US will give 3x more money to Israeli military than UN Green Climate Fund in FY2022

Speaking Security Newsletter | Advisory Note for Organizers and Candidates, n°119 | 4 October 2021

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Situation

The US Senate is set to approve another $1 billion in military aid to Israel. This will likely mirror the legislation that was recently offered (and passed) the House.

Analysis

I don’t buy into narratives that position the US under Biden as a state seeking to regain its credibility lost under Trump because I’m not sure how much credibility the US had in the first place. This perspective also predisposes the audience to look at Biden as some sort of savior, instead of just sitting back and honestly assessing the ways in which Biden and the new Congress are making things better, or in this case, much worse.

Backstory: Obama pledged $3 billion to the UN Green Climate Fund in 2015 (at the 2014 G20 Leaders Summit) but only gave $1 billion total by the time he left office. Trump didn’t provide any funding.

So with $2 billion left on the table, Biden requested $1.2 billion (short $800 million) in his budget request. Instead of the House closing that gap, it still shorted the previous agreement by $400 million. The IDF, meanwhile, got fully funded (per Obama’s non-binding MOU with Israel in 2016), plus an additional $1 billion in supplemental funding.

This is not how you (re)gain credibility.

Thanks for your time,

Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)

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