More Oil = Less Blood in the Levant, More in the Orient?

Today we'll see if sleeping on the revelations (see June 14's post) of massive reserves of recoverable oil in Israel has produced anything worthwhile. I don't know where I'm going with this yet, so strap in...

I am on record repeatedly here as a defender of Israel; not everything they do, but the right of the place to exist as a Jewish state. It's not a lot of real estate, it's in a (forever) rough neighbourhood, and if the Palestinian Arab recent arrivals can argue a "Right of Return", certainly Jews have priority of claim to everything west of the Jordan.

At the end of the day might makes right, and the Israelis have been a lot more restrained than I would have been facing a group of people who wanted (and repeatedly tried) to wipe my people from the earth. The fact that there are Palestinians still in the West Bank and Gaza is proof of that restraint, with all of the attendant misery on both sides that has come from it. A lot of that restraint, as mentioned in the FP article I referenced, comes from skittish Westerners scared of pissing off the Arabs.

I can't imagine that 2,000 years of anti-Jewish sentiment will disappear from Europe if Israel can suddenly supply them with petroleum, but it is to be hoped that more rationality could result. More interesting to me is the effect of this sort of sustainable windfall on Israel's security policy.

Americans are not entirely enamoured of the amount of money their country sends to Israel every year. I could add that a similar amount of money (c. $2B/y) has been going to Pakistan, a place that can't seriously be considered an ally of the US, but that's just for perspective. The latter is already being throttled back for being unreliable, but in any event the gravy train is over for all concerned as Uncle Sam is skint.

I will make the argument here that a more secure Israel will be a more stable bulwark in the Mid-East. They could of course go nuts and ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip or some such, but on past practice I consider that unlikely, as justifiable as Gaza's current government would seem to make it. This is good news for the local Arab countries too, particularly their soldiers. A strong Israel with the best and most modern armed forces in the area will dissuade a future Nasser from trying again; a weakened Israel with no US support might be a tempting target and result in a bloodbath on both sides. Even worse, if Israel was facing disaster, what would stop them from nuking their tormentors?

Of course this gives energy-and-everything-else starved Egypt a motive to invade, but as noted above it ensures Israel's means to resist all comers. In short, I can't see any way in which an energy and financially secure Israel will make things worse in that part of the world. Iran could go even farther off the rails and do something crazy once they have nukes but if Pakistan hasn't let one slip yet I don't see that happening either, and payback would be the end of Iran as we know it.

Much as a certain amount of restraint was necessary during the Cold War and later during the (very) recently lapsed Pax Americana due to the ability of superpowers to do a lot of damage, weakness or perceived weakness is the trigger for invasions and other adventurism. The Americans are overstretched, so the Chinese are playing war games with their weaker neighbours over the Spratly Islands. In that case a combination of oil reserves and no strong counter to the ravenous (of resources) Chinese could plausibly lead to war with at least Vietnam and Taiwan.

This suggests to me that it's time to switch my focal point to the Far East, as that is where some real movement could take place. Pakistan or North Korea could completely collapse and China could skirmish or worse with many of it's neighbours; yes the centre of gravity has definitely shifted. There will continue to be stuff happening in the Mid East, but I don't see much actually changing (globally) because of it. China throwing it's weight around will be QUITE different. I'm waiting to see American carrier groups defending communist Vietnam against free-market (ish) China. "The End of History" my ass.