a new survey, as the nation grapples with a surge in politically motivated attacks and threats. By yourNEWS Media Newsroom A growing number of younger Americans […]

He’s got the fame and the “Sexiest Country Star” title — but the "Different 'Round Here" singer says one label doesn’t bother him one bit. Continue reading…

In Case You Missed It. #comedy #funny #theunitedspot