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rfmcdonaldYesterday evening I retweeted Daniel Drezner's suggestion that Israel is starting to behave like North Korea.
How?
After a stormy reaction in his comments and the blogosphere that included (among other things) accusations that he was an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew, Drezner defended his argument. Israel is a much smaller country than the United States, and has many fewer opportunities for alliances than the US, especially with Turkey now being strongly disenchanted. (A Turkish naval effort to run supplies through Gaza past Israel, as mooted, could end badly.) If Israel comes to be seen as inhererntly and violently unreasonable as, well, any rogue state, then even Israel's legitimate security complaints could come to be ignored. Shades of the boy who cried wolf.
How?
[T]he parallels between Israel and -- gulp -- North Korea are becoming pretty eerie. True, Israel's economy is thriving and North Korea's is not. That said, both countries are diplomatically isolated except for their ties to a great power benefactor. Both countries are pursuing autarkic policies that immiserate millions of people. The majority of the population in both countries seem blithely unaware of what the rest of the world thinks. Both countries face hostile regional environments. Both countries keep getting referred to the United Nations. And, in the past month, the great power benefactor is finding it more and more difficult to defend their behavior to the rest of the world.
The Obama administration has reacted to this incident in remarkably similar ways to China's reaction to the Cheonan incident -- with a call for more information. Rachman wonders if there will be a quid pro quo on Iran and Israel at the Security Council. I wonder if the quid pro quo will involve Jerusalem and Pyongyang.
After a stormy reaction in his comments and the blogosphere that included (among other things) accusations that he was an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew, Drezner defended his argument. Israel is a much smaller country than the United States, and has many fewer opportunities for alliances than the US, especially with Turkey now being strongly disenchanted. (A Turkish naval effort to run supplies through Gaza past Israel, as mooted, could end badly.) If Israel comes to be seen as inhererntly and violently unreasonable as, well, any rogue state, then even Israel's legitimate security complaints could come to be ignored. Shades of the boy who cried wolf.
