W alter Russell Mead one of America’s leading foreign relations experts recently came out with his annual rankings of world powers and there were some surprises. Not least of which was Israel’s ranking as the world’s eighth strongest nation. That achievement is particularly amazing when one considers that Israel has approximately one-tenth the land mass and one-tenth the population of the next smallest nation on Mead’s list. (Permanent UN Security Council members Great Britain and France do not even appear.)
Excitement over Israel’s first ever placement on the list however must be somewhat tempered by the number seven entry Iran. Iranian proxies Mead notes are “on the march across the Middle East and the Shia Crescent seemed closer to reality than ever before ” and may soon bring Iranian forces to Israel’s border on the Syrian front. Meanwhile the “fruits of the nuclear deal continued to roll in: high-profile deals with Boeing and Airbus sent the message that Iran was open for business….” On the other hand Iran faces 2017 without “one of the mullah’s most important assets President Obama.”
Much of the credit for Israel’s current position particularly in the diplomatic sphere goes to the much-maligned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu whose days in office may be winding down. Israel has gone from a “regional pariah to a kingmaker ” writes Mead. “Privately and even not so privately many prominent [Sunni] Arab officials today will say that Israeli [military and intelligence] support is necessary for the survival of Arab independence.”
Netanyahu has been able to pull that off while dealing for eight years with the most hostile president since Jimmy Carter. As Caroline Glick wrote with respect to the State Comptroller’s report on the 2014 Operation Defensive Shield in Gaza Netanyahu had to conduct the entire war under the watchful gaze of President Obama who adopted the Hamas position from day one when he urged Israel to enter into an early ceasefire based on Hamas’s demands.
