Progressive Neo-Colonialism and Israel’s Second War of Independence

April 12, 2024

By Dave Wurmser, Ph.D

Israel is poised to enter Rafiah in Gaza and the adjacent “Philadelphia” corridor bordering Egypt to destroy the remainder of Hamas’ organized forces in Gaza and begin to establish security control over the whole salient. In a desperate attempt to convince Israel yet again to desist from doing this, the Biden administration now proposes to establish a joint-Israeli military command. While this alone ushers in battalions of problems, the most disturbing aspect of this is the trend it represents of trying to Americanize the Gaza conflict – increasingly as a neutral between the IDF and Hamas – with increasing US involvement. This follows the establishing of an American port, and reports that the US has started budgeting a plan for a “peacekeeping force” to be deployed to Gaza. The logic of this leads to one place, even though it is not yet fully conceived as US policy or not yet ready to be unveiled: in order to prioritize avoiding further damage to the Gazan population, the US injects itself, perhaps even its own forces, as a buffer between them and Israel ostensibly to ordinate with the latter but really to protect the former from the latter.

The determination in Washington to wring from Israel’s hands its agency originates not only in a measure of policy despair arising from Israel’s determination to proceed to victory rather than begin to wind down. It emerges from an increasing embrace of a domineering progressivism willing to pursue a neo-colonial annulling of Israeli sovereignty to advance a paradigm fundamentally at odds with the world of concepts that Israel now labors in the post-October 7 world.

It will fail not only because Israel is so determined, but because the October 6 paradigms the administration holds are detached from reality, and because the increasingly progressive aims of the administration are unaligned with American values and culture.

A clash of paradigms

Since October 6, Israel has two critical strategic objectives in Gaza: to return the hostages and to ensure that another October 7-like attack will never happen again. Both aims emanate from the most rudimentary function of government: to secure its citizens.

The United States rhetorically agrees, but it hopes to attain these two goals by advancing the very same paradigms that governed Israel until October 6 and catastrophically failed: grant Palestinians every carrot possible to ease their hatred and build up their investment in maintaining calm. In doing so, Washington thus hopes (and still does) to diminish the grievance fueling the rage animating Palestinian life and establish a deterrent to discourage departure from that paradigm. But Washington also frames this paradigm in the context of another: addressing the Palestinian problem insulates it from regional political forces and thus denies the region’s radicals the premier issue that galvanizes their following. Moreover, a regional condominium to secure regional calm can be reached with the region’s premier challenger, Iran. Thus, Washington believed in two paradigms:

a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem – which was a question of Palestinian need for self-governance and borders, not Israel’s existence — was essential, viable and would finally grant Israel its peace; and
Iran could be reasoned with enough to reach a regional condominium to secure regional stability, if even at the cost of a modicum of accommodation of Iranian strategic objectives.

Beyond this more traditional but sadly flawed views of the problem, a rising progressive impulse grips the administration. Progressives hold that the violence of the American system and culture inherent to its slave-trade dominated founding perpetuates itself dressed deceptively in the clothes of freedom to perpetuate the aims of subjugation. Thus, the roots of Western political structure must be destroyed and replaced, not only its form adjusted. In foreign policy, this is paralleled by the idea that the inherent violence of colonialism perpetuates itself in the clothes of international order and sovereignty to preserve it subjugation. Thus, the roots of the international system must be fundamentally changed and “colonial” states dismantled and replaced. Israel as a colonialist state is thus the cause, the symbol and the poster-child of evil, and thus its very existence governs feverish levels of progressive fury born of the certainty of righteousness.

The Biden administration deepened its attachment after October 7 to the first two pre-October 6 paradigms, but it now also allows the third paradigm, the progressive rejection of the liberal West, to consume traditional American affinity with Israel.

And yet, the vast majority of Israelis reject not only the progressive paradigm and the national suicide it requires, but also the first two paradigms. Those in the governing coalition as well as even some parties out of it (Like Lieberman’s Israel Beiteynu), are post-paradigm collapse – all pre-October 6 paradigms, not just one. Not only did the governing coalition in Jerusalem, but Israelis as a whole realize that Iran’s regime is entering a new phase of going in for final encirclement, strangulation and destruction of Israel, and thus no paradigm of arrangement or understanding can in any way be reached with Tehran’s tyranny, it also learned that the two-state paradigm was a fatal mirage. Along the way, a flurry of underlaying assumptions collapsed:

Entrusting its security in any way to another force – either by subcontracting control over the area to that force or by trying to deter that force into behavior – failed catastrophically;
Technology and qualitative military superiority can supplement manpower, territory, will, vigilance and fidelity to belief in the righteousness of Israel’s cause, but it can never replace them;
Any Palestinian political entity will mobilize all aspects of Palestinian life and society with one purpose in mind: to advance the immutable goal of destroying Israel. Not only Hamas, but the PLO as well continue to understand Palestinian nationalism as the annulment of Jewish national identity and rights, and thus any power or sovereign benefit they secure is weaponized as part of a strategy to carry the aspiration of destruction of the annulled Jewish identity forward;
Disdain and contempt, not grievance and despair, animate Palestinian rage. The more the grievance was answered and the more despair was allayed, the deeper Palestinian contempt of Israel grew and the more deadly, relentless, and enflamed the violence against not only Israel, but the Jewish people and the very concept of Judaism itself, became;
Displaying a conciliatory nature did not purchase global credit to be redeemed as an insurance policy to address the consequences of the failed conciliation;
The Palestinian issue continued being the vehicle for both preserving and expressing regional and global pathologies;
Feeding Palestinian aspirations nourishes and preserves rather than diminishes their use – as it had been intended by the Soviets — as part of a global assault (progressive or Islamist) on the West;
Similarly, feeding Palestinian aspirations invigorated the Islamist imperative to finish Muhammad’s massacre of the Jews of Khaybar and eliminate all remaining Jews;
Obtaining Arab acquiescence in Israel’s existence failed to make Israel a normal nation and the Jews a normal people like any other and thus failed to retire once and for all history’s oldest ideology: Jew-hatred. Despite the profound hope to the contrary, the line recited every Passover that “in every generation there will arise those who will finish us off” cannot be omitted, and the imperative of remembering and vanquishing Amalek (the paradigm of those who seek our destruction) can never safely be forgotten;
All Jews, not only Israelis, were under attack in an all-hands on deck moment on and since October 7; and finally,
The idea of “never again” demands payment through the steep cost of sacrifice and bravery of each new generation of Jews.

All the ideas and assumptions – both paradigms — that had commanded broad-based Israeli confidence and seized the obsession of Western foreign policy elites until October 6 were as mangled and destroyed among Israelis as the Israeli victims were themselves physically on October 7.

And yet, both these paradigms and their series of underlying assumptions are being salvaged and re-sold to the Israelis to convince them to revert to an October 6 mindset. And all are rejected profoundly by Israelis who see each of them as folly that will lead to their destruction.

The result is that Jerusalem and Washington now live in different conceptual galaxies separated by unbridgeable space. No diplomacy or persuasion can bridge that gap. Israel is not acting out of ideology, policy preference or academic conflict-resolution theory. It forged its new paradigm primordially by the screams, blood and tears suffered by Jews as they had not suffered on any day since the gas chambers in Auschwitz, Dachau and other factories of death were destroyed on the last days of the Holocaust. A cornered person facing a stark choice of death or resistance is not able to negotiate the terms in which he surrenders his life. Neither is Israel.

Across the seas, the Biden administration understands it cannot convince Israel – not only the government, but the vast majority of Israelis – of preserving the two previously-shared paradigms. And yet, it is unwilling to reconsider and travel with the Israelis in parallel and revisit its two paradigms either. Moreover, in addition to these two original paradigms, the Biden administration – and certainly many of its most influential staffers – appears increasingly motivated by ideology and creeping progressive neo-imperialism born of race-based “decolonization” ideology. In this progressive world view, Israel was invaded unprovoked, but its very existence is a provocative colonialist offense. Israeli women were raped, but rape is a Cri de Coeur of a desperate resistance. Babies were beheaded, but babies are settlers too and future oppressive soldiers.

And thus, unable to shed its first two informing paradigms, and dangerously drifting toward a progressive outlook, the administration and its progressive camp in Washington seeks to use every lever of power to wring from Israel’s hands any agency and divert it toward an end it is determined to reject. And while it is not unfolding along the pattern of the colonial invasions of old, the direction is relentless – to reduce Israel to a pliable vassal. For progressives, like their Bolshevik ancestors, power is an instrument to be used, not a device to be feared, to force a revolutionary idea into dominance. And the more progressive the Biden administration becomes, the more it displays these traits of tyranny and predation.

Who will prevail?

To consider which collection of paradigms – Israel’s or the increasingly progressive Biden administration’s — will prevail, one has to examine the stakes each possesses in vindicating its understanding.

In terms of the first two paradigms – the two-state solution and the condominium with Iran – failure is inevitable since both are paradigms anchored to a perception of reality that collapsed on October 7. Moreover, Israel’s determination to survive is stronger than any foreign nation’s policy preferences.

The rising progressive dominance in the administration, however, is more complex. For progressives, the battle against not only Israel, but Judaism itself is one of ideological dominance and survival. The hatred of Jews – being an inextricable part of the Judeo-Christian philosophical culture that gave birth to America – let alone its anti-Zionist component, has become the vessel of all Western ideological pathologies to attack the idea of America. Thus, it cannot be surrendered any more than can the entire political edifice of progressivism. It is truly the saloon in the old West; no town is big enough for both progressives and Jews, let alone Zionism. This is undoubtedly a formidable, indeed twilight struggle of sorts.

And yet, the nature of Israeli sentiment is not only equally determined, but more so because it is not irreducible – it is fighting its second War of Independence – but personal. Four millennia of stubborn Jewish survival will not end here. But it will prevail also because it emanates from the same sources of the American revolution: the impulse toward freedom by a people with a strong sense of independence. When Menachem Begin declared the revolt against the British in the darkness of World War II, he quoted Patrick Henry’s famous speech, ending it with the cry for liberty at all costs – and thus he called his movement by the Hebrew word for “liberty,” Herut.

The roots of a combined quest and destiny of freedom between the Jewish people and the American enterprise reach much further back, even further back than the frequent Biblical references of Abraham Lincoln. They reach back to the foundation of a unique American culture and are enshrined in the exchange of letters between Rabbi Moses Seixas of Newport (Touro Synagogue) and general Washington in 1790. Rabbi Seixas, hoping to secure equal rights of participation in the American experiment of freedom, wrote to General George Washington:

Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People — a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance — but generously affording to all Liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language equal parts of the great governmental Machine:

Rabbi Seixas here sets out a doctrine of freedom that defines America as a whole, not just its policy toward the Jews. The status of the Jews in the new country is seen to be the vehicle for establishing this doctrine of freedom, and a bellwether of its implementation. In true Abrahamic tradition, Seixas suggests, the nation that treats its Jews well is guaranteed to thrive, and the ones that do not, are seen as doomed.

But what was the weld that fuses the American and Jewish story of freedom? Note that Rabbi Seixas attaches the word “generously affording to all” when asking that Jews be allowed the rights others will have.

General Washington repeated those words in strikingly similar phrases back to Rabbi Seixas in his response:

All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

Washington’s repetition of phrases not only validated Seixas’ words as is his own – but he made a marked change in words from Seixas’ phrase — “generously afforded” — to his own “all possess alike.” This change captured his intent to frame the Jewish question not as a governmental policy or preference – man-made granted reights — but as part of the overall inalienable, inherent right that all men are endowed by their creator at Mount Moriah, which echoed the declaration of independence’s “We are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.” In other words, Washington deliberately intertwined the Jewish story in America with the American story of freedom.

And it was thus through his answer to the Jews, and through his vision for the rights of the Jewish community then that he enunciated a much broader, foundational doctrine of tolerance and non-sectarian, and yet faith-based (rights endowed by our creator—inherently possesses, not generously granted) foundation and vision of America. The nation’s treatment of Jews was fused with the foundational idea of the very independence of the nation. And the treatment of Jews profoundly reflectes the health, power and survival of America and its central founding idea.

In short, from day one, and frankly all the way back to the earliest colonists, the American vision of itself was never distant from the Jewish question and the emergence of the vision of the US as the new Jerusalem. It is what led the Steinbeck family to come to Palestine and try to set up an agricultural commune – only to be destroyed by the Ottomans. It was what led Abraham Lincoln to contemplate raising an army of Jews to liberate Palestine and reestablish Israel. And it was what led Mark Twain to say that the Holy land should be returned to the ownership of the Jews since only they seemed to have a spiritual attachment to it and ever did anything productive with it.

And so too now. Standing with Israel during its Second War of Independence at this moment is not only a foreign policy preference, but it is intertwined with the test of our lifetime of our own land. And as long as America remains true to the founding ideals of America and reaffirms its grasp of the nation’s mettle and essence, thus will the progressive challenge fail in America and so too will its advocacy to turn hostile to Israel fail as well.

Confront Iran now, before it is too late

April 11, 2024

History will record Biden’s obsessive efforts to negotiate with the ayatollahs as one of the biggest self-inflicted wounds

The Middle East is tense, with Iran considering its response to Israel’s April 1 elimination of high-ranking Quds Force officers, and a possibly decisive Israeli attack in Rafah against Hamas terrorists pending. Commentary reverberates with worries about “escalation” and “wider war”, as if Hamas’s October 7 barbarity was not escalation enough, or Iran’s mandate to Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraq’s Shia militias thereafter is not already a wider war.

Tehran’s ayatollahs have two overarching objectives: hegemony in the region and hegemony within Islam. Under its publicly declared “ring of fire” strategy, the brainchild of now-deceased Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani, Iran is now assaulting Israel. The “ring of fire” embodies Iran’s indirect efforts through belligerent terrorist proxies, combined with its own military forces, against Israel (and, not often mentioned, against Gulf Arab states).

Israel’s pounding of Hamas means things are not going well for Iran, but the decisive strategic decisions, in both Jerusalem and Tehran, still lie ahead.

Most likely to occur first, and strategically more important, is Iran’s answer to Israel’s strike against its Damascus embassy. Whether embassy territory is “sovereign” varies, but international conventions provide that diplomatic premises are “inviolable,” at least to the receiving state. Common sense, however, tells us that, like churches or hospitals, diplomatic premises lose any protected status if used for military purposes, and it is clear that Iran’s Damascus embassy is essentially a Quds force headquarters.

Nonetheless, Israel has unmistakably challenged Iran, much like America’s early exit for Soleimani in 2020. The stakes for both Israel and Iran are enormous. If Tehran’s riposte to Jerusalem is perceived as weak or ineffective, it risks losing sway over its terrorist surrogates and others, dismayed by the ayatollahs’ unwillingness to risk additional harm to Iran while still leaving them in mortal peril.

Alternatively, significant, direct Iranian retaliation could impel Israel to strike Iran itself. Or, if Iran acts indirectly through a proxy such as Hezbollah, Israel would feel justified in seeking to cripple Hezbollah, as its Gaza operation seeks to cripple Hamas. There is no doubt Hezbollah is the A-team of Iran’s terrorist proxies and the greater military threat to Israel.

Whether Israel is prepared to fight a two-front war its government must decide, and there is no doubt that decision is now squarely presented.

Appropriately or not, however, commentators and politicians have focused since April 1 not on Damascus, but on Israel’s mistaken attack in Gaza on a humanitarian organisation’s convoy. This emotional response has objectively benefited Hamas by again delaying Israel’s offensive against the terrorist group in Rafah; resurrecting calls for an immediate, unconditional cease-fire (ie, unlinked to releasing Israel’s Hamas-held hostages); and compounding Israel’s domestic and international political difficulties.

The Biden administration has significantly contributed to Israel’s isolation, as its distaste for Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu becomes ever-more evident. The White House has now twisted itself into a pretzel, largely because it fears the Democratic Party’s Left-wing threat to withhold support this November in a close, hard-fought election. Sensing Biden’s political vulnerability, these progressives are amping up efforts to restrict or prohibit additional arms sales to Israel, potentially crippling Jerusalem’s ability to exercise its right of self-defence.

For those worried about Republican isolationism threatening Ukraine aid, Democratic unwillingness to support Israel should provide no comfort about America’s role in the wider world.

Biden’s unwillingness these past six months to recognise Iran as the central actor in the Middle East’s ongoing terrorist aggression has already materially damaged America’s support for Israel. History will record his administration’s obsessive efforts to negotiate with the ayatollahs as one of the biggest self-inflicted wounds in politico-military affairs.

Biden is equally unable or unwilling to recognise that the real criminal in Gaza is Hamas, cynically abusing its own supporters and Gazans generally, not merely as human shields, but as cannon fodder to protect themselves, a war crime if there ever was one.

The consequences of Biden’s weakness, and indecisiveness in Israel, are serious and lasting. Israel has for too long delayed the Rafah offensive. Further delay will only increase domestic and international complaining and second-guessing, without reaping the benefits of destroying the remainder of Hamas’s organised combat capabilities and seizing full control of Hamas’s massive tunnel system under Gaza.

Mopping up residual Hamas guerrilla/terrorist activities will be time-consuming, but dismantling it means Israel is freer and less at risk if it must confront Hezbollah full on. Or confronting Iran and its nuclear-weapons programme now, before Iran has a reliable deliverable capacity.

Israel should finish the job of destroying Hamas’s military and political organisations soonest. Also soonest, the United States and Europe should declare openly that Iran is the real threat to peace and security in the Middle East, and act accordingly. The fastest way to end the ongoing conflict is to defeat the aggressor.

This article was first published in The Telegraph on April 11, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Trump’s ‘Love’ Affair With Kim Looms Over U.S.-Japan Summit

April 10, 2024

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit to Washington this week coincides with the re-emergence of a familiar threat: North Korea. On March 28, Russia vetoed what should have been a routine U.N. Security Council reauthorization of a panel monitoring sanctions on Pyongyang. Moscow’s veto reflected both unhappiness with the panel’s recent findings and a general fraying of relations between Russia and the U.S.

While the committee’s demise is unfortunate, the veto signaled something far more important: that the strengthening China-Russia axis is firmly resolved to protect its interests and those of its outriders, North Korea and Iran. China and Russia never fully shared the U.S. desire to keep the North from acquiring nuclear weapons. Getting them to agree to incremental sanctions required endless palavering, “full and frank exchanges,” and several near-shouting matches. But even that marriage of convenience is now gone.

Mr. Kishida’s visit highlights the stakes in a presidential election year. Unfortunately, neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump is fit to deal with Kim Jong Un’s rogue regime. Mr. Biden has followed Barack Obama’s “strategic patience” policy, increasing neither economic nor political pressure on Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear aspirations, nor otherwise seriously challenging the regime, nor even engaging in negotiations. As a result, North Korea has simply continued advancing its nuclear and ballistic-missile programs. After more than a decade of “strategic patience,” we now know what such diplomatic jargon really means: doing nothing. While Washington has played the idle bystander, Mr. Kim has profited from the growing Russia-China collaboration, strengthening his relations with Moscow and better positioning himself to secure tangible benefits from both poles of the new axis.

On North Korea, a second Trump term would be as bad as the first. Three summits between the two leaders produced nothing concrete apart from Mr. Trump’s claims that he and Mr. Kim “fell in love.” As with all nuclear proliferators, time is on the side of the rogue state. With Mr. Trump in office, Pyongyang got four years closer to being able to deliver a nuclear weapon.

Continue reading on the Wall Street Journal.

Are the Democrats beginning to step in the proverbial buffalo patties on Israel?

March 28, 2024

By David Wurmser, Ph.D.

The last week – corresponding ominously to the Ides of March — the Democratic establishment in the United States laid down the gauntlet to Israel’s government. A full court effort was made not only to weaken and oust Israel’s elected government, but to lean on Israel so hard that it would reconsider entering the last Hamas strongholds in Gaza in Rafiah and the Philadelphia corridor.

The campaign took many forms and reached a crescendo on March 20. In that one day, no less than three letters were released by progressive Jewish donors, progressive Jewish luminaries, and Democratic congressmen, demanding the Biden Administration take a much more hostile line against Israel. Across the pond, the United Kingdom announced that if Israel enters Rafiah, England will impose an arms embargo on Israel. Canada did not wait and announced also on the 20^th it was also imposing such an embargo. Even Germany’s leader announced on the 20^th that it was inconceivable that Israel enter Rafiah and that if it did so, there would be grave consequences – essentially echoing the U.K. position. Moreover, he announced that Germany already was reevaluating all its defense contracts with Israel.

Back in the States, a series of articles appeared a week earlier by “gurus” of Arab-Israeli affairs on the left side of the spectrum, such as Martin Indyk and Thomas Friedman, saying the United States had lost confidence in Israel’s prime minister. Also in the week of March 11, Vice President Kamala Harris used a formulation generally reserved in American discourse of the most inimical tyrants and not democratic allies – differentiate “between the government of Israel and the people of Israel” – to describe US policy toward Israel. And finally, Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer presented a shrill attack on Israel’s prime minister, lumping him together an as an enemy of peace on par with Hamas and essentially demanding new elections in Israel since the people of Israel have lost faith in the prime minister “who lost his way.” On the 20^th, Schumer followed up with another hostile act. Prime Minister Netanyahu was to give a briefing to both the Republican and Democratic caucus in Congress, but Majority Leader Schumer barred the Democratic caucus from meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu.

It was perhaps the most hostile week ever faced by Israel in the United States since its creation.

But then, suddenly, the next day, Majority Leader Schumer retreated and announced he was open to inviting Prime Minister Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress. Furthermore, on the heels of his call to oust the Israeli government earlier in the week – and after major donors said brazenly in their letter that the Biden team must lambast and oppose Israel because of the electoral threat emerging in key districts – Schumer asked that Israel not become a partisan issue. In the terms of modern Washington, the unprecedented attack on Israel was followed within 24 hours by an unprecedented, humiliating retreat by the majority leader.

The Senate majority leader’s whiplash-inducing behavior should be examined very carefully since it reveals much. Indeed, it is key to understanding where the issue really stands right now.

It appears that the Biden team and Schumer imagined that they could wrap an anti-Israeli policy in garb focused on the unpopularity of Prime Minister Netanyahu not only in Israel, but among American Jews. Vice Presdident Harris’ statement aimed squarely at that message: there’s a difference between the Israeli people and being anti-Israeli on the one hand and being anti-Netanyahu but not anti-Israeli on the other. So they thought they could appease the progressives by using the formula of Netanyahu’s being at fault for everything as the bridge to span over the chasm and embrace the anti-Israeli policies the progressives demand. That assumption, which is what Thomas Friedman, Martin Indyk and Vice President Kamala Harris peddled lately – indeed what the US intelligence community itself revealed in its estimate (also released publicly last week) and which Schumer plunged into, failed. Using the formulation, not only did Schumer fail to damage Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel, he apparently failed to do so even within the US Jewish community. The reason is that the assumption is flawed. A Pew poll of the US Jewish community’s attitude toward the Israeli government from earlier in the month found that a decided majority (+10%), namely 54%, of American Jews hold a favorable view of the Israeli government.[1]

Schumer is inescapably absorbing a tremendous political humiliation in his retreat. Not only was Schumer the point man for the administration in the Democratic leadership, but atop the Jewish community, in the last week in calling for new elections and blocking all access by Netanyahu to Congress, and thus his retreat is not just a minor political event. The fact that Schumer faced so great and swift a backlash that it induced a spectacularly rapid display of political gymnastics is highly revealing. It means liberal Jews, who still do not like Netanyahu, nonetheless saw through this maneuver as simply a transparent scheme to be anti-Israeli while not appearing so. And while, this is important, it also exposed something even more important than just the mood of the Jewish community. It was a test between the power of the progressives and their tantrum-induced threats to bolt, and the traditionally liberal US Jewish community.

Nor is that test just a Jewish question. Even in terms of the narrow question of electoral politics in the much-discussed case of Michigan, the administration seems to make baffling, inconsistent choices if the state really matters so much. In Michigan, the progressive protest seems quite limited since the uncommitted vote – which was heralded as the protest vote – was almost exactly the same percentage as President Obama mustered in his last presidential election in Michigan. Moreover, it would seem that whatever marginal gain President Biden may gain in Michigan by lurching toward the progressive side is lost – and by far larger margins – by his decision (also on March 20) to force a 50% mandate of electric vehicles in US car sales rather than punt the decision to after November. This decision will likely cost him precious powerful autoworkers’ votes in droves – a community that constituted the backbone of industrial American blue-collar workers’ support for the Democrats — compared to the trickle of Arab voters he gains by abandoning Israel. In other words, if the margins are so tight in Michigan, and the state is so critical, then he paid a dollar in political capital to get a dime back.

So Senate majority leader Schumer lunged toward the progressives but then had to recoil back to the more center-left Jews.

Indeed, for him to overnight consider becoming an agent in bringing about a repeat of Netanyahu’s famous 2015 speech to Congress opposing the Obama administration’s JCPOA (“Iran nuclear”) deal and actually countenance inviting prime minister Netanyahu to address Congress jointly can only have happened if Schumer had faced a withering backlash from forces that matter to him. What are those forces that matter to him?

First is donors. The Democratic Party donor base on the national level still relies for more than 50% of its donations on liberal Jews. While some are progressive – like the Soros empire – others remain liberal and pro-Israeli.

Second are his voters. New York Jewish Democrats were loyal to him, but there is obviously an erosion that concerns him greatly in his own voter base in New York. But recent polls – a Sienna College poll in February — now suggest a majority (53-44%) of New York Jewish voters will vote not only Republican, but for Trump himself in the next elections.[2] That the heart of Schumer’s own liberal Jewish voting block – New York state Jews – are nearly 10% more likely to vote for Trump that Biden is an earthquake.

Third, he is the Senate Majority Leader, and thus he is keen to ensure the Senate remains majority Democrat so that he keeps his leadership role. Up until today it was clear his concern was that the progressive threat to his majority leadership was emerging. Voices were challenging him and signaling he may face a challenge from that side. In order to stay on top of the Democratic caucus, he likely calculated he had to tack to the progressive left. And being a Jewish leader of such stature and reputation of being pro-Israeli, he felt immune from the potential backlash for taking such a line. But what appears to be happening is that the centrist Democratic senators in the country where there is a significant Jewish vote are in danger of shifting to a Republican seat. If the Israeli issue causes a backlash among centrists and liberal Jews, he therefore may remain as the head of the Democratic caucus in more progressive garb, but the Democrats lose the majority of the Senate. One of the most important of those seats is currently held by the retiring Democratic senator Ben Cardin of Maryland. Maryland does have a substantial Jewish vote, most of whom consider themselves as liberals. And yet, Governor Hogan, who only last month announced as the Republican opponent to replace Cardin’s seat, has pulled substantially ahead in the polls against the Democratic candidate, David Trone, and Maryland may lose its Democratic seat. That alone would cost Schumer his majority leadership.

It is thus likely that Schumer is beginning to calculate the danger of losing the center, especially the liberal Jewish vote, the liberal Jewish donations, and even his own liberal Jewish base in New York – the three most important forces in his world. The convergence of those three factors in backlash against his drift toward progressive positions on Israel would explain the humiliating and sudden turnabout that he displayed on March 21^st in saying he is open to inviting Netanyahu to speak to Congress.

What this tells us is that pressure on Israel is right now may be at its apex. A backlash is beginning. If the administration pushed any harder against Israel, it proceeds with great political risk unless it secures Israel’s indulgence or acquiescence – which at this stage it appears increasingly unlikely to grant. To descend into a bruising public fight with Israel would, in contrast, trigger the same backlash more broadly that Schumer just faced which forced him to back off.

For Israel, then, this moment is the most dangerous. It faces immense pressure, and the administration is poised to lay more pressure on if it can get away with it.

If…

The ‘if” is the key. Going forward, it appears that only when Israel demurs, abstains from taking the argument public and pushing back publicly, thus making it easier on the Biden administration to drift further toward appeasing the progressives. Biden will happily take whatever Israel allows him to appease the progressives. In other words, things will get worse for Israel if it cuts its opponents, like the progressives, slack by making it easy on Biden and the Democratic leadership to drift that way without a cost to relations with Israel.

In contrast, it will peak and begin to get better for Israel as it begins to double down on its convictions and forces the issue into the public debate and onto the American political establishment. In short, in a real showdown, the backlash against selling Israel out comes into play and is dominant. Schumer’s contortions worthy of a weasel is the perfect litmus test of that.

Which way will it go? In the end, Israel is operating out of deep conviction rather than policy or ideological preferences – and it is doing so largely under a national consensus. October 7 was not only a trauma for Israel, but also a wake-up call. Israel had not internalized that every aspect of Palestinian life – including any territory surrendered – was mobilized and contemplated by all Palestinians with a singular obsession of eradicating Israel. Schools and sports, health ministries to nature organization, were mobilized to prepare and indoctrinate with that singular focus. And antisemitism was cultivated as a strategic weapon internationally to isolate Jews and destroy not only the connection between Israel and key Western allies, but between those societies and the Jewish population.

And that is what Schumer and the administration miss. The very fabric of the golden age of American Judaism – and the mutually enriching 350-year mutual history in this land – are being ripped. The story so beautifully symbolized by the exchange of letters between General George Washington and Rabbi Seixas of Newport is in danger of being ended.

American values lay at the core of the flourishing of the American Jewish community. So when the administration abandons Israel to Hamas, when a party’s leadership and political operatives argue that a small, radical group of progressive voters who openly declare their hostility to American values is more important than the legacy of the American-Jewish common story and values, then it inescapably is also understood by American Jews as a surrender of the American street to the antisemites who make their genocidal aims clear in campuses and business, hospitals and street protests. Indeed, when the US distances itself from Israel, it is inherently understood not only by American Jews also as an abandonment of them — leading to an existential anxiety Jews in American had not known until now – but also by Americans more generally about how deeply the assault on our national values has progressed.

And that is bad politics.

[1] “Poll shows 54% of US Jews have favorable view of Israeli government,” The Times of Israel, March 21, 2024 (7:51PM).

[2] Andrew Bernard, “Majority of New York Jewish voters intend to vote for Trump says new poll,” The JC, February 22, 2024.

Will Biden allow Hamas a ‘terrorist veto’?

March 26, 2024

Humiliation in international affairs comes in many forms, often unexpectedly. It buried President Joe Biden on Friday, piling mortification onto his administration’s foreign policy cowardice.

First, the White House effectively abandoned Israel by sponsoring a Security Council resolution calling for an “immediate and sustained cease-fire” in Gaza. Then, unforeseen Russian and Chinese vetoes, cast almost for the fun of it, slapped America in the face. U.S. media, unfamiliar with U.N. performance art, has not fully appreciated the extent of Friday’s diplomatic reverses, although Biden added to his own problems on Monday by not vetoing yet another anti-Israel cease-fire resolution.

After weeks of negotiating one textual retreat after another, the U.S. draft resolution’s final, critical language was that the Security Council “determines the imperative of an immediate and sustained ceasefire,” and that “towards that end, unequivocally supports ongoing international diplomatic efforts to secure such a ceasefire in connection with the release of all remaining hostages.”

Previously, Washington vetoed three proposals not directly linking a cease-fire to freeing hostages and because council action could have derailed talks to reach a hostages-for-ceasefire deal. Washington had also circulated draft resolutions embodying this linkage, thus differing significantly from what Moscow and Beijing vetoed. One prior text reportedly expressed council “support for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza as soon as practical, based on the formula of all hostages being released” and also “lifting all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance at scale” in Gaza. Importantly, these earlier U.S. drafts had also called for a cease-fire “as soon as practical,” a far cry from “immediate,” which is now a concession almost impossible to reverse.

This time, however, the White House itself disconnected hostages from the cease-fire, albeit ambiguously, in a vain effort to bridge what is for Israel (and should have been for Biden’s negotiators) an unbridgeable gap. So clear was the priority to get agreement regardless of cost that one American diplomat conceded on Thursday that the U.S. draft was written for other countries to “read into it what they need to” to support it.

This is the kind of weakness that invites humiliation, which is precisely what happened. Ironically, it was Russian U.N. Ambassador Vasily Nabenzia who understood the domestic U.S. politics behind Washington’s motivation. He called the text “a diluted formulation” aimed to “play to voters and throw them a bone in the form of some kind of a mention of a cease-fire in Gaza.”

Europeans quickly took credit for shifting the U.S. view, foreshadowing new resolutions even more at variance with the administration’s initial post-Oct. 7 approach. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo boasted, “gradually other countries joined our position and the fact that the U.S. have adopted [it] too played a part.” French President Emmanuel Macron was even more explicit about Washington’s shift: “What’s important to note is that the United States has changed its position, and shown its will to defend, very clearly now, a cease-fire. For a long time, the Americans were reticent. That reticence is now gone.”

Indeed, on Monday, the U.S. abstained on the latest anti-Israel resolution, thereby allowing its adoption by all 14 other Security Council members. So doing will only strain Washington-Jerusalem relations even further, to the disadvantage of both.

However, Israel’s next moves to finish off Hamas are the real issue. There, Friday brought Biden more humiliation. Meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu unreservedly rejected postponing or canceling Israeli military action. Acknowledging Biden’s earlier support, Netanyahu declared, “but I also told him that we don’t have a way to defeat Hamas without going into Rafah, and eliminating the remaining battalions there. And I told him that I hope that we will do it with America’s support, but if we need, we will do it alone.”

The critical question is whether Biden agrees that Israel’s legitimate right of self-defense includes its clearly-stated objective of eliminating Hamas’s military and political capabilities. Fully backed by Iran, Hamas has barbarically precipitated Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. Having endangered its own civilians, Hamas hopes to save itself from destruction by persuading others to prevent an Israeli victory. If Biden’s ongoing intellectual confusion prevails, enabling Hamas to assert such a “terrorist veto” over legitimate self-defense, Israel will be permanently weakened. So too will global anti-terrorism efforts, with fatal consequences for even more innocent victims. America should flatly reject the concept of a “terrorist veto.”

Biden’s declining support for Israeli self-defense is intimately tied to his failing effort (so far) to topple Netanyahu’s government. Ironically, hoping that ousting Netanyahu will solve the Israel “problem” reveals Biden’s fundamental misreading of Israeli politics, which are always complex, especially now. Whatever Netanyahu’s personal approval ratings, his war cabinet, which includes several prominent political rivals, faces no substantial dissent from its anti-Hamas military objectives. In fact, by attacking Netanyahu, Biden has likely strengthened him through a backlash against outside interference.

Israel’s attack on Hamas in Rafah could come at any moment, and victory there could be a decisive turning point in the struggle against the ultimate aggressor: Iran. This is not the time for the United States to show weakness, especially at the U.N.

Jerusalem is following Winston Churchill’s insight, “without victory, there is no survival.” Washington should concur.

John Bolton was national security adviser to President Trump from 2018 to 2019 and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006. He held senior State Department posts in 1981-83, 1989-93 and 2001-2005.

This article was first published in The Hill on March 26, 2024. Click here to read the original article.

Russia Is Poised To Upend The ‘Diplomatic Chessboard’ In Ukraine

September 03, 2023

President Vladimir Putin is reasserting his power in Russia, and he could be poised to upend the diplomatic chessboard in Ukraine. Washington and the West seem unprepared to react effectively.

This article was first published in https://www.19fortyfive.com/ on September 3, 2023. Click Here to read the original article.

In recent months, Russia has seen considerable political turmoil, but there has been little change on the battlefield in Ukraine. Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny and subsequent assassination have dominated the news while Moscow and Kyiv remain, with modest exceptions, militarily gridlocked. As autumn approaches, however, President Vladimir Putin is reasserting his power in Russia, and he could be poised to upend the diplomatic chessboard in Ukraine. Washington and the West seem unprepared to react effectively.

Putin Tightens His Grip

After Prigozhin’s mutiny, many experts confidently explained that Putin was deeply wounded and his fall was inevitable, if not imminent. Today, these same observers say Prigozhin’s demise unleashes unseen networks of his supporters, seeking revenge.

The Kremlin’s inner workings remain obscure, so no predictions are assured. Nonetheless, Putin is now significantly more secure than he was before the mutiny, even if he has not fully regained his pre-February 2022 dominance.

Consider the hand he holds. Prigozhin is dead, as Putin first proclaimed and Russian authorities later confirmed. Also reportedly killed near Tver last week were Dmitry Utkin, Prigozhin’s top Wagner Group deputy (effectively its military commander) and other top advisors. Putin wants to preserve Wagner’s assets and personnel around the world, and one reason he took two months to eliminate Prigozhin was to ensure his own loyalists controlled the organization. That process may remain incomplete, but Putin has not been asleep.

Moreover, regular military officers who outed themselves by backing Prigozhin are being purged in time-honored Stalinist fashion. Sergey Surovikin, former commander of Russia’s aerospace forces, has been dismissed, notwithstanding that the so-called Surovikin Line has held up well against Ukraine’s offensive. Other Prigozhin collaborators are most likely on the lam. They are heading for the nearest international border, not spinning new plots to overthrow Putin.

That Putin has internal opposition is hardly surprising. “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” is a blazing Shakespearean insight, and it was not crafted uniquely anticipating today’s Russia. The real question in coming months is whether Putin can capitalize on his opponents’ disarray to regain the political and diplomatic momentum that Russia’s faltering battlefield performance has all but lost.

Russia’s Needs and Its Leverage

Any sensible evaluation of Russia’s current geopolitical position concludes that Moscow needs time to seriously reform and rebuild its embarrassingly poor military assets, reinvigorate its economy by ending Western sanctions, and escape political isolation. Putin’s dreamy fascination with recreating the Russian Empire may obscure such reasoning, but he is also a cold-blooded realist, particularly with his own security at stake. Westerners may find it hard to believe, but Putin’s harshest Russian critics are not “anti-war” but “anti-losing.” A stronger Putin is now able, with less concern about domestic second-guessing, to throw NATO into disarray diplomatically, reopening and inflaming existing Western disagreements and discontent with the Ukraine war, thereby buying the time Russia needs to recover and regroup.

If Kyiv’s spring offensive does not produce major battlefield progress, Putin could, without warning, propose a cease-fire within the next two months along existing battle lines and immediately open negotiations. Everything could be on the table, including ending economic warfare against the combatants. Putin might choreograph China’s endorsement of his proposal, with Beijing offering to be a mediator, perhaps suggesting a willingness to help rebuild the war zones in both Russia and Ukraine.

Putin’s key leverage would be Ukraine’s relative lack of success in the summer offensive. In an age of short attention spans, political leaders in Berlin, Paris, and even Washington would be sorely tempted to accept a cease-fire and enter negotiations. In Europe, despite surface rhetorical support for Ukraine, levels of military and financial aid have been slow, grudging, and inadequate. Even though reserves of natural gas may seem sufficient for the coming winter, many will want to put the conflict behind them. Who is certain, for example, that France’s Emmanuel Macron would not jump at the chance to be seen as a peacemaker?

What the West Should Do Now

In America, President Joe Biden faces an uncertain 2024 election. While the press has relished covering the emergence of isolationist, anti-Ukraine-aid Republicans, it has ignored leftist Democrats. In October, 2022, the House Progressive Caucus committed the classic Washington gaffe of saying aloud what they actually believed, issuing a letter conditioning support for further Ukraine aid on Kyiv opening talks with Moscow. The letter was hastily retracted, due to the imminent midterm elections, but the progressive position remains unchanged.

Biden could outmaneuver Republicans opposing Ukraine aid by endorsing a cease-fire and negotiations, speaking directly with Putin, and urging both sides to compromise. He could contest the 2024 election as America’s peacemaker, thereby confounding Donald Trump, who thought he was the apple of Putin’s eye. What would Trump do, reinvent himself as a hawk?
Biden has hardly been a successful war President. The White House’s hesitation to supply one weapons system after another, its undisguised fear of Russian escalation and the onset of World War III, perhaps in a nuclear form, and its general slowness and inattention at the presidential level signal hand-wringing, not hawkishness. There is currently no evidence Moscow is capable of escalating with conventional arms, nor any sign that its nuclear saber-rattling is anything but pure bluff. The sad truth is that Biden’s policy is sputtering, Ukraine could be a political liability, and he may well be looking for a way out. A bold Putin diplomatic maneuver could provide just the pretext Biden needs. Faced with his major international allies heading for the tall grass, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would be left in a nearly untenable position.

It is long past time for a more effective strategy to achieve the oft-stated objectives of restoring full Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to provide aid to Ukraine more coherently. Across NATO, therefore, and especially in Washington, Paris, and Berlin, Ukraine’s supporters need to sharpen and augment their arguments that continued opposition to Russia’s aggression is critical for Western security.

These arguments must be raised now, with summer ending and Washington coming back to life. Otherwise, Moscow might grab the diplomatic steering wheel, with grave consequences all around.

Jim Buckley, Civic Leader

August 24, 2023

Remembering his virtues and public service

This article was first published in The National Review on August 24, 2023. Click Here to read the original article.

Jim Buckley was the very model of what our founders had in mind for America’s civic leaders, rare at any point in our history, and perhaps rarest of all in today’s politics. His résumé alone does not tell the full story, although he was one of the few people in our history to serve in senior positions in all three branches of the federal government.

More important than the offices he held were the virtues he demonstrated consistently throughout his public service. Jim had character, an attribute that allowed him to withstand the turmoil of politics or business without suffering adverse effects on his behavior or his treatment of others. He was a gentleman in all the appropriate ways: respectful, courteous, and thoughtful, not because he was weak, but precisely because he was secure. He had strong religious faith and political principles, both of which transcended immediate personal gain, whether in fame or fortune. He was educated, unlike so many today who possess college degrees but little more.

Perhaps the most important of Jim Buckley’s virtues, an example to his fellow citizens in our time, was his courage. Quiet courage, as he was not a man to shout, boast, pontificate, or slander, an inner strength that impelled him against daunting odds to do what he saw as right.

In 1970, for example, he ran for the United States Senate from New York on the Conservative Party line, challenging the incumbent Republican, Charles Goodell, for not being, well, Republican. After his third-place finish as a Conservative in 1968, following his brother Bill’s unsuccessful 1965 run for mayor of New York, one could hardly avoid worrying that this candidacy could be a waste of time. Goodell, however, appointed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller to fill the vacancy caused by Robert Kennedy’s assassination, was sufficiently lackluster that Buckley won in a three-way race. I was in Army training at Fort Polk, La., at the time and ignored the rules against playing radios after taps, to listen for election results in distant lands. It was my happiest moment at Fort Polk.

In the Senate, Jim was not a party of one but caucused with Republicans. In his 1976 reelection campaign, he ran on both the Republican and Conservative lines. Unfortunately, he lost to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, causing enormous turmoil at National Review. In 1975, emulating Time magazine, brother Bill had created a “man of the year” award, naming Moynihan as the first honoree. After such flattery, Moynihan had the effrontery to beat “the sainted junior senator,” causing Bill to terminate the man-of-the-year program forever. Sic transit gloria mundi._

During Jim’s Senate tenure, he did two things that stand out as remarkable acts of courage, not just in his personal story, but in America’s history.

The first was his role in the Watergate crisis. As Richard Nixon’s presidency disintegrated, and the House of Representatives moved toward impeachment, levels of partisanship and acrimony rose higher and higher. Through the investigations of the Senate Watergate Committee, the evidence of the break-in and subsequent, ultimately politically fatal, cover-up dominated political discourse in Washington and the country generally. The stakes were high, and emotions were higher. Republicans, in Congress and out, could see that Nixon was badly wounded, but he seemed determined to fight to the very end.

Until, that is, Jim Buckley rose on March 19, 1974, to speak on the Senate floor. He called on Nixon to resign, the first conservative Republican senator to do so, saying: “There is one way and one way only by which the crisis can be resolved, and the country pulled out of the Watergate swamp. I propose an extraordinary act of statesmanship and courage — an act at once noble and heartbreaking; at once serving the greater interests of the nation, the institution of the presidency, and the stated goals for which he [Nixon] so successfully campaigned.”

This call for Nixon to act on his better instincts was not at all unusual for Buckley but seemed somewhat misplaced, given his audience. Nonetheless, as the House impeachment process unfolded, partisan barriers broke down before the accumulating evidence. Nixon ultimately resigned in August 1974 after being told by Republican leaders, including “Mr. Conservative,” Barry Goldwater, that the Senate would convict him if presented with articles of impeachment. Watergate taught many lessons, but one of the clearest was the standard that Jim Buckley set for civic virtue in American leaders: dealing forthrightly with reality, based on high principle.

In the immediate aftermath of Nixon’s fall, innumerable “reforms” were proposed in Congress, almost all constitutionally flawed and dangerous. Perhaps the worst were amendments to federal campaign-finance laws, universally hailed by the press, Democrats, and liberals, essentially all of which were ruinous to the good health of American politics. These included nearly prohibitive limitations on campaign contributions, candidate expenditures, and independent expenditures; disclosure of even small contributions and expenditures; public financing of presidential campaigns and conventions; and a Federal Election Commission to enforce these laws, only one-third of whose members would be appointed by the president, the others by the Senate president pro tem and House speaker.

Woe to those who dared oppose the great thunderers of the media, always vigilant in protecting their own press freedoms but casual at best when it came to protecting the First Amendment’s other free-speech protection — political activity by individual citizens and their voluntary associations.

None of that bothered Jim Buckley in the slightest, bringing him to his finest hour and bringing me, happily, the chance to work with and get to know him. During Watergate, I was a law student and worked as a research assistant to Professor Ralph Winter. Winter (later a Reagan-appointed Second Circuit judge and a powerful voice for sound constitutional interpretation) wrote extensively on why campaign-finance activity should receive the First Amendment’s full protection. Dave Keene, then a Buckley staffer, who had hired me as a summer intern in Vice President Spiro Agnew’s office in 1972 (Watergate summer, for those who weren’t around), called to ask about possibly challenging in court the new campaign-finance law’s constitutionality. Winter was ready immediately.

By the time Congress was putting the last touches on the legislation, I was practicing law in Washington, readying the filings that would initiate the case now known as Buckley v. Valeo. On January 30, 1976, the Supreme Court declared limits on candidate, campaign, and independent expenditures unconstitutional, and also held the Federal Election Commission’s appointment process unconstitutional, thus striking down a federal agency for the first time since the New Deal.

Collectively, Jim Buckley and his eleven coplaintiffs, including former senator Gene McCarthy, looked like they had stepped out of the bar scene in Star Wars, but that was emblematic of Buckley’s appreciation for finding allies in unlikely places. And I must say, listening to conversations between Buckley and McCarthy was the kind of treat few will hear in today’s Senate.

Henceforward, anyone who reads American constitutional law will learn of Buckley v. Valeo, a case that came into being because of the unique courage and principles of one man. There is much more to say about Jim Buckley, but I cannot emphasize enough what luster he brought to our country, and how much of an honor it was to know him.

Biden’s trilateral summit with Japan and South Korea is critical to American security

August 17, 2023

This article was first published in The Washington Examiner on August 17, 2023. Click Here to read the original article.

This Friday, President Joe Biden will host a trilateral summit critical to American security for decades to come.Joined by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, Biden hopes to “advance a shared trilateral vision” in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. Aspirations for the summit are high, but whether the leaders are truly prepared for effective trilateral teamwork, or whether Friday is just another meeting on their busy schedules, is unclear.The White House hails the “ironclad” U.S.-Japan and U.S.-ROK alliances, but that very formulation highlights probably the most difficult immediate obstacle they face: Can America’s long-standing “hub-and-spoke” Pacific alliances be transformed, even partially, into collective self-defense structures? This is not the work of one summit, or of only these three partners. No one expects to see an Asian NATO imminently. Nonetheless, China’s existential menace requires evolving beyond the hub-and-spoke paradigm. While Biden’s summit announcement mentions North Korea’s threat, the word “China” does not appear, perhaps for legitimate optical reasons. But if China is not absolutely central to the discussions, Friday’s summit will be a waste of time.A strong Pacific alliance will take work on multiple fronts. For their part, Japanese-Korean relations post-World War II are colored by history, and progress overcoming that history has often been reversed by new waves of hostility, generated by their respective domestic politics. Leaders such as Yoon and Kishida have heavy lifting to do, and despite opposition, both men seem determined to try.In their efforts, trilateral rather than bilateral security strategies and programs can be helpful. This is also how Washington can help pragmatically, moving beyond just voicing strong support for closer Tokyo-Seoul cooperation. A trilateral paradigm can give Seoul and Tokyo new room to enhance their relations, which can then permeate their bilateral dealings.In politico-military planning, trilateral cooperation can build patterns and habits of joint effort that transcend the constraints of bilateral relations, which the respective sides often see as zero-sum exercises. In a trilateral context, allocation of roles and responsibilities, defining and planning for contingencies, and the inevitably more complex consultations, can take the edge off purely bilateral issues. For example, discussing military budgets and defense-production programs — the meat and potatoes of any successful collective-defense partnership — while often contentious, can help justify decisions by each partner in ways that would otherwise be far more difficult to achieve individually or bilaterally. Closer trilateral cooperation is central to effective collective self-defense. For example, Donald Trump once asked South Korean President Moon Jae-in how South Koreans would feel about having Japanese troops fighting alongside them to repel a North Korean invasion. Moon was visibly uncomfortable with the question, given his domestic politics, and largely successful in avoiding a clear answer. Ineluctably, however, the logic for Japanese combat arms assisting South Korea’s defense is unassailable. It could prove far easier to realize in a trilateral structure than bilaterally. The leaders should also discuss how Japan and South Korea can enhance other emerging Indo-Pacific alignments. The Asian security “Quad” (India, Australia, Japan, and America), for example, does not include Seoul or other key players. Adding South Korea to form a “Quint” makes sense but may not yet be ripe. Accordingly, how the ROK and others can participate in the Quad’s emerging agenda is a vital topic. Similarly, neither Japan nor South Korea are now members of the AUKUS project for Great Britain and America to build nuclear-powered submarines with Australia, but they could easily have similar arrangements. Until Congress and the Biden administration take seriously the need for extensive increases in U.S. naval warships and submarines, not to mention more domestic shipbuilding capacity, working with Indo-Pacific allies to enlarge their respective arsenals is essential. Finally, Biden, Yoon, and Kishida should discuss how to cooperate in fending off Chinese designs on Taiwan and the East China Sea. While South Korea has understandably concentrated for decades on North Korea’s threat, Seoul’s leadership increasingly grasps that the more serious threat, economically as well as militarily, is China. It is already a commonplace understanding for the Japanese that an attack on Taiwan is an attack on them, and Koreans increasingly see threats to Taiwan in the same light. South Korea’s interests are essentially those of Japan, and indeed of America.Holding the line against Beijing and Pyongyang in all the waters around Korea and Japan is fundamental, and Taiwan is an essential ally for doing so. Positioned between the East and South China Seas, Taiwan is the key hinge point against China’s threat throughout East Asia. The summit leaders should be clear they will not be inhibited by Beijing’s insistence that countries either recognize China or Taiwan. There are numerous ways to engage in collective security with Taiwan as an effectively independent country, which it is, without saying so expressly.The sheer breadth of Beijing’s challenge is more than one summit can resolve, but the need for Indo-Pacific grand-strategy thinking is urgent. Regularizing these trilateral summits would be an important practical outcome this Friday.

Blame Biden’s Hesitancy for Stalling Ukraine’s Offensive

August 13, 2023

Paralyzed by fear of Russian escalation, the administration has sought only to stave off defeat.

This article was first published in The Wall Street Journal on August 13, 2023. Click Here to read the original article.

Ukraine’s spring offensive, now well into the summer, isn’t making the headway some proponents had forecast. The Ukrainians aren’t lacking in bravery or tenacity, and they’ve achieved eye-catching successes, such as the recent crippling of Russia’s Olenegorsky Gornyak, a roll-on/roll-off landing ship. Nevertheless, it should be a wake-up call for Washington that its strategy needs reformulating.

The solution isn’t a cease-fire and negotiation, as some in the West advocate. If Vladimir Putin were to agree to it, he would do so at a time of his choosing, not ours. He will likely propose a cease-fire if Moscow contains Kyiv’s attacks by early autumn, with the goal of trying to win through negotiations what Russia’s armed forces have failed to take on the battlefield. Accepting this offer would lead to Ukraine’s de facto partition—an unacceptable proposition for Kyiv and its Eastern European neighbors.

Far from being inevitable, the Ukrainians’ inability to achieve major advances is the natural result of a U.S. strategy aimed only at staving off Russian conquest. Instead, President Biden needs to start vigorously working toward Ukrainian victory.

Ukraine’s offensive failures and Russia’s defensive successes share a common cause: the slow, faltering, nonstrategic supply of military assistance by the West. The serial debates over whether to supply this or that weapons system, the perpetual fear that Russia will escalate to war against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and occasional Kremlin nuclear saber-rattling have instilled a paralyzing caution in Western capitals. Although the U.K. under Boris Johnson wasn’t deterred, NATO has seemed unwilling to fulfill its commitment to restore Ukraine’s full sovereignty and territorial integrity.

This hesitancy is a product of successful deterrence by the Kremlin, not American strategic necessity. There is no evidence that Russia has the conventional military capability to threaten NATO or the will to launch a nuclear strike. Despite Moscow’s repeated nuclear threats, the intelligence community has affirmed in congressional testimony that Russia’s nuclear capabilities haven’t once shifted toward operational status. Mr. Putin has been bluffing. That could change, but succumbing to bluffs gives him exactly what he wants cost-free.

The administration’s timid, haphazard approach to aid has fractured U.S. public support. Mr. Biden has compounded this problem with his insistence that the war is about Wilsonian abstractions of democracy vs. authoritarianism. Wilsonian principles have never motivated U.S. majorities, even when preached by the genuine article. There are compelling arguments that assisting Ukraine serves our strategic interest, but the president isn’t making them. He and Donald Trump both undercut Republican support for aid.

The West—particularly Washington—also needs to rethink sanctions policy radically. Theories about price caps on Russian oil have failed, and Western sanctions generally remain piecemeal and seriously underenforced. These defects aren’t confined to the Ukraine conflict and should prompt NATO institutionally to review how it conducts enforcement. Proclaiming sanctions is great PR, but enforcement is hard, tedious and necessarily done clandestinely where possible. The U.S. and its allies need a massive overhaul and upgrade of our sanction-enforcement instruments, procedures and personnel.

Read the completed article on WSJ.com.

The Foundation

America’s only hope is for Trump to withdraw from the election race

August 03, 2023

If he wins the presidency while still enduring these legal troubles, the US will enter a constitutional crisis

This article was first published in The Telegraph on August 3, 2023. Click Here to read the original article.

Donald Trump’s continued pursuit of the 2024 Republican presidential nomination will damage both the party and America, particularly if he succeeds. Neutral observers might think the growing mountain of legal challenges — criminal and civil — including the one filed Tuesday in Washington, would give Trump pause, notwithstanding his current opinion-poll lead in the Republican race. And everyone not named Trump recognises the enormous risks if he becomes the first convicted felon nominated for the presidency, or worse yet elected president.

For Trump, however, staying in the race increases his chances to get the nomination and secure funding to pay his rising legal billS. If he wins next year’s general elections, as is entirely possible, he will be able to terminate the pending federal investigations and prosecutions (although not the New York and Georgia criminal proceedings) or pardon himself if already convicted.

This growing disjunction between the national interest and Trump’s personal political and economic interest is nothing new. Unfortunately, however, there is little doubt he will seek to maximise his personal well-being over the country’s. America is in uncharted waters.

For any normal person, the burden of defending against criminal indictments, as well as civil lawsuits (which could significantly damage his personal finances) would be more than enough to reorient his priorities away from politics. The time involved to prepare for multiple trials and the magnitude of the legal jeopardy Trump faces should impel him to put other matters aside to concentrate on his serious risk of criminal convictions and substantial civil damages.

But Trump is an aberration. Ironically, he sees his best strategy is to use politics as his legal defence. His lawyers will argue at every opportunity that pre-trial proceedings and the trials themselves should be delayed and delayed again, to somewhere past election day. They will file every conceivable pre-trial motion and take every appeal permissible, which follows a long history of Trump’s approach to litigation.

Moreover, given this strategy and his already extraordinarily high legal fees — estimated at roughly $56 million since departing the White House — he needs the presidential campaign to help finance his legal defence. His outlays include legal fees paid on behalf of aides, which in many cases raise ethical issues. Prosecutors have questioned whether lawyers representing witnesses whose interests may be adverse to Trump’s can properly accept compensation from him.

If Trump’s delay strategy prevails, once inaugurated he can dismiss the federal special counsel and order the cases dismissed, which is within the executive branch’s prerogative. The two state cases are a different matter, and would remain pending against Trump, though he will certainly argue that they should be stayed during his presidency. If the state prosecutions proceed, however, and Trump is found guilty in one or both, it would be very Trumpian to refuse, as president, to accept the verdicts, expecting to skate free yet again. The US would face an unprecedented constitutional crisis.

The overall effect of this abnormal turmoil on America’s confidence in the integrity of its law-enforcement and government generally makes predictions hazardous. The vital question is just how deeply divisive and debilitating the consequences would be, and low long-lasting.

Internationally, America’s adversaries would swiftly take full advantage of Trump’s vulnerability and his propensity to comingle national interests with his personal interests. For Trump, obstruction of justice seems to be a way of life, with everything seen through the prism: “How does this benefit Donald Trump?”

Trump is already making clear his governing agenda will be retribution against his political enemies. He recently asserted, erroneously, not to mention almost sacrilegiously, that “I am being indicted for you”, having proclaimed earlier, “I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” Since Trump undoubtedly sees himself as the most “wronged and betrayed” of all, his intentions couldn’t be clearer or more dangerous.

Polls show that Americans do not want a repeat of 2020’s Biden-versus-Trump race; a majority want Trump to drop out. If someone with a rare gift of persuasion could talk sense to Trump, and persuade him to withdraw, any number of pretexts could be found to mask the real reason. There could be “health” issues, or perhaps he could argue no one should be president in their 80s, thereby also throwing shade on Biden. And Biden may yet decide to withdraw, which could lessen the zeal of Trump supporters who want a grudge rematch against the man they think stole the 2020 election.

The only real solution lies in one or more of the criminal trials taking place before November 3, 2024, which is still possible. If Trump is found guilty of one or more felonies, that may be sufficient to awaken enough of his supporters to abandon him, thereby derailing his campaign before he derails the country.

Uncategorized