Clean break
Alignment with the US and Israel puts the UK at risk, argues Iggy Wood
The Dahiyeh Doctrine – named after Dahiyeh, a southern neighbourhood of Beirut – is an Israeli military doctrine that calls for the ‘disproportionate destruction of civilian infrastructure’ in order to put pressure on enemy leaders. It was developed by Gadi Eisenkot, an Israeli general who later became the IDF’s chief of staff, during the 2006 Lebanon war, in which Dahiyeh was bombed extensively.
As I write this, Israel is once again bombing Dahiyeh, making 2026 the fifth year of the past 20 it has done so. It may prove to be the most destructive yet; Israeli leaders openly admit that they have been emboldened by the free reign the inter-national community gave them in Gaza. As the Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, threatened, Dahiyeh “will soon look like Khan Younis.”
Beirut is just one theatre in the increasingly regionalised US-Israeli war on Iran – which itself is just the latest episode in a steady breakdown of the international order. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the US’s capture of Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, all suggest we are moving towards a world more explicitly governed by the principle of ‘might makes right’.
In an era characterised by hard power, our first instinct may be to flee towards the arms of America. The Faustian bargain we have struck since the cold war is that, in return for participation in outrages like the Iraq war, the US will guarantee our security. Yet as the Arab Gulf states have found out, the security of American allies is easily traded for perceived US or Israeli advantage. As Ebtesam Al-Ketbi, president of the Emirates Policy Centre, told Reuters: “It is not our war. We did not want this conflict, yet we are paying the price in our security and our economy.” Far from ensuring their safety, the reliance of the Arab Gulf states on America – and the American military presence they host – placed them in the line of fire.
The question we must ask ourselves, then, is: are the US and Israel allies we want? Both countries have proven themselves to be reckless, unpredictable, and capable of unspeakable atrocities. Some mid-ranking officers in the US military reportedly see the war with Iran as the start of Armageddon (which, if you are a Christian Zionist, is a good thing), and plans for a ‘Greater Israel’ are becoming increasingly mainstream in an ever-more right-wing Knesset. Who knows what we will be asked to collude on next – and against whom?
Alignment with the US and Israel is particularly dangerous given the tailwinds for nuclear proliferation. In February, the New Start agreement, the most recent nuclear arms control deal signed between the US and Russia, expired. This could trigger an arms race between the two countries which in turn could fatally undermine the broader non-proliferation treaty in force since 1970. And, perhaps counterintuitively, the war on Iran has shifted the scales towards proliferation. The leadership of Iran was deeply divided over the question of nuclear weapons; now the perception may be that those who argued for expediting the programme have been vindicated. Looking not just to Iran, but also to Venezuela and Ukraine (which gave up its nuclear weapons in the 90s in return for American and Russian security guaran-tees), the conclusion drawn around the world may be: ‘acquire nuclear weapons or else.’ Notably, of George W Bush’s original ‘axis of evil,’ North Korea is now the sole state to remain untouched by American intervention – the only one with a nuclear arsenal. This is particularly troubling for the UK because, while Trident is nominally an independent nuclear deterrent, foreign military planners are likely to treat is as closer to a US asset.
It is hard to imagine a British foreign policy that is not wholly dependent on alignment with the US. Pedro Sánchez’s Spain provides a template, and surprisingly, he has seen some senior European figures rally around him. This is surely the direction of travel: collaboration and solidarity with Europe, with whom we share an interest in regional security, combined with increasing European independence from the US.
Image Credit: delayed gratification via flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
