Brzezinski : le commencement de la fin pour Israël

Zbigniew Brzezinski, l’ancien conseiller pour la sécurité nationale de Jimmy Carter (1977-81), ne cesse de se radicaliser dans la critique de la politique de l’administration GW et tout ce qui va avec. Sa cible favorite est la politique inspirée des thèses néo-conservatrices, et ses constats le rapprochent de certaines thèses dissidentes (hors-establishment). C’est une indication sérieuse du désarroi qui, aujourd’hui, secoue Washington. C’est l’unité même de l’establishment qui est en cause, sous la pression des tensions imposées par cette politique.

Un exemple très récent (Financial Times du 31 juillet) de la radicalisation de Brzezinski : « “It is absolutely baffling to me and almost everyone I know – Republican or Democrat – how Ms Rice and Mr Bush think this strategy will achieve their objectives,” said Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former head of the National Security Council. “The Bush administration is allowing itself to be suckered into believing it can achieve political goals through military means. They seem to have learned nothing from Iraq.” »

Le conflit Israël-Hezbollah, notamment avec les déboires d’Israël, représente la dernière en date des pressions imposées à l’establishment et, sans doute, l’une des plus graves, l’une des plus fortes. Brzezinski est interrogé sur ces questions par Nathan Gardel, rédacteur en chef de la revue NPQ ; cette interview a paru le 1er août sur le blog ‘The Huffington Post’. L’interview est citée et commentée notamment sur les sites CASMII et Information Clearing House.

Nous reproduisons ci-dessous cette interview. On observera la radicalité des propos, directement alimentée par les événements du Moyen-Orient. Brzezinski n’envisage rien de moins que la possibilité de l’“expulsion” des USA de cette région et du “commencement de la fin” pour Israël (« Eventually, if neocon policies continue to be pursued, the United States will be expelled from the region and that will be the beginning of the end for Israel as well »).

Voici l’interview :

Nathan Gardels: Israel beat the big Arab states in six days of war, but it wasn't able to defeat Hezbollah after more than a decade of occupation before it withdrew in 2000; and it hasn't been able to stop missile strikes now after three weeks of intensive air and artillery pounding, plus special operations on the ground. Does that mean Hezbollah has ‘won’ by standing up to Israel, damaging the Israeli deterrent by revealing it is not invincible?

Zbigniew Brzezinski: It is important to recognize that Israel defeated formal armies led in most cases by inefficient and often corrupt regimes. Hezbollah is waging ‘asymmetrical’ warfare against Israel based on increasingly radicalized and even fanaticized mass support. So, yes, Israel will have much more difficulty in coping effectively with this latter in contrast to the former.

Gardels: Over the years, Israeli hardliners like Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu have argued that Israel lives in a “tough neighborhood” where its enemies only listen to force. The American neocons argued the same — that going into Iraq unilaterally would provide “a demonstration effect” of overwhelming U.S. might that would scare the “tough neighborhood” into compliance with U.S. goals.

Hasn't this turned out to be wrong? Doesn't military superiority as a blunt instrument lead to eternal enmity, not security? Touring the devastation of towns across southern Lebanon after Sharon's invasion in 1982, one could predict that something like Hezbollah's hatred of Israel would emerge years later.

Brzezinski: These neocon prescriptions, of which Israel has its equivalents, are fatal for America and ultimately for Israel. They will totally turn the overwhelming majority of the Middle East's population against the United States. The lessons of Iraq speak for themselves. Eventually, if neocon policies continue to be pursued, the United States will be expelled from the region and that will be the beginning of the end for Israel as well.

Gardels: Don't the deaths of so many innocent civilians in Qana in the south of Lebanon — like the massacre in Haditha, Iraq, by American troops — send a message to Arabs and Iranians that the “new Middle East” coming from the U.S. and Israel will amount to occupation, carnage and bloodshed? Even Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian dissident who won the Nobel Peace Prize, told me recently that Iranians would rather suffer the mullahs for now than the horrors they see in Iraq.

Brzezinski: This is precisely why neocon policies are recklessly dangerous both to America and Israel.

Gardels: Beyond the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, where does U.S. diplomacy for the region go from here?

Brzezinski: The new element today is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the Israeli-Palestinian problem, the Iraq problem and Iran from each other. Neither the United States nor Israel has the capacity to impose a unilateral solution in the Middle East. There may be people who deceive themselves into believing that.

The solution can only come in the Israel-Palestinian issue if there is serious international involvement that supports the moderates from both sides, however numerous or few they are, but also creates the situation in which it becomes of greater interest to the warring parties to accommodate than to resist, both because of the incentives and the capacity of the external intervention to impose costs.

When Iraqi Prime Minister (Jawad) al-Maliki recently harshly criticized Israel in the Lebanon conflict, it was an indication of things to come. The notion that the U.S. was going to get a pliant, democratic, stable, pro-American, Israel-loving Iraq is a myth which is rapidly eroding. That is why the U.S. needs to start talking with the Iraqis about the day of our disengagement. We shouldn't leave precipitously. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq (Zalmay) Khalilzad told me that four months would be precipitous. I agree. But we should agree that the U.S. will disengage at some period beyond that.

As far as Iran is concerned, we have made an offer to the Iranians that is reasonable. I do not know that they have the smarts to respond favorably or at least not negatively. I lean to the idea that they'll probably respond not negatively but not positively and try to stall out the process. But that is not so bad provided they do not reject it.

While the Iranian nuclear problem is serious, and while the Iranians are marginally involved in Lebanon, the fact of the matter is that the challenge they pose is not imminent. And because it isn't imminent, there is time to deal with it.

Sometimes in international politics, the better part of wisdom is to defer dangers rather than try to eliminate them altogether instantly. To do that produces intense counter-reactions that are destructive. We have time to deal with Iran, provided the process is launched, dealing with the nuclear energy problem, which can then be extended to involve also security talks about the region.

In the final analysis, Iran is a serious country; it's not Iraq. It's going to be there. It's going to be a player. And in the longer historical term, it has all of the preconditions for a constructive internal evolution if you measure it by rates of literacy, access to higher education and the role of women in society.

The mullahs are part of the past in Iran, not its future. But change in Iran will come through engagement, not through confrontation.

If we pursue these policies, we can perhaps avert the worst. But if we do not, I fear that the region will explode. In the long run, Israel would be in great jeopardy.

Mis en ligne le 5 août 2006 à 11H50