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One of the useful things I’ve learned from MMT is that if you can actually “make stuff”, then there’s virtually no limit to what you can accomplish if you need to get something (major infrastructure, military buildup, etc) done. If you can’t, then all the money in the world won’t help.

I think the US Congress and Trump would sign off on virtually any amount of money for Israel if it needed to rebuild. While it’s the US that calls the shots in the relationship and it’s Israel that serves the US’ interest and not the other way around, I do think it’s true that Congress specifically is firmly under the Israeli thumb. Half of them are true believers, the other half are too reliant on AIPAC dollars (or at least afraid they will be the next Cori Bush or Jamaal Bowman if they cross AIPAC). $500 billion to rebuild Israel? I think I’ll have two chickens!

But that money has nowhere to go. WHO is gonna rebuild Israel? Palestinian workers? US contractors that can’t manage to build a proper little pier in Israel (and burning a mountain of cash in the process)? Will the US give billions to China to rebuild Israel? I mean, China would probably be down for that but I think the US would probably balk. That money will just get grifted away because that’s literally what happens whenever the US tries this sort of thing.

And I think if Israel (and the US) deplete their stocks in attacking Iran, they’re in for a rude awakening when it comes time to restock. I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but the privatization of the US military I think is really gonna come back and haunt Cheney and Rumsfeld. Back to MMT, you need productive capacity you can bring online to churn out what you need fast. That means idle factories at times. But inserting the profit motive into your military, that occasionally idle capacity has to be eliminated in order to increase profits (and it has). So not only does the US military not have the productive capacity to restock fast, it doesn’t have the capacity to build new factories to build productive capacity. Privatization has gutted the military, and there has been be a sweet irony to all of the US’ military failures over the last 25 years that it’s the very same capitalist system that is doing this.

Who says China isn't also going to help rebuild in Israel? They are heavily invested in the Haifa port which is critical infrastructure, do you think they will just shrug and say "well I guess its risk that comes with the business"? They'll help both sides the only question is would the US actualy allow more Chinese investments in Israel at this point.

The US may try to seize those investments but looking at how China handled the recent HK/Panama disaster they were surprised but not happy.

If we could even imagine Israel cooling down for a few months then the only thing stopping China from further investments in Israel would be US fearmongering.

There will be a lot of strategizing in the future for Israel to consider if welcoming China to play both sides is better than forcing them to pick a side. In the past during Trump 1 it was the US that prevented more investments, not Zionist principled stances against China. If you remember we saw this dynamic earlier during the Ukraine war too when Israel and Russia had surprisingly "good" relations.

The government seems pretty content to focus inward. Most of their foreign actions I'm familiar with seem to be centered around improving trade and thus wealth.

Avoiding becoming enmeshed in conflict seems to be the current pattern anyway.

you're the missile buff.

Seems unhinged