ROBERT KAGAN : ISRAEL AND THE DECLINE OF THE LIBERAL WORLD ORDER

Kagan, who co-founded PNAC and was financed by Rupert Murdoch, has today explained what I've been thinking for a year or 2: that Israel is behind a movement to take on the previous world order.

Kagan has written in The Washington Post an essay entitled, Israel and the Decline of the Liberal World Order.

In the following extract, Kagan has missed out Trump.

In the growing confrontation between the liberal world order and its anti-liberal nationalist and authoritarian opponents, which side does Israel want to be on? The question would have been absurd even a decade ago, when Israelis still regarded themselves as members in good standing in the liberal world. But in recent years, Israeli foreign policy has been trending in a decidedly anti-liberal direction.

Since about the middle of 2015, the Israeli government has: embraced Hungary’s avowedly “illiberal” Prime Minister Viktor Orban; worked to forge close ties with Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, despite its limitations on civil liberties and legislation outlawing public discussion of Poland’s role in the Holocaust; warmly embraced Brazil’s right-wing nationalist leader Jair Bolsonaro; provided a state visit for President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who once likened himself to Adolf Hitler; worked consistently to woo Russian President Vladimir Putin; offered a 25-year contract to a Chinese state-owned firm to manage the port of Haifa, which has often hosted the U.S. Sixth Fleet; and provided consistently strong support for the military dictatorship in Egypt, including lobbying the U.S. Congress on its behalf, as well as supporting the authoritarian sheikhdoms of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.