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The USSR collapsed out of apathy. The Russian Soviet Republic was replaced by the Russian Federation, they were and are a majority. The Palestinians winning would wipe the Israelis off the map in a way the crumbling of the USSR didn’t kill all Russians. the rationale for use of nuclear weapons is completely different.
As for American support, most current US migrants are Central American Christians (largely Catholic, but many Latin Catholics convert to Evangelical Christianity after moving to the US) fleeing leftist regimes (chiefly Venezuela), not generally a particularly anti-Israel demographic.
I was under the impression that they collapsed due to a deeply flawed economic system in combination with a dramatic over-expenditure on military spending in order to keep fighting the cold war. But the main point is that they did in fact collapse and nuclear weapons weren't able to stop that from happening. I still just don't see how nuclear weapons would be able to save Israel from an economic collapse or social unrest.
Attitudes towards Israel are far less positive among younger populations in the US to my knowledge - if you've got some evidence regarding youth attitudes towards Israel that suggests otherwise I'd be interested in seeing it. That said, I don't think it matters that they aren't particularly anti-Israel, because what matters is that they're not as fanatically pro-Israel as the current population. You need much less negative animus to cut off existing support than initiate a hostile action, and I think that's very possible given shifting attitudes towards Israel in younger populations.
Common misconception and oversimplification. Incorrect, but common.
The actually relevant point, however, is that the Soviet Union didn't collapse from external invasion, or from people who already identified with the core identity unit wanting to leave. This is relevant, because the thing that will actually end Israel as a nation-state- and what ended the crusader states- is external invasion, not civil unrest in the national core. Civil Unrest can weaken a state's capacity for militarily resisting invasion, but if invasion is already negated by other ways- such as nukes- the you have a weak state, not a dead state.
The Soviet Union collapse is a poor historical metaphor because the parts of the Soviet Union who left the Soviets were the Russian imperial sphere that never wanted to be part of the Russian empire. The Russian national core was never challenged or militarily endangered. In the Israel metaphor, this is Gaza and West Bank not being occupied, and the Israeli core existing uninterrupted and without a military threat.
The crusader state metaphor from earlier is likewise bad because that was a case of military invasion destroying the state- which is precisely what did NOT occur with the Soviet Union, for a reason of (among other things) sustained nuclear deterence despite major economic and democraphic and social regression.
Because economic collapse or social unrest don't actually destroy nations, and this is so well established it's easier to identify the exceptions- which are almost universally states without an underlying national identity to bind the state.
This is basic not-understanding-why-states-fail, both historical and mechanically.
Obviously states collapse for a variety of reasons and I only provided the two that seemed the most prominent. This is, as far as I can see (especially since you called it common), the conventionally accepted wisdom as well - economic hardship lead to reform attempts which then lead to dissolution and breakup. If you've got a more compelling theory or hypothesis I'd unironically love to hear it.
Yes, it didn't collapse from the kind of problem that nuclear weapons prevent, given that it had nuclear weapons (though if the Russians all decided to leave I don't think nukes would help there either).
But Israel is in fact surrounded by dangerous threats in just about every direction but the sea, and this means that they are going to need to spend a huge portion of their GDP on the military budget - far more than they do currently, and to the point that it is going to have a big impact on society. That's an extremely dangerous position for a nation to be in, nukes or no nukes.
Then please enlighten me! I just don't understand how an Israel that sustains severe economic damage due to the removal of western support manages to maintain itself in such a dangerous security environment.
And to answer your other post..
I see this happening well within my lifetime. Probably not before the next culture war thread, but I don't see US aid to Israel lasting for another 20 years.
And are also counter-productive to your claims, as one of the claims (Crusader States) were conventional invasions that nukes would have defeated had the Crusader states had access to them, and the other (Soviet) did not see the collapse of the core state (the Russian Federation) that would be analogous to Israel and thus is generally unapplicable as a metaphor of how Israel would be destroyed and instead an example of why Israel would not be destroyed (because even at a point of massive economic/military/social/political power disrepencies, Russia survived as an nation-state centered on the Russian nation).
Sure- don't skip the causal intermediary between 'reform attempts' and 'dissolution and breakup.' The Soviet system lost the willingness to enforce its imperial control by mass violence, not its ability to.
Maintaining social control by violence is actually quite cheap, and we saw a number of case-examples during the Soviet collapse itself- including in Russia itself. North Korea and Cuba practically the capstone example, and much better Israeli metaphors than the Soviet empire-block given their coherency and external aid dependency, but nearly all the post-Soviet states that chose not to democratize and maintain autocratic models were able to. Russia itself is an example here, as even as it faced real struggles economically, socially, and what have you, it was still able to put down rebellion when it chose to (Chechnya). While it would have been immensly expensive to, there is a very strong argument that the Soviets would have been able to hold much of the empire by force if they chose to, if they thought it was worth that cost. Especially with nuclear weapons to keep invaders out. Nuclear-counter-rebellion strategy is a high-cost strategy, but not an impossible one.
The reason the economic travails and reforms led to dissolution is because they didn't think it was worth the cost to hold the empire together.
The reason that reform attempts lead to losing will to maintain imperial control was that the reform attempts involved enabling information flow- necessary for economic improvement- that deligitimized the ideological premise of the project from a revolutionary premise worth costs along the way to an objective failure unable to deliver. The Soviet Union wasn't simply an economic unit, it was an ideology-project, and a materialist one at that. While there were always overlaps between the Russian imperialist habits and the Soviet strategy, the metaphorical glue that held the system together- not only from the bottom-up (why do we accept this) but the top-down (why do we do this to ourselves) was the ideological underpinnings of 'because Socialism will build a better society and make people's lives better.' Except it didn't. The system did not work, the ideology did not deliver its central premise of improving living standards vis-a-vis the alternative, the more moral society wasn't more moral than the alternative, and the systems very clearly wasn't working, and people already knew that. What the laxing of information controls meant is that everyone else knew that too. When it came to choosing between holding together the lesser option by force and even greater cost and misery, the Soviets- which is to say the Russians- ultimately didn't.
But this isn't the circumstance Israel is in, even in the abstract. Israel's information space is already open enough that one of the key snowball dynamics- the mass sharing of dissolutionment- is impossible since people already have access to the information and eachother. Israel's core ideological premise- an ethno-state that will work to protect jews from both hostile states and statues unable/unwilling to do so internally- is not under ideological threat for the core auidence, i.e. the jews who feel unsafe or insecure elsewhere in states that visibly do not even try. The parts of the Israeli context that could be metaphorically analogous to the Soviet Block are the Palestinian territories, not Israeli proper- and thus vestigial territories, and not core dependencies.
Which goes to the point of 'who is choosing to leave and let-leave.' In the Soviet System, the imperial block- particularly eastern Europe- wanted to leave. The Germans wanted reunification, the Poles wanted independence, even the 'totally Russian all along' Ukrainians wanted to leave. The Russians let them, because the Russians didn't feel the project was worth the costs of violent suppression. We can see today, in Ukraine, what an alternative decision process might have been, as the Russians are now led by the sort of leadership for whom trying to militarily impose Russian dominance absolutely is worth the cost... and while they are paying a cost, they are also nowhere near a state collapse in doing so.
The Russian Federation didn't collapse as a state at all, precisely because the problems that nuclear weapons prevent did not form (because everyone knew Russia was a nuclear state and that trying to invade it would be suicide).
The Russian Empire collapsed. The Russian State did not. And the reason it did not is because there was no one who was going to come in and kick it down and drive them out of the territory they held until they held nothing else, which is what happened to the crusader states and what the parties interested in Israel's destruction want to do to it.
In terms of state survival? Not really. This is where 'dangerous threats' becomes a motte and bailey between 'it's bad' and 'it's a cause for state collapse.'
Terrorism is dangerous. But it's not existentially dangerous. Neither is spending a large amount on GDP on military budget- which itself is assuming a conclusion at odds with various dynamics of what goes on with the Israeli defense budget in a contraction (between would-be-negated needs, like West Bank occupation, or the preference for exepnsive high-precision munitions that support patron political preferences to minimize civilian casualties).
The type of power required to destroy Israel in the form required for the crusader states metaphor to be valid requires the power of a state. States are precisely what are targettable by nuclear weapons in case of existential risk to the nuclear power. You have already had to awkwardly dance around this fact by claiming that other actors (Muslim Brotherhood) would totally make the trade as long as they weren't in power, without actually establishing how they would make such a trade without having power over the state, lest the state refuse the trade. Even proxy warfare has it's limits- while the Iranians certainly are edging nuclear breakout, MAD is mutual, not unilateral.
Because it has nukes enough that the dangerous states in its environment capable of existentially threatening it aren't going to existentially threaten it lest they destroy their own states in the process.
Economic collapse has historically been a cause of state collapse when it allowed an external party to conventionally invade. The Crusader States fell because the loss of foreign economic support and economic issues allowed external parties to conventionally invade. Big-vs-small wars are usually one-sided because the small-side's economic disadvantages allow the external party to conventionally invade.
But nukes do mitigate the threat of conventional invasion to physically displace territorial control. Nukes can be used against the organized armies of the invaders, or the cities and ports they use as key logistical corridors to project power, or against the very capitals of those controlling them. Superior numbers and economics and conventional capabilities do not make invading a nuclear-armed power more preferable than not.
This is why you had to appeal to the Soviet Collapse as an example of state collapse without conventional force. But the Soviet collapse was a case of *choosing not to fight,' and for which the consequence was the loss of functional colonial holdings, not core state or it's dominant demographic. And in the Israeli context, choosing not to fight the displacement of a state of jews for a state of arabs is precisely that, with openly acknowledged genocidal implications.
This is certainly a construction of security politics worthy of NonCredibleDefense, but not a particularly compelling one.
Since by definition you will have to die before it doesn't occur in your lifetime for it to be proven to not happen in the way you foresee it happening in your lifetime, this is why I find this a boring non-falsifiable.
It doesn't need to.
First, US aid to Israel is not a critical dependency to Israel such that the loss leads to a state collapse. This is a not-uncommon premise shared by the sort of American hyper-agency types who believe the US factor is the dominant factor in anything it's involved in, but it's really not.
From a fiscal perspective, Israel does not need to be spending the amount of money in the way it does in order to survive- there are both discretionary areas that could/would be cut in an imperial collapse context (West Bank occupation costs), and costs-for-preference that would change as the patrons do (Israel uses expensive precision munitions capabilities to 'roof knock' because it's patrons want it to), and so on. If military financial resources were cut, Israel would adapt, as has every other state. It doesn't simply cease to exist because defense spending fllas (or increases).
And even this is setting aside why US aid to Israel exists in the form it does, which is as a basic form of geopolitical bribery for purposes of maintain access near the Suez Canal in case someone tries to close it, as a domestic industry subsidy program, and as a means of influence Israel into more preferable/less-undesirable courses of action when provoked.
Note that all three of these motivations exist not only regardless of any US sympathy for Israel, but also for any other would-be patron state. If other regional actors don't like Palestinian refugees- and that's not liable to change in the next few generations- then there will always be willing donors for Iron Dome sustainment, despite the 'uneconomical' nature of the interceptor system, less the Israelis decide to not simply take it.
And this is without considering the plausible political contexts where US aid is suspended, especially in the next 20 years. While it would be quite a just-so narrative for the US to cut aid to Israel, but everyone else is the same, this isn't particularly plausible compared to the US cutting aid to everyone in the region, including most of the regional states that could plausibly threaten Israel. And reasons for that would vary from 'they have all collapsed due to a catastrophic regional war'- which would indicate a lack of proximal existential threats to Israel as Arabs spend more time trying to rebuild than get themselves nuked further back by deciding to YoLo what's left- to 'the US has suddenly chosen to create a power vacume in the Middle East'- which would be a patron state influx of patrons interested in the still-substantial oil flows of the region for Israel to solicit and play off of to regain external support- to 'Israel has already nuked the relevant threats'- which would certainly make them a pariah but not necessarily endangered.
The US was not the first patron-state of Israel, nor is there any particular reason for it to be the last, nor is there any particular reason to believe that Israel will collapse in the interim.
I appreciate the lengthy and well thought out reply - thank you for taking the time to make it. However I just had my own three hour post get lost due to a browser crash even after saying that I was going to keep it limited in order to make sure the discussion didn't get even larger. That said...
I meant the two reasons, not the two examples.
I agree - but I go even further. They were totally correct to think that it wasn't worth the cost to hold the empire together, so they didn't. Claiming that the decision was the cause of the collapse there is like saying someone with AIDS who caught a cold and died was killed by the cold - you're not lying, but I think you're being less accurate and conveying less information... and I certainly don't think that it qualifies as a counterargument to the position "This person died due to a compromised immune system". At the same time, the failure to deliver on the promises of socialism is just economic concerns with a bit of makeup - they're the same thing!
Wrong. If Israeli society adopts the kind of permanent war economy required to maintain security without the US, they're going to cause such severe harm to the quality of life of their citizens that many individual jews are going to think that the diaspora sounds like a much better way to live.
There's no motte and bailey here. One big problem is bad, two big problems at the same time are even worse. A straw breaking a camel's back is not a motte and bailey.
No dancing needed - I just assumed that recent events made it clear that a bunch of islamic militants with shithouse improvised equipment like paragliders can actually cause enough damage to prompt an Israeli reaction even without the backing of a state.
Yes, and I think that it is entirely possible that the Iranian nuclear program succeeds. Israel certainly says that Iran's on the verge of developing the bomb a lot, but I don't know how trustworthy their public statements are.
I think we are operating under different frameworks here - I developed my understanding of societal collapse from reading Joseph Tainter's work. Plenty of complex societies have failed without the need for an external party to invade - and the invasion itself is more of a symptom than a cause in most cases. Odoacer would not have been able to do what he did if the Empire wasn't already in a state of terminal decline.
No, I appealed to the Soviet collapse because there just aren't that many examples of nuclear powers in history, collapse or no. Maybe South Africa would have been a better comparison, but I forgot about them because they're not a nuclear power now (and their collapse is rather slow and ongoing).
Who?
Then to defeat your legalistic interpretation I'll just say within 60 years.
Comically wrong. US aid to Israel exists in the form it does due to corruption, espionage and ethnic ties between Israel and high-ranking members of the US state. We're all pseudonymous here, so you're actually allowed to point out that AIPAC and Jonathan Pollard exist without the Canary Mission getting you fired from your job. If you actually believe that it is purely geopolitical gameplaying responsible for a nation like Israel receiving the largesse that it does you're dumber than whoever NonCredibleDefense is. If the US was operating purely on the basis of geopolitical concerns they wouldn't be propping up Israel, their support for which is the ostensible reason behind islamic animus towards the Great Satan.
Who's gonna be that patron state? The list of countries that could fit the bill has two names on it - China and Russia. China has made it abundantly clear that they aren't interested in propping up the Israeli state, and the lack of jews in China means that the same corruption and espionage that got them so much US aid is going to be a lot harder. Do you think the China that forced islamic clerics to shave their beards and jump up and down in public while talking about how the communist party is more important than Allah is going to have big concerns about the plight of the Palestinians? Right now Russia is accepting delegations from Hamas to talk about Al-Aqsa flood, and they're already made security arrangements with states that Israel is actively attacking - Putin is not going to come in and save Israel.
US aid to other states in the region is largely just a disguised subsidy for Israel, though there's probably a bit of Iranian espionage getting some money handed out to their friends too. The regional aid and the aid to Israel are largely the same thing, so I don't think it that implausible that they'd get cut off all at once. I just don't think cutting off the payments meant to prevent the arab states from attacking Israel is going to make them decide not to attack Israel.
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