Q: WHAT DO "BREXIT" AND THE "ABRAHAM ACCORDS" HAVE IN COMMON?

A:  BORDER ISSUES, SOVEREIGNTY ISSUES, TRADE ISSUES, CULTURAL ISSUES,  EXISTENTIAL ISSUES... ALL OF THESE ISSUES IN THE CONTEXT OF AN AMERICAN POLITICAL TRANSITION TO A BIDEN/HARRIS ADMINISTRATION AND THEREFORE TO ALL THAT SUCH A TRANSITION MAY MEAN IN TERMS OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE, ALIGNMENTS OF SOVEREIGNTY, CULTURE, POWER, AND EXISTENCE.

 

  

 

Modern American History (that is, the history of the North American and South American Continents commencing with the European Invasions of the Americas) is perhaps defined by the recent period of seven-centuries since the "discovery" of the New World by Non-Native Americans. 

This reality stands in marked contrast to the familiarity of the European, African, Indian, and Asian Continents with each other, having engaged each other for thousands of years in every kind of human relationship possible (e.g. culture, politics, trade, war, etc.).

While Israel (in and out of power and sovereignty) has been at the center of the Middle East for greater than three-thousand years, the North Atlantic Island Nations of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland (most recently by those names, and with significant variations of culture and nations) have been central to the North Atlantic and therefore to Europe and Scandinavia, also for thousands of years. 

The North Atlantic Island Nations and Israel have in common their central roles in culture and trade as well as war and politics.  The historic Silk Road connecting China and Southeast Asia to Central Asia, India, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe consisted of many river, land, and sea routes; the New Silk Road seeks to modernize the historic Silk Road, representing a return of power from Europe to China.

It should surprise no one that the North Atlantic Island Nations and Israel are both at the stress centers of shifting power alliances.  Peoples with far more in common than naught are caught up in webs of power politics extending far into the past, and those webs of power politics are being fought in the New World today, even as those battles rage in the Old World.

At risk in the present are two distinct possibilities: that the peace existing between Ireland and England may be undone, and that the budding peace between Israel and multiple Arab nations may be undone.

Far more than the COVID-19 Pandemic, it is economic inequality, food inequality, healthcare inequality, racial inequity, and environmental disasters and destruction that will define the Biden/Harris Administration, such that the reputation of the New Administration may depend as precursor upon the foundations and consequences of foreign policy (which is not to say that the domestic issues are trivial; but, that the New Administration's focus, attention, and budgetary concerns dare not be so radicalized or reversed as to rip focus, attention, and budgetary concerns away from the present historical foreign policy achievements and advances of the Trump Administration.

When Joe Biden says, "America's back," chills should race up and down our spines, much like the chills that once again run up and down the spines of the two Irelands and Israel.  The imminent "hard and soft borders" (or, 'spine') dividing Ireland from Northern Ireland and therefore Britain is analogous to the 1967 "hard and soft borders" ('spine') dividing the various Arabias from Israel. 

Perhaps the Abraham Accords have something to teach Britain and Europe about a way forward beyond the stuck politics that the present EU-England negotiations suffer; perhaps Israel can assist the two Irelands and England to create a solution that will work for Ireland, Scotland, England and the EU; and perhaps in doing so, then the Abraham Accords may additionally be strengthened by lessons learned from the two Irelands and Britain.

Given that Joe Biden is himself Irish, there is an opportunity for Israel and the two Irelands to work together through Joe Biden, perhaps according to the working model of the Abraham Accords, to encourage the further growth of peace simultaneously in the North Atlantic and in the Middle East.  Success at these two central geopolitical faults may do much to ripple outwardly and generate equilibrium internationally all the way to the South China Sea.