Negotiating Advice for Ukraine Supporters

January 13, 2025

During the 2024 campaign, candidate Donald Trump said he could resolve the Ukraine war in twenty-four hours by getting together with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky to thrash things out. At a January 7 press conference, President-elect Trump conceded it could take up to six months. Call that learning.

Trump fundamentally wants the war to disappear. He has said repeatedly it would never have occurred had he been President, as he has also said about the ongoing Middle East conflict. Of course, these statements are, by definition, neither provable nor disprovable, but they reflect his visceral feeling that the wars are Biden’s problem and should disappear when Biden does.

Neither war will disappear so quickly, but Trump’s comments strongly suggest that he is indifferent to the terms on which they end. That is likely bad news for Ukraine, though it could be good news for Israel in its struggle against Iran’s “ring of fire” strategy. As Inauguration Day nears, there is precious little information publicly available about what Trump will actually do. And, because he has neither a coherent philosophy nor a strategic approach to foreign affairs, what he says in the morning may not apply in the afternoon.

Accordingly, those concerned for Ukrainian and Western security should focus clearly on what is negotiable with Moscow and what is not. Early decisions on the central components of potential diplomacy can have far-reaching implications that the parties will inevitably try to turn to their benefit. Ukraine especially must make several key decisions about how to proceed. Consider the following.

Although a cease-fire linked to commencing negotiations may be inevitable because of pressure from Trump, such a cease-fire is not necessarily in Ukraine’s interest. Talking while fighting was a successful strategy for the Chinese Communist Party in its struggle against the Kuomintang during and after World War II. It could work for Ukraine today under certain conditions. Most important, of course, is the continued supply of adequate military assistance, which is questionable with Trump in office.

But a cease fire can be more perilous for Ukraine than for Russia: the longer negotiations take, the more likely it is the cease-fire lines become permanent, a new border between Ukraine and Russia far into the future. As negotiations proceed, the absence of hostilities will provide opportunities for Moscow to seek full or at least partial easing of economic sanctions, which many Europeans seem poised to concede. Moreover, once hostilities stop, they are far harder politically to resume, which is also likely to Ukraine’s disadvantage. Although Russia would probably win an indefinite war of attrition, it also needs time to rebuild its debilitated military and economy. A cease fire affords that opportunity, and thereby buys time for Russia to heal its wounds and prepare the next attack. Russia waited eight years after its 2014 offensive, and can afford to wait again until the West is distracted elsewhere.

If Trump insists on a cease-fire-in-place and contemporaneous negotiations, Ukraine must be careful to avoid having the talks aim at a permanent solution rather than a temporary accommodation. Russia will see any deal as temporary in any case, no matter what it says publicly. Vladimir Putin obsesses over reincorporating Ukraine into a new Russian empire, and each slice of territory Russia takes back brings that goal closer. Negotiating an “end” to the war plays into the Kremlin’s hands, since it provides the false impression to gullible Westerners that there is no risk of future aggression.

Both the cease-fire issue and the duration of any deal raise two other questions: should there be “peacekeepers” along the cease-fire line, and should Ukraine insist on “security guarantees” from the West (NATO or otherwise) against future Russian aggression?

Peacekeeping is operationally complex, and rarely successful in any sense other than helping prolong a military stalemate. That is nearly the uniform outcome of UN peacekeeping. Peacekeeping forces (like UNIFIL in Lebanon or UNDOF on the Golan Heights) simply become part of the landscape, in peace or war. The Security Council loses interest in resolving the sources of the underlying conflict. The peacekeepers become irrelevant, as recent developments along the cease-fire line between Israel and Syria demonstrate. In short, peacekeepers are essentially only hollow symbols.

Indeed, it is the recognition of UN ineffectiveness that has likely inspired calls for deploying NATO peacekeepers along the Ukraine-Russia line-of-control. But does anyone expect Russia to agree meekly? Will Moscow not suggest peacekeepers from Iran or North Korea along with NATO? Moreover, there has been little discussion about what a peacekeeping force’s rules of engagement would be, whether deployed by the UN or NATO. Would these rules be typical of UN operation, where the peacekeepers can only use force only in self-defense? Or would the rules be more robust, allowing force in aid of their mission? Really? In aid of their mission, NATO peacekeepers would be allowed to use force against Russian troops? Or Ukrainian troops? In such circumstances, potential troop-contributing countries would make themselves very scarce.

Future security guarantees for Ukraine, which it is insisting upon, are unfortunately likely to be blue smoke and mirrors. Russia has repeatedly said that NATO membership — the only security guarantee that really matters — is a deal-breaker. European Union security guarantees? Good luck with that. Security guarantees by individual nations? That was the approach of the Budapest agreements on returning Soviet nuclear weapons to Russia; they didn’t work out so well. In short, “security guarantees” are mellifluous words, but evanescent without US and NATO participation, which Trump seems unlikely to endorse.

Negotiations are looming primarily because Trump wants the war to go away. Europe is too tired and too incapable of charting a different course. Contemplating these depressing scenarios, therefore, Ukraine and its supporters may have little choice but to acquiesce in talks on unfavorable terms. For that very reason, Kyiv should be very cautious on what it agrees with Trump.

This article was first published in 19fortyfive on January 12, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Trump risks hamstringing Marco Rubio

January 08, 2025

Turf-fighting is a way of life at the State Department, as in much of the federal government. The department’s complex and varied responsibilities have, over time, led to an organizational chart that has defied multiple attempts at rationalization. Its internal culture has simultaneously grown more entrenched. The Foreign Service is perhaps the government’s strongest civilian bureaucracy, buttressed by the department’s civil-service employees.

This is not the “deep state” so attractive to conspiracy theorists but a species of bureaucratic culture possessed by every federal department and agency and well-explored in public-choice economics. The State Department’s cadres instinctively resist political direction and control, trying to emulate the centuries-long insulation from politics of Europe’s foreign ministries. My own experience led me to conclude in Surrender Is Not an Option that the only solution to the department’s formidable bureaucracy is a “cultural revolution,” one that will take years to accomplish since the culture itself took many decades to evolve.

Every secretary of state, therefore, faces massive obstacles to giving new directions to their bureaucracy, especially Republicans, including President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). Worryingly, however, Trump has announced multiple appointments that could add serious complications to Rubio’s leadership and ability to successfully implement the administration’s foreign policy.

None of these Trumpian decisions are fatal, nor are further confusion, obstructionism, turf-fighting, backbiting, leaking to the press, and a generally Hobbesian foreign-policy involvement. Perhaps sweetness and light will prevail. However, the risk is palpable that Rubio’s enormous responsibilities will be considerably more difficult because of assignments and personalities he may have had a precious little role in deciding.

Trump’s practice is superficially similar to prior administrations: The White House routinely makes political appointments, while the State Department proposes career ambassadors. Critically different, however, are the natures of the positions being filled (or created), the unprecedented reality that some are already performing their “duties,” and whether they have direct access to Trump. By contrast, Rubio has kept a low-profile since being tapped, the customary approach before Senate confirmation.

For example, Trump chose Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as his U.S. ambassador to the United Nations before announcing Rubio, similar to 2016 when Trump picked Nikki Haley before Rex Tillerson. That did not turn out felicitously, either for Tillerson or his successor, Mike Pompeo. Whether or not our U.N. ambassador has Cabinet rank (and my view has always been “should not”), there can only be one secretary of state. Other opinions are welcome, but the department can only have one boss. Take my word. You have to watch those U.N. ambassadors.

Matt Whittaker, tipped for senior Justice Department roles (and perhaps still Plan B for FBI director), is to be our NATO Ambassador. Trump’s negative views on NATO are well-known, whereas Rubio has always been a strong NATO advocate. Will Whitaker report directly to Trump or to Rubio, and with what effect?

There is no doubt Keith Kellogg will have a direct line to Trump in his coming, newly-created role as assistant to the president and special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. Assistants to the president serve in his executive office, not at the State Department or another department. Trump once told me, “You know I wanted [Keith] as national security adviser after [H.R.] McMaster. He never offers his opinion unless I ask.”

This is the very paradigm of the fealty Trump wants from subordinates. Who knows what role Rubio will have in Ukraine policy?

The list of newly-concocted positions goes on: Massad Boulos, Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law, as senior adviser to the president on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs, and Steve Witkoff, a Trump family friend, as special envoy for the Middle East. Ever since Henry Kissinger and then Jim Baker, those roles have been for the secretary of state personally. Two more newly-forged, ambassadorial-style positions will go to first-term alumni: Richard Grenell as presidential envoy for special missions, “including Venezuela and North Korea,” and Mauricio Claver-Carone as the State Department’s special envoy to Latin America, which presumably still includes Venezuela. However, with Ukraine covered by Kellogg and two envoys already working in the Middle East, Grenell’s exact role is unclear.

Perhaps for belt-and-suspender purposes, the president-elect has not only nominated Warren Stephens, a respected investment banker, to be ambassador to the United Kingdom but just weeks later named Mark Burnett, producer of the former president’s television show The Apprentice, as special envoy to the U.K. Donald Trump said Burnett would “work to enhance diplomatic relations, focusing on areas of mutual interest, including trade, investment opportunities, and cultural exchanges,” which sounds suspiciously like the ambassador’s job.

Of course, all these appointees could also complicate the National Security Council’s interagency process, so Rubio will not likely be the only top-level Trump official wondering, “Who’s on first?” There may be more: Donald Trump hasn’t even taken office yet.

This article was first published in the Washington Examiner on January 8, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Trump can turn Syria opportunity against Iran

January 06, 2025

Last month’s rapid collapse and fall of Syria’s Assad dynasty surprised the world, starting with Bashar Assad himself. Led by the radical Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al Sham and likely galvanized by Israel’s mauling of Hamas and Hezbollah, the rebel victory represents Iran’s third catastrophic defeat in trying to implement its anti-Israel “ring of fire” strategy.

HTS and its leader, Ahmed al Sharaa, are struggling to consolidate power within long-fractured Syria. Their main priority is convincing Arab and Western states that they are no longer terrorists, nor controlled by Turkey, which labels HTS as terrorist but has nonetheless aided it for years. Sharaa has shed his terrorist nom de guerre and even his combat fatigues, now appearing at media events in Western attire. Whether his transformation from radical terrorist is real or merely cosmetic remains to be seen.

Iranian Leader Ali Khamenei attends a program at the Imam Khomeini Hosseini meets with Iran Air Force commanders and Iran Air Defense Force officers at the Imam Khomeini Husayniyya in Tehran, Iran on February 05, 2024. (Iranian Leader Press Office / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Still, this is no time for the United States to say “hands off.” We have two critical national security interests flowing from Assad’s downfall. First, cooperating with Israel and Arab allies, we must ensure that Syria does not become another terrorist state, threatening our regional allies and possibly Europe and America. Second, Washington and Jerusalem should seize the opportunity of swiftly moving events in the Middle East to increase pressure on Iran, including destroying or substantially weakening its nuclear weapons program.

On the antiterrorism front alone, the U.S. has compelling reasons to prevent another Afghanistan. Nearly 2,000 of our troops remain in northeastern and eastern Syria, supporting primarily Kurdish forces who helped eliminate the Islamic State territorial caliphate in 2019, and who are now guarding thousands of dangerous Islamic State fighters held prisoner. The Kurds are threatened not only by HTS but by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s neo-Ottomanist aspirations, long-standing irredentist objectives in northern Syria, and his vindictive campaign against the Kurdish people. Northeastern Syria is today relatively calm. Any U.S. withdrawal or assent to Turkish demands to “relieve” us would only contribute to longer-term instability.

Inside the remainder of Syria, numerous ethnic and religious minorities, some favored under Assad, some not, worry about their fate under radical Sunni Islamist rule, as possibly dangerous as the Shia Hezbollah terrorists in next-door Lebanon. The disorder in Syria compounds the already widespread fragmentation created during the Arab Spring struggle to overthrow Assad. These anarchic conditions are conducive for existing and newly arriving foreign terrorists to establish a significant presence in Syria, as in Afghanistan, which would pose substantial dangers regionally and globally.

For Washington, the possibility that HTS might push Russia out of its naval and air stations at Tartus and Hmeimim, respectively, is a major upside. HTS has reportedly called for all Russian forces to withdraw. Widespread reporting indicates that some removals of troops and equipment are underway, perhaps slowed by the sinking of a Russian cargo ship in the Mediterranean, which Moscow blames on terrorism. But if HTS did, in fact, expel the Russian military from Syria, that could be promising evidence that HTS wanted to foster stability and reject adventurism by unhelpful foreign assistance.

As to Iran, Assad’s overthrow substantially damaged its hegemonic ambitions, and not just in Syria. By cutting off land supply routes to Hezbollah in Lebanon, HTS severed the most efficient, economical route used by Tehran for years to supply its terrorist proxy. HTS has warned Iran against “spreading chaos in Syria,” which, typically, Iran denied doing.

Israel wasted little time after Assad fled to Moscow, attacking Syrian air, land, and naval military facilities; chemical and biological weapons targets; and temporarily occupying the entire U.N. Golan Heights demilitarized zone and some additional Syrian territory. Although criticized pro forma by Gulf Arab states, Israel’s preventive action was justified by Syria’s instability and the risk of terrorists seizing government control in Damascus. Even the Biden administration acted militarily, bombing significant Islamic State targets to prevent its resurgence, or allowing HTS to absorb Islamic State fighters and assets.

With Syrian air defenses degraded, as Iran’s have been by prior Israeli strikes, the way is now largely open from Israel to Iran should Jerusalem and Washington decide to strike the heart of Tehran’s nuclear program. There may never be a better opportunity.

The Biden administration has consistently and erroneously pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to eliminate Iran’s nuclear menace. However, core U.S. national security interests, notably our long struggles against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and global terrorism, all justify eliminating Tehran’s existing capabilities. Diplomacy has manifestly failed.

History is ready for the making in Syria and the Middle East. The incoming Trump administration should go for it.

This article was first published in the Washington Examiner on January 6, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

Presidents Expect Loyalty. Trump Demands Fealty.

January 05, 2025

Mr. Bolton was the longest-serving national security adviser in the first Trump administration and an assistant attorney general for the civil division at the Justice Department in the Reagan administration. He is the author of “The Room Where It Happened.”

Four years ago this Monday, Donald Trump pressured Mike Pence to pursue a surreal interpretation of the vice president’s constitutional role in counting the Electoral College’s votes. Mr. Pence refused, igniting Mr. Trump’s fury for not subordinating either philosophical or constitutional principles in service to him, thereby showing “disloyalty.” Thus ended Mr. Pence’s usefulness to Trumpworld, albeit honorably for Mr. Pence.

Now Mr. Trump is selecting key personnel for his second term. Although the prospective appointees vary in philosophy, competence and character, one requirement for them is unfortunately consistent: the likelihood that they will carry out Mr. Trump’s orders blind to norms and standards underlying effective governance, or perhaps even to legality.

Mr. Trump’s obsessiveness stems purportedly from an unhappy first term, when too many senior advisers were not “loyal” to him. These officials had separate agendas, Mr. Trump’s advocates say, undermining, frustrating, even reversing the president’s decisions and thereby illegitimately usurping his power. Such usurpers were considered denizens of the “deep state,” Republicans in Name Only, conspiratorially linked by a desire to cripple Mr. Trump’s presidency. Not this time, say his consiglieri, notably his eldest son; they want only loyalists.

But what exactly is “loyalty” in the executive branch, and indeed in Congress, where senators have a constitutional advise-and-consent role regarding significant numbers of (but not all) senior officials? To most citizens, loyalty is rightly seen as a virtue. Indeed, a major tenet of first-term veterans of Mr. Trump’s administration is that they did what was customary, which was to swear loyalty to our Constitution, not the man. Former officials like Mark Esper and Mark Milley have persuasively made precisely this point, which the Trump transition team conveniently ignores, fearing correctly that asserting personal over constitutional loyalty would produce nuclear-level blowback.

In fact, Mr. Trump, whose understanding of the Constitution is sketchy, really wants his appointees to display fealty, a medieval concept implying not mere loyalty but submission. Berating and demeaning cabinet officials before their colleagues, as he did to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, among others, and then keeping them in office is disturbing yet typical for Mr. Trump. At Britain’s 2023 coronation of King Charles, Prince William pledged that he would be his father’s “liege man of life and limb.” That’s fealty, publicly affirmed, the kind of personalist link that Mr. Trump expects will elide constitutional obligations.

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This is indisputably damaging to a free society, but it is a well-established Trump habit. Neither kings nor presidents, nor their countries, are well served if they are surrounded by sycophants and opportunists. Truly strong presidents are not afraid of advisers with strong views.

At his first formal cabinet meeting in June 2017, with the media present, Mr. Trump solicited his team’s praise, something even old Washington hands could not recall having seen.

In the current transition, potential Trump appointees say they have been asked whether they believe the 2020 election was stolen (to which there is only one right answer, one contrary to fact) and how they view the events of Jan. 6, 2021. (When Mr. Trump finally leaves the political scene, it will be interesting to see how many nominees claim they never believed he won in 2020 or that Jan. 6 was an innocent walk in the park, not an unlawful riot.) Kissing Mr. Trump’s ring to gain the highest government ranks is one thing, but the real crunch for the new appointees, especially those without prior government experience, will come after they actually begin work. That is one reason the Constitution checks the president’s appointment power.

The framers strove to make their Constitution lasting. They were not naïve. They had lived through “times that try men’s souls.” Alexander Hamilton, for example, saw the Senate’s advice-and-consent role in the most practical terms. As he wrote in Federalist 76, the idea that the president “could in general purchase the integrity of the whole body would be forced and improbable. A man disposed to view human nature as it is, without either flattering its virtues or exaggerating its vices, will see sufficient ground of confidence in the probity of the Senate, to rest satisfied not only that it will be impracticable to the Executive to corrupt or seduce a majority of its members; but that the necessity of its cooperation in the business of appointments will be a considerable and salutary restraint upon the conduct of that magistrate.”

Asking the Senate to perform as Hamilton envisioned is not hard. Recently, 38 House Republicans dealt Mr. Trump his first legislative loss as president-elect by defeating a continuing resolution he backed. Surely senators are at least as independent as House members.

How does fealty work in office? This is the real test of appointees’ personal integrity, evidencing whether their loyalty is to the Constitution or to Mr. Trump. In the Defense Department, for example, where military officers are obligated not to follow illegal orders, what happens if Mr. Trump orders a domestic deployment that violates the Posse Comitatus Act? Will Pete Hegseth, whom Mr. Trump has chosen to be the secretary of defense, urge rescinding the order or just pass it along to the armed services? Will uniformed officers, perhaps advised by government lawyers, demur? How deep into the chain of command could this chaos extend, and what lasting damage might it cause?

Analogous illegal orders could cause significant crises across the intelligence community, which is considered the dark heart of the deep state by many, Mr. Trump among them. But the federal departments and agencies most at risk are law-enforcement agencies, especially the Justice Department. If Mr. Trump orders that his choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi, prosecute Liz Cheney for potential subornation of perjury before the House’s Jan. 6 committee, what will Ms. Bondi do? She could say there is no prohibition on members of Congress encouraging witnesses to tell the truth in legislative hearings and no evidence that Cassidy Hutchinson or other witnesses perjured themselves.

Or Ms. Bondi could instruct Mr. Trump’s pick for deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who represented the president-elect in several criminal cases, to investigate not only Ms. Cheney but also Ms. Hutchinson and other witnesses. Mr. Blanche will be an interesting test case. He is a former federal prosecutor. He knows the rules. Will he uncritically follow Ms. Bondi’s order, at the risk of his own legal ethics and possible disciplinary action from the bar association? If Mr. Blanche passes the order down to the assistant attorney general for the criminal or national security division, or directly to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, what then? And once presented to career trial attorneys, what will they do, with their own professionalism at stake? All these questions and decisions also apply to F.B.I. staff members and other investigators, who will face scenarios comparable to those at the Justice Department.

As a result, there could be a Justice Department in continuing crisis. Whatever happens there and at other agencies, however, I believe the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts, and especially the trial courts, will not long tolerate the sort of malicious prosecutions Mr. Trump is considering in his retribution campaign. The example of district court judges in the District of Columbia, whether appointed by Republican or Democratic presidents, handling Jan. 6 defendants is instructive, especially their sentencing decisions. They may not all have been like Watergate’s “Maximum John” Sirica, an appointee of President Dwight Eisenhower, but they were tough. There’s nothing like the judiciary’s life tenure, compared with serving “at the pleasure of the president for the time being.”

Of course, just the cost of legal representation during investigations or prosecutions can be daunting, especially since Mr. Trump will be using tax dollars if he decides to wage lawfare against political opponents. He may not be expending his personal resources, but his targets will. Nor will they have the extent of official immunity that presidents have, criminally or civilly, something for office seekers to think about in advance.

Mr. Trump’s appointees should carefully note his expertise in escaping the consequences of his actions, whereas his loyal supporters often do not. Ask Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani.

This article was first published in the New York Times on January 5, 2025. Click here to read the original article.

A U.N. Reform Plan for Trump and Stefanik

December 26, 2024

The new administration should reject mandatory ‘assessments’ and fund only programs that work.
Elise Stefanik, Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has her work cut out for her. Fortunately, she’s already aware of the U.N.’s flaws. In a September op-ed for the Washington Examiner, she applauded Mr. Trump for withdrawing from the “corrupt and antisemitic” Human Rights Council and defunding the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the U.N.’s permanent refugee organization for Palestinians, during his first term. She also praised House Republicans for voting to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court.

Ms. Stefanik joins a long line of U.S. officials dismayed by the U.N.’s profound failings, including its deep-seated bias against Israel. As one of those officials, my contributions to U.N. reform include implementing President George W. Bush’s decision to remove America’s signature from the treaty establishing the ICC, advising Mr. Bush to vote against creating the Human Rights Council and then casting the vote, and leading the effort to repeal the U.N.’s infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution. Years later, in 2018, I recommended that Mr. Trump withdraw from the Human Rights Council and defund Unrwa.

But the job is far from over. No one should underestimate the difficulties that lie ahead or the effort that will be required to achieve real, lasting U.N. reform. A major obstacle is our own State Department. Its bureaucracy historically has been unwilling to do the heavy lifting required to muster support for transforming the U.N. That burden will fall not only on U.S. missions to U.N. components but also on the State Department’s regional bureaus, which are responsible for bilateral relations with the other 192 members. For decades, the regional bureaus have found reasons not to engage, pleading that innumerable bilateral issues be given higher priority. Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio will need to crack the whip for reform to succeed.

The new administration should prove to U.N. members that its goal of reform isn’t merely rhetorical. Washington’s most important weapon will be its wallet—decisions about how much it financially contributes, or doesn’t contribute, to the U.N. Current spending is out of control. In 2022, the most recent year for which we have accurate data, the U.S. contributed more than $18 billion, accounting for roughly one-third of total U.N. funding. As the Heritage Foundation reported, “the U.S. provided more funding to the U.N. system than 185 other U.N. member states combined.” That year we forked over 8.5 times the amount that China, the second-largest donor, contributed.

Funding for U.N. components falls into two categories: mandatory “assessed” contributions and voluntary contributions. Assessments are calculated by opaque “capacity to pay” formulas, which have historically made America the largest contributor. After decades of negotiation and legislation, U.S. assessments are capped at 22% for most contributions and 25% for peacekeeping operations. On a one-nation-one-vote basis, bodies like the General Assembly decide agency budgets, and members then pay their percentage shares.

Assessments therefore amount to taxation of America by other U.N. members. A majority of member governments tells us what we owe, on pain of losing our vote in U.N. governing bodies if we don’t pay up. That alone is sufficient reason to reject the concept of assessments, since it isn’t our votes in these bodies that matter. The only vote that matters is our Security Council vote (and veto), our main shield against one-nation-one-vote majorities U.N.-system-wide. Our permanent seat in the council and its vote are written into the U.N. Charter, and we can veto changes to the charter. The potential negative consequences of ending assessed contributions, then, are essentially nil.

U.N. bureaucrats, U.S. officials and nongovernmental organizations assert without evidence that America gets enormous credit for its contributions to the U.N. and warn that America’s influence would diminish worldwide if those contributions were significantly reduced or eliminated. These assertions are false. Special-interest advocates simply take our current level of funding for granted, complain that it’s inadequate and demand more. It’s time they get their comeuppance.

The U.N. Charter doesn’t require assessed contributions. The charter says merely that the organization’s expenses shall be “apportioned by the General Assembly,” but requires no specific approach. The assembly could make contributions entirely voluntary, as is the case already with some U.N. agencies and programs. The Trump administration simply needs to resolve against the U.N. system’s longstanding reliance on assessments until the totally voluntary approach prevails and other members acquiesce.

Shortly after taking office, Mr. Rubio and Ms. Stefanik should announce that the U.S. no longer accepts the concept of assessed contributions. Henceforth, we will pay only voluntary contributions, which we will decide by evaluating the performance of each U.N. agency and program. We may zero out some programs; we may voluntarily fund others at or near our current assessed level; we may even increase funding for others. But we will decide. And every other U.N. member will have the same prerogative.

This approach rests on the revolutionary assumption that we fund the U.N. based on its performance, paying only for what we want and insisting that we get what we pay for. U.N. agencies that are funded entirely by voluntary donations, such as the World Food Program, generally tend to outperform those funded by assessments. Because they have to prove their worth annually, they have an incentive to sustain and even boost their performance. If voluntarily funded programs fail or falter, we should reduce their funding accordingly.

Ultimately, some agencies will prove unreformable, and America should simply withdraw from them. The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization immediately comes to mind, as it did for President Ronald Reagan, who withdrew the U.S. from Unesco in 1984. The country rejoined in 2003 under Mr. Bush, Mr. Trump withdrew in his turn, and Joe Biden rejoined. Doubtless Mr. Trump will withdraw again—and rightly so.

Using America’s money as an existential threat will rock the U.N. system. While many other reforms are possible, they won’t match the power of unilaterally controlling our contributions. Besides, we need a much larger defense budget; reducing contributions to the U.N. is a good start to find the necessary funding.

This article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on December 26, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

The Fall of Assad

December 17, 2024

History is moving fast in the Middle East, raising the possibility, for well or ill, of massive changes throughout the region. The collapse of Syria’s Assad-family dictatorship took everyone by surprise, starting with Bashar al-Assad himself, and certainly including Russia and Iran. Arab and Western intelligence services missed the regime’s vulnerability, particularly the weakness and disloyalty of its military and security services.

The brutal dictatorship is gone, but what comes next? Most importantly, Assad’s removal is yet another massive defeat for Iran’s ruling mullahs. Following Israel’s thrashing of Hezbollah and its near-total dismemberment of Hamas, this is the third major catastrophe for Tehran’s anti-Israel “ring-of-fire” strategy. While Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu agreed to a cease fire with Hezbollah, he has made clear it lasts for only sixty days, ending just after the Joe Biden leaves office. Hezbollah will be in further dire trouble if its overland supply route through Iraq and Syria is permanently blocked. There is no cease fire with Hamas, meaning both terrorist proxies could face further Israeli decimation.

As for Iran itself, the situation could hardly be worse. With three major pillars of its regional power already fallen or on the way, the ayatollahs are now at great risk both internationally and domestically. Recriminations and finger-pointing among top leaders of the Revolutionary Guards and regular Iranian military(https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/09/iran-armed-forces-at-war-with-themselves-fall-assad-syria/) has already spread widely in the general population(https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/world/middleeast/iran-syria-assad.html).

Disarray and fragmentation in the senior ranks of authoritarian governments are often the first signs of regime collapse. Popular discontent in Iran was already extensive due to long-standing economic decline, the opposition of young people and women generally, ethnic discontent, and more. If the Revolutionary Guard and regular military leaderships begin to come apart, the potential for internal armed conflict grows. Assad’s collapse showed that a façade of strength can mask underlying weakness, with surprisingly swift collapse following.

Externally, Iran’s regime has not been this vulnerable since the 1979 revolution. Jerusalem has already eliminated Tehran’s Russian-supplied S-300 air-defense systems, seriously damaged its ballistic-missile capabilities, and destroyed elements of the nuclear-weapons program(https://www.axios.com/2024/11/15/iran-israel-destroyed-active-nuclear-weapons-research-facility). Netanyahu has never had a better opportunity to obliterate all or vast swathes of the entire nuclear effort. So doing would make Israel, neighboring states, and the entire world safe from the threat of Iran’s decades-long nuclear-proliferation threat, which has long contravened the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Israel, with US assistance if requested, should go for the win on the nuclear issue. Not only would that eliminate Tehran’s threat of a nuclear Holocaust, it would simultaneously strike yet another domestic political blow against the mullahs. In addition to the tens of billions of dollars wasted in supporting Iran’s now-decimated terrorist proxies, but the billions spent on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles would also be seen as squandered. Iran’s citizens would be perfectly entitled to conclude that the ayatollahs had never had their best interests at heart, and that their removal was now fully justified.

Russia is the next biggest loser. Distracted and overburdened by its unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, now about to enter its third year, the Kremlin lacked the resources to save its puppet in Damascus. Vladimir Putin’s humiliation is reverberating globally, and it will also have corrosive impact inside Russia, perhaps finally stimulating more-effective opposition to the ongoing burdens the Ukraine war imposes on Russia’s citizens and economy.

Even more significant losses may be coming. The Kremlin’s main interests in Syria are its Tartus naval station and its Latakia air base. These are Moscow’s only military facilities outside the territory of the former Soviet Union. They are vital to Russia’s position in the eastern Mediterranean. If forced to evacuate these bases, Moscow’s ability to project power beyond the Black Sea would be dramatically reduced, as would be the threat to NATO across the Mediterranean. Although there were early indications Russia might to retain the bases, recent commercial overhead photography indicates it may be preparing to withdraw some or all of its forces. The situation remains fluid(https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/13/world/syria-news).

Without doubt, Turkey, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorists, and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army are the big winners so far. However, Syria’s internal situation is far from settled. American troops remain in northeastern Syria assisting the largely Kurdish Syrian Defense Forces in the anti-ISIS campaign, and at al-Tanf. The Kurds should not be abandoned, especially to President Recep Erdogan’s neo-Ottomanist aspirations to expand Ankara’s control and influence in Arab lands It would be a mistake, at this point, to remove HTS from Washington’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, although, unwisely, the Biden administration is reportedly considering doing so(https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/09/us-debates-lifting-terror-designation-for-main-syrian-rebel-group-00193367).

While eliminating Assad is a critical contribution to reducing the Iranian threat, neither Israel nor neighboring Arab governments nor the United States have any interest in seeing another terrorist state arise, and this one on the Mediterranean. Delicate diplomacy lies ahead. In the meantime, Biden was right to bomb ISIS weapons storage depots in eastern Syria to deny those assets to HTS, and Israel is justified in eliminating the Assad government’s military assets for the same reason.

Importantly for the region and beyond, urgent efforts are required to locate and secure all aspects of Assad’s chemical and biological weapons programs(https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/12/12/syria-chemical-weapons-search-mustard-sarin/). Assaad used chemical weapons against his own people as recently as 2017 and 2018, so there is no question whether these capabilities exist.

Thus, while there is considerable good news surrounding Assad’s ouster and exile to Moscow, circumstances in Syria still pose serious threats to peace and security in the Middle East and globally. This is no time to relax or turn away, especially for the incoming Trump administration.

This article was first published in Independent Arabia on December 17, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Kash Patel Doesn’t Belong at the FBI

December 10, 2024

At the NSC, he was less interested in his assigned duties than in proving his loyalty to Donald Trump.
The president’s constitutional obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” requires evenhanded action in the national rather than his personal interest, a distinction Donald Trump doesn’t grasp. His oft-stated intention to seek retribution against opponents, if implemented, facially contravenes the Take Care Clause.

Too many of Mr. Trump’s personnel selections evidence his assiduous search for personal fealty, not loyalty to the Constitution. Kash Patel’s nomination as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation squarely fits this pattern.

Rep. Devin Nunes pushed Mr. Patel for the National Security Council staff after Republicans lost the House in 2018. Notwithstanding Mr. Patel’s lack of policy credentials, the president ordered him hired. NSC staff has long been divided into directorates responsible for different policy areas. Charles Kupperman, my deputy, and I placed Mr. Patel in the International Organizations Directorate, which had a vacancy.

Some five months later, we moved him to fill an opening in the Counter-Terrorism Directorate. In neither case was he in charge of a directorate during my tenure as national security adviser or thereafter, as he contends in his memoir and elsewhere. He reported to senior directors in both cases and had defined responsibilities. His puffery was characteristic of the résumé inflation we had detected when Mr. Trump pressed him on us. We found he had exaggerated his role in cases he worked on as a Justice Department lawyer before joining Mr. Nunes’s committee staff. Given the sensitivity of the NSC’s responsibilities, problems of credibility or reliability would ordinarily disqualify any job applicant.

He proved to be less interested in his assigned duties than in worming his way into Mr. Trump’s presence. Fiona Hill, NSC senior director for Europe, testified to Congress during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment hearings that Mr. Patel, at that time assigned to the International Organizations Directorate, participated in a May 2019 Oval Office meeting on Ukraine, and that he had engaged in various other Ukraine-related activities. Whatever he did on Ukraine while an NSC staffer, at least during my tenure, was unrestrained freelancing. (He has denied any communication with Mr. Trump on Ukraine.)

In August 2019, when I was overseas, Mr. Trump called Mr. Kupperman and White House counsel Pat Cipollone to the Oval Office. They arrived to find Mr. Patel already there. The subject of the discussion was making him an administration enforcer of presidential loyalty. Messrs. Cipollone and Kupperman strongly objected to any such role, whether in the NSC or the counsel’s office, and the issue disappeared. I resigned in September 2019.

According to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s memoir, during an October 2020 hostage-rescue mission, Mr. Patel, then in the Counter-Terrorism directorate, misinformed other officials that a key airspace-transit clearance had been granted. In fact, Mr. Esper writes, the clearance hadn’t been obtained, threatening the operation’s success, and his team “suspected Patel made the approval story up” but wasn’t certain. Typically, Mr. Patel’s version of this episode in his memoir denies any error—though, ironically, it also boasts of his acting beyond the authority of NSC staffers. Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also knew the day’s details, including about the clearance issue. He hasn’t spoken publicly about the incident. He should.

Last week Olivia Troye, who served as counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, elaborated on these concerns, tagging Mr. Patel with “making things up on operations” and lying about intelligence. His lawyers responded by threatening to sue her for defamation, writing that “at no point did Mr. Patel ever lie about national intelligence, place Navy Seals at risk, or misinform the Vice President.” What Mr. Esper and Ms. Troye accuse Mr. Patel of lying about is the airspace-transit clearance, the lack of which would have made transit by U.S. forces though the airspace of the country in question an act of war.

These are but a few of many cases that touch directly on Mr. Patel’s character and his consistent approach of placing obedience to Mr. Trump above other, higher considerations—most important, loyalty to the Constitution. His conduct in Mr. Trump’s first term and thereafter indicates that as FBI director he would operate according to Lavrenty Beria’s reported comment to Joseph Stalin: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”

Mr. Patel has frequently called for investigations of journalists, comments he has since tried to walk back. He has been accused of seeking to declassify sensitive information for political rather than legitimate national-security reasons. During Mr. Trump’s first term, both Attorney General William Barr and Central Intelligence Agency Director Gina Haspell threatened to resign if Mr. Patel was forced on them as deputy FBI or CIA director, respectively.

Mr. Trump claims to have been unfairly, even illegally, targeted by partisan Biden prosecutors. That may or may not be true. But if illegitimate partisan prosecutions were launched, those responsible should be held accountable in a reasoned, professional manner, not in a counter-witch-hunt. The worst response is for Mr. Trump to engage in the prosecutorial conduct he condemns. Simply threatening to do so politicizes and degrades the legal process and the American people’s faith in evenhanded law enforcement. A president possessed of civic virtue wouldn’t launch retribution against opponents, and he certainly wouldn’t appoint an FBI director who saw himself solely as the president’s liege man.

If Mr. Trump is determined, wrongly, to remove Christopher Wray as FBI director, there are previous examples of appointees who restored faith in a battered Justice Department and FBI. In 1975 President Gerald Ford selected Edward Levi, dean of the University of Chicago Law School, as attorney general, and in 1978 President Jimmy Carter named Judge William Webster, a Republican, to be FBI director.

Mr. Patel is no Ed Levi or Bill Webster. To resolve questions over his integrity and fitness, a full-field FBI investigation, as prior nominees have undergone, is warranted. With more facts available and less rhetoric, the result will be clear. I regret I didn’t fully discern Mr. Patel’s threat immediately. But we are now all fairly warned. Senators won’t escape history’s judgment if they vote to confirm him.

This article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on December 10, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Reflections on the Outlandish: Navigating the Strategic Earthquake in the Fertile Crescent

December 10, 2024

By David Wurmser[1]

[1] David Wurmser, Ph.D. is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington and at the Misgav Institute for Zionist Strategy and at the Jerusalem Center for Foreign and Security Affairs in Israel. He was former senior advisor to Vice President Cheney and to NSC Advisor Ambassador John Bolton.

The desolation wrought on Hizballah by Israel, and the humiliation inflicted on Iran, has left the Iranian axis exposed to Israeli power and further withering. It has also altered the strategic tectonics of the Middle East. The story is not just Iran anymore. The region is showing the first signs of tremendous geopolitical change. And the pieces on the board are beginning to move.

First things first. The removal of the religious-totalitarian tyranny of the Iranian regime remains still the greatest strategic imperative in the region for both United States and its allies, foremost among whom stands Israel. In its last days, it is lurching toward a nuclear breakout to save itself, which would not only leave one of the most destructive weapons in one of the most dangerous regimes in the world – as President Bush had warned against in 2002 – but in the hands of one of the most desperate ones. This is a prescription for catastrophe. Because of that, and because one should never turn one’s back on a cobra, even a wounded one, it is a sine qua non that Iran and its castrati allies in Lebanon be defeated.

However, as Iran’s regime descends into the graveyard of history, it is important not to neglect the emergence of other new threats. Indeed, not only are those threats surfacing and becoming visible, but the United States and its allies already need, urgently in fact, to start assessing and navigating the new reality taking shape.

The rise of these new threats, which are slowly reaching not only a visible, but acute phase increases the urgency of dispensing with the Iranian threat expeditiously. Neither the United States nor our allies in the region any longer have the luxury of a slow containment and delaying strategy in Iran. Instead, it is necessary to move toward decisive victory in the twilight struggle with the Ayatollahs.

Specifically, the upheaval surrounding the retreat of the Syrian Assad regime from Aleppo in the face of Turkish-backed, partly Islamist rebels made from remnants of ISIS, are the first skirmishes in this new strategic reality. Aleppo is falling to the Hayat Tahrir ash-Sham (HTS) – a descendent of the Nusra force led by Abu Muhammed al-Julani, himself a graduate of the al-Qaida system and cobbled together of ISIS elements. Behind this force is the power of nearby Turkey, who used the US withdrawal from northern Iraq a few years ago to release Islamists captured by the US and the Kurds. Some of these former prisoners were sent to Libya to fight the pro-Egyptian Libyan National Army under General Khalifa Belqasim Haftar based in Tobruk, and the rest were reorganized in Islamist militias oriented toward Ankara. The rise of a Muslim-Brotherhood dominated by Turkey, rehabilitating and tapping ISIS residue to ride Iran’s decline/demise to great strategic advantage will plague us going forward.

Added to this is Hamas’ destruction – also a critical goal for Israel and the United States but one that also involves consequences that must be navigated and hopefully countered. The world of Hamas is a schizophrenic world. It has two heads, aligned with different internal fractions – one more anchored to the world of Sunni, Muslim Brotherhood politics led by Turkey and the other to the Iranian axis. In 2012 Israel killed Ahmad al-Jabri, a scion of the powerful al-Jabari clan lording over Hebron but who had transplanted westward to become the leader of the Murabitun forces (part of the Izz ad-Din al-Qasem Brigades) within Hamas in Gaza. He had transported those forces to train under the IRGC in Mashhad Iran in the years before and became the driving force of Hamas by the time Israel felt it had to deal with him. Despite his demise, the structures he led anchored to Iran continued to grow and assume ever more dominance over Hamas, in part because of the release of several key figures in the Gilad Shalit hostage-release deal (2011), including Yahya Sinwar. But Iran did not cleanly control all of Hamas. Turkey maintained a powerful presence in the organization and had some senior leaders likely more loyal to itself than to Iran. In many ways, Hamas reflected the schizophrenia of its patron – Qatar – who served a critical ally to both Iran and Turkey in the last two decades.

In the last two decades, however, Iran proved more ascendent strategically in the region than Turkey. In fits and starts, Ankara had tried to quietly compete with Iran in the last two decades, but more often than not left to only nibble at the scraps left by Iran along the edges, whether in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon (after the August 2021 port explosion, for example) or among the two structures of geopolitical discourse, the “Lingua Franca” embodiments of regional competition — the Palestinians and the Islamists. Hamas, therefore, as well as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (an organization whose fealty was far more homogenously held toward Iran), became increasingly defined – indeed, far, far more — by Tehran than Ankara. Iran had become the region’s new Nasser, and its minions accordingly flourished as did its factions in Palestinian and Islamist politics.

However, suddenly the ground shifted. Israel has since summer, starting with Operation Grim Beeper and the demolition of Hizballah, triggered an earthquake in what is normally a glacial pace of regional strategic change. If Israel presses onward with priority as it should to devastate and destabilize the Iranian regime, and the Iranian axis meets it demise, then Hamas – indeed all Palestinian and Islamist politics – drifts to a Turkish direction and slowly emerge as Ankara’s strategic assets. This reorientation does not represent an increase in the Palestinian threat to Israel, but it would be the triumph of hope over experience to think it would reduce it. Indeed, it is likely no more than an exchange of a rabid donkey for a crazed mule. For the moment, Qatar – being much as the Palestinian and Islamist clusters they fund — rides both animals.

The emergence of the Sunni, Muslim Brotherhood bloc, which includes Turkey’s slow drift of to a dangerous position, as a strategic problem began with President Obama. Although Tayyip Erdogan always was an Islamist politician, his attempts to recreate some sort of neo-Ottoman Caliphate and reignite its imperialist ambitions were disconcerting but largely resulted in rhetoric and symbolism rather than reality. It was, however, latently concerning because the reference point on which he focused of resurrecting the terminated Ottoman Caliphate in 1921 also serves as common ground with the most dangerous Sunni Islamist movements, such as al-Qaida, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad group (which was renamed Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn), and Fatah al Islam, ISIS and the assortment of al-Qaida and ISIS affiliate groups across the Maghreb in Africa. There was always the danger of convergence of the Turkish and the most radical Islamist worlds into one strategic threat.

In 2011, President Obama made two critical mistakes that set a process that eventually now is beginning to realize our greatest fears of the Turkish-Jihadist convergence:

Instead of supporting indigenous Syrian opposition, President Obama subcontracted to Turkey and Qatar the task to define and support the opposition to President Assad of Syria as his regime descended into civil war. The threat of ISIS has thus remained ever since, and with Iran’s going down, Turkey feels its oats and surfs the crest of the ISIS-remnant wave, — rather than the Free Syrian Army, which sought closer ties to the West — to expansion.

⁠The U.S. remained wedded to trying to sustain Syria as a unified fiction of a state, fearing its partition would set a precedent to trigger a collapse of the Sykes-Picot foundation. The same mistake was replicated in Libya, which had strategic consequences for Egypt. As a result, Egypt is slowly strategically also now drifting in a dangerous direction.

The insistence on retaining a unified state meant that to survive in conditions of communal, sectarian, tribal, ethnic civil war, each faction within that state had to fight to the death for control over the other rather than disengage into partitioned pieces. Control meant survival while being controlled meant being slaughtered. This then also created the massive Syrian refugee crisis.

Given the calamity that befell Syria and the chaos that lies underneath, as well as these hovering strategic forces positioning already to scavenge the Syrian nation’s cadaver, it is important for both Israel and the United States, along with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, to contemplate as very possible many scenarios that hitherto were outlandish in the western end of the fertile crescent. It is too early to fully identify and digest, let alone definitively plan for the reality that will emerge, but now is the time for unrefined initial reflections that underlie a longer term strategic planning process.

First, to be clear; Iran remains the central threat. And nothing can be done until it is defeated. The urgency of ensuring and achieving its defeat is increasing rapidly.

With Iran’s defeat, Syria will begin the terminal process of unraveling. Russians will try to protect essential interests there – the Alawite regime and the Christian communities, especially the Greek Orthodox. It is not only the last legacy of Soviet global bloc (outside of Cuba), but also a more civilizational sense of commitment to the remains of the world of Byzantium. Russia considers itself to some extent the “Third Rome” – Rome and Constantinople being the first two – as several current Russian political commentators, intellectuals and religious leaders have posited, and the remnant Christian communities – especially the Greek Orthodox since the Maronites are Catholic and orient more to France – are envisioned as its charge.

We are thus witnessing the rise of an acute Russo-Turkish confrontation that will also ultimately threaten Israel. In this confrontation, it is not inconceivable that Russia may consider turning to Israel as a key offset to Turkish power rather than confront Israel once Iran is removed from the picture.

Moreover, China is likely to realign with Turkey and drop Iran when it realizes the Ayatollah regime is falling. China has hedged for the last few years, having signed a strategic agreement with Iran in 2021, but it has just as aggressively sought to tighten its relations with Turkey. Part of what drives Beijing and Ankara together is the strategic competition between China and India. China has ties to Pakistan through the Hindu Kush range and sees India as one of its premier enemies. Turkey as well has close strategic relations with Pakistan, and uses that relationship to compete with India in Afghanistan, and has attempted in the last half decade to destabilize India both through using Pakistani help to rile up unrest in the Jammu and Kashmir, but also among India’s 200 million Muslims. Again, as Iran has begun to run into trouble and as the regime is faltering, we already see the first sign of China’s move to stop hedging and shift more uncarefully toward Turkey.

And we see Egypt also recalibrating. This was due in part because of Libya, but also the unrelenting pressure of the Biden administration on human rights and Washington’s tolerance of Qatar and the Muslim brotherhood regionally against the Saudis and Egypt. At first, Egypt retrenched into close alliance with the Saudis and positioned itself as Erdogan’s nemesis – even to the extent of supporting the Syrian regime in its efforts to withstand pressure from Turkey and its Islamist allies. But the pressure by Washington (paused during the first Trump presidency) mounted and Egypt increasingly moved from confrontation to cooption of the internal Islamist threat. Again, this process began during the Obama era — which led to a strategic shift away from peace, away from Israel, and away from viewing Hamas as a profound strategic and domestic threat, and instead toward slow accommodation of Hamas and Turkey starting in 2016-17.

But the closure of the Red Sea and by extension Suez – and the unwillingness, which Cairo had thought was an inconceivable abdication of American power, of the United States to reverse that — as a result of the October 7 attacks so shook Cairo that it blew the lid off caution and hedging. The quiet slow drift has by now turned into a stampede. Egypt had its finger in the wind, but the wind told it that it is time to make its peace with the Muslim brotherhood and Erdogan and align with China. For the moment, Egypt is not forced to choose whether to side with the emerging Turkish-Sunni MB- Chinese bloc or the Russo-Iran bloc since the links are blurred and still uncrystallized. So, for the moment, while clearly abandoning the West, it has yet to leap wholeheartedly into the Turkish camp. The power of Russia and the residues of history still have their grip to some extent on Cairo.

In other words, we see already a mass realigning underway to digest the fall of Iran and the rise of an imperial Turkey. If Syria begins to fall apart, then several essential things come into play, especially since the 13-year effort to sustain Syria as a unified state will yield to its irreversible and catastrophic final failure and collapse.

This then raises the question of the pieces that emerge. Once again, there is a necessity of establishing a proper Lebanese state anchored to its Maronite foundation.

But then there is the more outlandish possibility that may become the desired and likely: it is important for the U.S. and Israel to start planning for an Alawite state further up the coast. Syria will unlikely remain one state. Russia may find that it will be able only to hold a rump Alawite state and Christian communities (Greek Orthodox — not Maronite) and retreat to protect an enclave state. It will also rapidly even now come to see Iran as useless in this regard and split from Iran on Syria — or what’s left of it.

How the United States and Israel relates to the desperate Russian-oriented enclave entity becomes equally challenging.

To note, Russia had cobbled together a new foreign policy approach launched a year ago in Valdai Conference in Sochi, as unveiled in Putin’s speech there of October 5, 2023. He envisioned cobbling together the BRICS (Brasil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) nations into one geopolitical strategic bloc to challenge the West. But that vision and the underlying unity upon which the Valdai vision is anchored now is being torn to shreds as Chinese and Turkish interests unravel Russian and Iranian interests (let alone leave Iran’s regime destroyed with a new more pro-Israeli and pro-Western regime in Tehran) in Syria and the Middle East splits along a Russo-Turkish competition Russia likely will reach out to India and a post-Ayatollah Iran, but less as a hostile challenge to Israel and the West as much as a desperate move to prepare itself and preserve its dwindling assets in the emerging Russo-Turkish confrontation.

It is strategically wise to consider now — given all the immense complexities and conflicting interests swirling about and the multiple ambivalences — how one handles the disintegration of Syria. It is likely that Russia will be forced to retreat into an effort to protect the Alawite and Christian (especially Greek Orthodox) communities, which it will likely only be able to do by creating a rump Syria state in traditional Alawite and Christian areas. Given that it relies on access to the area via its port along the Mediterranean cost in Syria, it will most likely anchor that rump entity along the eastern Mediterranean with strategic partners in Lebanon, and then a rump Alawite state to the north of that in Tartus and the surrounding mountains.

In this state of anguish, it is difficult to predict what Russia may do. Putin has proven thus far to change his strategic visions only slowly. Some basic principles seem to have been rigidly ingrained. Russia has shown itself to be more determined than nimble in strategic behavior. As such, it is possible that Russia will remain so focused on imperial European ambitions that it falters and falls – along with its Iranian ally – in its survival in the region. But it should not be ruled out as impossible that Russia may reach out to cooperate with the US and Israel to save its position. If so, one must ask: how much the US and Israel should cooperate with Russia, and how much should it attempt to create a third alternative and anchor a structure to US power and the greatly demonstrated Israeli power? The answer to that may also force on us another question – who represents the great threat – Moscow or Beijing? Or should we even choose?

It’s time to start noodling these questions – even the outlandish ones.

Dark days lie ahead with Trump on the world stage once more

November 30, 2024

Soon to be cast adrift by President-elect Trump, Ukraine’s likely future is bleak. Let’s not make it worse by a feckless peace deal
Donald Trump’s looming inauguration bodes poorly for vital Western security interests, and Ukraine in particular. Trump’s hostility to NATO is palpable, and his feelings about Ukraine follow close behind. After January 20, US military and economic assistance will likely drop significantly, and negotiations with Russia begin quickly. In turn, European financial support for Ukraine will diminish, as EU members rush to revive now-defunct commercial ties with Moscow. Despite contrary press reports, Trump has not yet spoken to Vladimir Putin. When they do, Trump’s desire to put this “Biden war” behind him could, at worst, mean capitulation to maximalist Russian demands. After all, if assisting Ukraine’s defence against unprovoked aggression is unimportant to Washington, why worry about Kyiv’s terms of surrender?

In fact, core America national interests remain. Since 1945, European peace and stability have been vital to advancing US economic and political security. The ripple effects of perceived American and NATO failure in Europe’s centre will embolden Beijing to act aggressively toward Taiwan and the East China Sea; the South China Sea; and along its land borders. These aren’t abstract, diaphanous worries at the periphery of our interests, but hard threats to US physical security, trade, travel and communications globally.

Biden put these interests at risk by bungling implementation of nearly three years of aid to Kyiv. He never developed a winning strategy. His administration helped create the current battlefield gridlock, deterred by constant but idle Kremlin threats of a “wider war.” Parcelling out weapons only after long public debates prevented their most effective use. Biden failed to explain clearly Russia’s threat to key Western interests, thereby fanning the belief there are no such interests, and abetting the Trump-inspired isolationism spreading nationally.

What to do? Aiding Ukraine is in NATO’s vital interest. That interest does not diminish because of persistent Biden administration poor performance. Do we ignore the continuing reality that Russia’s aggression threatens Alliance security? Does Ukraine simply give way to Trumpian capitulationism?

Certainly not. In the coming negotiations, certain points are essential to any potential agreement. The following suggestions, which are hardly my preferred outcome, are the absolute minimum we must obtain. They are only indicative, not exhaustive, and certainly not NATO’s opening position.

Any agreement must be explicitly provisional to keep Ukraine’s future open. Moscow will treat any deal that way regardless. For the Kremlin, nothing is permanent until its empire is fully restored, by their lights. Putin needs time to restore Russia’s military capabilities, and believing any “commitment” to forswear future aggression against Ukraine is dreaming.

A ceasefire along existing military frontlines during negotiations may be inevitable. Nonetheless, we should insist that any ultimate agreement explicitly state that the lines eventually drawn have no political import whatever, but merely reflect existing military dispositions. Russia may later disregard such disclaimers, but such claims must be rendered clearly invalid in advance.

Similarly, the agreement should not create demilitarised zones between Ukrainian and Russian forces inside Ukraine, or along the two countries’ formal border elsewhere. The surest way for a ceasefire line to become a permanent border is to make it half-a-mile wide, extending endlessly through contested territory. A DMZ inures solely to Moscow’s benefit.

Deployments of UN peacekeepers have an unhappy history of freezing the status quo, not helping to resolve the underlying conflict. Consider the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) which has partitioned the island since 1964. The UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) has patrolled the Golan Heights since 1974, and may last forever, but did not prevent Israel from annexing the Golan. The list goes on. In Ukraine, a disengagement force could mean permanent cession of twenty percent of Ukraine to Russia.

The problem is not mitigated if the peacekeepers are under NATO rather than UN auspices. It is not the quality of the military that makes a difference, but the intentions of the parties to the conflict. Does anyone doubt what Russia’s long-term aims are? Or Ukraine’s for that matter? My guess is that the Kremlin won’t agree to NATO peacekeepers anyway, at least not unless augmented by thousands of North Korean troops.

Finally, Ukraine should not be constrained in its future options to join or cooperate with NATO. What’s left of Ukraine will still be a sovereign country, striving for representative government, and free to pick its allies on its own. We should not acquiesce in enforced neutralisation, what in the Cold War was called “Finlandisation”. Even Finland turned out not to like it, finally joining NATO in 2023. And if some hardy nations want to provide security guarantees to Free Ukraine, they should be able to do so, not subject to Russian vetoes.

Soon to be cast adrift by President-elect Trump, Ukraine’s likely future is bleak. Let’s not make it worse by a feckless peace deal.

This article was first published in The Telegraph on November 30, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Trump and Iran

November 11, 2024

Donald Trump’s election as President guarantees that America’s Middle East policy will change. The real question, though, and a major early test for Trump, is whether it will change enough. Does he understand that the region’s geopolitics differ dramatically from when he left office, and could change even more before Inauguration Day? The early signs are not promising that Trump grasps either the new strategic opportunities or threats Washington and its allies face.

The region’s central crisis on January 20 will be Iran’s ongoing “ring of fire” strategy against Israel. Right now, Israel is systematically dismantling Hamas’s political leadership, military capabilities, and underground Gaza fortress. Israel is similarly dismembering Hezbollah in Lebanon: its leadership annihilated, its enormous missile arsenal steadily decimated, and its hiding places shattered. Israel will continue degrading Hamas, Hezbollah, and West Bank terrorists, ultimately eliminating these pillars of Iranian power. Even President Biden’s team has already urged Qatar to expel Hamas’s leaders(https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/08/politics/qatar-hamas-doha-us-request/index.html).

Unfortunately, Yemen’s Houthis, still blocking the Suez Canal-Red Sea passage, have suffered only limited damage, as have Iran’s Shia militia proxies in Syria and Iraq. Iran itself finally faced measurable retaliation on October 26, as Israel eliminated the Russian-supplied S-300 air defenses and inflicted substantial damage on missile-production facilities. Nonetheless, Iran’s direct losses remain minimal. Due to intense White House pressure and the impending US elections, Jerusalem targeted neither Tehran’s nuclear-weapons program nor its oil infrastructure.

Whether Israel takes further significant action before January 20 is the biggest unknown variable. Israel’s October 26 air strikes have prompted unceasing boasting from Tehran that it will retaliate in turn. These boasts remain unfulfilled. The ayatollahs appear so fearful of Israel’s military capabilities that they hope the world’s attentions drift away as Iran backs down in the face of Israel’s threat. If, however, Iran does summon the will to retaliate, it is nearly certain this time that Israel’s counterstrike will be devastating, especially if during the US presidential transition. Israeli Defense Forces could lay waste to Iran’s nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs so extensively they rock the foundations of the ayatollahs’ regime.

Washington’s conventional wisdom is that Trump will return to “maximum pressure” economically against Iran through more and better-enforced sanctions, and stronger, more consistent support for Israel, as during his first term. If so, Tehran’s mullahs can relax. Trump’s earlier “maximum pressure” policy was nothing of the sort. Even worse, a Trump surrogate has already announced that the incoming administration will have “no interest in regime change in Iran(https://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-envoy-says-trump-aims-to-weaken-iran-deal-of-the-century-likely-back-on-table/),” implying that the fantasy still lives that Trump could reach a comprehensive deal with Tehran in his second term.

Moreover, despite the staged good will in Bibi Netanyahu’s call to Trump last week, their personal relationship is tense. Trump said in 2021, “the first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with. Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake(https://www.axios.com/2021/12/10/trump-netanyahu-disloyalty-fuck-him).” In practice, this means that Israel should not expect the level of Trump support it received previously. And, because Trump is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, he need not fear negative domestic political reactions if he opposes Israel on important issues.

Much depends on the currently unclear circumstances Trump will face on January 20. In addition to shunning regime change, Trump seems mainly interested in simply ending the conflict promptly, apparently without regard to how(https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-erratic-foreign-policy-meet-a-world-fire-2024-11-06/), which has proven very effective in US politics. This approach is consistent with his position on Ukraine. Asserting that neither conflict would have even occurred had he remained President, which is neither provable nor disprovable, Trump sees these wars as unwanted legacies from Biden.

If Israel does not demolish Iran’s nuclear aspirations before Trump’s inauguration, those aspirations will be the first and most pressing issue he faces. If he simply defaults back to “maximum pressure” through sanctions, he is again merely postponing an ultimate reckoning with Iran. Even restoring the sanctions to the levels prevailing when Trump left the Oval Office will be difficult, because Biden’s flawed and ineffective sanctions-enforcement efforts have weakened compliance globally. Trump will not likely have the attention span or the resolve to toughen sanctions back to meaningful levels. The growing cooperation among Russia, China and Iran means Iran’s partners will do all they can to break the West’s sanctions, as they are breaking the West’s Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia.

As they say in Texas, Trump is typically “all hat and no cattle”: he talks tough but doesn’t follow through on his rhetoric. Since he has never shown any inclination to move decisively against Iran’s nuclear program, that leaves the decision to Israel, which has its own complex domestic political problems to resolve. An alternative is to assist Iran’s people to overthrow Tehran’s hated regime. Here, too, however, Trump has shown little interest, thereby missing rare opportunities that Iran’s citizens could seize with a minimum of outside assistance. If Tehran’s ayatollahs are smart, they will dangle endless opportunities for Trump to negotiate, hoping to distract him from more serious, permanent remedies to the threats the ayatollahs themselves are posing.

Of all the critical early tests Trump will face, the Middle East tops the list. China, Russia, and other American adversaries will be watching just as closely as countries in the Middle East, since the ramifications of Trump’s decisions will be far-reaching.

This article was first published in The Independent Arabie on November 10, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

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