Reflections from news and commentary of the day
Subscribe To
Posts
All Comments
Saturday, May 4, 2024
Re: [Salon] The dangerous new call for regime change in Beijing - Fareed Zakaria Guest Post
The dangerous new call for regime change in Beijing
Republicans criticize Biden for being too soft on China. Their preferred approach is much more dangerous.
By Fareed Zakaria The Washington Post
Columnist|
May 3, 2024
President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping shake hands before a meeting of the Group of 20 in Bali, Indonesia, on Nov. 14, 2022. (Alex Brandon/AP)
The world is a tense place these days, with Europe consumed by its biggest land war since 1945 and conflict continuing to convulse the Middle East. These tensions would pale into insignificance, however, if a third arena were to erupt — in Asia, involving the United States and China. Those tensions have in fact calmed down in recent months as both Washington and Beijing have sought to stabilize their relationship. But there are now cries in Washington to change that.
In an essay in Foreign Affairs, Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher argue that the United States should adopt a Cold War-style containment policy toward China, a strategy whose goal should be a victory that would encourage the Chinese people to “explore new models of development and governance.” Pottinger acknowledged on my CNN show last week that “an effective U.S. strategy might naturally lead to some form of regime collapse.” Pottinger was Donald Trump’s senior-most aide on China policy, and Gallagher, a former congressman, chaired the House select committee on China. Their views will likely shape the next Republican administration.
Pottinger and Gallagher argue that President Biden’s strategy — managing competition with China — does not go nearly far enough. The authors accuse the Biden administration of pursuing a 1970s-style détente policy toward China when it should be pursuing a 1980s-style Reaganite policy designed to push Beijing to the brink. According to them, we should welcome more friction and tension with China.
This is an important essay because it lays out clearly the alternative strategy being proposed by some on the right. By putting their cards on the table, Pottinger and Gallagher help us understand the reckless, dangerous and utterly impractical nature of their preferred policy.
China today bears little resemblance to the Soviet Union of the 1970s and 1980s. The Soviet Union was an unnatural empire, cobbled together after World War II, with a decrepit economic model that had started to fail by the mid-1970s. China is the world’s second-largest economy and largest trading nation. Unlike the Soviet Union’s totally state-owned economy, China has a mixture of private and public sector. Ninety-two percent of China’s exports come from a vibrant private sector, including 42 percent from firms with foreign investors. Despite its recent troubles, the Chinese economy is still growing at around 5 percent and, because of its size, is likely to stay the world’s second-most important economy for decades.
The Soviet Union was an isolated economy, whereas China is deeply integrated into the global system. Trade between the United States and the Soviet Union peaked at several billion dollars a year. China and the United States do that much trade every few days. The Soviet Union’s gross domestic product was around $3.2 trillion at its peak, roughly 7.5 percent of world GDP. Today, China’s GDP is about 20 percent of global GDP.
Most fundamentally, the Soviet Union was largely a natural resource economy — a Siberian Saudi Arabia — deriving much of its growth from extractive industries such as oil, gas, coal, nickel and aluminum. China is a diversified manufacturing powerhouse with an increasingly sophisticated information technology industry that is second only to the United States. In fact, looking back, it’s clear that in the 1970s, the Soviet economy had stalled, before receiving a last lifeline when global oil prices quadrupled. By the 1980s, oil prices had collapsed — and then so did the Soviet Union.
Were the United States to embark on a policy of containment, it would likely find itself alone. China is the largest trading partner of over 120 countries around the world, far more than the United States can claim. And most of these countries are eager to maintain good ties with Beijing. Eighty-two percent of Nigerians, for example, say Chinese investment has been a boon to their economy. Even European nations — America’s closest allies — have made clear that they view China as much as a partner as they do a rival. French President Emmanuel Macron noted last year that even in the worst-case situation of a conflict over Taiwan, Europe should be careful not to mimic U.S. hostility toward Beijing. And while he was criticized for those remarks, as one German businessman noted to me, “We all privately believe what Macron said publicly.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was in China last month, hoping to deepen economic ties between the two countries.
American strategies of regime change have rarely worked. Think of Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are unlikely to work this time, especially in a country like China, where the regime is broadly credited with bringing major economic progress for its people. After decades of poverty and misery, average incomes in China grew ninefold from 1978 to 2015.
The current bellicosity on the right reminds me of the growing demands for regime change against Iraq two decades ago. But this would be even worse. Because of China’s size and engagement with the world, a strategy of containment and overthrow would take the United States down a hair-raising path. Sustained confrontation would unravel the global economy, risk isolating the United States, and raise the odds of a world war over Taiwan. It is worth some sober reflection before embarking down this road.
Friday, May 3, 2024
Rusya yargısı, JPMorgan’ın varlıklarına ve Commerzbank’ın hisselerine el koydu – Harici.com.tr
Rusya yargısı, JPMorgan’ın varlıklarına ve Commerzbank’ın hisselerine el koydu – Harici.com.tr
The Moscow Court of Arbitration confiscated the assets and shares of international investment bank JPMorgan and Commerzbank in 12.3 million euros (about 1.2 billion rubles) in the lawsuit filed by Transcapitalbank (TCB).
The court said that Commerzbank (Eurasia) put 100 percent of the shares of JSC, Commerzbank AG, J. P. Morgan SE and its Russian affiliates have taken temporary measures to confiscate funds in all bank accounts opened on behalf of – excluding type C account, type I account.
In addition, the securities and real estate goods belonging to the companies were also confiscated within the amount of receivables.
The case is about the obstacles that arise from the banning of transactions in favor of the TCB after the US imposed sanctions against the TCB.
“The applicant [TCB] points out that the effective implementation of the arbitral award against the defendants is only possible at the expense of property located on the territory of Russia and the territory of Russia,” the decision said.
The St. Petersburg and Leningrad District Arbitration Court confiscated the assets of the US bank JPMorgan Chase in Russia at the request of the VTB on April 24, freezing $439.5 million in the bank's accounts from 2022.
Sohu, a publisher in China, wrote that the seizure of the assets of the US bank JPMorgan Chase in Russia at the request of the VTB at the end of April was a possible response to the US plans to seize Russian assets.
Thursday, May 2, 2024
Why Iran Does What it Does Across its Borders - May 2024
Why Iran Does What it Does Across its Borders - May 2024
Why Iran Does What it Does Across its Borders
Sir Richard Dalton KCMG has served as British Ambassador to Iran, to Libya and Consul-General in Jerusalem.
It is very difficult to foresee how things can possibly get better soon across Western Asia.
No regional order is in prospect. The region is littered with on-going wars and with the half-alive corpses of bad US policies. Deterrence works to reduce the chances of inter-state war, but scarcely affects lower-level conflict. There are no respected international rules of the road and there is no dominant power to keep people in line. States are not interested in searching for cooperative solutions other than with their friends. Animosity and mistrust prevail. Bad analysis is common: for example the knee-jerk “instability is all Iran's fault" and US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear JCPOA. Poor judgement on intelligence is rife, too, as with Israeli mistakes before 7 October 2023. And many states active in the region under-estimate the difficulties, and are over-confident in the utility of military force, despite the lessons of Yemen and Gaza and, before, those of Afghanistan and Iraq.
How does Iran see itself fitting in to this picture? Two prominent factors have little impact on the answer to that question but must be mentioned. First, both domestic economic and social distress, and rejection of the Iranian system of rule are higher than ever. Second, the dominant political faction is the purist "paydari front", which considers that Islamic rule should be maintained by whatever means are necessary: that is what is important, not the people's views and the republican elements of the constitution.
Islamic Iran's strategic aims have been constant for decades:
preserve Islamic rule in Iran and be the vanguard of Islam in its struggles with materialism and Western power.
maintain independence from foreign pressures and threatened attack.
achieve recognition of Iran's interests and inclusion in regional decision-making.
survival.
The main ways in which Iran works to achieve these aims are:
maximising oil exports including evasion of US sanctions. Iran’s key partner is China, which is prepared to fend of US attempts to enforce US unilateral sanctions on Iranian oil exports.
developing stronger armed forces and defence industries, especially missile and UAV manufacturing. Key to this is securing Russian investment in Iran and arms trade with Russia in both directions.
ensuring forward defence through alliances in the Levant and maintaining a network of 'resistance' forces that are active in pre-existing conflicts (e.g., break-downs of authority and civil wars in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, in all of which several foreign actors are jostling to influence outcomes). Syria is the bridgehead to Lebanon, where Hizbollah's missile arsenal and loyalty to Ayatollah Khamenei provide Iran with the deterrence against major attack by Israel and the United States that its inferiority in conventional weapons renders so necessary.
fostering an expectation of retaliation among those who seek to harm Iran. Since 1 April 2024, and the refusal of the West to criticise Israel's destruction of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Iran’s leaders are on a shorter fuse. They know for sure, as in the Iran-Iraq war, in which the current leadership were involved, that the West will do nothing for them, whatever the action taken by Iran's enemies.
keeping Saudi Arabia in check in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, and opposing further Saudi normalisation with Israel.
maintaining a vigorous presence in the Persian Gulf: the straits of Hormuz will be safe for Iran or for no-one. They advocate inclusive long-term multilateral, not exclusive US-allied, security structures for the region.
nuclear hedging, having achieved threshold status. They consider building nuclear weapons to be too risky and unlikely to enhance their security. They remain parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and accept core IAEA inspections, but have pushed against past restraints by way of retaliation for US repudiation of the JCPOA and to create leverage for future bargaining with the United States.
refusing to accept Israel's existence. It is an obsession of an aged egotistical leader with an ideological vision, that Israel is an enemy of Muslims, and has always been bent on harming Iran's interests. Tehran seeks to roll back Israeli and US advances in the region, especially the US presence in the Gulf. They support armed struggle, claiming that it is essential for freeing Palestine, given the failure of other approaches. They maintain rhetorical calls for the elimination of Israel but have no expectation of that happening, and theywould support a negotiated two-state solution if the Palestinians were to accept it.
The Future?
Near term: the unlawful Israeli attack on the Damascus consulate on 1 April was reckless. It was probably intended to raise Israel-Iran tensions to near-war levels. Whether or not it was intended to draw the United States further in and to lay a foundation for a regional pro-Israel alliance, that is how Israel hopes to exploit it.
The Iranian response on 13 April was also reckless. Both sides have since opted for a halt to escalation, but it's a fragile halt: the shift towards hard-liner predominance in Israel and Iran and a miscalculation or bad/good luck in targeting, together with Israeli bellicosity and Iranian pride, might get Iran into a war in which it would suffer greatly but land some damaging blows first.
Medium term: with the slow waning of the US post-1956 "moment" in the Middle East, there is a drive to establish an Israeli post-2023 moment, viz military destruction of Hizbollah and Israeli control of all Palestine "from the River to the Sea", in alliance with the United States and Arab neighbours, while freezing out Iran and keeping it weak.
Several factors could work against such an outcome: Israeli refusal to countenance a Palestinian state, Saudi and other Gulf Arabs’ reluctance to alienate the big Iranian power next-door, and a new period of great power politics. The West is not getting stronger in the region and on the other side are China, Russia, and Iran. They want stability but insist that their interests should be included, not excluded. These authoritarian powers “are more and more aligned,” as Jens Stoltenberg told the BBC in mid-April.
The squandering by the United States, at Israeli behest, of the post-2015 opportunity to build on the JCPOA was one of many recent tragedies. A reset in that direction would be the best way forward. There is no chance at present of negotiating a fresh nuclear limitation and monitoring agreement, but after Ayatollah Khamenei there will be a fair chance of a less ideological and more pragmatic leadership: for example, one that would accept what Palestinians are prepared to accept (as enunciated by President Khatami in 2002).
Without justice for the Palestinians, successful negotiations on the issues inflaming Israel's northern border, and an accommodation with Iran, there will be no peace.
China, Russia, the EU, the United States and the Gulf Arabs should work together in an Iran contact group and, at the right time, should seek, amongst other things, fewer sanctions on Iran; an up-dated nuclear agreement that would limit Iran’s access to fissile material and re-establish intrusive monitoring; deconfliction in Syria and Yemen; and the creation step-by-step of a multilateral dimension to regional security. This would be to revive the 2003 “grand bargain” approach suggested by Iran but ignored in Washington at the time. A wide-ranging agreement of this kind on cooperative solutions across lines of enmity will be the only way of neutralising the issues dividing Israel and Iran and of calming the region.
[Salon] Saudi normalisation: still on, despite genocide - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
Saudi normalisation: still on, despite genocide
Summary: the Saudis have signalled that normalisation is still on despite the ongoing genocide.
As frantic diplomatic activity continues at the UN over the Gaza genocide, in the never never land that is regime media Saudi Arabia’s firm, clear and unyielding position in support of the Palestinian people’s legitimate rights is driving forward international efforts for peace and justice.
“We are witnessing successive accomplishments on all regional and international levels in the wake of Saudi Arabia’s spearheading of this political activity” Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization Hussein al-Sheikh was quoted as saying by regime mouthpiece Asharq Al-Awsat.
“Riyadh is employing its Arab, Islamic and international weight through calm diplomacy and in partnership with brothers in the Arab world and friends around the world to mobilise all this activity to isolate Israel and condemn its behaviour, on the one hand, and support Palestinian rights on the other,” he said.
On Wednesday a spokesperson for the Saudi embassy in the US told CNN that the country’s position is that establishing relations with Israel is contingent on ending the war in Gaza, recognition of a Palestinian state and establishing an irrevocable and irreversible pathway towards a two-state solution. Regarding a timetable, the Kingdom is working diligently to achieve these goals as soon as possible.
Given the absence of a ceasefire in Gaza, Netanyahu’s adamant resistance to the creation of a Palestinian state and his apparent determination to launch an offensive on Rafah, accomplishing any of these goals does not appear to be imminent and so the Guardian reported that the Saudis are now pushing for a more modest Plan B which would not include normalisation but would not depend on any agreement with Netanyahu either.
The Plan B deal would see the Saudis get what they want - a NATO-like defence pact, civilian nuclear reactor and high-level sharing in the field of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies - while the US would get its strategic partnership with the Kingdom cemented and encroaching Chinese and Russian influence would be halted.
“There should be room for a less-for-less model, so the relationship with the US need not be held hostage to the whims of Israeli politics or Benjamin Netanyahu,” said Firas Maksad, senior director for strategic outreach at the Middle East Institute.
Whether the Biden administration – let alone Congress – would accept such a less for less deal is far from clear.
From right to left: Sheikh Mohammed Al-Issa, secretary-general of the Mecca-based Muslim World League; Abdullah bin Al-Sheikh Al-Mahfouz bin Bayyah, head of the Emirates Council for Sharia Fatwa and the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies and the Al-Muwatta Foundation in Abu Dhabi; Sheikh Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, Chief Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and President of the General Presidency for the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques; an Israeli official.
“Without Senate approval, this is a non-starter, and without the Israel piece of this, a Senate approval is non-starter,” said Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders now the executive vice-president at the Center for International Policy.
South Carolina Republican Lindsay Graham - who has become an unlikely diplomatic ally to White House officials negotiating with Saudi leaders – was more bullish. “I don’t think anybody on the Republican side is going to undercut the deal,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” Graham continued “If we can get a deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, it ends the Arab-Israeli conflict, it isolates the Iranians, it creates some hope for the Palestinians, it provides security in a real way to Israel.”
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman argued that Israel is now facing a historic choice between “Rafah or Riyadh”, meaning an invasion that would not only result in a humanitarian catastrophe in front of an increasingly hostile world but also fail to "eliminate Hamas" and achieve the much heralded "total victory" Netanyahu has vowed to deliver; or, conversely, Israel could choose to end the war, help introduce an Arab peacekeeping force to govern Gaza, begin a process of normalisation with Saudi Arabia and Qatar and engage a revitalised Palestinian Authority in a process that would ultimately lead to a Palestinian state that would become a central part of a U.S.-led regional security alliance to counter Iran.
This, in essence, is Biden’s plan: an Arab peacekeeping force in Gaza, a U.S.-Saudi defence pact, and an integrated "security architecture" that would include Israel, the Americans, the European Union, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and the PA.
But as the Washington Post reported on Monday it faces plenty of obstacles, not least reticence among the Arab nations U.S. officials envision will help oversee the devastated territory in Washington’s “day after” blueprint.
“Whoever goes there, if they are seen or perceived to be there to consolidate the misery that this war has created, then they will be seen as the enemy,” said the Jordanian foreign minister, Ayman al-Safadi. “I think nobody would want to be part of that configuration.”
“Of course, we’re willing to play a role fully in whatever [form] it takes,” said Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry . “But that role and what we will accept in terms of risks and rewards will be subject to the overall evaluation of the end result and whether it is consistent with our aims.”
What happened this week was not a change in the Saudi position, just a reiteration of what the Saudis previously said in February after US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby suggested that Riyadh was prepared to normalise relations before there is a ceasefire in Gaza and without progress toward Palestinian statehood.
What is most remarkable about all this is that Israel / Saudi normalisation is back on the table given that the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza continues in full swing.
As we wrote in our newsletter of February 9, the real reason for all this is MbS’s desire to help Israel as well as deflecting accountability for the ongoing genocide and the funnelling of the Palestinians back into a make-believe world otherwise known as apartheid or the status quo ante. Saudi-Israeli relations are already more than normalised. Putting it on the agenda again now represents a last ditch push by the Saudis to get a deal with Biden before November’s election while tossing a political lifeline to Netanyahu to try and stop him sinking further into the Gazan quagmire, as war crimes prosecutions loom and Israel faces defeat both on the battlefield and in the forum of public opinion around the world.
The real question now is not whether Saudi and Israel are going to establish diplomatic relations or even whether there is going to be a two state solution. The real question now is for how much longer can the Zionist project survive before it collapses into the dustbin of history as other colonial settler regimes have done in the past?
The Distortion of Campus Protests over Gaza - TomDispatch.com
The Distortion of Campus Protests over Gaza - TomDispatch.com
"
Helen Benedict, Students on the Right Side of History
May 2, 2024
I live reasonably close to Columbia University. Over the years, on my daily walks, I've often wandered through the gates of its striking campus on 116th Street, crossing from Broadway to Amsterdam Avenue, passing students, admiring the enormous Low Library and the scene generally. About noon on a recent day (but before students there occupied Hamilton Hall and were violently cleared out of it by the police), with Columbia Professor Helen Benedict's piece in mind, I decided to walk to that now embroiled, embattled campus.
Everything looked normal as I headed up Broadway until I hit 110th Street and noticed that there were police officers on every corner. As I went farther uptown, the sidewalk suddenly narrowed because part of each block now had metal police barricades with plastic white police tape on them, clearly meant to hold possible protesters outside the school later in the day. The smaller (but still huge) gate I often enter at 114th Street was bolted shut with a giant "kryptonite evolution" lock on it and a security guard standing behind it. I could at least peer in and see a few of the on-campus tents that Columbia students protesting the nightmare in Gaza were now living in. Another block up and it was just police, police, police, plus a few orthodox anti-Zionist Jews with strange protest signs and a man waving an Israeli flag and shouting at them. And then there were all the TV cameras waiting for something, anything, to happen.
As I stood there, with police everywhere and not a demonstrating student in sight, I thought: how strange that all of this had happened on the very campus where, in 1968, amid the Vietnam War and after the killing of Martin Luther King, the cops had similarly been called in on demonstrators in a way that would prove historically memorable. Live and learn? Not a chance. The present Columbia president, Minouche Shafik, despite (as Benedict told me) the advice of her faculty, did it again and, in the process, not surprisingly created a nationwide movement against the nightmare in Gaza that's already spread to more than 40 campuses and is still growing.
Sometimes, it seems as if no one ever learns anything. A striking but solitary protest over Gaza and then throw in the modern version of McCarthyite Republicans, a cowed university president, and the decision to call in the police on a peaceful set of demonstrators. The next thing you know, you have a national movement embroiling campus after campus. But let Benedict, author most recently of the novel The Good Deed, in her second TomDispatch piece, explain the madness of it all in a distinctly up close and personal fashion. Tom
Wednesday, May 1, 2024
Chinese virologist who was first to share COVID genome sleeps on street after lab shuts
Chinese virologist who was first to share COVID genome sleeps on street after lab shuts
COVID trailblazer sleeping on the street
Noted Chinese virologist Zhang Yongzhen appears to be back at work following a dispute that saw him sleeping in the street outside his own lab. According to social media posts on Zhang’s Weibo account, his group was given two days to relocate to a new lab that lacked sufficient biosafety controls. In 2020, Zhang and long-time collaborator Edward Holmes, a virologist in Australia, were first to publicly release the genome of SARS-CoV-2 — a choice credited as key to the swift development of COVID-19 vaccines. But Zhang’s research output has since dwindled, which Holmes blames on an effort to sideline Zhang for unauthorized sharing of data. “It is heartbreaking to watch,” he says. “It is unfathomable to me to have a scientist of that calibre sleeping outside his lab.”
Bernie Sanders on X: "Mr. Netanyahu, antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to millions. Do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. https://t.co/CnM6oOrHKd" / X
Fr. Bob's Reflection for Fifth Sunday in Easter -
Most of us are repulsed by spiders. Rather than admire the woven web in the corner of the room, we are quick to destroy it. The spider swaying from the ceiling does not evoke amazement in us, despite its abilities. The spider disgusts us, and even causes us fear.
But, spiders have a lesson for us. They move through life with complete confidence. The spider has within itself all that is necessary. If it wants to get from the ceiling to the floor, all it has to do is reach inside itself. The more the spider gives of itself, the further it is able to progress. Destroy a spider's web and you might see that it is rebuilt the next day.
Why am I speaking about this?
Because, my friends, it is the lesson the Apostles had to learn after Jesus left them. He makes the point to them in today's Gospel: "I am the vine and you are the branches. Apart from Me, you can do nothing."
The vine itself does everything for the branches. Apart from the vine, the branches are empty sticks, withering and lifeless. But on the vine, the branches are vibrant and living; filled with fruitfulness and usefulness. And when those branches flourish, what a difference it makes to our world.
They give of themselves; the branches cannot bear fruit by themselves. The branches need the vine to nourish and strengthen them. We are all different branches attached to the same vine. We make up the Christian community.
Our Christian faith is always communal, never centered in isolation. Only by gathering do we become the Church of Jesus.
I once remember reading an old "Peanuts" comic. Linus is eating a peanut butter sandwich. While eating, he says, "What a wonderful hand I have. I could do so many things. Conduct an orchestra. Painting beautiful paintings. Perform brain surgery."
By the time he finished eating his sandwich, he is holidng out both hands. "These hands are so great, they could save the world," he says. Lucy looks up at him and says, "Linus, your hands are full of peanut butter."
We all have peanut butter on our hands. But that should not let that stop us from reaching inside ourselves to be Christs for others.
He is the vine. You are the branches.
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Robert Warren, S.A.
Spiritual Director
[Salon] The Death Of American Exceptionalism: What Will Come Next? - Guest Posst by Allan Brownfeld
THE DEATH OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM: WHAT WILL COME NEXT?
By
Allan C. Brownfeld
————————————————————————————————————————-
The Strange Death of American Exceptionalism
By Jack Ross,
Sublation Media,
231 pages,
$27.95
More and more observers are arguing that the U.S. may now be moving toward a major decline, one from which great powers rarely recover. The Founding Fathers worried that the love of liberty which motivated our early leaders would give way to more narrow and selfish interests. James Madison and other Founders believed that the kind of government established in the Constitution could not endure if the people abandoned dedication to its principles.
Benjamin Franklin said of the government that was created at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that it was “a republic if you can keep it.” We have already seen the attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power with the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 200l. Even now, our former president claims that he really won the election and millions of his supporters share this view. His attorneys suggest that a president is above the law and should be immune from prosecution even if he ordered the assassination of a political opponent. Those who make such an argument may be unfamiliar with Magna Carta—-or with the charges made against King George III which led to the American Revolution.
We live in a political era none of us ever imagined. Shortly after graduating from law school, I worked in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. This was the era of the Cold War and the end of segregation. Today, Republicans and Democrats view themselves, more and more, as “enemies.” In one position, I worked at the House Republican Conference. Among our board members were two future presidents, George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford. I never heard them speak ill of the Democrats. Their goal was to convince the Democrats that the legislation we were developing was good for the country. Working together, Republicans and Democrats defeated Communism and advanced civil rights. Remember the friendship of Ronald Reagan and Tip 0’Neill. Sadly, those days seem to be over.
In this important and thoughtful book, Jack Ross places our current political moment in historical perspective and provides us with an eloquent call to revive a new vital center and return to the fundamental values of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. He shows us how both the Republican and Democratic parties have lost their way. Jack Ross is an independent historian whose previous books are “The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History” and “Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism.”
Ross examines in depth how we have reached our current political situation: “There have been two central stories of American politics since the dawn of the 21st century. The first was the disintegration of the organized conservative movement that defined both the voter base and governing ideology of the Republican Party for more than a generation. Astute observers noted this as soon as the failures of George W. Bush became evident, with the Iraq war followed by the 2008 financial crisis. But only the rise of Donald Trump would force the movement to at last face up to the fact.”
The second central story, in Ross’ view, “was the Democratic Party’s abandonment of its one enduring constant over 200 years —its identity as the party of working people. First set in motion in the 1970s, the watershed was Bill Clinton’s embrace of free trade in the 1990s, with Barack Obama’s response to the 2008 financial crisis accelerating the trend. The campaigns of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020 then proved to be the last stand of whatever link the Democratic Party maintained to its historical identification with the working class.”
Out of the wreckage of the Bush presidency, Ross argues, “the American right came to mirror the rising European populist right—-largely working class and secular, and primarily moved by real and perceived threats to national identity. As the shared outcome of those two central stories, this suggests that the 2016 election represented a pivotal movement of realignment in the American political system.”
With regard to the idea of American “exceptionalism,” Ross provides this assessment: “…America is a new type of civilization different from all others , existing in the course of human events on terms exempting it from the normal cycles of rise, decline and fall afflicting other nations and civilizations throughout history…The common secular version of this belief…is of America as a ‘propositional’ nation…that America is founded on an idea rather than shared ancestry and culture.”
In Ross’ view, “It is striking that the basic tenets of the American Creed have retreated in parallel with the collapse of the three pillars of American exceptionalism—-religiosity, belief in American mission in the world and persistent upward mobility…the deeper background to this strange death of American exceptionalism was the fatal undermining of the American Creed as a consequence of the Vietnam War.”
When it comes to Donald Trump, Ross makes the case that he “possesses the most revolting and irredeemable personal character ever to grace the office of President…an office for which he was self-evidently unfit. He never had any aim or purpose in life rather than his personal enrichment and aggrandizement; he has never believed in anything whatsoever other than himself; and his shambolic, petulant refusal to concede the 2020 election right up to his incitement of the surreal putsch at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021…represented a unique menace to the American republic.”
Populism on the right and “wokeness” on the left are, Ross declares, threatening not only American exceptionalism but the very future and integrity of our society. He presents many suggestions for reform: “..to the usurped authority over the English language by ideologically captured style guides of corporate media,America must establish its version of the Academie Francaise, to undo extensive damage ranging from the jargon creep of gender ideology and critical theory to the racist capitalization of ‘black’ and ‘white.’ ..Indeed, the most urgent public policy action to arrest the disuniting of America belongs to the U.S. Census Bureau, to overhaul its racial classifications and end the ‘one drop rule’ in the classification of non-whites.”
Historically, many have warned that democratic societies have limited life spans. At almost 250 years, we have exceeded expectations. . No other country in 2024 lives under the same form of government it did 240 years ago—-only Americans. More than 200 years ago, British historian Alexander Tytler wrote that, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury—with the result that democracy collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship.”
In 1857, Thomas Babbington Macaulay expressed the view, “I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization or both.” Looking to America, he said that, “Either some Caesar or Napolean will seize the reins of government…or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians…as the Roman Empire was…with this difference—-that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your institutions.”
In this book, Jack Ross may take his place with other historians who warned about the dangers confronting free and democratic societies. He has tried to give us a road map to protecting our free society, if only we will take it.
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Megatron on X: "BREAKING: 🇺🇲🇮🇱 The US is preparing sanctions against the international criminal court in The Hague because of the arrest warrant for Netanyahu - Times of Israel Unprecedented in human history. Members of Congress have warned the International Criminal Court that they will… https://t.co/mY1DbvCrHU" / X
Megatron on X: "BREAKING: 🇺🇲🇮🇱 The US is preparing sanctions against the international criminal court in The Hague because of the arrest warrant for Netanyahu - Times of Israel Unprecedented in human history. Members of Congress have warned the International Criminal Court that they will… https://t.co/mY1DbvCrHU" / X
BREAKING: 🇺🇲🇮🇱 The US is preparing sanctions against the international criminal court in The Hague because of the arrest warrant for Netanyahu - Times of Israel Unprecedented in human history. Members of Congress have warned the International Criminal Court that they will retaliate if arrest warrants are issued against Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials. Speaker Mike Johnson: "If unchallenged by the Biden administration, the ICC could create and assume unprecedented power to issue arrest warrants against American political leaders, American diplomats, and American military personnel, thereby endangering our country's sovereign authority." Members of Congress from both parties are reportedly preparing legislation to sanction ICC officials unless they back down.
[Salon] WHERE ARE THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES? - Guest Post by Seymour Hersh
[Salon] WHERE ARE THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES? - micheletkearney@gmail.com - Gmail
View in browser
WHERE ARE THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES?
Congress just passed an enormous aid package for wars in Ukraine and Gaza, but the White House is ignoring news it does not want to hear
Seymour Hersh
President Joe Biden shares a toast with comedian Colin Jost during the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington on April 27. / Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images.
It has been a triumphant fortnight for the Biden White House. First the House and then the Senate overcame meek opposition and at last voted to pass foreign aid bills worth more than $95 billion that include military funding to continue Ukraine’s war against Russia and Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
The vote was praised by America’s newspapers: a New York Times report said that the issue before Congress was whether the United States “would continue to play a leading role in upholding the international order and projecting its values globally.” The Associated Press channeled the House leadership, calling the vote “a turning point in history—an urgent sacrifice as US allies are beleaguered by wars and threats from continental Europe to the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific.”
The pleasure in the vote shared by the White House and Congress, and the mainstream press’s enthusiasm, were more than a little off-putting to those with memories of past wars. Billions of American taxpayer dollars are going to support a war in Ukraine that many believe cannot be won, and perhaps could easily be settled, with more billions going to support the war in Gaza that could cost Biden thousands of votes in contested states where there is intense opposition to the ongoing Israeli attacks.
But there was much more to the legislation, officially known as the “Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024,” that did not make it into congressional debate or the reporting about it. At least fourteen of the specific procurement requests for funding Ukraine’s military needs, including weapons, intelligence support, general operations and maintenance provided by American taxpayers, called for the president and his secretaries of state and defense to report to Congress about what was done and when within a given time period.
The reality is that such requirements are almost always ignored at the time they are due and usually fulfilled months later by junior officials in the State Department and the Pentagon, with the questions and answers there for all—that is, almost no one—to read. But the questions posed in the bill remind some in the American intelligence community of the sorts of deeper issues that were formerly raised by a one-time staple: National Intelligence Estimates. NIEs are produced on request from the president and his senior policymakers by a team of National Intelligence Officers at work at America’s senior intelligence office, the National Intelligence Council. These men and women are scholars in their fields and are committed to supplying non-political assessments. They are housed at CIA headquarters but are known to be fiercely independent.
I was told that the president and his top national security aides, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, have yet to request a study that delves deeply into any of the international crises of the day: the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
The White House’s apparent lack of interest in the most difficult foreign policy issues—as the president focuses on re-election—has bewildered some veterans of the intelligence community. “The Biden Administration is wandering in the wilderness,” I was told by an American intelligence official. “They speak publicly and daily of their objectives. Victory in Ukraine and the war in Gaza. Resolve the Palestinian quandary. Checkmate Xi. Defend Taiwan. Strengthen NATO. Restore our economic strength and limit global climate change.
“Noble,” he said. “But glittering generalities. Each is a title to a needed NIE that does not exist nor has been undertaken. Where is the National Intelligence Council and our stable of the nation’s greatest experts on every issue? Producing unread and irrelevant products” on such issues as UFOs and DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] in the community. No products on the capabilities and intentions of world leaders and the countries that are the keystone of policy development and implementation.”
In 2009 the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government published a background memorandum on the NIE process. It described NIEs as the American intelligence community’s “most authoritative written judgments on national security issues. NIEs usually provide judgments on the likely course of future events and highlight the implications for US policymakers.” In my own reporting on NIEs for the New Yorker, I learned that the final recommendations and conclusions are often reviewed by prominent outsiders in the academic community, after appropriate clearance, to assure objectivity and impartiality [nb. Note cut] before they are distributed to the White House and other vital offices throughout the government.
In a talk ten days ago in Texas, William Burns, the CIA director who has been playing a key role in hostage talks between Israel and Hamas, complained that Hamas rejected what he called a far-reaching proposal that would involve freeing hostages in exchange for unspecified concessions from Israel. Burns claimed that Hamas’s obduracy was responsible for delays in much needed humanitarian relief to Gaza. The New York Times reported today that Israel has reduced the number of hostages sought for release by Hamas in the first phase of a ceasefire truce. Secretary Blinken called the reduction “extraordinarily generous” on the part of Israel. He said that “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and ceasefire is Hamas.”
I was given a different account of which party was responsible for the failure of the talks by the intelligence official. He complained about the lack of “guidance” in the hostage negotiations—something that an NIE might have provided. “No one in the White House or the administration asked the intelligence community for guidance,” he claimed. If so, they would have been told that the prospects for a settlement were dim. “Israel is going to kill Hamas,” he said. “When the last member of Hamas takes a bullet, then there will be a ceasefire. They are going into Rafah. End of story.” He cited a classic Turkish proverb to characterize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position: “We will burn a blanket to kill a flea.” The official added that the Israelis have told Washington that if Netanyahu “stepped down tomorrow, a war cabinet member would take his place and there would be exactly no change at all in their policy or commitment.”
The official’s predictions for the immediate future are dark ones: “Bibi will be indicted by the International Criminal Court, along with three Israeli generals. The IDF begins the Rafah squeeze on five known Hamas lairs. US policy remains incomprehensible. Events on the ground and massive financial aid are uncoupled from policy.
“World leaders are working on the problem. I could go country by country. The United States? Our leader thinks his uncle was eaten by cannibals.”
--
[Salon] Le Pouvoir and the Hirak: revenge served cold - ArabDigest.org Guest Post
[Salon] Le Pouvoir and the Hirak: revenge served cold - micheletkearney@gmail.com - Gmail
Le Pouvoir and the Hirak: revenge served cold
Summary: having defeated the Hirak the Algerian regime has turned its attention to opposition members who escaped the counter revolution and are now living abroad.
In February 2019 peaceful weekly protests known as the “Hirak” swept Algeria and millions marched through the streets of major cities and smaller towns demanding basic rights and freedoms in a challenge to Le Pouvoir, the cabal of military and security elites that run the country. By 2022 however it had become clear that the revolution had failed, stalled by the Coronavirus pandemic as well as constant harassment and arrests by the security services. Since then the regime has been on the offensive targeting human rights activists, academics and journalists as well as anyone else perceived to have had a leading role in the Hirak.
Inside Algeria, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has been pursuing "justice by telephone", handing down sentences and legal decisions from on high to the corrupt judicial apparatus that has already seen around three hundred activists and protesters detained in a pseudo-anti-terrorist campaign because of their support for the Hirak or because they spoke up in solidarity with the detainees or against human rights abuses. Many detainees are held in pretrial detention for unjustified long periods of time, while others have been sentenced to harsh sentences under problematic articles in the Penal Code such as harming the national security or interest, undermining national unity, offending public officials, incitement, spreading fake news and terrorism. Several organisations that supported the Hirak have also been banned, including the Youth Action Rally (RAJ), the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LADDH) and two opposition parties, the Socialist Workers’ Party (PST) and the Democratic and Social Movement (MDS).
With the internal opposition now under control the regime has been turning its attention to opposition members who escaped and are now living abroad. Algeria's political isolation means that although the regime is no less vindictive than any other Arab regime, it does not have such a free hand when it comes to dispatching émigré dissidents in West as does, for example, Saudi Arabia. At the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 by a Saudi death squad called the Tiger Team.
Nevertheless Algeria’s Direction de la Documentation et de la Sécurité Extérieure (DDSE), one of the three branches of the powerful intelligence services, devotes enormous resources to monitoring political opponents abroad. Top of its most wanted list are the leaders of the principal exiled Algerian political opposition organisations: Rachad, an Islamist political movement founded in 2007 that "intends to work for the establishment of a rule of law governed by democratic principles and good governance" and the Mouvement pour l'Autodétermination de la Kabylie (MAK), a separatist movement founded in 2002 demanding the independence of provinces inhabited by Berbers in eastern Algeria. Both groups operate openly in exile. Last year MAK met US lawmakers after recruiting Elisabeth Myers, an American lawyer, as its lobbyist in Washington and thousands of its supporters demonstrate on a weekly basis in the streets of Paris and other French cities. Ten days ago MAK’s leader Ferhat Mehenni proclaimed the rebirth of the Kabyle state to his supporters at the foot of the skyscraper housing the UN headquarters in New York.
MAK leader Ferhat Mehenni speaking outside the UN headquarters in New York on April 20, 2024 [photo credit: TikTok]
In January 2022 French journalist Nicholas Beau reported on how the DDSE had set up a secret cell with a mandate to carry out covert operations and executions of Algerian dissidents and political opponents living in the European diaspora. Two men were reportedly behind it: Abdelkader Tigha, a former non-commissioned officer in the Algerian secret services living in exile in Belgium and Colonel Hocine Abdelhamid, aka Boulahya ("the bearded one"), deputy head of the DDSE and a former officer in the death squads during the “Années de Plomb” which ran from 1992 until 2002.
After a promising start Beau reported that collaboration between the two men broke down after Tigha realised his role was to be trapping and assassinating dissidents in Europe. He then turned double agent and began monetising the information he had collected from the Bearded One by tipping off his would-be targets and sharing other DDSE dirty laundry on the internet with help from Hicham Aboud, a former Algerian army officer turned prominent opposition journalist who runs a You Tube channel with 685,000 followers from his home in Roubaix, northern France.
The regime also targets dissidents through diplomatic and legal channels. One such case is that of former army corporal Mohamed Benhalima who had been sentenced to death in absentia in Algeria for espionage and desertion and was refouled from Spain in March 2022. He had fled there in 2019 fearing reprisals after participating in the Hirak and ran a YouTube channel denouncing military officials before he was returned without due process or evaluation of his asylum claim.
In 2021, Mohamed Larbi Zitout, a former Algerian diplomat turned YouTuber and one of the founders and leaders of Rachad who now lives in the UK announced that the British authorities had warned him that he should leave his home immediately as they had information about "an imminent threat to his life".
Slimane Bouhafs, an advocate for the rights of Algeria’s Kabyle population and an officially recognised UN refugee was kidnapped on August 25, 2021 from his home in Tunis. Four days later he surfaced in police custody in Algiers and was put on trial for terrorism. He had previously served 18 months in prison for “insulting Islam.”
Another prominent dissident who was targeted by the regime abroad is the French-Algerian activist Amira Bouraoui. She was sentenced to two years in prison for "offending Islam" and "attacking the person of the President of the Republic" as well as being banned from travel but she managed to escape by crossing illegally into neighbouring Tunisia using her French passport. In February 2023 she was arrested in Tunisia and faced deportation to Algeria but was allowed to leave for France instead, sparking a diplomatic incident. Algeria accused France of assisting her "clandestine and illegal exfiltration" via Tunisia and recalled its ambassador in Paris. Two of her family members were subsequently arrested, Amira's sister Wafa Bouraoui was detained a few hours after she messaged her more than 19,000 followers on Facebook that the family house was under siege; Amira’s 73 year old mother Khadidja Bouraoui was held in custody for a week.
Reports continue to circulate that the Algerian regime is running an active clandestine external intelligence campaign that systematically targets dissidents and defectors living in the West, following in the footsteps of the Saudis, Libyans and others. Some say Algerian dissidents have recently been subjected to kidnap and extraordinary rendition back to Algeria from France.
Such stories seem plausible but hard to prove because the DDSE are more professional than the Saudi Tiger team and French authorities would always seek to cover up these sorts of operations just as they covered up and then dropped the police investigations into the seizure of the two dissident Saudi Princes Saud bin Saif Al Nasr and Prince Sultan bin Turki who were kidnapped from Paris in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Algerian dissidents would be well advised to continue to take full security precautions.
Monday, April 29, 2024
Washington has lost touch with reality. If it doesn't adapt, the world will pay | Middle East Eye - Guest Post
Washington has lost touch with reality. If it doesn't adapt, the world will pay | Middle East Eye
Washington has lost touch with reality. If it doesn't adapt, the world will pay
A person in a suit Description automatically generated
Marco Carnelos
24 April 2024
In a failing quest to maintain its 'primacy', the US has cast China, Russia and Iran as global villains.
US President Joe Biden is pictured in Hanoi on 10 September 2023 (Saul Loeb/AFP)
US President Joe Biden is pictured in Hanoi on 10 September 2023 (Saul Loeb/AFP)
The US intelligence community recently released its annual threat assessment, which focuses on worldwide threats to the country’s national security. The document reflects the collective analyses and insights of the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and more than a dozen other agencies.
The report’s foreword provides a clear sense of this community’s dystopian and self-referential thinking: "During the next year, the United States faces an increasingly fragile global order strained by accelerating strategic competition among major powers, more intense and unpredictable transnational challenges, and multiple regional conflicts with far-reaching implications."
It continues: “An ambitious but anxious China, a confrontational Russia, some regional powers, such as Iran, and more capable non-state actors are challenging longstanding rules of the international system as well as U.S. primacy within it.”
Iran, Russia and China are thus the main villains for allegedly challenging longstanding rules of the international system. No surprises here; this has been a US policy mantra for years.
The problem, rather, is that it is not clear to which rules the report is referring: the customary international law enshrined in the UN Charter and UN conventions, or the so-called US-led rules-based world order. The main conceptual problem is that for the US political establishment and its key western allies, there is no distinction. But as is often the case, they are grossly mistaken.
International law and the UN Charter are the pillars of the global order built after the Second World War, to which the US provided an outstanding contribution. Conversely, the US-led rules-based international system is a more recent evolution of American political thinking: a self-referential mindset twisted to the interests of Washington and its allies.
This order is based on neoliberal ideology and imbued with double standards, of which the tragedy unfolding in Gaza is the latest and most visible example.
Based on a series of assumptions, such as US exceptionalism and the undisputed superiority of western democracies (ie, “western civilisation”), this system claims national laws as universal ones. It assumes a set of values and connected rules, but is quite careful not to implement them when they collide with its own interests. This order can be summarised by an informal motto: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”
Challenging US hegemony
Unsurprisingly, the report from the US intelligence community blames China, Russia and Iran, along with a handful of non-state actors (including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine and the Houthis in Yemen) for challenging not only the rules of the international system, but above all, US “primacy within it”.
It seems that the real crime is not challenging the system itself, but rather US hegemony. Yet, while such a preposterous position could still have been accepted a few years ago, it is now openly challenged - or at least resented - by many countries across the so-called Global South.
Only a minority of countries in Europe and East Asia consider US primacy to be an essential prerequisite of a stable international system. In fact, scrutiny of the last two decades of history proves the opposite.
Throughout history, empires have risen and then collapsed. US policymakers would be wise to adjust to these rules of history
The global order is shifting from a unipolar configuration centred on the US to a multipolar one. Throughout history, empires have risen and then collapsed. US policymakers would be wise to adjust to these rules of history and give up on the notion of their indispensability. They now face a binary choice: accept history’s verdict, as the UK has progressively done since 1945, or catastrophically resist it.
A reference to the Gaza crisis in the report is even more enlightening about the US intelligence community’s dystopian views: “One need only look at the Gaza crisis - triggered by a highly capable non-state terrorist group in Hamas, fueled in part by a regionally ambitious Iran, and exacerbated by narratives encouraged by China and Russia to undermine the United States on the global stage - to see how a regional crisis can have widespread spillover effects and complicate international cooperation on other pressing issues.”
This passage suggests that the US intelligence community is fundamentally incapable of seeing the conflict in Gaza for what it really is: a national liberation struggle triggered by decades of brutal and unpunished Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, facilitated by massive US weapons deliveries and a political shield at the UN Security Council, where the Israeli government would otherwise be held accountable for its war crimes.
The US narrative - that the events of 7 October are also traceable to Chinese and Russian attempts to undermine Washington on the global stage - borders on the ridiculous.
Double standards
The real factor undermining the global standing of the US is not the alleged actions of certain autocracies, but mostly Washington’s own international behaviour and double standards, exemplified by its unwavering support for Israel’s bloodbath in Gaza - an assault that violates all the rules that the US has been preaching for decades.
The Biden administration thus missed another excellent opportunity to distance itself from hypocritical double standards
This is demonstrated perfectly by the Biden administration’s behaviour after the recent adoption of a UN Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. After allowing the resolution to pass by abstaining, the US rushed to minimise its meaning and impact by qualifying it as non-binding.
So, for the sake of clarity, the indispensable nation that prides itself as being the main enabler of the longstanding rules of the international system, the beacon on the hill, is essentially telling another UN member state (Israel) that it can ignore a Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, after more than 34,000 people have been killed in Gaza. The tragic irony is that the Netanyahu government did not even need this US exhortation; it would have ignored the resolution anyway.
For the record, UN Security Council resolutions are always binding. The Biden administration thus missed another excellent opportunity to distance itself from hypocritical double standards. It accomplished an outstanding masterpiece by upsetting everyone: Israel and the vast pro-Israel lobby in the US for not casting its veto; and the left of the US Democratic Party, the Palestinian people and the rest of the world for outrageously calling the resolution non-binding.
Meanwhile, the US threat assessment attributes to China “the capability to directly compete with the United States and U.S. allies and to alter the rules-based global order”. It thus equates a simple Chinese capability into a deliberate intent pursued by its leadership, while indirectly confirming that in US official thinking, the only world order that can be contemplated is one led by Washington.
In a flash of common sense, the threat assessment acknowledges that US actions intended to deter foreign aggression are often “interpreted by adversaries as reinforcing their own perceptions that the United States is intending to contain or weaken them, and these misinterpretations can complicate escalation management and crisis communications”.
If the US intelligence community’s analysts have been surprisingly smart and honest in recognising this problem, known by international relations experts as the concept of “the indivisibility of security” (ie, any security measure taken by one nation can be interpreted as a threat by another), they should also be able to admit that their tendency to equate hypothetical capabilities with automatic intentions, is a big part of the increased tensions characterising modern geopolitics.
Marco Carnelos is a former Italian diplomat. He has been assigned to Somalia, Australia and the United Nations. He served in the foreign policy staff of three Italian prime ministers between 1995 and 2011. More recently he has been Middle East peace process coordinator special envoy for Syria for the Italian government and, until November 2017, Italy's ambassador to Iraq.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/us-must-adapt-lost-touch-reality-world-pay
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)