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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   24772 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026

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The mental model that I find predicts things the best so far is that the US is not Israel's slave, and Israel is not the US' slave. Rather, they are one entity.

If that were the case, wouldn't there be a symmetrical relationship? For instance, you'd see Israeli troops fighting in US wars like how British or Australian troops fight alongside America. Or maybe America would sell Israeli technology to Israel's rivals like Iran like how Israel sold US technology to china.

That's a good point. The Israeli troops not fighting in US wars makes sense. The US doesn't need the help, and I have a sense that when countries like Britain send soldiers to help the US in its modern wars, the main benefit to the US government is just that it makes the wars look less unilateral and gives the allied militaries a bit of very rare combat experience - the US government certainly does not need the military help. Israeli troops, on the other hand, because of how hated Israel is, would be counterproductive to the US government's PR.

When it comes to the sale of technology, however, I have no explanation. Other than, maybe just that Israel does not create enough new technology for it to be worth while for the US to sell it? I don't know.

Israel already sells its technology to third-party powers that can easily export it onward to Iran (and already have trading relationships with Iran), this isn’t really a gotcha, there’s no defense against that happening.

The US has a whole legal requirement to maintain Israel's 'qualitative military edge', so they refuse to sell advanced hardware to anyone that might be or become anti-Israel. The Egyptians for instance get the crappiest versions of the F-16, no AESA radars and no AIM-120s.

Israel meanwhile has no such concerns about damaging US interests by selling on technology. This is what I mean by the relationship being asymmetric.

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