How the Israeli Actions in Gaza Unveil the West’s Liberal Delusions
One question that may well puzzle historians of the future when they come to consider the present juncture is why the democracies of the West took no action to restrain Israel from perpetrating genocide in Gaza. They might find this inaction puzzling because the language of human rights has been a bedrock for the US and its allies, an essential feature of Western hegemony. It has long served as a soft power tool and as justification for military action.
The US and its European allies, including Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands, have all been complicit in Israel’s onslaught. They have shipped arms daily, tried to shield Israeli leaders from prosecution, and done nothing to prevent murderous attacks on Palestinian civilians.
Generally, the explanation for this conspiracy falls into two separate camps. Where one assumes the Israel lobby has hijacked Western decision-making to make sure Israel gets impunity and support. At the same time, the other supposes the US views Israel as an essential piece of its imperial strategy in the oil-rich region and, as such, its survival is crucial to it.
But there is another reason: one has less to do with Israel and more with the way the West conceives of itself and its role in the world. Since the Cold War, liberalism has been the guiding logic of Western foreign policy. Realist international relations scholars such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt refer to this as “liberal hegemony.”
The foreign policy of the US and its key Western allies seems to be based on the assumption that liberal democracies and free markets are the best conduits to achieve stability and peace. This axiom emanates from political scientist Francis Fukayama’s notion of “The End of History,” where he proclaimed that the end of the Cold War and the triumph of the West would be marked by the “universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
Since 1945, the language of liberalism has been a mainstay in US and European foreign policy and has been a common denominator throughout the spectrum. The US empire acted as a night watchman of liberal values to transform other societies into democracies and open markets. Imperialism deployed the discourse of rights to legitimize military intervention: Afghanistan about the rights of women, Iraq about human rights.
In 2021, after President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump, the only recent US president who does not share this liberal the former administration made the case that the international community was glad to see the US return to the world.
For US President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State Anthony Blinken: “America at its best has more capacity than any country on Earth to mobilize others for the common good and the good of our people.”In 2021, after President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump-arguably the only recent US president who does not subscribe to those above liberal projects administration contended that a relieved international community welcomed America’s return to the world.
As Biden’s Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, stated: “America at its best has a greater ability than any country on Earth to mobilize others for the common good and the good of our people.”Gaza has revealed the full extent of the liberal delusion and its inability to contend with reality. The Mediterranean enclave has often been called a concentration camp where the majority of its inhabitants are refugees from the earlier Zionist ethnic cleansing campaigns of 1967 and 1948. Since 2007, it has been under blockade-meaning no freedom of movement, no access to markets, and continual Israeli military attacks.
