by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n Whatever the protestations of the Obama administration, many in both Britain and Israel feel that 2009-10 marked a watershed, the beginning of an era in which America was no longer a special friend to either \u2014 whether gauged by serial symbolic snubs or real policy differences on things like Jerusalem and the Falklands.\u00a0<\/p>\n Why does this matter, other than that it is stupid for a country to treat old friends like belligerents and old belligerents like friends?<\/p>\n In the case of Britain, history resonates. Over the last century it was Britain that, sometimes alone, defended liberal constitutional government, whether from Prussian militarism or the hydra of fascism, Nazism, and Japanese militarism. It was always a reliable partner in the Cold War, and aside from normal periodic spats was a loyal ally in most of America\u2019s postwar fights. We forget sometimes the courageous record of the British in Korea, or their lonely alliance with us in Iraq. Note that this is all apart from the British role in general in the shaping of Western liberal political history, and in particular the protocols and values that underlie so much of the American experiment, from a common language to a rich heritage of literature and thought. For an American president to be woefully ignorant of all that, and why it should count, is nothing short of unbelievable.<\/p>\n Obama is equally clueless about why, for a half-century at least, both Republican and Democratic presidents have forged a second special relationship, this one with Israel. There certainly were not always strategic advantages in doing so, given the Arab world\u2019s vast petroleum reserves, its huge size and population in comparison to tiny Israel, and the global fear, first, of rampant Soviet-inspired Palestinian terrorism, and, subsequently, its radical Islamic epigone.<\/p>\n Instead, the United States \u2014 again, keen to both history and values \u2014 took on the special defense of the Jewish state for a variety of principled considerations that went well beyond the concerns of Jewish Americans. We understood the long history of anti-Semitism and how, when freely expressed and practiced without objection, it devolves into pogroms and its ultimate nightmare in the Holocaust. We acknowledged the role of Judaism in the foundation of the Western Judaeo-Christian religious experience. And the American public was impressed that a tiny country without natural resources was able not only to survive in a sea of hostility, but to do so under the aegis of consensual government and an open society.<\/p>\n Last, such special consideration for Israel was predicated on some ugly realities. Most of the autocratic world, and some of the contemporary West, simply mask personal prejudice and realpolitik with a postmodern veneer of fashionable multicultural sympathy for the \u201cother\u201d \u2014 despite the illiberal and often fascistic tendencies of both radical Islam and Arab dictatorship that so galvanize most of Israel\u2019s Middle Eastern enemies. But when the U.S stood by Israel, there was a sort of equilibrium established.<\/p>\n The United Nations knew that nearly half of its resolutions aimed at Israel would come under fire from the United States. We would bite back in New York at the fiery speeches of an extremist like Arafat or Qaddafi. The Arab summits accepted that yet another pan-Arabic resolution damning the Jewish state would go nowhere in convincing the West to drop its alliance. And European triangulators accepted that their flagrant dislike of Israel would always encounter American resistance.<\/p>\n The net result, again, was that Israel\u2019s front-line enemies, whether terrorists or state autocracies, accepted that it was futile to try to destroy Israel, and difficult to galvanize world opinion to turn it into a global pariah.<\/p>\n Now, however, the Obama administration \u2014 through its symbolic snubs and choice of personnel, and through real policies concerning Jerusalem \u2014 has sent a message to Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iran, the United Nations, and the European Left that America is no longer particularly interested in playing its traditional role in defending Israel either intellectually or politically \u2014 and thus perhaps soon not through military assistance either. That will only encourage new adventurism, as a mostly opportunistic world rushes to pile on, at first rhetorically, but soon through material action and global indifference to Israel\u2019s fate.<\/p>\n The origins of Obama\u2019s apparent distaste for both Britain and Israel have been explored, but why the party of Truman and JFK abetted his transformation of American foreign policy is a more complex, but equally disheartening, matter.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner Whatever the protestations of the Obama administration, many in both Britain and Israel feel that 2009-10 marked a watershed, the beginning of an era in which America was no longer a special friend to either \u2014 whether gauged by serial symbolic snubs or real policy differences on things like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[590],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-rE","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8063,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/war-clouds-on-the-horizon\/","url_meta":{"origin":1714,"position":0},"title":"War Clouds on the Horizon?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A large war is looming absent preventive American vigilance. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online The world is changing and becoming even more dangerous \u2014 in a way we\u2019ve seen before. In the decade before World War I, the near-hundred-year European peace that had followed the fall of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The World"","block_context":{"text":"The World","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors (Photo: Senior Master Sergeant Thomas Meneguin)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/pic_giant_120414_SM_F22-Raptors-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1549,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-great-anglo-american-spat\/","url_meta":{"origin":1714,"position":1},"title":"The Great Anglo-American Spat","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Various irate British observers \u2014 from columnists like Peter Hitchens and Geoffrey Wheatcroft to parliamentarians and former cabinet officials \u2014 have recently declared the \u201cspecial relationship\u201d with America to be over. The Anglo animus, perhaps brought to a boil by the World Cup\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2010"","block_context":{"text":"June 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/june-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10684,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-deadly-cost-of-mutual-misunderstanding\/","url_meta":{"origin":1714,"position":2},"title":"The Deadly Cost of Mutual Misunderstanding","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 26, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 Hitler went to war without an accurate conception of the Allies\u2019 strength. The Allies did the same without an accurate conception of Hitler\u2019s ambition. Unprecedented bloodshed ensued. Editor\u2019s Note: The following is the third in a series of excerpts adapted from Victor Davis\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "War"","block_context":{"text":"War","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1627,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-nobel-bad-idea\/","url_meta":{"origin":1714,"position":3},"title":"A Nobel, Bad Idea","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"President Obama's new nuclear policy is ill-timed and ill-conceived. by Victor Davis Hanson City Journal (April 2010) President Obama has announced a new American policy concerning the use of nuclear weapons (the \u201cNuclear Posture Review\u201d). 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