VIDEO: Why retribution against China for COVID-19 harms US interests
The Quincy Institute's Rachel Esplin Odell explains that punitive action against Beijing right now will only undermine U.S. economic interests — after a month that saw more 22 million Americans lose their jobs.
As COVID-19 ravages America, some U.S. politicians are focusing their efforts on trying to punish the Chinese government through sanctions and other measures.
The Quincy Institute's Rachel Esplin Odell explains that punitive action against Beijing right now will only undermine U.S. economic interests — after a month that saw more 22 million Americans lose their jobs.
If U.S. officials are serious about punishing China, then the situation could quickly escalate out of control, costing untold lives and devastating the global economy. And how many countries in the world would really benefit from having to choose sides in a catastrophic Cold War between Beijing and Washington? Watch:
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President Trump announced on December 22 that the Navy would build a new Trump-class of “battleships.” The new ships will dwarf existing surface combatant ships. The first of these planned ships, the expected USS Defiant, would be more than three times the size of an existing Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.
Predictably, a major selling point for the new ships is that they will be packed full of all the latest technology. These massive new battleships will be armed with the most sophisticated guns and missiles, to include hypersonics and eventually nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. The ships will also be festooned with lasers and will incorporate the latest AI technology.
If you think you have heard this story before, you would be right. This will be the fourth time this century that the national security establishment has attempted to build a new surface combatant ship for the Navy. For those of you who may not be keeping score, the previous three attempts have been horrendous failures.
Just to refresh everyone’s memory, the Navy already attempted to build a modern version of the battleship in the early 2000’s. That was the Zumwalt-class destroyer program. Navy leaders wanted to build 32 such ships that would be armed with a futuristic gun system to support Marine amphibious assaults. The gun could never be built in a cost effective way so it was cancelled. That left the ship without a clear mission and the entire program was stopped after only three ships had been built. Each of those ships still don’t have a clear mission and now exist as $8 billion anchors around the Navy’s neck.
Less than a month before the president announced this latest shipbuilding program, the Secretary of the Navy cancelled the Constellation-class frigate program after Navy leaders sunk nearly $9 billion into it and before a single hull had been commissioned. That announcement was shocking because the Constellation frigates were intended to be a low risk replacement for the earlier, failed Littoral Combat Ship program.
The Littoral Combat Ships were supposed to be the Navy’s workhorse ships that would hunt mines and submarines, fight other surface ships, and provide security for the rest of the fleet. They were originally to employ a complicated modular design that would see each ship have mission systems swapped out in port to give them the specialized capabilities for their next deployment. The scheme failed spectacularly when modules didn’t work and cost soared. The ships also proved to be quite fractious and suffered several embarrassing mechanical breakdowns. Several Littoral Combat Ships had to be rescued at sea and towed back to port.
The Littoral Combat Ship program was expected to help the Navy increase the size of the fleet because each ship was supposed to cost a mere $220 million when the program began in 2002. By the time Navy officials gave up on the program 15 years later, the cost of each hull had grown to over $600 million.
Over the course of three major shipbuilding failures, a reasonable person would expect that those involved in the process would have learned some lessons. The first lesson that should have been learned and properly applied this time around is that the desire to build the most futuristic ship imaginable is a fool’s errand.
The Zumwalt, Littoral Combat Ship, and the Constellation-class programs all failed because the designers got too cute. Rather than building rugged ships that are stripped down to the bare essentials, they continue to create fanciful designs chock-a-block full of every conceivable gadget.
There is an uncomfortable truth the leaders of the national security establishment need to learn. That is: every gadget you add to one of these systems is one more thing that can break. When designers lack discipline, as they obviously did while sketching out this latest future boondoggle, a simple mathematical truth asserts itself. Engineers will struggle just to get all of these components to work individually.
Then there will be a terrible system integration challenge to get all of these finicky components to work together. Even if those two challenges can be overcome, the poor crews of these ships will struggle mightily to keep all of these gadgets functional while at sea. The sheer number of problems will constantly threaten the crew’s capacity to stay one step ahead of the maintenance monster the designers are now creating for them.
I take no pleasure in predicting another shipbuilding disaster. My own son is a sailor in the U.S. Navy. He and his shipmates need effective equipment to do their jobs. When politicians in Washington implement policies that place political and economic interests above military effectiveness, acquisition disasters become inevitable.
You can take this one to the bank. The Navy will spend tens of billions of dollars over the course of the next decade on the Trump-class program. At best, the Navy will receive three troublesome ships that will cost more than $10 billion each before then entire scheme is abandoned. Of course, the people who are making these decisions today will have long since passed from the scene by the time that happens and so will not have to face the consequences of their actions. It will be my son and those who come after him who will have to do that.
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An Israeli Air Force F-35I Lightning II “Adir” approaches a U.S. Air Force 908th Expeditionary Refueling Squadron KC-10 Extender to refuel during “Enduring Lightning II” exercise over southern Israel Aug. 2, 2020. While forging a resolute partnership, the allies train to maintain a ready posture to deter against regional aggressors. (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Patrick OReilly)
On November 17, 2025, President Donald Trump announced that he would approve the sale to Saudi Arabia of the most advanced US manned strike fighter aircraft, the F-35. The news came one day before the visit to the White House of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has sought to purchase 48 such aircraft in a multibillion-dollar deal that has the potential to shift the military status quo in the Middle East. Currently, Israel is the only other state in the region to possess the F-35.
During the White House meeting, Trump suggested that Saudi Arabia’s F-35s should be equipped with the same technology as those procured by Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly sought assurances from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who sought to walk back Trump’s comment and reiterated a “commitment that the United States will continue to preserve Israel’s qualitative military edge in everything related to supplying weapons and military systems to countries in the Middle East.”
The Trump administration’s approach to the military balance in the Middle East is not determined solely by politics, but also by the requirement in US law to maintain Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME). The policy was originally conceived almost 45 years ago as a way to ensure Middle East stability by guaranteeing Israel’s military superiority over regional rivals. But the QME requirement has created perverse incentives that have the potential to sustain destabilizing military action by Israel, to fuel arms races, and ultimately to undermine US strategic interests in the Middle East.
The Origins of the QME Policy
A formal US commitment to safeguarding Israel’s QME began to take shape in the 1970s. It was first articulated as US policy under the Reagan administration in 1981, when then-secretary of state Alexander Haig testified to Congress that a “central aspect of US policy since the October 1973 war has been to ensure that Israel maintains a qualitative military edge.” The first challenge to Israel’s QME came the same year, when the Reagan administration proposed to deliver the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), a military radar and command and control system, to Saudi Arabia as part of what was at the time the largest foreign arms deal in US history. After considerable opposition from US lawmakers sympathetic to Israel as well as from the Israeli government, President Ronald Reagan reaffirmed to Congress that he remained “fully committed to protecting Israel’s security and to preserving Israel’s ability to defend against any combination of potentially hostile forces in the region.”
It was not until 2008 that Israel’s QME acquired a formal definition in US law. The Naval Vessels Transfer Act of 2008 defined QME as:
The ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damages and casualties, through the use of superior military means, possessed in sufficient quantity, including weapons, command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that in their technical characteristics are superior in capability to those of such other individual or possible coalition of states or non-state actors.
The Naval Vessels Transfer Act also required the US government to conduct a quadrennial assessment of Israel’s qualitative edge and amended the Arms Export Control Act of 1976 (AECA) to require that any major US arms transfer to other Middle Eastern states should not adversely affect Israel’s QME. Amendments in 2014 added a requirement: for such transfers, the administration should also certify “Israel’s capacity to address the improved capabilities provided by such sale or export.” According to the original definition, maintaining the qualitative edge necessitates that Israel remains able to defeat credible conventional military threats from states and non-state actors.
QME in Practice
Since 2008, the Department of State has been responsible for ensuring that proposed arms transfers to the Middle East comply with the legal requirements to maintain Israel’s QME during the arms transfer review process. The Department defines the region as those countries that fall under the purview of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA), which covers the area from Morocco to Iran. In practice, because Iran has been ineligible for US arms transfers since the 1979 Revolution, this legislation applies only to the Arab world.
The executive branch notification to Congress of a proposed major arms transfer to the region must include a classified QME analysis as part of the official documentation. The analytical process and the means by which it is considered in the policy process is also classified, but has been described as involving “input from the State Department, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the Joint Staff, the defense intelligence community, the combatant commands, and the services. At the annual Department of Defense Joint Political Military Group meeting, the Israelis typically make a presentation that includes a list of systems they deem threatening to their QME.”
When considering proposed arms sales to the region that may challenge Israel’s QME, the US government can consider three options:
The first option is to provide Israel with additional military capabilities to remain ahead. For example, when the Obama administration proposed to sell F-16 fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2013, it simultaneously proposed to provide Israel with advanced radars capable of identifying incoming F-16s at long range. But balancing arms transfers by bolstering Israel’s purely defensive capabilities is difficult, as the distinction between defensive and offensive systems often depends on context and intent. If Israel’s newly acquired capabilities prompt other regional states to upgrade their systems, the QME rule can help to fuel an arms race across the Middle East. Section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), which pre-dates the codification of QME, requires each proposal to analyze its potential for contributing to an arms race. The opening paragraph of the AECA specifically states that “it remains the policy of the United States to… discourage arms races.” If QME-related arms sales create the potential to trigger arms races, they may be in direct violation of US law.
A second option is to place limitations on a sale. These limitations may be quantitative (such as a limit on the numbers of an article transferred to an Arab state), geographical (based on factors such as on the proximity to Israel of the article and the recipient country), or technological (to ensure that Israel is supplied with more advanced versions of the capabilities in question).
The third option—denying the proposed sale to preserve Israel’s qualitative edge—can be disadvantageous from Washington’s perspective. The US arms export lobby often argues that it is preferable for Washington to supply weapons—while monitoring or constraining their use—rather than allowing states with poor human rights records to turn to America’s competitors. But the legal requirement to maintain Israel’s QME means that denying sales to Arab states is sometimes the only option. In such situations, Arab governments may turn to third countries to obtain the defense capabilities that they consider necessary to respond to security concerns focused on US adversaries such as Iran. From Washington’s perspective, preserving Israel’s QME may produce perverse incentives for partners in the Middle East to shift their defense supply chains to countries such as China or Russia that are not bound by this limitation.
Regional Implications
The legal requirement to uphold Israel’s QME places limitations on US arms transfers to all Arab countries, constraining both the sophistication of the technology and the quantity to be supplied. The QME standard applies to all US defense articles destined for the region—including fully deployable ‘end items’ like aircraft or tanks as well as subcomponents incorporated into systems produced by third countries for Middle Eastern clients. When US-made defense systems surpass the capabilities of what foreign competitors can provide, the US government can, in effect, dictate the ceiling for what technology levels and quantities Arab states are permitted to receive.
The superiority of US military technology therefore grants the United States considerable leverage over Arab states. But if the United States loses its edge in military technology—or if US-origin items are gradually designed-out of partner weapons systems—that leverage may decrease. US limits on arms transfers might then create incentives for Arab states to turn to alternative suppliers (such as China or France) for certain high-end military systems.
A broader concern is the implication of the QME for Israel’s foreign and security policy. Because Israel remains assured that the United States will help it retain military superiority over the entire region, Tel Aviv may feel able to rely on such superiority rather than engaging in diplomacy. But Israel’s recurrent reliance on military force in regional political conflicts arguably contributes to instability across the Middle East as a whole. In this respect, the QME doctrine inadvertently can feed into the regional dynamics of instability, driving precisely the threats to Israel that it is meant to mitigate.
Does QME Have a Future?
The improved outlook for regional security promised by the Abraham Accords may eventually weaken the perceived need for the United States to guarantee Israel’s qualitative military edge. Does Israel really need a QME over countries with which it enjoys cordial diplomatic and trade relations? Perhaps surprisingly, Israeli officials have themselves made this argument, for example stating in the context of the 2020 proposed F-35 sale to the UAE that “[w]e believe that the UAE is an ally in confronting Iran, and we do not believe that this arms package will violate the US commitment.” Such public avowals, however, do not overcome the underlying statutory requirement. In this author’s experience while serving in the US government, advocates for maintaining Israel’s QME—such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)— opposed such sales behind closed doors.
Proposals to expand the QME definition to include Turkey as a state over which Israel must maintain a qualitative military edge could lead to additional complications by prioritizing Israel’s defense over that of a NATO member. The concept of US responsibility for another country’s QME also creates a troubling precedent that, in recent years, some US analysts have sought to advance in other contexts, such as with regard to Greece (versus Turkey) and India (versus China). Taken out of the Israel context, expanding the QME will likely risk fueling further arms races.
Military analysts have argued that the world is on the brink of a new revolution in military affairs, one characterized by the proliferation of low-cost weapons systems capable of overcoming high-tech capabilities. If correct, this analysis suggests that Israel’s QME is unlikely to be a permanent fixture of the Middle East’s military balance. In future, US and Israeli policymakers would be wise to explore alternatives to Israeli military hegemony and the inherent fragility that it brings to the region. Diplomacy and compromise—including the need for real progress on Palestinian self-determination—promises the only real exit from the isolation that the QME has allowed Israel to impose on itself. If Israel is to step back from using military force as a first resort, it must first realize that its current military advantage is ephemeral. Diplomacy represents the only viable alternative to the current trajectory of instability and arms races.
This article has been republished with permission from Arab Center Washington DC.
The Trump administration’s hopes of convening a summit between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi either in Cairo or Washington as early as the end of this month or early next are unlikely to materialize.
The centerpiece of the proposed summit is the lucrative expansion of natural gas exports worth an estimated $35 billion. This mega-deal will pump an additional 4 billion cubic meters annually into Egypt through 2040.
On Wednesday, in a video statement from Jerusalem, notably without the attendance of any Egyptian officials, Netanyahu announced his final approval of the deal. Flanked by Energy Minister Eli Cohen, he hailed the $35 billion agreement as a "historic" windfall that would cement Israel’s status as a "regional energy superpower." Egypt gave its quiet assent to the terms back in July and was quick to downplay the agreement after Netanyahu’s announcement, noting that the agreement is “purely commercial” devoid of any “political dimensions or understandings of any kind.”
Behind the scenes, the U.S. has been eager to use the momentum of the deal to stage a trilateral summit, with Trump's adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly taking the lead. The fanfare is meant to serve as Netanyahu’s victory lap, proof that, despite two years of grinding war in Gaza, Israel’s regional standing remains intact.
But the setting of Wednesday's announcement was telling. There was no rose garden ceremony, no handshake in Sharm el-Sheikh. According to the Times of Israel, an Egyptian official explained days before that Sisi would not meet with Netayahu, not without a fundamental shift in Israel’s conduct. Mahmoud Musallam, a member of the Egyptian senate, gave the refusal a public face, noting that relations are “poor” and that a summit was “impossible.”
This situation comes as no surprise. While significant volumes of gas from Israel’s Tamar and Leviathan fields now flow to Egypt—helping to stabilize its precarious energy security— the smoking ruins of Gaza lie between them. The conflict has turned the 1979 peace treaty, long a cornerstone of Middle Eastern stability, into a stress test of the cold, transactional peace between the two regional powers.
Israeli officials, including Cohen, have played a chaotic game of brinkmanship over the last few months, backing out of signing the gas deal and publicly questioning the fairness of its commercial terms. The move prompted U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright to cancel a planned visit to Jerusalem in October in a huff.
But the commercial dispute was merely a symptom of a relationship at its nadir. Cairo refuses to accredit Israel’s designated ambassador, leaving its embassy headless for most of the past year. Direct communication between the presidential palace and the prime minister’s office has gone dead. All that remains is quiet, mutual resentment.
The official cited in the Times of Israel report was explicit. Sisi refuses to be a “prop” in Netanyahu’s political survival drama.
Indeed the Israeli premier’s position is perilous. In Gaza, the “total victory” he promised has yet to materialize; instead it has isolated the country diplomatically. In domestic courts, he faces longstanding bribery and corruption charges for which he recently took the extraordinary step of petitioning President Isaac Herzog for a pre-conviction pardon, arguing that the “security reality” and “national interest” justify his request for legal immunity.
Faced with these pressures, and with Israel heading into an election year, Netanyahu needs to look like a statesman. But Sisi has no intention of casting himself as the supporting actor who legitimizes the principal author of the devastation on his doorstep.
At the border between Egypt and Gaza, Israel demands that the Rafah crossing be opened in one direction, exit only, refusing to accept the entry or the return of Palestinians. Egypt refuses, seeing this as another attempt at displacing Gaza's population.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty has been vocal on the matter, accusing Israel of committing “genocide” and claiming that Israel is trying to engineer a demographic shift that Egypt will not accept. Meanwhile, Israeli officials accuse Egypt of turning a blind eye to weapons smuggling, effectively blaming Cairo for Hamas’s resilience.
Washington is desperate for a diplomatic breakthrough it could use to showcase progress on its Gaza peace efforts; it is so keen for a photo-op between leaders who haven’t met face to face since 2018.
The Trump administration evidently sees the Egypt-Israel axis as the only thing that could breathe life back into the Abraham Accords. It wants to generate momentum for a now U.N.- approved (and presumably Egyptian-led) "International Stabilization Force" to police the “day after”’ in Gaza, even while administration officials quietly fume about Israel’s ceasefire violations.
But the Trump team is misreading the room. It is forgetting the events of the Gaza Peace Summit in October, when President Trump had issued a last-minute invitation, only to watch the guest list disintegrate. Iraq’s prime minister threatened a boycott, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s jet reportedly circled the Red Sea until he received assurances that Netanyahu would not show up.
Cairo, faced with an empty hall, rescinded Netanyahu’s invitation, while the latter’s office obligingly cited the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah as the reason for his absence.
In short, a public meeting with Netanyahu is politically toxic for regional leaders. Their populations are still seething from the images of death, destruction and starvation coming out of Gaza over the last two years.
For Egypt, the $35 billion project and the billions of additional cubic meters of gas it brings is highly desired of course, but the reality is that Cairo also has leverage. The new deal, which envisages the expansion of the Leviathan field, would see Egypt act not just as a consumer, but as a hub for the liquification of Israeli gas at its Idku and Damietta plants for re-export to a gas-starved Europe.
This is what has driven Washington’s push to close the deal. For the White House, it’s a win on multiple fronts: Europe gains a non‑Russian energy lifeline, Chevron, a U.S. company, secures a lucrative and strategic contract, and, most optimistically, U.S. officials wager (as does Netanyahu) that deeper energy and economic integration could help cool regional tensions and bring Israel in from the cold.
But Egypt, since giving its quiet approval in July, has had the luxury of playing for time, filling the gap with Qatari LNG bought on the spot market (expensive, but politically safe) while it squeezes Netanyahu for concessions on Gaza.
The standoff embodies what analysts have for long described as a “cold peace” between the two. For decades, the relationship was maintained by security elites in the back rooms, insulated from the passions of the street, but the Gaza war has shattered that arrangement. Intelligence coordination continues, it has to, but the political buffer is gone.
Even routine security coordination is now mired in suspicion. Take Israel’s seizure (or “occupation” as one Egyptian official called it) last year of the Philadelphi Corridor, the roughly nine-mile stretch of land along the Gazan-Egyptian border that includes the Rafah crossing. That move was perceived by Egypt as a unilateral rewriting of the security arrangements that had held for forty years. Netanyahu, alongside Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, have in turn accused Egypt of treaty violations regarding troop levels in the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt dismisses this as deflection.
When neighbors start citing the fine print of 45-year-old treaties, it signals how little trust remains.
Sisi, consistent with the regional and international consensus, demands a political horizon for the Palestinians. He needs a Palestinian entity in Gaza that is stable enough to keep the border quiet and possible refugees on their side of the wire. Netanyahu’s government, still beholden to far-right parties that dream of the permanent displacement of the more than two million Gazans, offers no such horizon. As a result, the impasse hardens.
Yet, despite these tensions, the closure of the gas deal was inevitable, even before Netanyahu put pen to paper. The pipelines are already sunk deep in the Mediterranean, and the gas is already flowing. But the political theater Netanyahu, Trump and Kushner crave — the handshake, the smiles, the declaration of a new era — appears out of reach for now. Contracts will be signed by technocrats, while Sisi stays away and washes his hands of the whole affair.
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