Sheldon Richman on the U.S. subsidizing Israel's behavior

The primary source of unintended consequences in foreign policy is the irresponsibility that attends the subsidization of client states.  Elementary economics would teach that a subsidized agent will probably behave differently than one who must bear all the costs of his actions.  Throughout the postwar period, Israel has been reasonably sure that it will be kept militarily superior to its Arab opponents, and that its treasury will be replenished, almost regardless of what it does.  Even its "miscalculation" in the 1956 Suez intervention did not bring about a cutoff of U.S. aid.  Such an arrangement makes irresponsibility inevitable.  Conversely, the Palestinian conclusion that no compromise can possibly change the official U.S. attitude also is conducive to irresponsibility--and indiscriminate violence.  A policy that helps to create, repress, and demoralize hundreds of thousands of refugees and second-class citizens will inevitably breed demagogues and their attendant horrors.  Thus, U.S. policy in the Middle East has been complicitous in fostering recklessness and atrocities on all sides.

~ Sheldon Richman, "'Ancient History': U.S. Conduct in the Middle East Since World War II and the Folly of Intervention," Cato Institute, August 16, 1991