Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Trump’s Record and the Bolton Effect

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Afghanistan, alliances, America First, Asia-Pacific, Barack Obama, China, Europe, extended deterrence, globalism, Iran, Iran deal, Iraq, Israel, Japan, John Bolton, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Kim Jong Un, Middle East, neoconservatives, North Korea, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Palestinians, Republicans, South Korea, Syria, Trump

With John Bolton now out as President Trump’s national security adviser, it’s a great time to review the Trump foreign policy record so far. My grade? Though disappointing in some important respects, it’s been pretty good. Moreover, Bolton’s departure signals that performance could improve significantly, at least from the kind of America First perspective on which Mr. Trump ran during his 2016 campaign. That’s less because of Bolton’s individual influence than because what his (clearly forced) exist tells us about the President’s relationship with the Republican Party and conservative establishment.

There’s no doubt that the Trump foreign policy record is seriously lacking in major, game-changing accomplishments. But that’s a globalist, and in my view, wholly misleading standard for judging foreign policy effectiveness. As I’ve written previously, the idea that U.S. foreign policy is most effective when it’s winning wars and creating alliances and ending crises and creating new international regimes and the like makes sense only for those completely unaware – or refusing to recognize – that its high degrees of geopolitical security and economic self-reliance greatly undercut the need for most American international activism. Much more appropriate measures of success include more passive goals like avoiding blunders, building further strength and wealth (mainly through domestic measures), and reducing vulnerabilities. (Interestingly, former President Obama, a left-of-center globalist, saltily endorsed the first objective by emphasizing – privately, to be sure – how his top foreign policy priority was “Don’t do stupid s–t.”)     

And on this score, the President can take credit for keeping campaign promises and enhancing national security. He’s resisted pressure from Bolton and other right-of-center globalists to plunge the country much more deeply militarily into the wars that have long convulsed Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, and seems determined to slash the scale of U.S. involvement in the former – after nineteen years.

He’s exposed the folly of Obama’s approach to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Although Tehran has threatening to resume several operations needed to create nuclear explosives material since Mr. Trump pulled the United States out of the previous administration’s multilateral Iran deal, it’s entirely possible that the agreement contained enough loopholes to permit such progress anyway. Moreover, the President’s new sanctions, their devastating impact on Iran’s economy, and the inability of the other signatories of Obama’s multilateral Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to circumvent them have both debunked the former President’s assumption that the United States lacked the unilateral power to punish Iran severely for its nuclear program and ambitions, and deprived Tehran of valuable resources for causing other forms of trouble throughout the Middle East.

Mr. Trump taught most of the rest of the world another valuable lesson about the Middle East when he not only recognized the contested city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but actually moved the U.S. Embassy there. For decades, American presidential contenders from both parties had promised to endorse what many of Israel’s supporters called its sovereign right to choose its own capital, but ultimately backed down in the face of warnings that opinion throughout the Arab world would be explosively inflamed, that American influence in the Middle East would be destroyed, and U.S. allies in the region and around the world antagonized and even fatally alienated.

But because the President recognized how sadly outdated this conventional wisdom had become (for reasons I first explained here), he defied the Cassandras, and valuably spotlighted how utterly powerless and friendless that Palestinians had become. That they’re no closer to signing a peace agreement with Israel hardly reflects an American diplomatic failure. It simply reveals how delusional they and especially their leaders remain.

Nonetheless, Mr. Trump’s Middle East strategy does deserve criticism on one critical ground: missing an opportunity. That is, even though he’s overcome much Congressional and even judicial opposition and made some progress on strengthening American border security, he’s shown no sign of recognizing the vital America First-type insight holding that the nation’s best hope for preventing terrorist attacks emanating from the Middle East is not “fighting them over there” – that is, ever more engagement with a terminally dysfunctional region bound to spawn new violent extremist groups as fast as they can be crushed militarily. Instead, the best hope continues to be preventing the terrorists from coming “over here” – by redoubling border security.

The Trump record on North Korea is less impressive – but not solely or even partly because even after two summits with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, no progress has been made toward eliminating the North’s nuclear weapons or even dismantling the research program that’s created them, or toward objectives such as signing a formal peace treaty to end the Korean War formally that allegedly would pave the way for a nuclear deal. (Incidentally, I’m willing to grant that the peninsula is quieter today in terms of major – meaning long-range – North Korean weapons tests than when the President took office – and that ain’t beanbag.)

Still, the main – and decisive – Trump failure entails refusing to act on his declared instincts (during his presidential campaign) and bolstering American security against nuclear attack from North Korea by withdrawing from the peninsula the tens of thousands of U.S. troops who served as a “tripwire” force. As I’ve explained previously, this globalist strategy aimed at deterring North Korean aggression in the first place by leaving an American president no choice except nuclear weapons use to save American servicemen and women from annihilation by superior North Korean forces.

But although this approach could confidently be counted on to cow the North before Pyongyang developed nuclear weapons of its own capable of striking the United States, and therefore arguably made strategic sense, now that the North has such capabilities or is frighteningly close, such “extended deterrence” is a recipe for exposing major American cities to nuclear devastation. And if that situation isn’t inexcusable enough, the United States is playing such a dominant role in South Korea’s defense largely because the South has failed to field sufficient forces of its own, even though its wealthier and more technologically advanced than the North by orders of magnitude. (Seoul’s military spending is finally rising rapidly, though – surely due at least in part to Trump pressure.) 

Nonetheless, far from taking an America First approach and letting its entirely capable Asian allies defend themselves and incentivizing them plus the Chinese and Russians to deal as they see fit with North Korean nuclear ambitions that are most threatening to these locals, the President seems to be happy to continue allowing the United States to take the diplomatic lead, bear much heavier defense spending burdens than necessary, and incurring wholly needless nuclear risk. Even worse, his strategy toward Russia and America’s European allies suffers the exact same weakness – at best.

Finally (for now), the President has bolstered national security by taken urgently needed steps to fight the Chinese trade and tech predation that has gutted so much of the American economy’s productive sectors that undergird its military power, and that his predecessors either actively encouraged, coddled, or ignored – thereby helping China greatly increase its own strength.

In this vein, it’s important to underscore that these national security concerns of mine don’t stem from a belief that China must be contained militarily in the Asia-Pacific region, or globally, as many globalists-turned-China economic hawks are maintaining. Of course, as long as the United States remains committed to at least counterbalancing China in this part of the world, it’s nothing less than insane to persist in policies that help Beijing keep building the capabilities that American soldiers, sailors, and airmen may one day need to fight.

I’ll be writing more about this shortly, but my main national security concerns reflect my belief that a world in which China has taken the military and especially technological need may not directly threaten U.S. security. But it will surely be a world in which America will become far less able to defend its interest in keeping the Western Hemisphere free of excessive foreign influence, a la the Monroe Doctrine, and in which American national finances and living standards will erode alarmingly.

The question remains, however, of whether a Bolton-less administration’s foreign policy will tilt significantly further toward America First-ism. President Trump remains mercurial enough to make any such forecasting hazardous. And even if he wasn’t, strategic transitions can be so disruptive, and create such short-term costs and even risks, that they’re bound to take place more unevenly than bloggers and think tankers and other scribblers would like to see.

But I see a case for modest optimism: Just as the end of Trump-Russia scandal-mongering and consequent impeachment threat has greatly reduced the President’s need to court the orthodox Republicans and overall conservative community that remain so influential in and with Congress in particular, and throw them some big bones on domestic policy (e.g., prioritizing cutting taxes and ending Obamacare), it’s greatly reduced his need to cater to the legacy Republicans and conservatives on foreign policy.

Not that Mr. Trump has shown many signs of shifting his domestic priorities yet. But I’m still hoping that he learns the (screamingly obvious) lessons of the Republicans’ 2018 midterms losses (e.g., don’t try to take an entitlement like Obamacare away from Americans until you’re sure you can replace it with something better; don’t endorse racist sexual predators like Alabama Republican Senatorial candidate Roy Moore simply for partisan reasons). It’s still entirely possible that the growing dangers of his remaining globalist policies will start teaching the President similar lessons on the foreign policy front.

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Still Clueless on the Palestinians After All These Years

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Arabs, Gaza Strip, Israel, Jackson Diehl, Jerusalem, Middle East, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Palestinians, Trump, Washington Post, West Bank

I’m not focusing on Jackson Diehl’s column yesterday in the Washington Post because he’s such a terribly important foreign policy pundit. He’s not. Instead, I’m picking on him because he’s so utterly typical of chattering class conventional wisdom (which of course includes the academics and the think tanks) on U.S. Middle East policy, and specifically on relations between Israel and the Palestinians. In the face of overwhelming and ongoing floods of evidence, it continues to be not only spectacularly wrong, but almost proudly so.

Israeli-Palestinian relations weren’t Diehl’s only focus today, but they were prominent in his overall theme that President Trump is making dangerous mistakes by tossing out so many foreign policy ultimatums to friend and foe alike lately. Diehl could be right on that larger point (though I’m doubtful) but could not be more off-base when it comes to what is still amazingly called “the peace process.”

Diehl’s evidently worked up this week because Mr. Trump decided to punish the Palestinians for snubbing a White House peace plan in protest of his recent decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. In retaliation, he’s cut half of America’s annual $125 million contribution to the United Nations agency that helps provide economic aid and various types of social services, and has threatened to eliminate the rest “unless they sit down and negotiate peace.”

According to Diehl, such steps will backfire big-time because

“The withdrawal of U.S. aid is the last thing Israel wants — it would cause the collapse of the West Bank Palestinian security forces that in recent years have worked closely with Israel to prevent terrorist attacks. Israeli military forces might have to redeploy in Palestinian areas they now avoid. In short, if Trump follows through, he’ll do less damage to the Palestinians than to Israel, the ally he thinks he’s appeasing.”

As a result, Diehl claims, “To punish Trump for that ultimatum, the Palestinians need only sit tight.”

That last point alone leaves no doubt that Diehl thinks we’re living on a planet where water runs uphill. I mean, are the Palestinian people in any kind of a position where “sitting tight” is remotely appealing? Are they the side in this conflict that’s satisfied with the status quo?

Further, who historically has paid the highest price for a resumption of terror attacks on the West Bank and/or Gaza? Try “the people who live there” – i.e. the Palestinians.

And finally, if the Palestinians, or “outside agitators” (dating myself here!) ignite another round of violence great enough to strain Israeli resources seriously, nothing could be easier for the Trump administration to do than give the funds that were slated to the UN agency to the Israeli government – or more – to use as it pleases.

Diehl’s stated fear about Palestinian violence, however, underscores an even more important point about the standard lens through which the foreign policy establishment views this issue. These supposed experts have been raising this specter for years now, and seem to have forgotten that the last event that could legitimately be called a significant Palestinian uprising took place in 2000. In fact, Diehl seems to have forgotten that he himself semi-predicted new outbreaks because of the Trump Jerusalem decision – and like so many others, blew the call.

But don’t expect this Post pundit or any others to change their tune significantly. For doing so would amount to recognizing the fatal flaws that have marked their entire overarching analysis of Arab-Israeli relations for decades. As early as 2002, when I wrote this short article, it should have been screamingly obvious that the Palestinians had virtually no leverage with Israel, whether from using force themselves or relying on their fellow Arabs to help out.

And it should have been just as obvious that their delusional demands to negotiate with the Israelis as equals, or anything close, were being enabled only by the diplomatic support from outside powers. Whether mindlessly or cynically, the United States and the Europeans have acted as if peace could somehow be created by diplomacy that ignored power realities. That’s simply childish, and the prime victims have been the Palestinians.

That’s in fact why I found the Trump Jerusalem decision so refreshing and potentially productive.  It’s why I believe that an aggressive Israeli settlement program (if not every single settlement decision) can be similarly constructive. And it’s why the President’s announcement had made foreign policy sophisticates so livid: For the real message the United States is sending to the Palestinians now is the one that’s been as emphatically rejected in the past as it’s been urgently needed – and completely common-sensical: “Keep up the obstructionism, and you’ll lose even more land.” I only wish that Washington and Jerusalem were spelling this street smart content out more explicitly, or at all, and especially for the sake of the Palestinians themselves. Unless that common expression is true, and there really is no fixing stupid.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Kerry and the Establishment Remain Clueless About Middle East Peace

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foreign policy establishment, Israel, John Kerry, Middle East, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Palestinians, Samantha Power, settlements, Six-Day War, West Bank

At the risk of appearing to pile-on, here’s a criticism of Secretary of State John Kerry’s jeremiad this week about Israel’s record in Middle East diplomacy you haven’t read yet: The speech once again makes clear that the man who’s dubbed “America’s Chief Diplomat” has no clue as to what determines the outcome of a negotiation.

I’ve been making such arguments for years. The gist is that Kerry – and his boss in the Oval Office, and most of the foreign policy establishment in the United States and the rest of the western world – have been (unwittingly, I assume) making an Israel-Palestinian peace less, not more likely with the approach they’ve been using literally since the Six-Day War in 1967. Their fundamental mistake has been seeking to award the Palestinians at the bargaining table what they have no hope of winning on the battlefield or through any other actual or conceivable developments on the ground. But since outside powers have never been able to deliver on this implicit promise in any way, the result consistently has been enabling Palestinian obstinacy that gets more self-defeating every year.

What stands out about Kerry’s speech, and the entire Obama administration approach, has been misunderstanding the role played in Middle East diplomacy by Israel’s settlements in territories it was won militarily since 1967. The Secretary of State repeated the view that much settlement activity represents an “obstacle to peace.”

Previous American administrations have stated more or less the same position – as U.S. UN Ambassador Samantha Power has stated. But that consistency doesn’t made such views any less rear-end backward. In fact, if not for the meddling of outside powers, the settlements would have been likely to produce reasonable Palestinian offers of compromise. For every bit of land that comes under Israeli control makes whatever state the Palestinians could possibly hope to create that much weaker, smaller, and less viable. Without the false hopes held out by American and other foreign diplomats, the Palestinian leadership could have experienced no stronger incentive to bargain realistically – and therefore seriously.

Ironically, Kerry’s detailed indictment of Israeli policy on this front does an excellent job of detailing just what the Palestinians have lost – and keep losing:

>“[T]here are over 80 settlements east of the separation barrier, many located in places that would make a continuous – a contiguous Palestinian state impossible. Does anyone seriously think that if they just stay where they are you could still have a viable Palestinian state?”

>Crucial decisions about the West Bank are “being made unilaterally by the Israeli Government, without consultation, without the consent of the Palestinians, and without granting the Palestinians a reciprocal right to build in what will be, by most accounts, part of Palestine.”

>“[I]t’s not just a question of the overall amount of land available in the West Bank. It’s whether the land can be connected or it’s broken up into small parcels, like a Swiss cheese, that could never constitute a real state. The more outposts that are built, the more the settlements expand, the less possible it is to create a contiguous state.”

>“[A] settlement is not just the land that it’s on, it’s also what the location does to the movement of people, what it does to the ability of a road to connect people, one community to another, what it does to the sense of statehood that is chipped away with each new construction.”

>“Today, the 60 percent of the West Bank known as Area C – much of which was supposed to be transferred to Palestinian control long ago under the Oslo Accords – much of it is effectively off limits to Palestinian development.”

>“If the occupation becomes permanent, over the time the Palestinian Authority could simply dissolve, turn over all the administrative and security responsibilities to the Israelis.”

In fairness to Kerry – and the viewpoint he represents – he is convinced that a West Bank seized in this way would be unsustainable for Israel:

“[I]f there is only one state, you would have millions of Palestinians permanently living in segregated enclaves in the middle of the West Bank, with no real political rights, separate legal, education, and transportation systems, vast income disparities, under a permanent military occupation that deprives them of the most basic freedoms. Separate and unequal is what you would have. And nobody can explain how that works. Would an Israeli accept living that way? Would an American accept living that way? Will the world accept it?…Who would administer the schools and hospitals and on what basis? Does Israel want to pay for the billions of dollars of lost international assistance that the Palestinian Authority now receives? Would the Israel Defense Force police the streets of every single Palestinian city and town?

“How would Israel respond to a growing civil rights movement from Palestinians, demanding a right to vote, or widespread protests and unrest across the West Bank? How does Israel reconcile a permanent occupation with its democratic ideals? How does the U.S. continue to defend that and still live up to our own democratic ideals?”

And these are clearly serious questions for Israelis. But what Kerry and so many others have completely missed is that:

(a) It’s entirely reasonable so far from an Israeli standpoint to assume that even this likely scenario is safer and thus vastly more acceptable than the one flowing from the establishment of the kind of Palestinian state – led by the current generation of Palestinian leadership; and (much more important)

(b) These are far more serious – indeed, national life and death – questions for the Palestinians. Moreover, the answers they can realistically hope for are far worse – and worsening all the time.

President-elect Trump has indicated his interest in trying to end the conflict between Israelis and their Arab neighbors – and his confidence that he can succeed. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether he’s right. But his career has demonstrated some skill at hands-on negotiation. And he does know a thing or two about the importance of real estate.

Following Up: New Evidence for Some of My Major Iran Deal Fears

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Following Up, foreign policy establishment, Iran, Iran deal, Israel, Kerry, Middle East, nuclear weapons, Obama, Palestinians

On Friday, I listed several reasons for major concerns about President Obama’s deal aimed at denying Iran nuclear weapons – at least for the next decade, or decade-and-a-half, depending on what importance you attach to various of the framework’s fixed-term provisions. This morning, the Washington Post’s Dan Balz provided near-dispositive evidence for my jitteriness about the inexperience and instincts of Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Kerry.

Here’s Mr. Obama’s own account, told to Balz, of how he reacted as a presidential candidate following a much-criticized (including by rival Hillary Clinton) promise he made in a 2007 campaign debate to meet with leaders of Iran and other rogue states without preconditions:

“Obama knew what the conventional wisdom was in those hours after the debate. On their way to the airport, he already could see the swirling criticism appearing on the Internet. He told his advisers, some of them nervous about the position he was in, to hold the line.

“‘I said: ‘Don’t back down. If we go down, we’re going down swinging,’  Obama later told me. ‘It was a moment where I felt confident enough to trust my instincts and also confident about the fact that I wasn’t going to be intimidated by the pundits. . . . This was a moment where I said, ‘You know what, I’m just going to make sure that whatever I do accords with what I believe.’”

“Obama’s compass on Iran might have been set at that moment.”

Again, you don’t need to put the nation’s foreign policy establishment or its punditocracy on a pedestal to note that this expression of supreme diplomatic confidence came from a politician who had served in the U.S. Senate at that time for less than two years, and was that far removed from his only other job in public life – Illinois state senator.

In fact, Kerry, a Senate veteran who chaired the foreign relations committee, has long been a pillar of the liberal wing of this establishment. Here’s what Balz writes of his outlook:

“Kerry motivation in producing an agreement with Iran is an extension of his long-held determination to affect the course of events in the Middle East. It was among his greatest disappointments in the aftermath of his defeat by then-President George W. Bush in the 2004 election that he would have no opportunity to try to bring about a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

“Kerry made a Middle East peace agreement a priority when he succeeded Clinton as secretary of state; he has nothing to show for it. Prospects for new negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians are nil, and relations between Israel and the United States, symbolized by the open warfare between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are at a low point in the history of the two countries.

“Kerry’s legacy as secretary of state may now rest in part on whether he can reach a final deal with Iran this summer and whether Iran lives up to the terms or whether it stalls, blocks or otherwise frustrates the international community on the implementation while continuing to sponsor and export terrorism across the region.

There could be at least four related possible reasons for Kerry’s obsession with an Israeli-Palestinian peace, none of them reassuring in the slightest:

>He (as with many other so-called Middle East experts) has no clue as to how stable – overwhelmingly in Israel’s favor – the power balance between the two is. (Click here for a reminder.)

>He believes that the Palestinian Arabs have some kind of abstract, absolute, perhaps moral right to nation-hood, regardless of strategic or other circumstances, even though history teaches no such lessons.

>He believes that he can make special contributions to this goal.

>He agrees with the dangerously fact-free claim that peace between Israelis and Palestinians will pacify most of the politically, socially, and economically diseased and indeed dysfunctional Middle East.

As I’ve written previously, no segment of the professional U.S. foreign policy community or political faction has had a monopoly on strategic ignorance and incompetence when it comes to the Middle East, or to America’s genuinely important interests in the rest of the world. The big question facing the country is how soon at least some of its leaders will start recognizing, however dimly, the conceptual failures staring them right in the face. In the meantime, unless the Iran deal proves much more effective than its American authors’ records suggest, the nation’s best hope for avoiding disaster could be a Congress that finally discovers a foreign policy backbone.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: It’s High Time for America to Take the Hint(s) in the Middle East

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border security, foreign policy, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, John Boehner, Jordan, Middle East, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Palestinians, Shiites, Sunnis, terrorism, Yemen

Sometimes, when countries are lucky, reality knocks them over the head with a two-by-four before they make fatal mistakes. The United States, over whom God is said to watch (along with fools and drunks) has just gotten two of them in connection with the Middle East in the last week. Yet no one should bet the ranch that these broadest of hints will be taken.

The first came in a Saturday Washington Post news article on the regional situation just before a Saudi-led coalition started intervening in Yemen’s civil war. As Post reporter Liz Sly explained it:

“The United States is aligned alongside Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and against them in Yemen. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, who have joined in the Saudi offensive in Yemen, are bombing factions in Libya backed by Turkey and Qatar, who also support the Saudi offensive in Yemen. The Syrian conflict has been fueled by competition among all regional powers to outmaneuver one another on battlefields far from home.”

The clear message: This is a madhouse that even Bismarck couldn’t deal with, much less Susan Rice.

The second sign that current Middle East policy is flying the United States into a mountain came from, of all people, House Speaker John Boehner. Now traveling through the region, the Ohio Republican declared, “America’s ability to lead in the world depends on Jordan’s ability to remain a stabilizing force in the Middle East, and we could not ask for a more solid partner.”

This is the same Jordan whose Sunni king from an Arabian peninsula tribe rules over a population that’s long been more than half comprised of always restive Palestinians, but whose demographic profile is now being reshaped by enormous refugee waves from disintegrating neighboring countries. Among the newcomers – hundreds of thousands of Shiites who comprise that sect’s first significant presence in the country. In other words, Boehner believes that the future of America’s global leadership depends on the national equivalent of a time bomb whose ticking he can’t, or won’t, hear.

As I’ve written before, it’s time for the United States to go. But not in the belief that various surrogates – like Arab coalitions – can effectively replace or even supplement American power. Or that the domestic energy revolution is already advanced enough to make the region marginal to U.S. economic interests.  Or that ISIS is so brutal that it will ultimately tear itself apart or provoke a powerful backlash.  Or that one of these days, Iran and Saudi Arabia may be ruled by moderates and genuine modernizers. Or that (similarly), Islam in all its forms might undergo a Reformation and help lead all the Middle East’s peoples out of dysfunction.

Instead, the United States urgently needs to begin actively and explicitly preparing its exit by using domestic policies to minimize Middle East dependencies and threats. This means ensuring that the economy develops energy sources large and diverse (geographically as well as in terms of fuel types) to turn Middle East oil producers into permanent global energy market followers, not leaders. It means securing U.S. borders well enough to keep out terrorists from within the region (and their supporters from without). And until marginalization policies are firmly in place, it means (a) harrassing ISIS with air strikes and special forces to keep it off balance, and (b) either preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon, or crippling its economy through sanctions if current negotiations fail, until marginalization policies are in place.

Above all, it means that American leaders must realize that foreign policy-making isn’t first and foremost about acting out their fantasies – whether imperial or humanitarian. (Yes, I know – the two often overlap.) Instead, foreign policy-making is first and foremost about promoting and defending the nation’s security and welfare. Before the energy revolution in particular, the United States had no viable alternative to active, often dangerous, involvement in the Middle East’s deadly affairs. Now the vastly superior disengagement option, which emphasizes (domestic) conditions that Washington can reasonably hope to control, is within our grasp. I’d hate to be the one to have to explain to future generations why this opportunity wasn’t aggressively seized.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Where Obama’s Reaction to Netanyahu’s Win Does and Doesn’t Matter

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Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Palestinians, peace process, Syria, terrorism

If you had any doubts that the Obama administration is completely out to lunch when it comes to the Middle East peace process, they should be erased for good by U.S. reactions to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s reelection victory. Statements by American officials since the Israel results came in make clear that President Obama is not only on the wrong track on the merits, but lacks a clue even how to implement his own misguided strategy effectively.

As I’ve written previously, the way to a sustainable peace between Palestinians and Israelis is not to try to win for the former at the bargaining table what they are less capable of winning on the battlefield than ever. This approach – which has dominated Arab-Israeli diplomacy since at least the 1967 war and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza – can only encourage the Palestinians’ recalcitrance (by convincing them that foreign pressure on Israel will continue regardless of their behavior) while creating no incentives for Israeli concessions (barring the kind of harsh American and European measures that seem inconceivable – even though the Washington Post has noted that some of the latter’s leaders “have begun to openly debate employing sanctions against Israel….”).

Instead, the United States should encourage a peace based on current and foreseeable power realities in the region – meaning overwhelming Israeli strategic superiority. In policy terms, this means clearly telling the Palestinians that their only hope for meaningful progress is behavioral change dramatic enough and prolonged enough to convince Israeli majorities that statehood or something like it has become safe. That is, America is leaving the two sides to their own – incredibly unequal – devices.

Unfortunately, Mr. Obama remains wed to recipes for failure. The dispositive evidence? Responding to Netanyahu’s last-minute campaign promise to reverse himself and oppose the idea of statehood for Palestinians, the State Department announced that it might not veto United Nations Security Council resolutions critical of the Jewish state.

But this quasi-threat is a hissy fit – at very best. For the administration has brought up no plausible ideas for restarting the peace negotiations in which it puts so much stock. Indeed, in addition to making clear to reporters that “there will be no change in military, intelligence and security cooperation,” and that it will continue opposing the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to join the International Criminal Court (which is scheduled to take place on April 1, and which would enable it to file war crimes cases against Israel), Obama aides told The Wall Street Journal that “the White House now sees no chance for restarting peace talks while” Mr. Obama and his Israeli counterpart “remain in office.” Of course, to Netanyahu and his backers, that’s a promise, not a threat.

Fortunately, the prospect of a freeze on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has never been less relevant to U.S. security interests. And it will remain so while all actors in the Middle East, except maybe for the Palestinians, have much bigger fish to fry – like the inter-related rise of ISIS, the unfolding break-ups of Iraq and Syria, and the expansion of Iranian influence. But this latest reminder of American diplomatic incoherence can only weaken the U.S. position among Middle Eastern friends, foes, and everyone in between.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Of Chickensh– & Avoiding Stupid Sh–

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Arabs, chickensh--, geopolitics, Iran, ISIS, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, nuclear weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Palestinians, stupid sh--, Sunnis, terrorists

Usually, swipes at foreign leaders made anonymously by U.S. diplomats don’t create too much of a stir. After all, even when (as is often the case), they’re deliberate leaks aimed at sending official messages unofficially, they’re anonymous. So who knows how high ranking and therefore authoritative the muck throwers are? Above all, anyone who does speak for attribution can easily deny that they represent government policy, or even the views of anyone who really counts.

But an exception seems to be the shots against Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from Obama administration policymakers reported recently by Atlantic correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg. Even their target felt compelled to respond.

I have no idea whether this dust-up will rage on, much less whether it reveals or portends anything genuinely new in U.S.-Israel relations. What I do know is that, if the complaints do reflect what a critical mass of the president’s top advisors really think, there are several big, important ironies at work here. The three biggest:

The first and most obvious: Aides to a president widely slammed for timidity abroad are calling another government head “chickensh–”? Granted, their critique focuses on Netanyahu’s alleged unwillingness to make peace with the Palestinians (and Sunni Arab states) for fear of antagonizing hardline Israeli voters. In fact, the Obama officials reportedly specified that the Israeli leader’s supposed fear of “launching wars” is a “good thing.” But you’d think that folks in an administration arguably guilty of politically inspired difference-splitting in conducting an underwhelming military campaign in Libya, and of waiting for months even before approving modest airstrikes against ISIS terrorists would demonstrate just a little self-awareness.

Second, and perhaps less obvious, it’s likely that many of the same aides attacking Netanyahu, or at least their colleagues, have been the same officials eagerly spreading the word to the press that the president’s foreign policy should be praised for avoiding “stupid sh–.” As I’ve written, although they, and the president, have taken heat for touting such prudence as a major diplomatic guiding principle, for a nation as inherently strong, secure, and wealthy as the United States, it’s as good a lodestar as any and better than most.

Third, and perhaps least obvious of all, these Obama snipers appear completely unaware that Netanyahu’s caution arguably, and quite sensibly, could reflect his judgment that Israel’s position, too, is secure enough to justify standpat-ism.

At first glance, it may seem ludicrous to compare the geopolitical situations of the two allies. America of course is a huge, indeed continent-sized country located literally oceans away from its leading prospective enemies and boasting immense natural wealth. Israel seems to be the opposite in all these ways.

At the same time, though it is, as the phrase goes, “surrounded by enemies,” Israel has probably never been more secure militarily. As I’ve pointed out previously, with each passing year, the Palestinians’ strategic position keeps weakening. They remain painfully far from being able to change the military status quo unilaterally, and as long as the ISIS is still a threat, the rest of the Arab world looks less likely than ever to ride to their rescue, or even help them in any remotely meaningful way.

The emergence of an ISIS state in a large chunk of current Iraqi and Syrian territory would hardly be welcomed by the Israelis, but this development would surely be strongly resisted by the ostensibly moderate Sunni countries – making them even less inclined to pressure Israel. Indeed, according to many reports, ISIS’ emergence – and Washington’s tardy response – is generating covert cooperation between the Jewish state and Sunni regimes. And although ISIS’ anger seems focused at least for now in an operational sense on the Sunni countries and the West, not on Israel, does anyone really believe that even dramatic Israeli-Palestinian peace progress would affect the jihadis’ agenda?

There’s no doubt that Israel is very afraid of the possibility of Iran going nuclear. But nothing its Obama administration critics apparently want it to do vis-a-vis the Palestinians and the Sunni countries would help on that score. In fact, in an additional irony, not only does Iran seem to have prompted tacit Israeli-Sunni detente, but U.S. Efforts to derail Iran’s nuclear drive are motivated in part by its own fear that “chickensh–” Netanyahu will attack Tehran’s nuclear sites if diplomacy fails.

So it turns out that the most encouraging action the Obama foreign policy team could take would be to start leaking to reporters that the Netanyahu “chickensh–” charges were really meant as a compliment – and that they’re going to start seriously examining all the ways in which their own “stupid sh–” point could smarten up America’s own diplomacy.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: How Obama Keeps Feeding Palestinians’ Delusions

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diplomacy, Hamas, Israel, Middle East, negotiations, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Palestinians

As bad as developments on the ground are, the biggest blow delivered lately to prospects for a lasting end to the violence between the Israel and the Palestinians came from Secretary of State John Kerry. The main problem: He’s heading back to the Middle East to negotiate another ceasefire.

The idea evidently was Kerry’s. The Secretary was caught on camera yesterday grousing to an aide about the collateral civilian damage from Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and then concluding, “We’ve got to get over there” to calm the situation. President Obama agreed.

Most pundits and foreign policy establishmentarians will applaud this latest exercise of “American global leadership.” Yet history teaches that whatever short-term gains such diplomacy may produce will be more than offset by further violence over the longer term that makes prospects for an enduring settlement ever bleaker. For this American – and other forms of outside – interventionism can only feed Palestinian delusions that what has been decisively lost on the battlefield can be regained at the negotiating table, via external pressure for Israeli concessions.

As explained in this op-ed of mine published 12 years ago, these Palestinian hopes are delusional, and U.S. and other diplomatic involvement is counter-productive, because both assume that Israel’s position of massive and indeed growing strategic superiority can be negated or defined out of existence. Yet since international paper guarantees – which have a discouraging history of quickly being broken or explained away – can never achieve or protect a strong nation’s security nearly as well as its own devices, foreign peace-making attempts inevitably amount to dressed up efforts to urge Israel to surrender advantages that are not only invaluable, but that it is literally in no danger of losing.

Also inevitable: The greatest victims of ceasefire talks, shuttle diplomacy, peace conferences, and the like will remain the Palestinian people. These exercises not only inevitably convince their leaders that foreign pressure on Israel can negate their massive military inferiority. They just as inevitably lead Palestinian extremists in particular to exploit the only semblance of an effective weapon they (rightly) believe they still possess – the ability to arouse Western indignation through periodic outbursts of violence bound to trigger Israeli reprisals and therefore Palestinian civilian casualties.

Because the United States and other foreign democracies do have consciences, this strategy has periodically succeeded in saving Palestinian paramilitaries from total defeat, and enabling them to fight (ineffectually) another day. But it has no chance of generating enough pressure to achieve the goal most of the leadership (at least from time to time) says it wants – a Palestinian state with full sovereignty, including the unfettered right to field its own armed forces, but which Israel, for the foreseeable future, rightly perceives as unacceptably risky.

In fact, as my 2002 article makes clear, conceivable foreign interference lacks the ability even to generate anything remotely deserving to be called a “negotiation.” For the Israelis’ ability to achieve their own main objectives through their own efforts and capabilities means that the Palestinians can offer them nothing that is worth accepting a significant compromise. Moreover, as implicitly recognized by the Palestinians’ persistent but vain hopes in a Washington savior, they have no chance of mustering the military power to force meaningful Israeli concessions on their own, and no one inside or outside the region will provide the men or materiel to change realities on the ground.

If the Obama administration – and its successors – really wants to foster a lasting Israel-Palestinian peace settlement, they will adopt a hands-off strategy. Such non-interference will at least stop encouraging Palestinian obstinacy and extremism, and could well force a critical mass of Palestinians and their leaders to accept the reality of strategic defeat.

Fortunately for this continually exploited and beleaguered population, in this case, strategic defeat does not doom it to political defeat. For unlike most of history’s victors, Israel, for all its flaws, is a pluralistic democracy, and therefore predictably contains a large voting bloc that’s anxious for genuine peace sooner rather than later. Therefore, the Palestinians have an opportunity – and have always had an opportunity – to strengthen this constituency and start winning significant compromises by conclusively demonstrating peaceful intentions. Not that this approach is sure to work. But unlike sporadic violence, it’s not sure to keep failing.

At the same time, however, the Israeli democracy also contains a large voting bloc that’s eager to expand West Bank settlements further and continue squeezing the Palestinians. So if the Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza, truly want better and freer lives, they’ll start changing their behavior right away. Contrary to the longstanding conventional wisdom about this conflict, time is anything but their friend.