Under President Obama, the U.S. announced a “pivot to Asia,” to be accompanied by a retreat from the Middle East. The Trump administration has, in many respects, taken a similar approach. According to conventional wisdom, such a reorientation is made possible by America’s growing energy independence. But, writes Paul Wolfowitz, few have noted the inherent paradox in “pivoting” from the Middle East to East Asia:

How can a strategy that aims to protect this country’s large and growing interest in the Asian Pacific region, with both its future opportunities and potential threats, and particularly one with a focus on China, say little or nothing about China’s critical and growing dependence on the energy resources of the greater Middle East? Not to mention the even greater dependence of Japan and many of our other friends and allies in the region on that vital energy source?

Yet the Obama administration strategy called “the Pivot” did precisely that. And to a surprising extent so does the Trump administration’s “Indo-Pacific Strategy,” despite some important departures from Obama with respect to China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

As a strategy, the Pivot suffered from a fundamental flaw, reflected in that phrase “energy independence” still often heard from the Trump administration even though Trump has partially reversed the retreat from the Middle East. The U.S. may have become energy “self-sufficient,” but East Asia most definitely has not. The Middle East, in particular, remains to this day the indispensable energy source for the economies of both our most formidable competitor in East Asia, China, and our most important ally, Japan, not to mention other important friends and allies in the region. Retreating from the Middle East makes little sense as part of a strategy for protecting American interests in the Asia Pacific.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.