While it is a wild and foolish exaggeration to claim that "Israel runs America", it would be equally foolish to ignore the extremely disproportionate influence of political action committees on American foreign policy. The (infamous) Israeli lobby is truly extremely well-organised and wields serious power, not just in Washington, but across the spectrum of state and local politics. In other words, an aspiring politician in Oregon whose platform contains criticism of Israeli policy will have to face not just Oregonians who oppose his platform (as a whole), not just Jeiwsh-Americans in Oregon, but the whole Jewish-American political machine in the United States that has made a habit of swiftly kicking off-screen such "aspiring politicians"!
Nonetheless, the recent endorsement (it's an endorsement, for all practical purposes) of
Israeli nuclear capability by the United States represents indeed a turning point in American foreign policy.
So far, the American position regarding Israeli nukes was something like "Don't ask, don't tell".
Now, it
officially acknowledges and OKs Israeli nukes. Consequences:
(a) This harms the consistency of the very blueprint for American foreign policy ("For the 21st Century") which explicitly calls for actively stopping proliferation of nukes. The doctrine is now being changed to "We don't care if the country is friendly to us". Huh?? Whazzat? Never heard of a country
changing regimes, pumpkin? Them nukes still be there, pumpkin.
(b) This hurts (worsens) the credibility of the United States in the eyes of both the Arab world, to the extent that the U.S. cares about Arab world attitudes, and the Europeans, ditto.
(c) This represents no gain at all in strategic terms for the United States. America has no formal defense treaty with Israel. Moreover, Israel has repeatedly stated and demonstrated that, in matters of its defense, it will act unilaterally, without consulting with the U.S. and even
against American advice or interests. Essentially, this is like allowing any other maverick nation to possess nukes.
--Cyrus