Since the UN is not yet an actual power to entrust the world to, the US being the most powerful national entity on the globe should assume the responsibility to keep an eye on the world as the possibility of international leadership is actualizing. Assuming responsibility does not mean the US has to be castrated by global demands for moral dictations that may lead the US anywhere besides where it needs to go. Certain humanistic endeavors that are promised by a world under the UN, cannot materialize as of yet. The US should do what it has always done, run things the ways it sees fit. The responsibility of being the superpower is grave, and it spells US intervention according to American decree, until an alternative arises. “Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed them that never in his professional life had the gap in military power and capability between the United States and all other powers yawned so wide. The entire Clinton administration has been schooled in the conviction and the phrase that theirs is the "indispensable nation," the superpower without whose leadership and involvement nothing serious can be achieved internationally” (Walker M.). The US should acknowledge this fact and use it wisely and without hesitation.
The conflict in the Middle East is key in understanding why the interests of the US should not be left to chance, but rather should be pursued in the fashion the US sees fit. The birth of the Israeli state in 1948 changed the Middle East to a great extent. Israel is home to the Jewish people and it is also the only democracy in the area. Due to the fact that during WWII a large scale migration has filled Israel with immigrants, mainly form Eastern Europe, Israel is relatively modernized and western in its culture. The surrounding Arab nations are relatively underdeveloped. “In the Holy Land (as the newspapers like to call it), the first world collides with the third: an affluent, mainly white democracy, economically and culturally close to the west, confronts poor, brown, mainly Muslim people”(Time for Israel to back down). Although the fate of Israel was preliminarily in the hands of international powers, it soon gained independence aided by the interest of the US. “UN involvement in Palestine began because one of the powers, Britain, decided it was no longer ready to cope with an intractable problem and used the UN as the way out of its troubles...But then again UN activity in the Arab-Israel dispute died down. This time the reason was a determination on the part of the US, initially in the person of Kissinger and later in the person of President Reagan, that the US should be the sole broker of peace between Israel and her neighbors”(Walker, H. B.). US values Israel as its Middle Eastern ally; Israeli democracy can serve as a stepping-stone for other US interests in the area. A strong bond formed between the US and Israel, whether based on the “Jewish connection” or on the ability to keep a friend in a hostile neighborhood, necessitates an American rather than international intervention in the Middle East. “Everyone expects Washington to provide financial aid to Israel, sell it high-technology armaments, and support it diplomatically in the United Nations”(Pipes).
From an Israeli prospective, UN intervention in the Israel-Arab conflict may lead to an equal, yet unfair resolution. Neutrality should not be synonymous with a total choice to ignore the facts, and should not lead to surrendering to terrorism. “The imbalance is the more profound when one recalls that Israel, a defensive power, was taxed not only with making the lion's share of concessions but also with taking a leap of faith by trusting the word of neighbors who had on many occasions aggressed against it; in return, those neighbors merely needed to mouth the right words in order to receive the territories they had lost when Israel defeated them. Few, if any, can be the cases in world history of a victorious party's being asked both to make the concessions and to take the risks”(Pipes).
While staying intact with moral reality, the US needs to choose sides. Choosing to support Israel can be justified by idealism. Soviet Union support of Arab countries such as Egypt and Syria during the cold war has taken its toll. The cold war is over, the world is moving towards globalization, and boarders are opening up. People who have learned to hate others are now learning to accept different cultures, traditions, religions, and lifestyles. But although it is noble to adhere with this trend, the US cannot possible preach tolerance towards certain extremities exemplified in the September 11th terrorist attacks. America’s adherence to cultural diversity cannot subscribe to people who were taken with joy with the sight of plans crashing into buildings, and people dropping to their deaths. The fact that the perpetrators of the attacks have a good reason, in their opinion, for doing what they did, does not make any American feel any better about the aftermath. No wonder the US and Israel gained a renewed sense of alliance, both faced with the cruel acts witnessed. “In a striking case of religion's being conscripted into the service of political ends, traditional Islamic conceptions of martyrdom were invoked to recruit suicide bombers in their teens and early twenties; to justify the tactic of placing small children in the direct line of Israeli return fire; and to ensure the approval even of the parents of the young Palestinian corpses thus created. Instead of mourning, the mothers rejoiced and the fathers took pride; instead of weeping and wailing, they emitted cries of jubilation; instead of being consoled by friends and relatives, they were congratulated; and instead of burying their children in anguish and grief, they celebrated the funerals as "weddings," with candies being distributed and sweet coffee drunk rather than the bitter coffee of ordinary funerals” (Podhoretz). It seems the US has at times taken decisions that are more consistent with what the world expects it to take than with its own interest in the Middle East. Another reason for Israeli reluctance for UN intervention is that as mentioned in Grigsby, the sovereignty of state might be undermined in the case of UN intervention. Letting Israel maintain its authority over its own affairs leaves Israel doing what it has been doing: “Israel's only realistic choice is to hold tight, to keep its powder dry, to refine the anti-terrorist techniques it has already developed, to ensure the credibility of its military power as a deterrent against larger-scale attack, and to use that power if and when the Arabs force it to” (Podhoretz). It would seem as if staying out of the conflict might prove beneficial to the US, allowing more secure oil prices and less anti Americanism in the Arab world. “From a cold-blooded point of view, it would be convenient for Americans if the burgeoning hostility toward Israel were Israel's problem alone. After all, even if Israel's concessions over the last years have had precisely the wrong effect on Arab attitudes toward the Jewish state, they have won a certain measure of good will among Arabs toward the United States... The Oslo process softened some of the anti-Americanism endemic to the Middle East, thereby rendering oil sources slightly more secure, anti-American terrorism a bit less likely, and political harangues less impassioned”(Pipes). In view of recent crude awakening, even the potential benefits of forsaking Israel, seem realistically dangerous.
