If you read only one thing today, let it be this

If you read only one thing today, let it be this.

re: "Gingrich’s Fresh Hope"

Caroline Glick at Big Peace stuck up for former-Speaker Gingrich in the Jerusalem Post.

Money quote(s):

"(F)ormer speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, did something revolutionary. He told the truth about the Palestinians. In an interview with The Jewish Channel, Gingrich said that the Palestinians are an “invented” people, “who are in fact Arabs.”

His statement about the Palestinians was entirely accurate. At the end of 1920, the “Palestinian people” was artificially carved out of the Arab population of “Greater Syria.” “Greater Syria” included present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. That is, the Palestinian people were invented 91 years ago. Moreover, as Gingrich noted, the term “Palestinian people” only became widely accepted after 1977.

As Daniel Pipes chronicled in a 1989 article on the subject in The Middle East Quarterly, the local Arabs in what became Israel opted for a local nationalistic “Palestinian” identity in part due to their sense that their brethren in Syria were not sufficiently committed to the eradication of Zionism."

So the latest date is 1977, which would (in Western demographic terms) a generation ago, but in Middle Eastern terms is more like two generations. Long enough for the myth of national consciousness to become a reality.

(Which doesn't make Gingrich a liar.)

"In their view, Gingrich is an irresponsible flamethrower because he is turning his back on a 30- year bipartisan consensus. That consensus is based on ignoring the fact that the Palestinians are an artificial people whose identity sprang not from any shared historical experience, but from opposition to Jewish nationalism.

The policy goal of the consensus is to establish an independent Palestinian state west of the Jordan River that will live at peace with Israel.

This policy was obsessively advanced throughout the 1990s until it failed completely in 2000, when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rejected then-prime minister Ehud Barak’s and then US president Bill Clinton’s offer of Palestinian statehood and began the Palestinian terror war against Israel.

BUT RATHER than acknowledge that the policy – and the embrace of Palestinian national identity at its heart – had failed, and consider other options, the US policy establishment in Washington clung to it for dear life. Republicans like Rubin’s mentor, former deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, went on to support enthusiastically Israel’s surrender of Gaza in 2005, and to push for Hamas participation in the 2006 Palestinian elections. That withdrawal and those elections catapulted the jihadist terror group to power.

The consensus that Gingrich rejected by telling the truth about the artificial nature of Palestinian nationalism was based on an attempt to square popular support for Israel with the elite’s penchant for appeasement. On the one hand, due to overwhelming public support for a strong US alliance with Israel, most US policy-makers have not dared to abandon Israel as a US ally.

On the other hand, American policy-makers have been historically uncomfortable having to champion Israel to their anti-Israel European colleagues and to their Arab interlocutors who share the Palestinians’ rejection of Israel’s right to exist."

Being uncomfortable sometimes is just something that goes with the job. As fond as I am of Europeans, I don't expect that I'll always agree with them.

"Throughout the Arab world, Islamist forces are on the rise.

Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power.

The US is no longer seen as a credible regional power as it pulls its forces out of Iraq without victory, hamstrings its forces in Afghanistan, dooming them to attrition and defeat, and abandons its allies in country after country."

This too shall pass.

"Both Rubin and Abrams, as well as Romney, justified their attacks on Gingrich and their defense of the failed consensus by noting that no Israeli leaders are saying what Gingrich said. Rubin went so far as to allege that Gingrich’s words of truth about the Palestinians hurt Israel.

This is of course absurd. What many Americans fail to recognize is that Israeli leaders are not as free to tell the truth about the nature of the conflict as American leaders are. Rather than look to Israel for leadership on this issue, American leaders would do well to view Israel as the equivalent of West Germany during the Cold War. With half of Berlin occupied by the Red Army and West Berlin serving as the tripwire for a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, West German leaders were not as free to tell the truth about the Soviet Union as American leaders were."

Interesting parallel that appeals to my inner Cold Warrior.

"When Romney criticized Gingrich’s statement as unhelpful to Israel, Gingrich replied, “I feel quite confident that an amazing number of Israelis found it nice to have an American tell the truth about the war they are in the middle of, and the casualties they are taking and the people around them who say, ‘They do not have a right to exist and we want to destroy them.’”

And he is absolutely right. It was more than nice. It was heartening."

Said (actually written) by an Israeli, writing for the Jerusalem Post. So I'm inclined to accept the sentiment as genuine.

12/12

re: "This Week at War: Moral Hazard at NATO"

Robert Haddick at Small Wars Journal ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") foresees the end of the free ride.

Money quote(s):

"Europe may not be able to rely on America's free security guarantee forever."

Nothing is forever. That should be plain enough. But even in geopolitical terms, where a single lifetime approximates for "forever," alliances require constant tending, by all their members. Or they're not really alliances.

(Don't get me wrong, as an old "Cold Warrior," I think NATO, when it worked, was one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century.)

"In blasting NATO, Gates explains what moral hazard feels like

In what he termed his "last policy speech as U.S. defense secretary," Robert Gates ripped into his policymaking peers at NATO headquarters in Brussels last week for allowing "significant shortcomings in NATO in military capabilities, and in political will" to occur. Gates noted that although the non-U.S. alliance members have more than 2 million troops in uniform, these countries struggle to deploy 40,000 soldiers into an effective military campaign. Gates also pointed to NATO's embarrassing performance in Libya, noting that European members, despite having a multitude of officers collecting paychecks at frivolous staff billets, have failed to generate the intelligence support and command capabilities needed to wage an effective air campaign. Gates warned of a "dismal future for the transatlantic alliance."

Gates's frustration was no doubt sparked by the realization that his department has become the victim of moral hazard. The United States provides a free security guarantee to Europe. Europeans, meanwhile, have responded in an economically rational way by taking greater risk with their external defense. With the collapse of the Soviet Union removing the last plausible military threat, it was logical for European policymakers to avoid spending on expensive space, communications, and intelligence systems that the United States was largely providing for free. Gates and many other U.S. policymakers see an alliance with too many free riders"

This has always been the case, at least as long as I can recall. But at least before, when NATO as an alliance had as its primary military purpose the defense of Western Europe, even the smaller, less militarily-capable members knew, and planned for, a fight that would probably take place on, and above, their own territories. So even if they didn't have that many chips to put into the pot, they planned to ante-up with what they did have.

"Gates fears that the United States will have to bail out the Libya operation. This week, Adm. Mark Stanhope, Britain's top naval officer, warned that budget limits and unit rotation requirements could force NATO combatants over Libya to soon have to choose between Libya and Afghanistan. Should a shortfall of European forces in either campaign result, Gates undoubtedly fears that the United States will have to make up the gap.

Over the longer term, the moral hazard issue extends beyond NATO into the Western Pacific, the South China Sea, and soon the Persian Gulf. For example, the United States has a great interest in signaling to China that it has strong security commitments to its partners in the region. Washington likewise wants those partners to share the defense burden and to also avoid provocative behavior. The stronger the signal it sends to China, the less incentive the partners have to do their part."

&

"Gates concluded his speech by warning Europe's leaders that the next generation of U.S. leaders lacks nostalgia for the Cold War struggle and could walk away from the NATO alliance. In the future, Europe will undoubtedly have to do more for its external defense. That doesn't seem like a problem now since there is no apparent external threat. But should they have to more fully insure themselves, European defense planners should consider how they would rebuild their defenses. They should consider how much time it would take to mobilize political and budgetary authority to prepare for these threats and how long it would take to rebuild the required military forces. Most notable in this regard is the risk of losing both a defense industrial base and functioning military institutions, which once gone might never be restored, at least within a relevant time frame."

You're a member of the NATO alliance you have, not the one you wish you had.

(Or, alternatively you're not.)

A country which so degrades its military institutions to the point where there's not any there left, is likely to have to learn the harsh lesson that one doesn't reconstitute that institution by last-minute conscription notices. This is as true for our European (and other) allies as it is for the U.S.

re: "Say it ain't so - part 5,379"

Helen at EU Referendum ("To discuss issues related to the UK's position in Europe and the world") remarks on SecState Clinton's recent trip to Russia.

Money quote(s):

"(G)iving the Russians a button to push does not exactly send the right signal."

This approximates my first thought about this particular gift, but then I'm a barely reconstructed Cold Warrior, who actually trained to push those red buttons.

BTW, the button itself was actually gray in color, but had a spring-loaded protective cover (to prevent accidents) which was red.

She also asks:

"Is there nobody in the State Department who knows elementary Russian? Or did they do this on purpose to embarrass the Secretary of State?"