Col. Lawrence Wilkerson argues that American one-sided support for Israel is a danger to the region and U.S. interests. He says the U.S. should withdraw militarily from the Middle East and end support for Israel and Saudi Arabia. Doing so would encourage regional compromise, not war. Larry Wilkerson on theAnalysis.news with Paul Jay.

Transcript

Paul Jay

 Hi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news. Don't forget the donate button. Subscribe button, the share button, sign up for the email list and all of that. Be back in a few seconds with Larry Wilkerson.In a speech during a Senate session on June 5th, 1986 still at the height of the Cold War, Joe Biden said this about Israel. Now joining me to discuss just what is the "strategic interest" in the Middle East is Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. He was chief of staff to Colin Powell at the State Department and at the Joint Chiefs. Thanks very much for joining me, Larry.

Larry Wilkerson

Thanks for having me, Paul.

Paul Jay

So before we get into today or post collapse of the Soviet Union, let's go back to 1986 and into the early 90s, but especially that period towards the height of the Cold War. Why was Israel considered such a strategic interest of the United States? And is what Biden says true, at least at that time? If there hadn't been in Israel, the United States would have invented it.

Larry Wilkerson

Let me take you back to 1947 1948 for just a minute and then I'll fast forward. I gave a speech at the National Press Club a few years ago. It was called Israel is not a strategic asset. It's a strategic liability. What I said in that speech at the beginning was I quoted the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the study they did for Truman when he was thinking about recognizing Israel. Should it be in that position? The Joint Chiefs essentially predicted what has happened. They have basically said this is not a strategic asset, it's a strategic deficiency, and and it is so because there are 400 million Arabs and just a few Jews and this is taking on all of those Arabs in perpetuity. They talk about it in a lot of other things, too, the partition of Palestine and so forth and so on. At any rate, it caused George Marshall, not a man, to be persuaded to this kind of position in any cavalier way to tell Truman essentially, I might not vote for you if you recognize Israel, which took Truman by complete surprise and Truman's kind of cavalier response back was essentially very accurate. "I know there are more Jews in New York than there are Arabs," because Truman was looking at the vote and what it would do for the Democrats.

Fast forward to the time you've just talked about. What has Israel become in what was very inchoate at that time – 1947/48 – Soviets hadn't even exploded an atomic weapon yet, is suddenly very cohesive, and it's the Cold War and it's a threat that has nuclear weapons and a threat that has a poisonous ideology we thought called communism, and a threat that in 1986, Ronald Reagan had painted as big as a ten foot gorilla in order to support his arms buildup in the early 80s. So here we are with Biden saying what he said. In that particular time, as it had been since the Cold War really began to burn hot, you could argue that happened even after the death of Stalin and certainly with the explosion of the bomb before Stalin's death, Israel took on the appearance of an unsinkable aircraft carrier at a very strategic location in the eastern Mediterranean. In fact, probably you could say the only place we could land, as it were, if we had to, and it had a fairly and growing competent army, air force and other elements to.

So at that time, as I admitted in my speech,