On the American retreat and subsidy disguised as assistance- Anshel Pfeffer in Haaretz:

'The grandiose opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games often serve as a useful venue for informal meetings between world leaders. The Beijing Olympics in August 2008 was no exception. Vladimir Putin (at the time prime minister of Russia, on a break between his periods of presidency, but no one had any illusions that he was still very much in charge of the Kremlin), had a brief meeting with then-Israeli president Shimon Peres.
Putin had one message for Peres: “Get your people out of Georgia.” Russian troops were about to invade the neighboring country, in what was to become the first round in Putin’s campaign to keep former Soviet vassals in line, and he was now telling Israel to remove the private Israeli defense contractors working with the pro-western Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili’s military. Peres sent the message on to prime minister Ehud Olmert and Israel swiftly complied.'

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'Israel’s leaders, to their credit, were prepared for this. Peres and Olmert, Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu have all been extremely wary and respectful of Putin and made major efforts over the past two decades to improve ties with other aspiring, global and regional powers, particularly China, India and Brazil. Even when the leaders of these countries were incurring the displeasure of Israel’s supreme ally – some would say patron – in Washington.
In recent years, Israel was slow to join the U.S. and other western governments in condemning Russia for its expansionist moves in Crimea and Ukraine, and has rebuffed pressure to place more stringent restrictions on sales of technology to China. This has been the situation both under Barack Obama and Donald Trump, despite their radically different relationships with Israel’s current leaderNetanyahu.
U.S.-Israel special relationship That doesn’t change the fact that Israel still sees its alliance with the U.S. as its primary strategic asset. It’s not just the military assistance of 3.8 billion dollars a year (mainly a subsidy to American arms manufacturers who sell their wares to the Israel Defense Forces), the almost blanket veto in the United Nations of any resolution against Israel, or the “joint values” and the historic fact that the U.S. was the first to recognize the newly-born state of Israel, 11 minutes after midnight on May 15, 1948. The fact that Israel is widely viewed across the world as one of America’s closest allies has huge strategic importance for its foreign relations and military deterrence.'

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'They may have to be more wary, but once again, it could be in Israel’s interests to suspend, or even end, exclusivity - especially if the U.S. is no longer certain about its long-term presence in the region. New security partnerships with the Europeans and closer relationships with the Russian and Chinese defense establishments make sense, even if they do come at America’s expense.
Partnering with nice European democracies is one thing, but Russia and China? What about shared values? Good questions, again. But shared values, or even the perception or myth of sharing them, are a luxury worth having only when the partners can first project each other’s power. As America retreats from the Middle East, there’s less and less American power for Israel to project, and the question of whether Israel can be better off without its strategic partner is no longer a question. It will have little choice in the matter anyway.'

Read the article here,

The most important thing is this article is that the retreat of America as a global policeman, the demise of America as a superpower, is not longer discussed as something that might or might not happen, but as something that is happening as we speak.
Those on the left will regret this demise, because it will turn out to make this world not a better, more progressive, more open place, quite the contrary. And I'm not saying this naively, American foreign policy was not a beach party. It was bloody mess, filled with injustices, not easily forgivable injustices.
But the alternatives, the dictators waiting to fill the void, the dictators filling the void as we speak, will be worse.

The interesting question is: will the demise of America as a political and military superpower coincide with the demise of America as cultural superpower? My prediction: the demise of the US as cultural superpower will come fifty years after the final demise of America as a political superpower.

And who knows, perhaps the American superpower will have a post-script.