Ok but you aren’t actually saying anything cogent here.
Accepted. I am afraid that I have reached a point where I find it difficult to cogently describe the current international situation. The world, in my view, is looking a lot less Westphalian and a lot more Hobbesian.
I observed in rely to OS that Israel’s ability to materially affect the interests of quite a lot of countries is pretty limited. Which I think is fair to say.
Agreed.
He came back with reference to extraterritorial assassinations post-Munich and din’t otherwise really make it clear just what was being said or imagined. Having been left guessing, I took a guess.
Understood. The guess does seem to be a couple of long strides away from taking out an individual on the territory of a foreign government without their permission - an act that is not uniquely Israeli, or Indian for that matter.
If you have ideas about how Israel can really ‘punish’ countries like Ireland or Norway or Spain I’m all ears, and outright curious.
I don't. Most every act of "punishment" evokes in me a sense of noses being cut off to spite faces.
Norway, Ireland and Spain are almost uniquely cushioned against punishment by anybody. Norway is one of the world's most self-sufficient economies. Ireland and Spain are well buttressed by the EU. Spain is also strategically important to the UK (Gibraltar) and the US (Rota). And Ireland, no matter how annoying the Micks are the Brits are not going to let anything of import happen to them. They bailed them out in 2008 and the Brexit and Borders nonsense continues.
I’m just suggesting that Israel is a country with heavy ties to a few nations (and disproportionate influence within them) but very limited ones to many others, with limited ability to exert diplomatic or political consequences on them for something like recognizing a Palestinian state. That’s not me chucking shit at them; it’s just something I think is objectively true. Israel can double down with key allies, but that doesn’t solve the increasing diplomatic isolation they’re sliding into here.
I think you are right on all points there. And I think your observations are true for most of the United Nations and the risks they face.
...
That is why I believe there is a rising resurgence of the Hedgehog Defence.
When NATO leaders gathered in Lisbon in 1952, the Alliance hoped to have 50 divisions available to deter Soviet attack. By the end of the Cold War it had
warontherocks.com
For the last 80 years it has been accepted that two or three nations could impose their will on the rest of the world. Now they have been found to be vulnerable to attacks at home and less than omnipotent abroad. It has also been found that home turf offers many advantages.
My sense is that the world is moving towards an era of hedgehogs, all bundled up and isolated, making themselves as immune as possible from their neighbours and pursuing their own policies on their own terms.
A supra-national power would face the opposite of the Domino Theory. Instead of being able to knock over one nation and having all the others fall in sequence each and every hedgehog would have to be both taken and either controlled or eliminated. The costs of imposition would increase drastically.
The market place is already accommodating accordingly. The rise in new suppliers of military equipment suggests that people are not only looking to create their own hedgehogs but are finding many like-minded potential customers who don't want attachments to unreliable hegemons.
