IASPS Op-Eds
February 25, 2001

Arik Sharon's Strategy: Barak or the Linchpin of Unity Government - Part I
 by Robert J. Loewenberg, IASPS President

The business of a good "think tank," of policy analysis, includes prediction necessarily. However, IASPS makes a habit of steering clear of people --they are not policy-- and of politicians especially. With respect to Mr. Sharon and in the circumstances of our wider predictions --the past ones having proved right and the present ones about the future being grim -- the matter of a Sharon government invites a slight exception. It's also pleasant to add in view of our record on predictions that IASPS has been pressed by requests from readers of our website for a prediction whether the "Right wing extremist Sharon" may affect our general view of things.

This is Part 1. Background to a prediction  -- Sharon will establish the only stable government since Oslo

For a fuller view of what our "general view of things" is the reader is invited to refer to past op-eds on the site concerning the Options after Camp David. What follows here is the briefest overview.

Aid is the cornerstone of Israel's political economy. At the level of what Aristotle called material cause the peace process is coeval with the intersection of Israel's socialist aims and the fatal admixture to it of aid, "free money." It began in 1974.  Israel undertook to build its socialist political economy  on free money now up to 10% of GDP. The aid-based statist Israeli regime that resulted from this has now sealed Israel's demographic destiny in irreversible, perhaps fatal decline. (See IASPS Research Papers in Strategy No. 11: American Aid to the Middle East.) The peace process, although itself the creature of this decline was nevertheless embraced among Israel's less infatuated but still irresponsible advocates, Rabin particularly, as the only way to evade the worst consequences of decline. Many consequences were apparent before 1993. Of the more obvious and now unmistakable consequences, Arab irredentism based upon terror and war is not the worst.

Far graver than the Arabs and what is actually driving Israel below the line of critical mass as a national body able to act in history is its Jewish socialist-"utopian" statism. This is what prevents reform as well as growth at the same time it devours limits upon the State or what can slow the peace process. So the first question one would want to ask prior to clarifying this point about Limits in connection with any prediction about Mr. Sharon's unity government is: will he stop the aid and free money? And, supposing he would, could he get away it?

Considering that Israel has been as effective in getting these monies (more than any country in history) as in convincing everyone aid is good for Israel, enemies and friends alike, as well as all Israelis, this is a relevant question.

Rather it would be a relevant question if there were any chance of Sharon's considering it. Since there is no such chance, the one prediction that is certain at least for the near and medium term is that socialist Sharon will not take such a move and does not suppose that the peace process he understands to be bad policy has arisen because of  free money. Indeed his first public act even before forming a government was to send a trio of super aid-hawks to America for money led by Zalman Shoval, a beau ideal of an Israeli businessman or someone whose business starts -- it's banking -- in the understanding shared with Labor, the State and the Manufacturers Association that Israel has first of all to insure the absence of markets and freedom. (See IASPS Policy Studies No. 31: The Israeli Banking Market)

Sharon is like everyone else on the subject of free money and this assures us that the policy consequence of aid which is the peace process will not soon pass from the world scene under Sharon. But even with this and therefore with the continuation of the peace process at the top of Israel's agenda, Sharon's  attempt to appoint Barak as the linchpin in his unity government tell us much. Knowing that Sharon hopes to shut down this policy and that he will not do it by shutting off what causes the demographic decline that has brought the peace process about, the Barak appointment tells us this: Sharon is going to attempt something new; to govern Israel by using what the peace process has fueled and deepened in Israel's socialist political affairs, that is its profoundly hate-based factionalism. This will be the Limit Sharon introduces into Israel's political order of the Unlimited.