Refuting the xenophobic political rhetoric in the EU

There are some basic facts about immigration in the EU that parties of the left, center, and (the pro-democracy) right have to find ways to inject into the conversation. Following are some of the key ones.

The European Union is based on what are called the Four Freedoms: freedom of movement for goods, services, capital, and people. The kind of combined economy the EU has can’t really function with a healthy dose of all four. How the euro currency is constructed and the (in my view) demented “debt brake” that says EU countries can have no more debt than 60% of their GDP are perpetual problems – but those don’t have to do with the free movement of people. (The free movement for people across borders is actually regulated by what is known as the Schengen system that includes non-EU countries like Switzerland. The first Schengen country which a person enters is the one responsible for checking passports.)

The politicians, of course, have to devise their own talking points for dealing with xenophobic demagogy. But talking points have to be combined with practical, reality-based policies. A few bullet-points on this:

• Xenophobia lives on lies and anecdotes: politicians call out the lies and provide a real-world context refuting them.

• Ending the free movement of people among EU countries would basically wreck the EU common market.

• The current EU “Dublin system” by which asylum-seekers are supposed to be processed by the country of entry has long since broken down and has stuck Greece and Italy with large refugee camps than neither handle well. It needs to be replaced by a required systematic cooperation throughout the EU. Bitching about how our country needs to be able to “control its borders” won’t solve any actual problem.

• Anyone who talks about making immigration physically harder and more dangerous in order to stop immigrants from being exploited by smugglers is blowing smoke. The main effect is to make to attempts to enter the EU more expensive and more deadly. The EU borders are already the deadliest in the world. People who are calling for tougher police or military measures to reduce refugee entry are pretty much consciously calling for more deaths and abuse.

• The third-country solutions, like the now-abandoned British scheme to ship all asylum seekers to Rwanda, or the current EU agreement with Tunisia to hold refugees that and process their European asylum claims, are basically scams to let politicians pretend they are doing something to keep the foreigners out. (This is not to say that any and all such third-party outsourcing is bogus. The EU-Türkiye agreement of 2016 was an example of how that can work reasonably well; but even that eventually became more-or-l ess a scam because the EU failed to follow it up with a more permanent solution.)

• Human rights matter, and they are part of the rule of law. And every EU country is responsible for maintaining the rule of law.

• The EU has to have significant immigration. The birth rates in the EU are below the replacement rate. And for the foreseeable future, maintaining European economies will require more workers that current birth rates don’t provide.

• Strong economies are a magnet for immigration. Western members of the EU attract immigrants from eastern ones. Europe attracts immigrants from outside the EU, both highly-skilled and unskilled.

• Immigration is not easy. And absorbing refugees is also a challenge. And, yes, that requires some amount of public investment for the receiving countries.

• All immigrants and refugees are people and some of them will commit crimes. The better integration can function, the less likely it will be that immigrants turn to criminal activity. In the EU and the US, crime rates among immigrants are generally lower than among native citizens.

• And, yes, all that includes adequate support of government programs, including schools and health insurance. They should be managed well by the government. But there will always be somebody who find it satisfying to bitch and moan about “welfare loafers” no matter what.

• “Help on the spot” is a classic politician’s magi-thinking notion when it refers to cutting down external immigration and asylum-seeking by promoting economic development in the countries now producing lots of refugees. (Short-term assistance in particular crisis moment is a different thing.), At best, promoting develop in poorer countries is a decades-long solution, not an immediate one. And, in any case, the most significant form of development aid that stimulates local economies are cash transfers the immigrants in the EU send to their families in both Global South countries and eastern European EU countries.

• “Help on the spot” is a classic politician’s magi-thinking notion when it refers to cutting down external immigration and asylum-seeking by promoting economic development in the countries now producing lots of refugees. (Short-term assistance in particular crisis moment is a different thing.), At best, promoting develop in poorer countries is a decades-long solution, not an immediate one. And, in any case, the most significant form of development aid that stimulates local economies are cash transfers the immigrants in the EU send to their families in both Global South countries and eastern European EU countries.

• Finally, “open borders” is basically a bogeyman slogan, because no significant political trend actually advocates it. Within the EU, open borders within the Union is an essential part of the construction of the EU, as noted above.

A review of Israel’s wars since 1947 (Part 1 of 3)

This is the first of a three-part recap of Israel’s wars since 1947.

Israel has had numerous wars since 1947 that obviously have had a huge effect on how the Israeli public and its politicians think about war. There have been many squandered chances to develop a lasting resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, which has been a continuing thread through that entire period.

The current war, which has no end in sight, is easily the longest intensive conventional military conflict in which Israel has engaged. (Not counting the two periods of popular militance known as intifadas, which can’t reasonably be counted as wars.) So a look back at them provides some relevant perspective on the current disaster.

Civil War in Mandatory Palestine 1947-48.

This is the period where the Zionist forces scrambled to gain control over as much of the territory of British Mandatory Palestine and drive out as many Palestinians as they could in preparation for UN recognition of Israel’s independence. It was at the end of November 1947 when the UN General Assembly adopted a partition plan for separate Jewish and Palestinian states. Britain had turned formal authority for Mandatory Palestine over to the United Nations in February 1947.

War of Independence 1948-49.

Dieter Vieweger observes, „At that time, both parties to the conflict were preparing for a violent implementation of their goals. The UN's partition plan was certainly conceived as being honest and mediating - but unfeasible without the military presence of a force of law and order.” (1)

David Ben-Gurion, was the leader of the Zionist armed forces Haganah and later the first Prime Minister of Israel, declared Israeli independence on May 14, 1848. Haganah during this war also allied (secretly) with the Zionist terrorist groups Irgun and Lehi, who concentrated on terror against civilians. Haganah was renamed the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) later that same month and began to absorb the Irgun and Lehi fighters.

The civil war and the War of Independence created what is still known as the “refugee problem.”

British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt 1956-57, aka, the Suez Crisis (Oct-Nov 1956).

Israel teamed with the two main formal colonial powers in that region, Britain and France, to seize control over the Suez Canal from Egypt and to overthrow the government of Egypt President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who advocated for an “Arab socialism” and unity among Arab nations in conflict with the West (“Pan-Arabism”. This was a case where Israel was not only representing its own aims but could also legitimately be said to be acting on behalf of Western imperial powers.

But US President Dwight Eisenhower was not on board for this particular action. He applied strong pressure on Israel, Britain, and France to pull back and give up their war aims. This became to be an important turning point in British-US relations, after which Britain became very reluctant to take political positions contrary to those of the US in international conflict, a posture still very much on display decades later when British Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair enthusiastically backed the Cheney-Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq.

The US also required Israel to remove its forces from the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. Unconditional support for Israeli military adventures was still in the future.

Six-Day War of 1967.

This was the war in which Israel seized the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and have since maintained what is still called an illegal occupation, though it’s very clear that the Israeli government intends to hold those areas permanently with a view to incorporating them into Greater Israel, or “Eretz” Israel. Such control is a part of the official program of the governing coalition of Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government. They want permanent control of that area, also known as “from the river to the sea.”

Avner Cohen wrote on the 50th anniversary of that war:

Fifty years ago, war transformed the Middle East. Six memorable days, known to Israelis as the Six-Day War and to Arabs and others as the 1967 War, redrew the region’s landscape in fundamental ways. In those six days, Israel defeated three Arab armies, gained territory four times its original size, and became the preeminent military power in the region. The war transformed Israel from a nation that perceived itself as fighting for survival into an occupier and regional powerhouse.

The consequences for the Arab coalition were similarly transformative. For those “on the line of confrontation,” as Arab states bordering Israel were called, the war brought the loss of vast territories and crushing humiliation, all the more so for the Palestinians. Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt and the most prominent Arab leader at the time, survived the war but his leadership never recovered. The stunning defeat initiated the demise of his brand of secular pan-Arabism that was once an assertive ideological force in the Arab world. [my emphasis] (2)

This had big political significance in the US, because the Israelis won widespread admiration from the American public for their quick victory – something that clearly was not happening in the Vietnam War which was still going on. One particular dark side of that was that American Christian fundamentalists came to embrace the Christian Zionist view that looked forward to wars involving Israel as signs of the End Times. And, in a not-unrelated effect, some racist white Americans saw Israel as a nation of white people fighting dark-skinned barbarian Arabs.

Christian Zionism in the form of a “dispensational premillennialism” End Times theology was pioneered by the sectarian Anglo-Irish minister John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) was one of the most important influences in the development of what came to be known as Christian fundamentalism, which is generally the outlook of the political Christian Right in the US. It has now grown to be a major political influence in the Republican Party that celebrates warlike behavior on Israel’s part. The Christians United for Israel group led by John Hagee is one of the most important lobbying and political-mobilizing organizations in US politics.

Hagee told Bill Moyers back in 2007, that it is a “fact that in history, if Jerusalem is at war, the world is at war. If there's peace in Jerusalem there's peace in the world.” (3) Whether uncritically backing Israel’s wars is the best way for the US to bring peace to Jerusalem or anywhere else is not at all as clear to most people as it is to Christian Zionists like Hagee.

Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Israel’s reputation as an invincible nation of warriors was shaken by the 1973 war, which occasioned what was known as the Arab Oil Embargo (1973-74) that made OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) part of the American political vocabulary. Israel was attacked on the Yom Kippur holiday on October 6 by Egypt and Syria. But Israel emerged as the clear winner, though the heroic reputation that IDF Gen. Moshe Dayan had earned in the Six-Day War was tarnished be the setbacks the IDF suffered in the early part of the Yom Kippur Was, to the point that he resigned his command. (4) The enemy had pulled off an attack that caught the Israelis by surprise. (So October 7, 2023 was not the first time that happened.)

Not least through the efforts of the Carter Administration, Israel began a peace process with Egypt culminating in a treaty in 1979 that actually did produce decent relations and maintained the peace between Israel and Egypt, though the still-not-settled Palestinians question was not improved by that reconciliation.

There followed a period ofn attempts by the Palestine Liberation Organization under Yassir Arafat to pressure Israel. But though the Israeli government always blames the Other Side for the lack of progress, Israeli politics was taking a more revanchist turn, and former Irgun terrorist leader Menachem Begin became prime minister. After a 1980 attack by Iran on an Iraqi nuclear research center near its capital Baghdad failed to do serious damage, Begin ordered a much more effective strike in 1981.

Notes:

(1) Vieweger, Dieter (2023): Streit um das Heilige Land (8th edition), 169. Munich: Gütersloher Verlagshaus. My translation from German.

(2) Cohen, Avner (2017): The 1967 Six-Day War. Wilson Center. <https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-1967-six-day-war> (Accessed: 2024-22-09).

(3 Hagee, John (2007): Bill Moyers Journal 10/08/2007. <https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10052007/transcript1.html> (Accessed: 2024-22-09).

From The River To The Sea: 2024 Israeli Knesset version

Everyone should remember the vote that the Israeli Knesset took in July. From the conservative Times of Israel:

This resolution — passed 68-9 — altogether rejects the establishment of a Palestinian state, even as part of a negotiated settlement with Israel.

“The Knesset of Israel firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of Jordan. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel will pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region,” the resolution stated.

“It will only be a matter of a short time until Hamas takes over the Palestinian state and turns it into a radical Islamic terror base, working in coordination with the Iranian-led axis to eliminate the State of Israel,” it continued. “Promoting the idea of a Palestinian state at this time will be a reward for terrorism and will only encourage Hamas and its supporters to see this as a victory, thanks to the massacre of October 7, 2023, and a prelude to the takeover of jihadist Islam in the Middle East.” (1)

That’s a 68-9 endorsement by the Knesset of the commitment that is part of Netanyahu’s coalition’s official government program: From The River To The Sea belongs to Israel and nobody else. Permanently.

Notes:

(1) Magid, Jacob (2024): Knesset votes overwhelmingly against Palestinian statehood, days before PM’s US trip. Times of Israel 07/18/2024. <https://www.timesofisrael.com/knesset-votes-overwhelmingly-against-palestinian-statehood-days-before-pms-us-trip/> (Accessed: 2024-18-07).

The Soviet Union and the founding of Israel

The Soviet Union was a key supporter of Israel in its 1947-49 War of Independence.

Dahlia Scheindlin describes that relationship briefly. Israel officially became independence in 1948. The leaders of the Zionist movement in the early decades of the 20th century were willing to consider various partners in their quest for establishing a Jewish state.

David Ben-Gurion was the most important Zionist leader in the lead-up to independence:

Ben-Gurion was also a shrewd observer of [international] politics, and at points in the 1930s, he seemed to consider, or even gravitate toward, the Soviet sphere of influence - instrumentally. But overall, as fascism spread and World War II loomed, Yishuv [Jewish community in Palestine] leaders sought to convince global leaders that a new Jewish state would be an upright member of democratic society. (1)

Scheindlin relates the developments in the 1940s:

Ben-Gurion still weighed Israel’s Western- or Eastern-bloc orientation. The [1942] Biltmore Program implies that the choice was made, but he retained a measure of neutrality. At the same time, the Zionist leadership had been wooing the Soviets, an unlikely courtship, given anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism under Stalin, as well as the Palestine Communist Party’s anti-Zionist position ...

Scheindlin relates the developments in the 1940s:

Ben-Gurion still weighed Israel’s Western- or Eastern-bloc orientation. The [1942] Biltmore Program implies that the choice was made, but he retained a measure of neutrality. At the same time, the Zionist leadership had been wooing the Soviets, an unlikely courtship, given anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism under Stalin, as well as the Palestine Communist Party’s anti-Zionist position ...

She discusses a Soviet policy that looked forward to weakening the British Empire after the Second World War, then still very much in progress in 1942. The Soviets had been pushing the US and Britain to open the “Second Front” against Germany in mainland Europe – which was what the 1944 Normandy landing represented - and regarded Churchill as impeding that decision. So, the Soviet shift on Palestine policy was surely encouraged in part by the consideration of pressuring Britain for the invasion of France.

But in 1943, the Soviets seemed to shift. Stalin apparently became intent on breaking what he saw as a British “stranglehold” on the Middle East. The Soviet deputy foreign minister visited Palestine, touring Jewish settlements in the hills outside Jerusalem, with Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, among others. In 1945, Ben-Gurion shocked the Histadrut [the Jewish community’s general trade union] with a sudden statement welcoming communists back to the Histadrut, apparently hoping to impress the Soviet delegation at an upcoming conference in London.

The Zionist movement and certainly the Soviet government were familiar with the need to make coldly pragmatic alliances that may not have been entirely comfortable for their ideologies in order to achieve their larger strategic goals. The Soviet ideology has always condemned Zionism as a reactionary movement. But, as Wiebke Bachmann observes of the post-World War II situation, “For Moscow, only realistic considerations would be decisive in regard to a decision for or against Jewish national aspirations” in postwar Palestine. (2) He summarizes the description given in 1946 by a leading Soviet diplomat, Nikolaj Novikov:

The conclusion of this key document of the early phase of the Cold War was that British and American interests after the war would collide and lead to a rudimentary split in the imperialist camp [i.e., the US and the West]. While the two powers [Britain and France] have largely agreed [with the US] on spheres of interest in Asia, a compromise with regard to the Mediterranean region with all neighboring countries is so complicated due to the particularly strong geostrategic and economic interests of both countries that these differences can easily be exacerbated, and the Middle East could become "a center of Anglo-American antagonisms."

[Direct quote from Novikov:] “The United States is not interested in providing aid and support to the British Empire in this vulnerable spot, but rather much more in its own penetration of the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East, to which the United States is attracted by the natural resources of the space, mainly oil." [my emphasis]

The jargon Novikov used was Marxist, but the calculations he described were the pragmatic calculations of international power factors that characterized Soviet foreign policy before the Second World War.

Scheindlin describes the situation in 1947 this way:

In February 1947, [British Secretary of State Ernest] Bevin announced that Great Britain was turning Palestine over to the UN General Assembly. The US still presumed that Stalin would oppose the Zionist aims. Instead, [Foreign Minister] Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet representative to the UN, made a surprising statement in May, recognizing the claims of both the Jews and Arabs in Palestine and supporting a federated state for both. If not, he conveyed, the Soviet Union would support partition [into Jewish and Palestinian states]. Bevin thought that the Soviet Union hoped to pour “indoctrinated” Jews into the region and turn it into a communist state.

The Soviet Union was also quietly helping the Zionist leadership in the way it needed most desperately - facilitating Jewish immigration to Palestine, via Poland and the West. [my emphasis]

In the immediate postwar period, the Soviets (rightly) calculated that there would be tensions between the US on the one side and France and Britain on the other over countries that France and Britain had controlled under the colonial system.

As she relates:

By contrast, following World War II but prior to Israeli independence, the US was still somewhat divided over the issue. President Truman broadly supported the Jewish cause, but the State Department was wary, and some of its staff outright opposed an independent Jewish state, concerned that it would fall under the Soviet sphere of influence. Yishuv leaders hedged their reliance on the US at that stage, and it was only in 1949, after Israeli independence, that Ben-Gurion stated: “In the ideological debate, Israel is democratic and anti-communist.” [my emphasis]

Truman’s Administration was concerned about relations with Arab nations, which looked at the Zionist project of creating the State of Israel very negatively. The Zionist movement had influential supporters in the US who also lobbied the Administration to support Israeli independence.

Another factor in the policy mix is that the US was committed – albeit less than wholeheartedly – to decolonization after the Second World War. The reasons varied: out of principle; to stabilize the international order; and the recognition of the reality that European nations could not hold huge portions of what we now call the Global South as their colonial property indefinitely. In general, too, the reduction of the colonial presences of Britain and France were also conducive to a more safely dominant position of the US in the world and in Europe, in particular. And, as the Soviet diplomat Novikov accurately noted, access to oil was a central consideration in the US position.

Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia was the most important provider of arms to the Zionist forces during the War of Independence. “When the Jewish independence war began, the British were supplying arms to the Arabs while the United States announced an embargo on arms supplies to Jews and Arabs.” (3)

As the conservative Jerusalem Post reported in 2020:

One day after the State of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948, a military coalition of Arab countries attacked the new state. David Ben-Gurion had expected the attack, and as the Jews in Mandatory Palestine desperately lacked arms, he had begun to seek them long before the UN November 1947 decision to establish the Jewish and Arab states. An international arms embargo was in force, and the only country willing to sell arms to a nascent Israel was cash-strapped Czechoslovakia, which also offered to train Israeli pilots and other specialists. The first deal between the Yishuv and Czechoslovakia was signed in January 1948 – and it was not cheap.

The Israelis obtained some 400 tons of mortars and other heavy machinery, aerial bombs, rifles, ammunition, machine guns, flamethrowers, explosives, tanks, and combat vehicles from the Czechs. A separate deal promised twenty-four Czech-built Avia S-199 fighters, a lesser version of the German Messerschmitt. ...

The first Israeli pilots and foreign volunteers arrived in Czechoslovakia before the Arab invasion, on May 11, 1948. The training was far from over when the War of Independence broke out; the fighter planes had to be hastily disassembled, sent to Israel, and reassembled. …

By January 1949, Czechoslovakia had trained some 200 Israeli specialists, paratroopers, and aircraft mechanics, including 82 pilots and 1,600 volunteers from Czechoslovakia and other European countries. Many of them chose to stay in Israel after the War of Independence.

... According to a 1952 report from Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Viliam Široký, Czechoslovakia received almost $14.5 million for its arms. It was an enormous amount of money for the State of Israel, but the Avia S-199s played a crucial role. In 1968, David Ben-Gurion said: “Czechoslovak arms saved the State of Israel, really and absolutely. Without these weapons, we wouldn’t have survived.” [my emphasis] (4)

Although relations between Israel and the USSR cooled after the war and a public impression was left that the, the weapons transactions with Czechoslovakia continued at least into early 1951, almost certainly with Soviet approval or at least toleration. Uri Bialer has pointed to one element of continuing commonality of Israeli and Soviet policy, even though Moscow was shifting to improving relations with Arab countries.

While one can only speculate on Russian motives, the information that has come to light certainly supports the suggestion linking the changed Soviet attitude toward Israel with the latter's support of the American stand regarding Korea late in 1950 and its growing reliance on the US. In other words, Soviet aid was related to Israel's foreign policy orientation to a greater degree than has heretofore been assumed. This leads to the speculation that the USSR rewarded Israel for its non-alignment stand in 1949-50 with its approval of the Czech arms deal and withdrew their support once Israel changed its global foreign policy orientation. [my emphasis] (5)

Bialer also notes:

The fact that the Czechs sold everything for US dollars, that they enforced a strict payment schedule, that by making the deals they were able to dispose of obsolete weapon systems, and that they sold them for a fixed period of time does not detract from the advantage of the deal to Israel. Czech military assistance became the obvious, tangible and unquestionable symbol of Soviet help to the creation of the state of Israel. Soviet and East European officials emphasized this endlessly when Israeli representatives complained about their negative response to other requests, mainly to those dealing with Jewish emigration.

By the time the USSR concluded an important arms deal with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt in 1955, the diplomatic shift away from cooperation with Israel was basically complete. The USSR had broken diplomatic relations with Israel in February 1953 after a bomb injured three people in the Soviet legation in Tel Aviv. But with a shift of policy after Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, “diplomatic ties were resumed [in] July, 1953. In June 1954 the Soviet legation in Tel Aviv and the Israeli legation in Moscow were raised to embassy level.” (Kahng)

Notes:

(1) Scheindlin, Dahlia (2023): The Crooked Timber of democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled, 33. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.

(2) Bachmann, Wiebke (2011): Die UdSSR und der Nahe Osten. Zionismus, ägyptischer Antikolonialismus und sowjetische Außenpolitik bis 1956, 108. Munich: Oldenbourg Wessenschaftsverlag. My translation from German.

(3) Kahng, Gyoo-hyoung (1998): Zionism, Israel, and the Soviet Union: A study in the rise and fall of brief Soviet‐Israeli friendship from 1945 to 1955, Global Economic Review 27:4, 95-107.

(4) Zbavitelová, Gita (2020): The Czech arms that saved Israel: Czechoslovakia provided desperately needed weapons in 1948. Jerusalem Post 12/03/2020. <https://www.jpost.com/international/the-czech-arms-that-saved-israel-650710> (Accessed: 2024-16-09). Uri Bialer (see note 5) renders what may be the same quote as, “they saved the country, I have no doubt of that. The Czech arms deal was the biggest help we had then, it saved us and without it I very much doubt whether we could have survived the first month.” He cites it to the Hebrew edition of Ha’aretz of 05/03/1968.

(5) Bialer, Uri (2008): The Czech‐Israeli arms deal revisited. Journal of Strategic Studies 8:3, 307-315.

Stephen Kotkin on nuclear blackmail in the Russia-Ukraine War

Stephen Kotkin is a historian of Russia who is a fellow of Stanford’s Hoover Institute and its Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He’s generally conservative and takes a pretty jaded view of Russia’s past and present. (1)

I don’t know how far he subscribes to the “realist” view of international relations. But he has a very informed and grumpily pragmatic take on how foreign affairs tend to work. In this discussion from this September, he describes his model of how countries make pragmatic calculations with particular reference to Russia (2:20:00 ff.):

So I've gotta figure out how to share the planet with countries that are not going away, that have a different model from me.

They're Eurasian land empires, they're a thousand, or in the Chinese case, more than a thousand years old. They have autocratic government, they have big land armies and fight land wars. They suppress consumption and other things that I could describe.

And they're called Iran, and they're called Russia, and they're called China and they predate us. And they don't think it's just that America, which just appeared on the planet recently is dictating the terms of how the world is organized.

And they're gonna push back against that. And they're gonna push back against it in the vulnerable places: Crimea, Ukraine, Israel, South China Sea, Taiwan. And it's been clear as day for 30 plus years that those places were territorially vulnerable. And we've been out to lunch about that, and here it is now.

But again, does that mean we blow the planet up? We end humanity? Does that mean that we capitulate and hand over Ukraine sovereignty? No, on both of those questions.

So there's this place in between, appeasement and holocaust, nuclear holocaust. There's this place in between which is called deterrence plus diplomacy. And deterrence plus diplomacy means, they're scared of me, but I talk to them. I don't talk to them just to talk and I don't scare them just to scare them.

I'm not a hawk and I'm not a dove. I'm a combination, I have deterrence and I have diplomacy. Because I want terms that are favorable to me and my friends. 'Cause I have to share the planet, but what are the terms of sharing the planet?

You know, deterrence in diplomacy, I mean, it is not a new thing, we can do it. We've done it before. Okay, our political class maybe has degraded. Okay, maybe we're not in the best of shape, right this current moment. Maybe we made some mistakes and we have a lot to answer for.

Maybe we misjudged who these people are and what they're up to. Maybe they misjudged us and they misjudged our will and our capacities and our resilience and our corrective mechanisms and our bounce back and our alliances - built on trust and relationships, not built on [indistinct]. Maybe they underestimated us.

Maybe it's not just that we made mistakes, but maybe they made mistakes. And maybe they're in trouble, and maybe we have to get on the front foot, and maybe we have to push back. Not just in the places where we're territorially vulnerable, but all sorts of other places where I see vulnerabilities with them. Maybe we can do this because we've done it before.

And they're not 10 feet tall and we're not basket cases. And deterrence and diplomacy works, and we know how to do it and we've done it, and we can do it again, and I'm in favor of it. And so, it's okay, we're gonna be okay.

Sure, things are - Ukraine is not on a good trajectory right now. We could go on, sure, I'm not Pollyannish, I know what the world looks like. But I also know the strengths. Tremendous strengths, unbelievable strengths and their vulnerabilities. [my emphasis]

I take Kotkin’s approach as expressed there as a reminder that foreign policy is based more than sound bites. And that decision-makers need to be realistic in understanding not just the personalities and ideologies of leaders in other countries but also be mindful of the practical considerations – from economic to military to sentimental attitudes – on which foreign leaders operate.

And also that countries need to be realistic about risks and possibilities in a field where certainty can be in short supply.

Listen to one of Donald Trump’s press conferences or speeches to get an idea of how much willingness or ability he has to weigh such considerations seriously. Being a blustery, cranky old man full of dumb prejudices who is primarily looking for ways to get other countries and power players to give him money in narrowly transactional arrangement is not conducive to the kind of pragmatic thinking on foreign policy that Kotkin describes. Given Trump own bad history of managing his own many makes one wonder how pragmatic he is with “the art of the deal” even on his private grifting.

Kotkin’s description there is a reminder of what concerns me about the seeming lack of pragmatism in the Biden Administration approach in the two war situations that currently dominate its foreign policy: Israel’s war with Gaza and the West Bank that has already spread in a limited way to Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Yemen. and maybe soon to Jordan and Egypt, too; and, the Russia-Ukraine War.

There is little doubt at the moment that the Biden Administration has simply decided to back whatever the current government of Israel does militarily no matter how damaging it may be to American interests and to the lives of people in the Middle East. Whatever combination of bad assumptions, past dogma, ideology, lobbying pressure, and bureaucratic drift on the part of a President whose health appears to be badly in decline is producing that result, it is a high-risk policy that seems remarkably devoid of pragmatism and realism in that situation.

In Ukraine, the US policy looks like a mimetic repetition of the idea behind backing the Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan – we called the “brave mujahideen freedom fighters” back in the day, a process that spawned the jihadist movement as we later came to know it. Russia has a clear military advantage, however unjust and illegal their invasion of Ukraine and annexation of part of its territory may be. The benefits of that operation to the US were highly questionable compared to the short- and long-term costs. But the calculation in Ukraine seems to be similar: the US and NATO can back Ukraine in a war for years that will damage the Russians with relatively small investments on the part of the West. The primary victims will be Ukrainians, not Americans. The fact that the Ukrainians will pay severe costs for decades doesn’t seem to weigh heavily in that approach.

Kotkin offers some explanation of why the sanctions that the US always touts as a super-weapon weren’t so effective as their advocates hoped (1:07:30ff):

So again, Putin. People think, oh, we'll put economic sanctions on him and we'll cause him economic pain. We'll shave two points off his GDP. And so Putin lost the private automobile industry in Russia. The sanctions destroyed the private automobile industry.

It was gonna eventually be displaced by the Chinese anyway, but Russians buy more cars now from China, they don't have a domestic automobile industry to speak of anymore because of the sanctions. And you know what Putin's response to that is?

Okay. I guess so, I lost my private automobile industry. And, you know, he's not a private equity mogul. He doesn't care if you shave two points off his GDP. Because he can enforce austerity, he can suppress consumption at home if necessary. He cares about cash flow.

Okay. I guess so, I lost my private automobile industry. And, you know, he's not a private equity mogul. He doesn't care if you shave two points off his GDP. Because he can enforce austerity, he can suppress consumption at home if necessary. He cares about cash flow.

Authoritarian regimes need cash flow, not GDP growth. This is a really important distinction. GDP growth is something you need if, for example, people have a choice in their election when they go to the polls, if elections are free and fair. If they can throw you out, then GDP growth is really important.

But if you have a choiceless election, if the election is a fraud, a sham election and the GDP growth goes down, well, that's why you have police, with truncheons. You have police with truncheons in case GDP growth goes down.

Yeah, but if cash flow goes down, then big trouble. Because you need the cash flow to pay off the elites. You know, that pulled coop, that paying off of the elites, and the elites is very expensive, right? The wife, the second wife, the third wife, the mistress, the dacha, the gun collection, it is just a fortune what these guys cost.

And so you need cash flow. Fortunately [for Putin], the cash just gushes out of the ground. [I.e., oil and natural gas] It's just like tap, tap, tap, it's just gushing cash. …

And so you're taking that cash flow into your pocket. You don't need to have foreign bank accounts abroad. Putin doesn't have any foreign bank accounts abroad, because the whole Russian economy is his bank account.

And when he needs to divert any money, by the way, if he had a foreign bank account, it would be a message to the elite that he didn't think he was gonna stay forever. It would be a message of weakness if he opened a foreign bank account. [my emphasis]

I don’t think Kotkin is excluding the possibility that Putin may have other kinds of assets abroad like real-estate with shadow owners. His basic point is that the advantageous side of being a petrostate is that, as long as oil prices hold at reasonably high prices, the rulers can get plenty of ready cash flow from it. Being a petrostate also has serious downsides, but that’s another story.

Notes:

(1) Prof. Kotkin: "Russia: Back to the USSR or Back to the Tsarist Empire?" Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies YouTube channel 09/10/2024. <https://www.youtube.com/live/jJSDdCPpbto?si=oKgS3oNOFhQbzpTN> (Accessed: 2024-14-09).

An informed conversation on how corruption works in elite British politics

This is an hour-and-a-half interview with Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper to discuss Kuper’s book Good Chaps: How Corrupt Politicians Broke Our Law and Institutions (2024). (1)

The conversation is a good overview of how legal (and sometimes not-quite-so-legal) corruption works at the elite level of British politics and the dynamics of campaign contributions in the British context. Kuper notes that Britain has "a deep-discount version of US politics" when it comes to money in politics. But as this conversation shows, even the deep-discount version is more than bad enough when it comes to undercutting the interests of the vast majority of the British people.

There is some discussion of Brexit and what at disaster it was, and about the politics of immigration. He also talks about Tony Blair’s massive think tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and its strong neoliberal bias, although they don’t use the term “neoliberal” in the conversation. It's also an example of how wealthy donors – some more dubious than others – exert an enormous influence of political conversation.

This conversation is also a reminder that de facto corruption in the sense of great wealth in practice being able to nullify the democratic will of the voters is very often legal. Extreme concentration of wealth always undermines democratic institutions.

Notes:

(1) How the British Establishment REALLY Works- Aaron Bastani meets Simon Kuper. Novara Media YouTube channel 07/28/22024. <https://youtu.be/eaOInvE-YIM?si=MnhEPxtgSpxDvVZs> (Accessed: 2024-03-10).

A Primer from Richard Wolff on … Communism?

I’m not sure who wants or needs to see this introductory fact-based presentation on what “communism” is. (1)



Of course, it would be a challenge to make sense out of the last two centuries of European history or the last century of China’s without having some idea of what Communism is. Or of any other continent, for that matter (except for Antarctica).

And, if you find yourself wondering just how ditsy it actually is for Donald Trump to call Kamala Harris a Communist, Wolff’s lecture could shed some light on it.

On the other side of that point, John Stoehr recently did a piece mocking that accusation by explaining why Trump is actually the Commie. (2) It’s kind of cute. But it’s also kind of a flashback to lazy Cold War polemics. It’s meant to be a light piece, in which he has lines like this: “Trump isn’t defending capitalism. He’s defending white power.” It is cute. But trying to fit his perception with any meaningful definition of what the groups and regimes that call themselves Communist have been about would be a brain-twister.

There has been a gigantic amount written, published, broadcast and taught about Communism. If someone were trying to get a historical picture of what it is, they could research articles with names like "The Communist Theory of State" (3) or “A British Version of ‘Browderism’: British Communists and the Teheran Conference of 1943” (4).

Or, you could watch a just-the-facts kind of presentation from someone like Richard Wolfe that doesn’t require the reader to have any kind of deep background in the last two centuries of socialist and communist history, theory, and endless polemics.

The Austrian left-social-democrat Carl Grünberg (1861–1940) published an article in 1912 dealing with the origins of the words “socialist“ and “socialism. (5) The earliest usage of the words Grünberg found was from an Italian cleric in 1803, where it was used to refer broadly to the opposite of individualistic philosophies, which Grünberg describes as "a thoroughly different" meaning that the one it was to later acquire. He finds a French usage from 1831 of "socialisme" where it referred to ... the Catholic Church! In the sense of the Universal Church: Catholic theology emphasized the importance of community in contrast to the more individual-oriented Protestant theology.

The first use of "socialist" in the sense it came to be known in the 19th century he found was in 1827 from the English Co-operative Magazine and Monthly Herald, a paper of Robert Owens' reform movement and it was used to describe the “Owenites”. Although he notes the word didn't catch on for a while in England.

In 1831, Grünberg finds "socialisme" used in a French paper, Le Globe, where it referred to the Saint-Simonist reform doctrine in contrast to individualism. This is a very similar usage to that of the English Owenite paper in 1927. He and Ernst Czóbel (6) find the first usages of the adjective form "sozialist" in German in 1840. Grünberg found the earliest usage of the noun form in German in and 1842 book by Lorenz von Stein (1815-1890), and Czóbel found the noun used in Hungarian in 1842.

In other words, the term “socialist” in the now-familiar meaning came into usage as a reference to the reformist doctrines that later came to be known as “utopian socialist”, particularly those associated with Robert Owen (1771-1858), Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and Claude Henri Graf von Saint-Simon (1760-1825).

Since we’re coming up on the 500-year anniversary of the German Peasant Wars of 1525 that are also a major part of the story of the Protestant Reformation, it’s worth noting that radical Protestant and proto-Protestant religious sects of that era as well as some the peasant movements themselves have also been referred to in a descriptive and not necessarily pejorate sense as “communist,” because they advocated some idea of community property. The German Social Democratic leader Karl Kautsky (1854-1938) in his two-volume work on Forerunners of Modern Socialism (1909) titled the first volume, “Communist Movements in the Middle Ages,” and the second, “Communism in the German Reformation.”

The term “primitive communism” is also used to refer to practices of early Christian communities. The late-medieval and early-modern versions looked to that early Christian example, as they understood it, as a model for society.

Notes:

(1) Wolff, Richard (2024): Economic Update: Understanding Communism Pt. 1. Democracy At Work YouTube channel. <https://youtu.be/-L9rxsESNGU?si=v6qRWt5ThlcDS588> (Accessed: 2024-21-09).

(2) Stoehr, John (2024): Face it, Trump is a communist. The Editorial Board 09/27/2024. <https://www.editorialboard.com/face-it-trump-is-a-communist/> (Accessed: 2024-21-09).

(4) Redfern, Neil (2005): A British Version of “Browderism”: British Communists and the Teheran Conference of 1943. Science & Society 66:3, 360-380.

(5) Grünberg, Carl (1912): Der Ursprung der Worte „Sozialismus“ und „Sozialist“. Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbetiterbewegung (aka, Grünberg Archiv) 2:1912. <http://www.literature.at/viewer.alo?objid=12621&scale=2&viewmode=fullscreen&page=374> (Accessed: 2024-21-09).

6) Czóbel, Ernst (1913): Zur Verbreitung der Worte ,,Sozialist" und ,,Sozialismus". Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung 3:1913, 481-485. <http://www.literature.at/viewer.alo?objid=12622&viewmode=fullscreen&scale=2&page=467> (Accessed: 2024-21-09).

France and British politics and immigration

European politics is in the middle of a serious surge by the far right. (1)

French President Emmanuel Macron is one leader who has followed the strategy of pandering to the right. The German political scientist Thomas Bierbacher describes in his book, Mitte/Rechts. Die Internationale Krise des Konservatismus (2023), shows in the cases of Britain, France, and Italy how the conservatives tried to take votes from the far-right by adopting their rhetoric, especially on immigration.

And in all three cases it wound up strengthening the far right. That's how the feckless Tories in Britain would up Brexiting. And in this year's election, they came in third behind Nigel Farage's brand-new nationalist party.

Macron surprised everyone this past summer by dismissing Parliament. There was much speculation that his goal was to set up the NR to be the leading party in forming a government and selecting a new Prime Minister, expecting that the experience would show the voters how bad the Le Pen’s party would be at governing. But the various left parties surprised everyone including themselves by putting together a united “popular front” electoral group that wound up taking first place in the election.

But instead of forming a left-center government, he has set up a government and Prime Minister from the center-right Republican Party (Les Républicains) who will lead a minority government “tolerated” by the far-right RN, i.e., dependent on the RN not to call for a vote of no-confidence.

In other words, Macron decided to keep on with the pander-to-the-far-right strategy. Harrison Stetler writes:

[T]he new government concludes two weeks of coalition negotiations between Macronist MPs and the new prime minister Michel Barnier’s right-wing Les Républicains party. While talks had appeared to break down in recent days over personnel and policy specifics, the need to bind together soon won out.

A Barnier government offers the Républicains a chance to return to power after twelve years on the sidelines, even if he’s dependent on their Macronist ex-adversaries. Once a dominant force in France’s now-defunct two-party system, the conservative Républicains had not been in national government since the end of Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency in 2012. Since Macron’s election in 2017, they have hemorrhaged supporters and officials to both the president and the far right. Ironically, their return to power comes at a point when the party is a shell of its former self in the National Assembly, with a caucus of merely forty-seven MPs. [my emphasis] (2)

Italy, of course, also now has a "post"-fascist Prime Minister from the direct successor party of Mussolini's.

And even though the British election this year produced a majority in Parliament for the Labour Party, that party has become so devoted to neoliberal doctrine that it may go down the same road of trying to pander to the far-right rather than defeat it with sensible, popular left-of-center social and economic policies. (3)

Notes:

(1) How far to the right? France's new centre-right coalition. FRANCE 24 English YouTube channel 09/23/2024. <https://youtu.be/LEhiKGRGijo?si=cP_2qrS075BXK5mh> (Accessed: 2024-26-09).

(2) Stetler, Harrison (2024): France’s New Government Is a Hard Turn to the Right. Jacobin 09/25/2027. <https://jacobin.com/2024/09/france-michel-barnier-right-republicains> (Accessed: 2024-26-09).

(3) Brown, Gordon (2024): Europe is in thrall to the far right – that’s the result of appeasement by so-called moderates. The Guardian 09/17/2024. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/17/europe-far-right-appeasement-france-populist-progressive> (Accessed: 2024-04-10). And Gordon Brown is hardly a flaming leftie!

Conservative xenophobia – German edition

Focus is important: In the actual political process in Europe, the far right has taken the lead in nativist demagogy. But the spread of the attitude and its incorporation into official policy is happening primarily by the retreat from democratic and rule-of-law principles on the part of center-right parties that embrace the xenophobic and nativist pitches.

The key element in the rise of the far-right parties in the EU has been the capitulation of the center-right/conservative parties to the anti-immigrant, ethno-nationalist appeals promoted particularly by the far right.

In the cases of German politics, the center-left Social Democrats, the Greens and even elements of the far left have joined the Christian Democratic conservatives in beating the anti-immigrant drums. The Guardian reports:

Germany’s decision to tighten controls at every one of its land borders seems driven chiefly by politics, is difficult to justify in law, deals a heavy blow to Europe’s prized free movement and could severely test EU unity.

Berlin said on Monday that controls in place at its border with Austria since 2015, and since last year with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland, would be extended next week to France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark.

The move would curb migration and “protect against the acute dangers posed by Islamist terrorism and serious crime,” said [Social Democrat] Nancy Faeser, the interior minister. (1)

This could potentially disrupt the “four freedoms” of the European Union, which are the freedom of movement for “goods, persons, services, and capital within the EU. They are the cornerstones of the Single Market and the common currency. Many citizens see them as the greatest achievement of the European unification project.” (2)

From FRANCE 24: (3)

Austria’s Die Presse reports:

For the first time, Germany is reintroducing border controls around the entire country – including those countries that were once joint pioneers of opening [of borders under the Schengen system]. This is justified [in political rhetoric] by the large rush of asylum seekers and the security dangers posed by it. The introduction is politically motivated by the recent election successes of the xenophobic AfD in [the German states of] Saxony and Thuringia. (4)

It's always helpful to be alert when the phrase “the large rush of asylum seekers” and especially “the security dangers posed by it.” News services like Die Presse should not be so sloppy in using such terms without describing more specifically what is meant and over what time period. Germany this year is not facing a “large rush of asylum seekers” compared to previous years.

Part of the maliciously intended rhetoric and the laziness of the press in amplifying it also has to do with the large number of Ukrainian refugees that have come to the EU since 2022. The number of those who came to the EU in the year after Russia’s 2022 invasion was something like five times the number who came in the so-called “crisis” year of 2015-16. They were absorbed generally effectively. But that hasn’t had any effect on the nativist rhetoric which still continues as though that never happened. That’s in no small part because the nativist groups focus on immigrants from Muslim countries – as seen in Faeser’s statement above.

The Guardian report does note, “Schengen members currently operating controls on particular borders include Austria, which cites Ukraine-related security threats and pressure on asylum to check arrivals from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Hungary.” I don’t want to give the Austrian authorities too much credit because they have been using xenophobic scare rhetoric, as well. But there has been some apparently legitimate concern about Hungary loosening visa requirements for Russian and Belarussian citizens that could facilitate illegal Russian activity in other countries because Hungary is part of the Schengen zone, meaning that other Schengen countries would normally be required to respect Hungary’s checks on people entering it, and those people can then travel freely to other Schengen countries, normally without additional border checks. (5)

Notes:

Henley, Jon (2024): ‘The end of Schengen’: Germany’s new border controls put EU unity at risk. The Guardian 09/10/2024. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/10/the-end-of-schengen-germanys-new-border-controls-put-eu-unity-at-risk> (Accessed: 2024-15-09).

(2) The four freedoms in the EU: Are they inseparable? Jacques Delors Institut Berlin/Bertelsmann Stiftung 11/22/2017. <https://www.delorscentre.eu/en/publications/detail/publication/the-four-freedoms-in-the-eu-are-they-inseparable> (Accessed: 2024-15-09).

(3) Germany tightens controls at all borders in immigration crackdown. FRANCE 24 English 09/10/2024. <https://youtu.be/wZ4i4_nL71Y?si=HccYTz-rUMxC9gsa> (Accessed: 2024-15-09).

(4) Bühm, Wolfgang (2024): Der langsame Tod des Schengen-Abkommens. Die Presse 14.09.2024, 11. My translation from German

(5) Erleichterte Einreise für Russen: Deutsche Politiker fordern Schritte gegen Ungarn. Der Standard 04.08.2024. <https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000231108/einreise-fuer-russen-deutsche-politiker-fordern-schritte-gegen-ungarn> (Accessed: 2024-15-09).

Stephen Walt on the current trend of US-Israel relationship

Stephen Walt thinks that the last year has brought a serious shift in the trend of US-Israel relations:

At first glance, the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel seems stronger than ever. The Biden administration has given Israel a blank check, while Israel has ignored Washington’s ineffectual calls for restraint. Netanyahu got repeated ovations as he told a pack of lies to Congress, and universities have bowed to pressure from politicians and wealthy donors by cracking down on pro-Palestinian protests.

Yet October 7 and after still constitute a watershed in U.S.-Israeli relations. Israel’s brutal attempts to destroy not just Hamas but thousands of innocent Palestinians have cost it the sympathy it received a year ago, and its violent campaigns on the West Bank, in Lebanon, and elsewhere have exposed its true character. The Israel lobby has been forced into the open, defending a genocide that has done lasting damage to America’s own image and interests. It won’t end overnight, but [the] “special relationship” [between the US and Israel] will never be the same. [my emphasis] (1)

Walt co-authored with John Mearsheimer the highly influential The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007). But Mearsheimer in the many interviews he’s been giving in the last year seems to be fatalistic about the enduring effect of the Israel Lobby and grumbles that he thinks that for the foreseeable future, the US will continue to back whatever the Israeli government does because of the lobby’s influence.

As I’ve said repeatedly, Mearsheimer has a very annoying habit of often being right about his predictions. But on this issue, I think Walt’s more optimistic view is also, well, more realistic. Both are leading advocate of the Realist school of international relations. But they claim different emphases, with Walt favoring “defensive Realism” and Mearsheimer “offensive Realism.” But Mearsheimer himself argues that the outsized and lopsided US support for Israel is a rejection of the course that Realist IR theory would recommend. Because he sees the US support for Israel’s wars and occupation policies as damaging to the practical foreign policy position of the US. He and Walt see the influence of the Israel Lobby as having counteracted the normal power-political calculations that one would expect to come into play for the US.

Like everything about American policy towards Israel, there are conflicting arguments on that point. Advocates for Israel’s long-standing policies are that Israel provides great benefits to the US in its fight against terrorism and in dealing with the Muslim world by helping confront jihadist terrorism and Iran.

But after a year of seeing Israel’s genocidal targeting of civilians in Gaza and now recklessly pushing to involve the US in a war with Iran, lots of Americans are now seeing dramatically what the downsides for American interests and US relations with other countries are. And how gut-wrenchingly brutal and criminal Israel and its “world’s most moral army,” the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), are willing to be to Palestinian civilians, aid workers, and journalists.

All of Israel’s significant military conflicts – as opposed to low-level engagement with guerrilla attacks have been much shorter, lasting only months or even weeks. What is called the First Lebanon War is conventionally dated as lasting from 1982 to 2000, which includes the full period of Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon. Most of the active combat was in 1982-83. The Israeli invasion of June 1982 was formally ended by an armistice of August 21. Hezbollah, which formed during that did wage low-level guerrilla warfare against the IDF during that period. Most Israeli forces had been withdrawn by mid-1985.

Israel’s military planning and public relations strategies (aka, propaganda) assume that most of their wars will be short. This current war is the longest they’ve ever had. And there is yet no obvious end in sight. That means that claims that are memorable and dramatic – Hamas beheaded dozens of babies on October 7; the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are the Most Moral Army In The World; Israel always gives warning for civilians to clear out before bombing their cities and residences; the Oslo process offered the Palestinians an independent state and they inexplicably refused to accept – initially sound convincing to American audiences. Not least because Americans tend to take a sports-event attitude toward far-away wars, i.e., pick you team and cheer for them all the way through.

But after a year of tens of thousands of civilians targeted and killed, little kids shot in the head by sharpshooters, the Lavender and Where’s Daddy AI systems that target adult Palestinian males and make it a point to kill them along with their families, of repeated relocations of civilians who the IDF then attacks as they are evacuating or later in refugee camps, hospitals and schools and universities bombed with scant evidence for the claims of the extensive underground terrorist military facilities supposedly concealed underneath them, Knesset members debating whether the anal rape by IDF soldiers of prisoners with metal rods was justifiable or not – lots of Americans are much more dubious of Israeli claims.

That is shown by the large number of respondents in polls who describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide or possible genocide. And the fact that the US is at the moment being steadily drawn in to active combat roles supporting Israel, with a possible direct war with Iran in prospect, inevitably causes people to wonder whether Israel is acting in the best interest of the United States in their wars.

And, certainly for Democratic voters, the fact that the obnoxious and toxic Benjamin Netanyahu came to address Congress with what was essentially a campaign speech for Donald Trump didn’t make the best impressions of what game Netanyahu is playing.

So, Stephen Walt’s speculation that this (continuing) war is “a watershed in U.S.-Israeli relations” certainly sounds plausible.

Omer Bartov, the Israeli-American historian and expert in the Holocaust and genocide, discusses the situation as it appears a few days before the anniversary of the October 7 attack. Includes the ugly authoritarian trends in current Israeli politics. (2)

Notes:

(1) Symposium: Will US-Israel relations survive the last year? Responsible Statecraft 10/03/2024. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/october-7-anniversary-israel/> (Accessed: 2024-05-10).

(2) Omer Bartov—Israel Guilty of Genocide, Ethnic-cleansing; US Totally Complicit; Israel Could Implode. The Wire YouTube channel 10/04/2024. <https://youtu.be/XjShVWKN_-M?si=NiJNbjPj-CGe4X2x> (Accessed: 2024-05-10).

Election songs

Campaign songs were once a standard part of Presidential campaigns. One of the most famous was from the 1860 campaign: (1)

The English family singing group the Marsh family have made a couple of entertaining ones for the 2024 US Presidential election. Here’s one about Kamala Harris: (2)

Another from them about J.D. Vance: (3)

This one is a bit kitschy, but cute: (4)

Notes:

(1) Lincoln and Liberty - 1860 Campaign Song. Max Power YouTube channel 08/16/2024. (Accessed: 2024-04-10).

(2) "Gimme Hope Kamala" - Marsh Family adaptation of Eddy Grant "Gimme Hope Jo'Anna" for Trump vs Harris. Marsh Family YouTube channel 08/24/2024. (Accessed: 2024-04-10).

(3) "Vance VP" - Marsh Family parody adaptation of "Dancing Queen" by ABBA, on JD Vance. Marsh Family YouTube channel 07/20/2024.

(4) How Do You Solve A Problem Like A MAGA? The Sound Of Music Nuns Have Their Say... Shirley Serban YouTube channel. (Accessed: 2024-02-09).

Is hope a plan for the US in the Russia-Ukraine War?

John Ganz points to an important assumption that lies behind the current US-NATO policy on the Ukraine War:

Part of Zelensky’s “plan for victory” is to lobby its Western allies for strikes deep within Russian territory using long range weapons, presumably to attack Russia’s economic infrastructure and win a more favorable negotiating position. But strategic strikes alone have never won a war: neither the Allies truly earthshaking round-the-clock bombing campaign against Germany nor the U.S.’s on North Vietnam enough to secure victory in either conflict. Even in the era of drones and electronic warfare, there are no “wonder weapons.” Ultimately, troops just have to win battles and take territory. [my emphasis] (1)

The notion in the US that nuclear weapons are magical win-a-war-instantly devices is based on a US-centered triumphalist reading of Japan’s surrender soon after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb strikes.

What is conveniently left out of that version of the story of Japan’s surrender is that in 1945 the Soviet Union, in line with its commitment to its allies – and, of course, its own particular calculation of national advantage – had entered the war with ground troops and was sweeping through the northern part of Japanese-occupied Korea. Japan wasn’t just facing a couple of big atomic bomb blasts. It was also in the process of being rapidly defeated on the conventional battlefield at that moment.

Ganz also quotes Ben Conable from the War on the Rocks blog arguing, “While history is not necessarily predictive, at least the cases of Afghanistan and Chechnya (in 1994) suggest that Russia’s biggest vulnerability may lie at the intersection between battlefield casualties and economic strain.”

It’s true that after nine years and a few more weeks of fighting, the USSR decided to give up on the war in Afghanistan. After crowing about that great Cold War victory for a decade of so, the US embarked on its own version of that adventure – and took 20 years to decide it wasn’t worth it anymore. So, taking advice about Afghanistan from American warhawks should be regarded a dubious proposition. The Soviet war there has “been cited by scholars as a significant factor that contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.” (2) Although I suspect there is a lot of wishful thinking in that conclusion.

Also, this is a good time to ask again: have the economic sanctions produced the kind of devastating “economic strain” that its optimistic advocates expected? Uh, so far, no.

With a vision of Cold War triumph on the brain, hawks like Conable think that it may be a great idea to stick it to the Rooskies for as long as we (the West) can. After all, it’s Ukrainians and not Americans that are paying the price in death and devastation. Ganz also isn’t too impressed with that line of argument:

If this business about demonstrating resolve and “commitment” sounds fishy to you it’s because it was part of the same Cold War thinking that got us increasingly entangled in Vietnam. And with all due respect to the author, this sounds a little like “cope” as they say online.

The best case scenario that I can see, far short of victory according to some on the Ukrainian side, is that Zelensky’s plan includes a way to give Russia another bloody nose, making peace negotiations somewhat more favorable to the Ukrainian side and making the sacrifices of this terrible war bearable for the Ukrainian people. Withstanding the Russian invasion in the first place was a heroic feat that rightly earned the world’s admiration: it’s already a great victory in its own right. It would be a tragedy indeed to see that accomplishment squandered by either a lack of hope or a lack of realism. [my emphasis]

I’ve had a feeling for a while that US Ukrainian policy is more-or-less on autopilot: keep giving them more weapons to keep the current war going as long as possible in hopes that it will be another (imagined) “Afghanistan” for Russia. At this point, that approach of continuing the war indefinitely instead of trying to arrange some kind of armistice that offers both hope for Ukraine and a new sense of realism about the actual military situation looks more like the West repeating the United States’ failure to judge the Afghanistan situation more sensibly during our two-decades’ adventure there.

As Ganz argues, “With less men and materiel than Russia, Ukraine’s options are limited. It seems highly likely that they will have to sacrifice territory in any prospective negotiation.”

As the old military saying goes: Hope is not a plan. Nor an exit strategy, nor a war-termination strategy.

Notes:

(1) Ganz, John (2024): Ukraine is Losing the War. Unpopular Front 09/27/2024. <https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/ukraine-is-losing-the-war> (Accessed: 2024-30-09).

(2) Soviet–Afghan War. Wikipedia 09/27/2024. <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War&oldid=1247994825> (Accessed: 2024-03-10).

Mexico’s new President Claudia Sheinbaum

Mexico’s new President was sworn in on Tuesday: Claudia Sheinbaum, the first female President of Mexico (1) and its first Jewish President. (2) She was the candidate of the Morena party, which is also the party of the outgoing President AMLO (Andrés Manuel López Obrador), who left office with high popularity ratings.

Latin America has had several women as Presidents, including Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Panama, Honduras, and Peru have had Jewish Presidents in the past. (3)

Oliver Stuenkel writing for the Carnegie Endowment in June listed five key areas to follow during Sheinbaum’s administration (4):

• The first is whether Sheinbaum will continue the steady erosion of democracy that her predecessor and mentor, AMLO, has overseen during his six years in office.
• The second key issue will be whether Sheinbaum can do more than her predecessor to harness Mexico’s unique opportunity over escalating U.S.-China tensions.
• Third, analysts wonder whether AMLO, the Morena founder who has single-handedly transformed Mexico’s political landscape, will leave politics altogether or whether he will seek to influence Sheinbaum—as often happens in Latin America.
• The fourth question is whether Sheinbaum will play a more visible role on the global stage.
• Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, is whether Sheinbaum will be capable of addressing cartel violence and the country’s extremely high murder rate.

On that last point, a reminder here that the American War on Drugs began during the Nixon Administration. And that in 2024, the United States is still the primary market for sale of illegal drugs.

Alejandro García Magos in 2023 discussed some of the issues around what Stuenkel calls “the steady erosion of democracy.” (5) ALMO and Sheinbaum are definitely on the left of the political spectrum, which always makes Washington and the US foreign policy establishment nervous. So these criticisms need close scrutiny.

It’s not obvious at first glance why AMLO and/or Sheinbaum would be focused on trying to weaken a democratic process by which they came to power, since Mexico was criticized for decades by the chronic dominance of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the “party that dominated Mexico’s political life for most of the time since its founding in 1929. It was established as a result of a shift of power from political-military chieftains to state party units following the Mexican Revolution (1910–20).” (6)

This is not to dismiss the expressed concerns out of hand. One of AMLO’s reform proposals was popular election of judges – which I tend to think is a very bad idea, based on the experience of various US states with such a system. But the larger context is very relevant. For instance, some judges tried to use a kind of legal injunction to stop the Congress from even debating the reform! And also larger context like this provided by Gunther Maihold on AMLO’s policies in office:

Beyond pre-established political categories of "left" and "right," López Obrador relied on a traditional program, namely the defense of sovereignty and national independence, especially vis-à-vis the United States. On the other hand, he committed himself to a progressive discourse for more social justice in favor of disadvantaged sections of the population and committed himself to a policy against discrimination and racism of all kinds.

The central motif of his governmental program became the struggle for a better distribution of the country's wealth in social and regional terms. He put this program into practice with the focus on "republican austerity" and the fight against corruption. (7)

Social justice, “wokeness,“ fighting corruption, defending national sovereignty in relation to the US? These are not the priorities billionaire oligarchs want to see – especially not the American ones!

A report from NACLA and Revista Común addressed the significance of the rise of the Morena Party:

This latest election solidifies the strong support for Morena’s political project of the Fourth Transformation (4T), a reorganization of Mexican society mirroring major transformational moments in history, including Independence, the reformation, and the Mexican Revolution. It also consolidates Sheinbaum—a politician forged within Morena, a representative of the movement’s push for renewal, and the most visible face of a political generation formed outside the PRI in leftist movements since the 1980s—as a national leader.

Sheinbaum’s victory thus represents an important step toward the consolidation of a new political system in Mexico. Fed by the positive results of AMLO’s government and the ineffectiveness of the opposition, Sheinbaum’s triumph marks a profound reconfiguration of political forces and the eclipse of old terms of debate and horizons of transformation that had defined Mexican public life since the 1990s. Powerful yet contradictory, the political project headed by Sheinbaum constitutes a dam against the rise of the far right, punitive populism, and the lack of reason taking root in other Latin American countries. [my emphasis] (8)

Kurt Hackbarth foresees:

Having lost its bastion in the judicial branch, expect Mexico’s right to pour even more energy into a media war against the new administration. In this it will find, as ever, a willing accomplice in the United States. One of AMLO’s last official acts as president, after exhausting attempts to come to an agreement, was to turn the highly polluting Calica limestone quarry owned by Vulcan Materials on the popular tourist coast of Quintana Roo into a National Protected Area. In response, Republican senator Katie Britt warned Mexico of “crushing consequences,” a threat amplified by friendly news outlets. More of the same will doubtless follow as the Sheinbaum administration looks to tighten up rules governing water and mining concessions to multinationals; it will be important that her government not make the rookie mistake of ceding to the bluster and baleful headlines. [my emphasis] (9)

Notes:

(1) Claudia Sheinbaum Becomes Mexico's First Female President. Bloomberg Television YouTube channel 10/01/2024. <https://youtu.be/ZwSFMvc3AvU?si=mKMe-atyEP8VaZWU> (Accessed: 2024-02-10).

(2) Nicole Acevedo et. al. (2024): Mexico's first female president is also its first Jewish president. NBC News 06/03/2024. <https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/claudia-sheinbaum-mexico-president-jewish-first-woman-rcna155179> (Accessed: 2024-02-10).

(3) List of Jewish heads of state and government. Wikipedia 10/01/2024. <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Jewish_heads_of_state_and_government&oldid=1248826425> (Accessed: 2024-02-10).

(4) Stuenkel, Oliver (2024): Five Issues to Watch After Sheinbaum’s Electoral Triumph in Mexico. Carnegie Endowment 06/05/2024. <https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2024/06/mexico-election-claudia-sheinbaum-cartel-violence-climate-economy?lang=en> (Accessed: 2024-02-10). The five points are direct quotes from Stuenkel’s article.

(5) Magos, Alejandro García (2023): Democratic backsliding in Mexico: Lessons for opponents of authoritarian populism. Wilson Center 05/26/2023. <https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/democratic-backsliding-mexico-lessons-opponents-authoritarian-populism> (Accessed: 2024-02-10).

(6) Editors (2024): Institutional Revolutionary Party summary". Encyclopedia Britannica 05/02/2020. <https://www.britannica.com/summary/Institutional-Revolutionary-Party> (Accessed: 2024-02-10).

(7) Maihold, Fünther (2024): Claudia Sheinbaum wird erste Präsidentin Mexikos. SWP-Aktuell 49 (Oktober 2024) [Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politk]. My translation from German.

(8) Carrasco, Daniel Kent et. al. (2024): The Mexico of Claudia Sheinbaum. NACLA 06/10/2024. <https://nacla.org/mexico-claudia-sheinbaum> (Accessed: 2024-02-10).

(9) Hackbarth, Kurt (2024): Claudia Sheinbaum, Presidenta. Jacobin 10/02/2024. <https://jacobin.com/2024/10/claudia-sheinbaum-mexico-inauguration> (Accessed: 2024-02-10).

Biden agrees to more war in the Middle East

Gideon Levy is blunt about what the US position on Netanyahu’s Middle East War actually is: (1)



At this point, Biden’s public statements calling for restraint are nothing more than a bad joke. On Day 360 of the current Middle East War, the White House is issuing the same statements that he has never matched with restraints on the arming of Israel and everyone in the world will be flabbergasted if he does so in his remaining three months in office. (2)

Biden’s policy on Netanyahu’s ever-expanding war is irresponsible and shows every appearance of getting worse:

he U.S. is sending an additional “few thousand” troops to the Middle East to bolster security and to be prepared to defend Israel if necessary, the Pentagon said Monday.

The increased presence will come from multiple fighter jet squadrons, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters. ,,,

The additional personnel includes [sic] squadrons of F-15E Strike Eagle, F-16, A-10 and F-22 fighter jets and the personnel needed to support them. The jets were supposed to rotate in and replace the squadrons already there. Instead, both the existing and new squadrons will remain in place to double the airpower on hand. (3)

Notes:

(1) Gideon Levy: "Barbaric Glee over Nasrallah's Assassination Is a New Low for Israeli Society". Democracy Now! YouTube channel 09/30/2024. <https://youtu.be/Hph5MbraCz0?si=0ebBd5LPyJNW8BFl> (Accessed: 2024-30-09).

(2) Haaretz 09/30/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-09-30/ty-article-live/palestinian-militant-group-says-three-of-its-leaders-killed-in-israeli-strikes-on-beirut/00000192-40e7-d3a1-a1b7-f7e743ce0000> (Accessed: 2024-30-09).

(3) Copp, Tara (2024): The US is sending a few thousand more troops to the Middle East to boost security. AP News 09/30/2024. <https://apnews.com/article/us-troops-middle-east-israel-hezbollah-e37e2dbef573e33c0f8fb6a8103f27f1> (Accessed: 2024-30-09).

Austrian National Election

Austria held its national parliamentary elections on Sunday to elect representatives for the Bundesrat, the lower House of Parliament, which will form a new government coalition for a term of up to five years.

Going into the election, polls were indicating that the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) would get the most votes, the center-right Christian Democratic People’s Party (ÖVP) would come in second, and the center-left Social Democrats (SPÖ) third, with no party getting a majority. The Greens and the liberal party NEOS were expected win enough votes to maintain their presence in the parliament.

Based on the currently available figures, the results came out this way for the five parties that made the threshold for parliamentary representation, based on information as of just after 8:00 PM Central European Time: (1)

The only coalition thinkable for the FPÖ to make would be with the ÖVP. A coalition of ÖVP-SPÖ-NEOS or ÖVP-SPÖ-Greens would be the other two most likely variants.

University of Salzburg political scientists Reinhard Heinisch gave a description just before the election of the political situation in Austria, with some important historical background and analysis of the FPÖ, in particular: (2)

As in other EU countries including France, Germany, and Italy, the supposedly center-right parties have tried to compete with the far-right parties by glomming on to some of their hot-button issues. Which has often resulted in strengthening the far right rather than attracting votes from them to the center-right.

That game has also played out in Austria. Although, as Heinisch notes in his discussion, the FPÖ has always complained about foreigners, but it was the ÖVP who took the lead in promoting Islamophobia. Not surprisingly, the FPÖ quickly picked it up.

Leading up to the election, the FPÖ promoted a xenophobic slogan of “Fortress Austria” as the basis for a possible ÖVP-FPÖ coalition:

Four days before the Nationalrat [lower House of Parliament] elections, constitution spokeswoman Susanne Fürst (FPÖ) has called on the ÖVP to build the "Fortress Austria" together. Only with the FPÖ can the strict migration course propagated by the ÖVP be implemented, she asserts. ...

As examples, she cited the establishment of return centers, deportations to countries of origin, especially to Afghanistan and Syria, securing external borders, and stopping of development aid for countries that do not cooperate. These measures would only exist in an ÖVP-FPÖ coalition, she claims.

She appeared pleased that Finance Minister Magnus Brunner (ÖVP) will be responsible for migration as EU Commissioner in the future. "The ÖVP and Brunner will receive our full support and backing," provided they follow up their proposals with deeds. There was criticism for Brunner's positive view of the EU migration pact. She claims the pact "only wants to declare illegal immigration legal ". (3)

Rule #1 for dealing with nativism: xenophobes lie.

If one doesn’t keep that in mind, it’s impossible to navigate their claims, e.g., “they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats.” (Donald Trump)

Xenophobes lie. It’s how their ugly game works.

Hannes Amesbauer, the FPÖ security spokesperson who is considered a possible cabinet minister, claims that in the past five years, there have been on the average 340 reports a day about people from other countries. He bases the need for a “Fortress Austria” on “knife attacks, gang wars, Islamism, and the danger of terrorism.”

The rightwingers in Austria use “knives” as a symbol for scary foreigners and Muslims. I guess it’s supposed to sound dangerous Oriental, or something.) Yes, it’s brainless. But that’s how demagogues roll. The crime rate among foreigners in Austria and in most (all?) EU countries is consistently lower than among native-born Austrians. The non-native born Austrians would be much safer if all the native-born Austrians were to leave.

On the day of the election, Deutsche Welle English posted a surprisingly bad discussion of the state of Austrian politics. (3) Really lazy journalism in that one.

Even though Austria is a small country, the outcome of the coalition negotiations could also have some effect on the EU’s position on the Russia-Ukraine War:

Christoph Schwarz, a Research Fellow at the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy, said if the FPÖ enters the government, “one can assume that Austrian support for EU initiatives in support of Ukraine will be harder to attain.” Even so, he adds, much would depend on “political bargaining and the composition of such a government.”

The FPÖ and United Russia, Vladimir Putin’s party, signed a Friendship treaty in 2016. The FPÖ’s Russian connections have led to bizarre moments. Karin Kneissl, appointed Austria’s foreign minister on the FPÖ’s recommendation in 2017, danced with Putin at her wedding in 2018. Kneissl now lives in Russia, where she was recently appointed goodwill ambassador for Siberian tiger conservation. The FPÖ has since distanced itself from the Friendship treaty, but ties between the far-right party and Moscow have survived. (4)

Without trying to summarize all the complications of the hype and the genuine worry about illegitimate Russian interference in EU elections, it is legitimate to call the FPÖ a Putinist party. They lean heavily in the direction of EU authoritarians like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and France’s Marine Le Pen.

Notes:

(1) Das Ergebnis, die möglichen Koalitionen: Die Nationalratswahl 2024 im Überblick. Der Standard 09/29/2024 (20:12pm CET).<https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000237888/das-ergebnis-die-moeglichen-koalitionen-die-nationalratswahl-2024-im-ueberblick> (Accessed: 2024-29-09).

(2) Prof. Heinisch: If You Don’t Want the FPÖ in Government, Hope They Come in First in Austria Polls. ECPS Brussels YouTube channel 08/28/2024. <https://youtu.be/nMccw5zWd2k?si=pYqb2yhB-YJHxqAN> (Accessed: 2024-28-09).

(3) FPÖ will mit ÖVP „Festung Österreich“ bauen. ORF 09/25/20024. <https://orf.at/stories/3370860/> (Accessed: 2024-29-09). My translation from German.

(4) Far-right FPÖ set for big win on 'Fortress Austria' platform. DW News YouTube channel 09/29/2024. <https://youtu.be/QLSUBOqQrtU?si=XzGB2SE6DpiOI2bA> (Accessed: 2024-29-09).

(5) Junyen t, Marc Martoreli (2024): Austrian election could complicate EU Ukraine war policy. Responsible Statecraft 09/24/2024. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/austria-elections/> (Accessed: 2024-29-09).

The Israel-Lebanon War is nasty and getting nastier

Hezbollah has confirmed the Israeli claim that their top leader was killed in Israeli airstrikes:

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has been killed, the Lebanese movement said Saturday, dealing a seismic blow to the Iran-backed group that has been engaged in a year of cross-border hostilities with Israel.

Hezbollah's statement confirms earlier announcements from Israel's military that they had killed Nasrallah in an air strike on Beirut's southern suburbs, in a move that could destabilise Lebanon as a whole. (1)

Deutsche Welle reports: (2)

Events so far seem to confirm that Netanyahu, with the full support of his government coalition, is pressing ahead with a war with Lebanon that threatens quickly to become a ground war and very possibly a direct war with Iran. This is consistent with Netanyahu’s years-long goal of drawing the US into a direct war with Iran. And with his goal of getting Trump elected President again in November. Because he knows that Trump is generally committed to enabling Israel to do anything they want. And also that Trump is obviously very “transaction-oriented,” i.e., he’s happy to be bribed. And he has no problem dealing with people who have the mentality of mobsters.

Politico EU reports:

Nasrallah’s death could send a seismic shock across the Middle East and runs the risk of triggering a wider regional war that Israel’s Western allies have been scrambling to avert.

It will also test Israel’s theory that by escalating a long-simmering fight with Hezbollah it can get the group to back down. If Hezbollah and its Iranian supporters decide to keep up their fight — and the militant group vowed on Saturday to “continue the holy war against the enemy and in support of Palestine” — it could lead to a broader regional conflict. (3)

Some of the reporting speculates that the loss of key commanders recently will make it much more difficult for Hezbollah to respond to Israeli attacks. We’ll soon see, I suppose. Other reporting suggests that Hezbollah’s training system takes into account the likelihood of leaders getting assassinated, so there may be much more redundancy in their leadership capabilities than the more optimistic (from Israel’s viewpoint) assumption.

The big risk for Israel would be a ground invasion of Lebanon. Such an invasion could lead Iran to directly enter the battle in Lebanon against the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Iran considers Hezbollah to be one of its most significant assets. Responding to the assassination, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on Muslims “to stand by the people of Lebanon and the proud Hezbollah with whatever means they have and assist them in confronting the … wicked regime [of Israel]”.

Khamenei, who Reuters reported had been transferred to a secure location inside Iran, did not mention Nasrallah in his comments. He added: “The fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront.” Israeli “criminals must know that they are far too small to cause any significant damage on the strongholds of Hezbollah in Lebanon”, he said. “All the resistance forces in the region support and stand alongside Hezbollah.”

Iran has so far been reluctant to involve itself in the fighting between the Lebanon-based group and Israel. [my emphasis] (4)

Ori Goldberg, Israeli analyst and former editor-in-chief of +972 Magazine, argues that Iran’s leadership, contrary to how Israel’s leaders portray it, does not aim to wipe Israel out but it more focused on a broadly defensive view of preventing the Iranian regimes overthrown and threats from other nations:

This is one of our biggest blindspots in Israel. We cannot begin to view ourselves as aggressors; we only want peace, the common thinking goes here. But Israel attacks Iran — inside the country and outside of it — at a rate that far outweighs Iranian attacks on Israel. And then we tell ourselves that this is because they are bad guys and we are simply trying to defend ourselves? Which country has hundreds of nuclear bombs? Which country has the biggest and most powerful army in the region? …

Israel believes in a tactical approach of isolating itself and acting with surgical strikes against threats. The Iranians believe that if they isolate themselves, they will allow all of their enemies to surround and attack them.

Thus, the Iranians are trying to build influence in every place where decision makers have the power to influence Iranian national security. They want to be present in Lebanon and Iraq and Yemen because they believe that being aware of what nearby states are planning is what will truly safeguard their national interests.

Israel is not interested in being part of the Middle East; even the Abraham Accords were a way to parlay its presence in the region. Israel wants to build walls, to be friendly with Europe and the United States. If someone threatens the state, Israeli war planes and soldiers will carry out a surgical attack and come back home to their bases. [my emphasis] (5)

This is a helpful way to portray Israel’s “tactical” approach, which basically assumes that it will have to carry out short military conflicts periodically to control the Palestinians and to eventually establish what is the official goal of Netanyahu’s currently governing coalition, i.e., permanent Israeli control of the land between Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, i.e,, “from the river to the sea,” in the words of the protest slogan that critics accuse of being a call for genocide against all Israeli Jews.

Israel’s previous ground incursions into Lebanon have not been happy experiences: the First Lebanon War of 1982-2000 (with most of the fighting 1982 with an occupation of southern Lebanon following) and the Second Lebanon War of July-August 2006. Hezbollah actually came into being as a resistance force against Israel during there long presence in Lebanon in that first war.

It was also in the first year of the First Lebanon War that a much sharper political sensitivity emerged among Israelis compared to previous attitudes, as Yagil Lev recounts:

Politically, the First Lebanon War (1982) was the watershed event after which bereavement became politicized and Israel gradually distanced itself from the historical hegemonic model of bereavement that justified losses without question. It spurred parents of fallen soldiers to take collective action against the army’s operations. The catalytic event took place during the first week of the war, which claimed the lives of about 230 soldiers. (5)

That intervention turned into a long-term occupation that was a very different experience than the much shorter wars of 1967 and 1973:

Later, protests were staged against the transformation of the war from the previously declared and widely politically acceptable short-term operation (that took barely one week in June 1982, during which Israel conquered south Lebanon) into an attempt to reshape internal Lebanese politics, which prolonged the war beyond the first week and culminated in a siege of Beirut in July and August 1982. In 1982, [Israeli activist group] Peace Now led the mass protest movement against Israel’s invasion of south Lebanon. Its main achievement was the massive rally it organized in Tel Aviv in September 1982 in response to the Sabra and Shatilla massacre, in which two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut were attacked by Christian Lebanese forces in an area controlled by the IDF. Peace Now effectively demanded the establishment of an investigative committee, which ultimately removed Defense Minister Ariel Sharon from his position. Yet, Peace Now voiced antiwar grievances, rather than concerns about casualties as such. [my emphasis]

A ground war with Hezbollah, and maybe even with Iran, won’t be nearly as easy for Israel as they tried to make it look with their recent exploding-pagers attack. Israel has configured its military to focus on short wars using heavy airpower and brief operations like the cynically named “mowing the grass” actions in Gaza prior to 2023. As Yagiv Lev describes, since the early part of the First Lebanon War, it as a “partial transformation of the IDF from a labor-intensive organization to a technology-intensive one, with heavy reliance on aerial assaults, precision weapons, and artillery and reduced use of intrusive ground troops.” (p. 63)

And he notes, “The decisions made during the Second Lebanon War … reflected [the] priority [of minimizing casualties among IDF soldiers]. The General Staff relied on massive airstrikes and deferred the ground operation for as long as possible because of the concerns over casualties.” (p. 134)

Lev also gives this description of how the IDF and the government viewed the infliction of civilian casualties in the Second Lebanon War:

In ... an attempt to exhaust the advantages of counterfire in reducing soldiers’ exposure to risk, the military learned the lessons of [previous engagements in] Lebanon. The Dahiyah Doctrine (named after the South Beirut neighborhood of Dahiyah, which was heavily bombarded by Israel during the war) was adopted after the war. This doctrine referred to the use of disproportionate power against every village in Lebanon from which rockets were fired on Israel, with the aim of causing immense damage and destruction, rather than hunting down individual missile launchers, which the IDF had failed to do during the war. The doctrine eliminated the need for clearing out the launchers through a costly ground attack. (p. 165)

Notes:

(1 Al Khoury, Laure (2024): Hezbollah chief killed in Israeli strike on Beirut. Al Monitor 09/[28]/2024. <https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/09/hezbollah-chief-killed-israeli-strike-beirut> (Accessed: 2024-28-09).

(2) What Nasrallah's death means for the Middle East conflict. DW News YouTube channel 09/28/2024. <https://youtu.be/eoHBNMmAkPo?si=Zos79d7EZjTMFmlE> (Accessed: 2024-28-09).

(3) Gavin, Gabriel & Detmer, Jamie (2024): Hezbollah leader Nasrallah killed by Israel in major escalation. Politico EU 09/28/2024. <https://www.politico.eu/article/hezbollah-hassan-nasrallah-kill-lebanon-strike-israel-war/> (Accessed: 2024-28-09).

(4) Beaumont, Peter & Christou (2024): Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah killed by Israel in major escalation of conflict. Guardian 09/28/2024. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/28/israel-says-it-has-killed-hezbollah-leader-hassan-nasrallah> (Accessed: 2024-28-09).

(5) Goldberg, Ori, interviewed by Edo Konrad (2024): What Israelis don’t want to hear about Iran and Hezbollah. +972 Magazine 09/20/2024. <https://www.972mag.com/iran-israel-hezbollah-ori-goldberg/> (Accessed: 2024-28-09).

(6) Lev, Yagil (2012): Israel’s Death Hierarchy: Casualty Aversion in a Militarized Democracy, 51. New York & London: NYU Press.