The ‘Super-Sparta’ Trap
Two September 2025 speeches reveal the fundamental contradictions in America’s Israel alliance
Grüezi!
On 15 September 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered what Israeli media dubbed his “Super-Sparta” speech.
Israel, he said, faced “isolation” and would need to develop “an economy with autarkic characteristics” – a self-reliance severed from global trade.
The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange dropped two per cent within minutes.
Eight days later, Donald Trump launched a 57-minute assault on the United Nations – triple his allocated time – confirming something that neither leader wanted to publicly acknowledge.
America’s protective policies now isolate the protected whilst undermining the protector.
Trump’s unprecedented presidential hostility toward the international system that America helped construct signals a deeper strategic crisis.
Bu together, these speeches expose a fundamental diplomatic contradiction.
The harder America works to shield Israel from international pressure, the more it forces Israeli economic isolation whilst undermining its own global leadership.
1 The Sparta Admission And What It Means
Netanyahu’s choice of Sparta as a model was telling. You can visit its ruins today. Sparta heroically, though unsuccessfully, confronted the Persian empire. It also enslaved and oppressed its Helot minority.
Israel, said Netanyahu, would be “Athens and super-Sparta” – combining intellectual prowess with military isolation.
Netanyahu presented a dramatic departure from Israel’s innovation-based economy.
Like the Tel Aviv stock market, Israeli business leaders understood the implications immediately.
The High-Tech for Israel Forum asked:
“Is this the prime minister’s vision – that we go back to being an orange seller?”
The president of Israel’s Manufacturers’ Association was more direct:
“The Israeli brand, of creativity, demand, and success, has been seriously harmed in the world... an autarkic market will be a disaster for Israel’s economy and will influence every citizen’s quality of life.”
Economic isolation would reverse decades of technological development.
2 The Scapegoating Strategy
Netanyahu’s speech is a fascinating illustration of how protective relationships create incentives for blame displacement rather than policy adjustment.
Rather than acknowledging that his government’s actions might have contributed to his country’s isolation, he attributed the situation to external forces.
“Limitless migration” had created politically significant Muslim minorities in Europe who were “very vocal, very, very belligerent.” Israel was also the victim of digital influence operations by “Qatar and China” using “bots, artificial intelligence, and advertisements.”
This allowed Netanyahu to avoid confronting how Israel’s conduct in Gaza is being perceived by those outside – growing majorities of American and European voters view as genocidal – and how that might explain its diplomatic isolation.
The protective relationship enables such deflection by ensuring that American support continues regardless of Israeli policy choices.
3 America’s Umbrella Under Strain
America’s protection mechanism operates through three channels that are creating the isolation that Netanyahu identified.
Financial: America provides $3.8 billion annually in military aid whilst simultaneously defunding international organisations that criticise Israeli actions. The Trump administration has withdrawn from multiple UN entities, creating a zero-sum trade-off: protecting Israel means abandoning US multilateral leadership.
Electoral: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – Washington’s most influential pro-Israel lobbying group – and its super PAC spent over $126 million in the 2024 election cycle. That money can also be used to fund campaigns against Netanyahu’s critics.
The $20 million campaigns against Representatives Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, early Gaza ceasefire advocates, demonstrated how financial pressure can disconnect policy from public opinion.
This creates a “chilling effect” where only 8% of Democrats approve of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, yet Congress remains structurally insulated from these preferences through targeted spending.
Legal Exemptions: America maintains special Israeli exemptions from its Leahy Law requirements that prohibit military aid to units credibly accused of human rights violations. This requires continuous diplomatic capital to defend.
4 Security Establishment Pushback
The most damaging revelation came not from Netanyahu’s public admission, but from military leadership dissent. IDF Chief of Staff Lt Gen Eyal Zamir reportedly yelled at cabinet ministers on 15 September – the same day as Netanyahu’s speech – that they should “take the deal!” and accept a hostage-ceasefire agreement rather than pursue expanded military operations.
“Why isn’t the negotiating team travelling around the world now, in order to bring about a deal by force? Why do we always have to depend on [the US]?” Zamir asked ministers, exposing the strategic contradictions where military professionals advocated for diplomatic solutions that political leaders rejected.
When security establishments support different policies than political leaders, protective relationships amplify rather than resolve strategic contradictions.
5 Trump’s Institutional Abandonment
Trump’s UN speech revealed the American side of the protective paradox. Rather than defending Israeli actions within international law frameworks, Trump instead chose to attack the US-created institutions themselves, asking “What is the purpose of the United Nations?” and declaring it “not even coming close to living up to its potential.”
He also echoed Netanyahu’s criticism of European immigration policies. Without tying it to facts, he dog-whistled culture wars, lending support to the kinds of politicies promised by Europe’s far right. Netanyahu’s own party has formalised relations with such parties, mostly in support of their “anti-Muslim” agenda.
Trump’s institutional hostility to the UN stems directly from the protection dynamic: when American allies increasingly view Israeli actions as violations of international law, America faces a choice between working within legal frameworks it helped create or abandoning them entirely. Trump chose abandonment.
Brown University’s Watson Institute documents $22.8 billion in American spending on Israeli military operations and related regional deployments since October 2023 – the most sustained military campaign since the ISIS war.
Yet this has failed to prevent the European recognition of Palestinian statehood that Netanyahu acknowledges requires economic autarky.
6 The Feedback Loop’s Toxic Logic
The protection mechanism creates self-reinforcing cycles that become harder to break as costs escalate.
Netanyahu’s evening damage control – dismissing “doom-and-gloom forecasters” and promising to “increase investments in weapons production so as not to be dependent on weak Western European leaders who give in to the extreme Muslim minorities in their countries” – illustrated how protective relationships encourage escalation rather than adjustment.
When 77% of Democrats view Israeli actions as genocide, and six out of ten Americans want the US to stop UAS sending Israel miliyet electoral spending ensures policy continuation, democratic systems eventually find alternative channels for expression.
AIPAC’s 2024 electoral success against constituent preferences will likely trigger organised counter-mobilisation targeting incumbents who prioritise Israeli preferences over American strategic interests.
7 The Strategic Implications
Israeli Opposition Leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid captured the fundamental issue:
“Isolation is not fate. It’s a product of a wrongheaded and failed policy.”
Yet the protective relationship structure makes policy adjustment difficult because it insulates decision-makers from the consequences of their actions.
Former war cabinet member and Netanyahu rival, Gadi Eisenkot, was more direct:
He is implementing the ‘Netanyahu Doctrine:’ to create endless threats for Israel … Israel wants to belong to the region and to the family of nations. Netanyahu is dragging it into an extremist, blind approach doomed to fail.
What these two speeches from September 2025 reveal is that the US-Israel relationship as currently structured has become strategically counterproductive for both nations.
Netanyahu’s “Super-Sparta” vision threatens Israel’s economic foundation, whilst Trump’s institutional hostility undermines America’s global leadership.
Ultimately, the dynamic serves neither country’s long-term interests.
Thanks for reading!
Best
Adrian
