Biden asks for 100 billion: is it for Ukraine and Israel?

How will US President Joe Biden go down in history for his October 19 speech in which he announced that he would ask Congress for an additional 100 billion US Dollars for military aid to Israel and Ukraine?

It is possible that it will go down as a dangerous example of how a US President can be ready to set the world on fire in order to win an election.

Or as a watershed moment in the US’s return to military and financial supremacy to the extent where its dominant power in world politics reached the point it did 30 years ago after the collapse of Soviet Union.

Conversely, as a turning point when it became clear that the US, for all its military and financial superiority, could no longer impose its will on world politics.

In his speech, Biden said that he wanted the $100 billion to appeal to the conscience of the US and Western European public opinion to put a stop to terrorists like Hamas attacking Israel and tyrants like Russian President Vladimir Putin attacking Ukraine. When he says that he wants to spend this money to make Israel look stronger than ever, he is risking a backlash from almost every Muslim in the world, as well as progressive and liberal people all over the world, and he doesn’t care about that.

All he seems to care about is winning the elections in November 2024 with the support of pro-Israeli capital groups and the military-industrial complex.

National mourning and withdrawal of diplomats

Yesterday, October 19, shortly before Israel (along with Morocco, Jordan and Bahrain, Israel’s Eurasia Treaty partner) withdrew its diplomats from Türkiye, I passed by the Israeli Embassy residence in Ankara. The residence was surrounded by barricades – as many as you could count – and guarded by four busloads of police, reinforced by two armored vehicles. The same was true for the Israeli Embassy. For the first time in Türkiye, police used violence to disperse demonstrators protesting against Israel; one of the demonstrators in front of the Consulate General in Istanbul was killed and more than 60 people were injured, including police officers.

Biden’s open support for the Netanyahu administration not only leads to more Palestinian civilians being killed. It also leads to Israeli civilians killed by Hamas not being remembered in the Muslim world. So much so that President Erdogan did not declare three days of national mourning for all the civilians killed, although in his initial reactions he expressed condolences for all the civilians killed. The decision to declare national mourning was correct, but it would have been more appropriate to include all civilians killed. The refusal of the European Union countries to fly their flags at half-mast in Ankara (the US Embassy joined the mourning with a message “for all the innocents”) showed the extent of polarization.

100 billion in arms purchases

Israel is the first country in the world to receive state-of-the-art weapons from the US. (There is information in Ankara that Israel, and Binyamin Netanyahu in particular, was involved in the exclusion of Türkiye from the F-35 program, citing the S-400 missiles purchased from Russia.) In addition, Israel receives 4 billion dollars in grants from the US every year.

When Biden says he will make Israel look stronger than ever, what other weapons does he intend to use?

If the US President can get the 100 billion he wants from Congress, there should be no doubt that this money will enter the coffers of American arms companies before it even enters the coffers of the Israeli and Ukrainian governments.

Biden already told Congress in his speech that all the warehouses would be filled with American weapons and that this should be considered a wise investment.

The Biden administration is hostage to the agenda of the “military-industrial complex” that another US president once warned of as a danger to US democracy.

Let me explain.

The military-industrial complex from Eisenhower to Biden

In his farewell speech to John Kennedy on January 17, 1961, after losing the election, US President Dwight Eisenhower said:

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual–is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist”

This was said by the victorious commander of the Allied armies that won the Second World War before he was elected President of the United States. He warned the new US President, who was later assassinated, that the consolidation of the military-industrial complex would threaten democracy.

Apart from his other irregularities, Donald Trump posed the greatest threat to the military-industrial complex with his decision to withdraw from Syria after Iraq and Afghanistan, and to get tough with his European NATO allies.

More recently, the US senator boasted that 24 billion dollars of Congressional funds would be allocated to Ukraine to sell weapons, thereby damaging the Russian army without killing a single American soldier.

Everyone understood in their own way

With this risky speech, isn’t Biden actually testing the capacity of the US to re-rule world politics with its military and financial power?

And this despite the rise of China…

Let’s not forget that just a few days ago, after the hospital bombing in Gaza, which Biden said “Israel did not do it, Islamic Jihad did it”, King Abdullah of Jordan canceled a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and told Biden not to come.

The Biden administration calculates that oil-rich Arab governments such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar, which contribute greatly to the survival of the American military-industrial complex with their huge expenditures, will leave behind their words of solidarity with Palestine and condemnation of Israel and fall back into line.

It is possible that he will be right, but less likely than before. Arab leaders realize that the biggest threat to them comes not from Russia or Iran, but from the reaction of their own people.

How did Russia react to Biden’s speech?

The Tass news agency has quoted Biden as saying that he would not go to war with Russia unless Russia attacked a NATO country.

The world has not become a safer place after Biden’s speech.