The spectacle of J.D. Vance, a man whose grasp of foreign policy seems derived from a single briefing book, lecturing Benjamin Netanyahu on strategic wisdom is the sort of historical farce that would make Gibbon weep. Here we have the junior senator from Ohio, a man whose nation has not faced an existential threat since 1812, presuming to instruct the leader of a country that has fought for its survival every decade. The irony is so thick you could carve it into a monument to Western hubris.
But let us not mistake this for mere incompetence. This is decadence, pure and simple. The West, having forgotten what it means to fight for one’s homeland, now moralises from the safety of its post-imperial armchairs. The UK, meanwhile, chirps about ‘stability’ in the Middle East as if the region were a recalcitrant club member rather than a cauldron of civilisational conflict. Stability? The Middle East has been unstable since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, largely due to the meddling of powers who now feign surprise at the consequences.
Vance’s rebuke of Netanyahu is a textbook example of the intellectual corruption that occurs when policy is conducted by polls rather than principles. He accuses Israel of strategic missteps, but what he really means is that Israel refuses to commit suicide gracefully. Netanyahu’s approach may be flawed, but it is grounded in a reality that Washington, London, and other post-heroic societies have long since abandoned. The United States cannot even secure its own border, yet it presumes to lecture Israel on security.
Make no mistake: this is not about strategy. It is about the West’s desperate need to believe that it can impose its will through words alone. It cannot. The Houthis, Hezbollah, and Iran’s mullahs do not care about senatorial rebukes. They care about power. And power, as the Victorians understood, must be demonstrated. Vance’s statement is a signal to every adversary that the West has lost its nerve.
The UK’s call for stability is equally risible. The British government, which once ruled a quarter of the globe, now issues press releases about ‘restraint’ and ‘dialogue’. Has the Foreign Office forgotten that the ‘peace process’ has been a graveyard of good intentions for thirty years? Stability in the Middle East is not achieved by asking polite questions at the UN. It is achieved through deterrence, resolve, and a willingness to let your enemies know that you will break them if they push too far.
Perhaps the most galling aspect of this affair is the assumption that Israel exists to serve the West’s strategic interests. Netanyahu, for all his faults, understands that Israel’s survival depends on its own strength, not on the generosity of distant powers. The West, by contrast, seems to believe that history has ended and that we can all now enjoy perpetual peace under liberal internationalism. Tell that to the families of those killed in Hamas’s attacks. Tell that to the Jews of Europe, who learned the hard way that international institutions offer no protection.
The real strategic misstep here is not Netanyahu’s, but that of Western leaders who believe they can lecture a nation fighting for its existence while doing nothing to address the actual threats. Vance’s rebuke is a symptom of a deeper malaise: the refusal to acknowledge that some conflicts are not amenable to ‘de-escalation’ and that some enemies cannot be reasoned with. Until the West rediscovers the language of power, it should stop pretending to speak for the civilised world.
