Caroline Glick: the foreign policy elites hate the Abraham Accords…
…because they have proven them wrong about Israel, Palestine, the Arab World, and the path to peace.
Have you noticed a pattern here? For decades, leftist experts who presented themselves as caring about achieving a certain outcome – whether it be increased economic prosperity for black people, or peace in the Middle East – were really only interested in that outcome if it was achieved by the efforts of the right people (themselves) in the right way and not the wrong people in the wrong way.
The Arab-Israel conflict isn’t supposed to end this way. For 50 years, the “experts” have all agreed that the road to peace goes through Ramallah. So long as Israel doesn’t make peace with the Palestinians, it cannot make peace with the Arabs…
…But even if Trump and Netanyahu are forced off the stage, the Abraham Accords will not go away. The peace that is bursting out from all quarters is real. It reflects the real desires of the people who live in the region. And it turns out their desires are far different from the sacrosanct anti-Israel catechisms taught and internalized by the peace processors of the West.
And this brings us to the real “Netanyahu Dilemma.” The real dilemma embittering the lives of the foreign policy elites is not whether to give the Nobel Peace Prize to men they hate. It is how to react to the peace these men have achieved.
Please read the whole thing.
This is also true on trade where Trump proved it is actually possible for the U.S. government to represent the interests of its people, rather than focusing on making foreign governments happy or achieving some Platonic ideal of “free trade.”
Mike
. . . and on funding of NATO, where Trump demonstrated that European nations who have been stiffing NATO all these years are actually able to pay more.
Amazing what you can do if you’re the US President and willing to re-examine all the assumptions that have underlay American foreign Policy for decades now.
It’s not just foreign policy, although the Middle East does provide a pretty clear cut case. Only a determinedly myopic ideologue (i.e. the types most likely to prosper in the Foreign Policy Elite (sic)) could fail to grasp that if any part of the world is best suited to Grand Gestures, Strong Horse Tactics, Ginormous Super Excellent Deals, this is it.
It’s hard to pin down the root causes of our societal cancer, but some of the symptoms are a fanatical fixation on subtlety, nuance, wheels within wheels, mysterious adoption of ‘axioms’ which it then becomes heresy to examine, the building of vast rickety structures and models upon these rickety axiomatic foundations, and the indisputable fact that above some nebulous rank in the Nomenclature it is impossible for one’s failure to be noticed or for there to be any negative or downwardly mobile personal consequences.
Above para applies to just about all fields of intellectual, ‘scientific’, and political endeavours now. Foreign Policy one aspect of the Beast.
And this, Dear Friends, is Reason Number 689 Why They Hate Trump. He doesn’t care for their Glass Bead Games and just has a go. Not needing personally to make a career out of word games and analysis paralysis certainly helps him with this, but beyond that it’s his personality and this they hate even more.
Now we can’t know for sure that these Abraham Accords will work out or not in the long run. But that’s irrelevant. If the US is going to stay involved in this @#$!^show for another however long, it might as well get its money’s worth and try to get positive outcomes rather than just fund talking shops and all the other meaningless and corrupting nonsense with money it doesn’t have.
achieving some Platonic ideal of “free trade.”
See Jagdish Bhaghwati on ‘free trade’ deals: they consist of compendia of carve-outs that no one understands in toto. There are sectoral interests who do understand bits of the deal, because they were the ones lobbying for the carve-outs. Per Bhaghwati, and actual free-trade deal would be about 10 pages long, not the phone-book sized submissions that Mitch McConnell expects Republican senators to ratify before even one of them has read the text.
I’m not sure she offers a name as to someone in the diplomatic establishment who hates these deals.
One thing various parties have figured out is that in the Arab population of the West Bank, Gaza, and the UNRWA camps, a critical mass is implacably opposed to any deal and will work to sabotage one. You look at public opinion research on the West Bank and Gaza and you see maybe 1/3 want an agreement that might prove sustainable. (Another 1/3 might consent to an agreement if a 7 digit population of Arabs is given free-rein to settle in Israel). The one attempt at competitive elections in the West Bank and Gaza was in 2006: about 40% of the vote goes to the brigands who gave you the Oslo catastrophe; about 45% goes to HAMAS, who make their view of Israel quite clear; and another 7% goes to a red-brown collection of parties scarcely more accommodating than HAMAS. Their political leadership over a period of more than 40 years rejected or sabotaged a half-dozen initiatives which could have ameliorated the situation of the Arabs on the West Bank and Gaza. If it has to run through Ramallah, there will be no deal.
“…really only interested in that outcome if it was achieved by the efforts of the right people (themselves) in the right way and not the wrong people in the wrong way.”
________
I couldn’t find a short clip, but that’s covered about the midpoint of The Bishop’s Gambit episode of Yes, Prime Minister.
“If they’d left it to the Foreign Office, it would have been impossible.”
The left has going down the wrong path for a long time. It is so hard for them to give up strategies and losses. They continue to live in a delusional world view and choose to be bitter rather than be happy about the success, lives saved, and calm in the Arab/Israelis world.
I am grateful for this administration’s success in foreign affairs and no new proxy wars. Bravo!
“ Their political leadership over a period of more than 40 years rejected or sabotaged a half-dozen initiatives”. Make that 80 years. In 1937 the British, as governor of the Palestine mandate, offered a two state solution with a tiny Jewish state and all the rest an Arab state. The Jews said yes, the Arabs, under the leadership of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, said no Jewish state and rejected the deal. The Grand Mufti had a stellar career in Berlin during WII. He afterwards returned to Egypt as an escaped Nazi war criminal to head up the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the last remanent of Nazism still in existence.
The Palestinians are going to learn that the gravy train stops here. Th EU can give them money but no more from us. Arafat walked away from the best deal they could ever get,
These new ME agreements must really rub the State Dept International Relations PHds ( e.g. Susan Rice) and diplomats (e.g. Hillary, Kerry) raw.
Here we have a loud mouth, in-your-face, Queens, NY realtor showing that these experts are morons and incompetents; that they are F’n clueless.
No wonder they hate his guts.
Add in the Serbia -Kosovo trade agreements plus having the N.Korean Rocket Boy cease lobbing missiles over Japan, and well, that’s enough to drive the State Dept. “experts” ripping up their Harvard / Oxford / Yale diplomas and using them as toilet paper.
Recall that Obama told Trump, upon the latter’s assuming the presidency, that N.Korea would be his, Trump’s, biggest foreign relations problem.
Guess not folks.
Oh yea, don’t forget the US embassy in Jerusalem; another “impossibility” according to the “experts.”
The big difference between a thinker and a follower – irrespective of ideology or educational attainment- is knowing when NOT to listen to your advisors and knowing when to chart a totally new course of attack aimed at actually getting something done.
This latter point is nowhere on the radar screen of govt. types; what matters to them is dialogue, the process, going along to get along while F’ing over American citizens, and attending as many fancy schmancy diplomatic dinner and cocktail parties as possible.
The more Trump accomplishes, the more he will be hated by the academics and the self-anointed “intellectuals;” you know, the arrogant academic types who populate the State Dept and other (useless, wasteful, incompetent) Federal Agencies.
If Obama had accomplished any of this, he would have 10 Nobel Prizes on the fireplace mantel of his new $10 MILLION Martha’s Vineyard mansion; three for actually accomplishing something, 6 for being a liberal progressive, smooth talking bullshit artist 50% black guy, and one for accomplishing something or other sometime in the future (sort of like a futures market for Nobel Peace Prizes).
Peace is great news!
I’m afraid it might mean Iran is closer to a nuke than previously believed, but the Arabs coming to accept the reality of a Jewish state is pretty good.
World Health Org gets the Nobel. Ha. For helping China cover-up the Wuhan virus? For giving lousy early advice?
They should be defunded.
The Palestinians should be defunded, too.
Trump’s doing so much!
The more Trump accomplishes, the more he will be hated by the academics and the self-anointed “intellectuals;”
Yeah, the pointy-heads hate those who do (and don’t teach! except by example)
While it’s certainly an encouraging development and a remarkable achievement, I’m not at all confident that Trump’s peace initiatives will last much longer than his last term.
He’s achieved agreements with the leadership of a very few Arab countries. Even in those countries, that leadership does not represent the views of the great majority of their citizens. Nor does the leadership’s acceptance of Isreal’s right to exist comport with Islam’s tenet that once territory becomes part of the Ummah it must forever remain so. That’s a theological imperative and while “strong horse” governments do rule their societies, as long as government is not aligned with its society’s mainstream cultural/religious beliefs, its hold on power will rest on “shifting sands”.
Geoffrey Britain:
There was a story last week that Saudi Arabia was ready to sign onto the peace train with Israel but are waiting until after the election; it Trump wins they will, if Biden, nope. Too risky with Biden and the Iran-lovers in the Swamp Department (Foggy Bottom feeders).
Cleaning out the swampists in the State Department and undoing the rot of Obama may take more than another 4 years of Trump.
There is an ex-State Dept. diplomat who comments here that may have some insight (“T”)?
@Geoffrey Britain:
All true. But still at least Trump *Did Something*.
When faced with seemingly (and possibly really) intractable problems two of the smarter heuristics are either to (a) Do Nothing or (b) Learn incrementally by changing a variable and observing system response. Rinse and Repeat. Another not entirely silly option is to hit the system with a kick in the posterior (Yay, Dirac Delta Function) and see what it does… make inferences from response and test them.
What does NOT work well and what our ‘Elites’ (it is to laugh) do is formulate baroque a priori assumptions sourced from their posteriors and bearing little reality to facts on the ground. Said assumptions they do not test. Having lined up all their theoretical ducks, off they go building vast edifices of other people’s moneys and ruined lives upon this flimsy foundation. When it doesn’t work, well obviously it just requires more lives, years, and Other People’s Money.
I’m just a blowhard dumbass, but even I can see that these gilded cretins couldn’t figure out the transfer function of a bag of rocks. Whereas Trump stands a good chance of doing better.
It makes it seem like there is a world wide vampiric cabal that is controlling things, does it not.
While it’s certainly an encouraging development and a remarkable achievement, I’m not at all confident that Trump’s peace initiatives will last much longer than his last term.
He’s achieved agreements with the leadership of a very few Arab countries. Even in those countries, that leadership does not represent the views of the great majority of their citizens. Nor does the leadership’s acceptance of Isreal’s right to exist comport with Islam’s tenet that once territory becomes part of the Ummah it must forever remain so. That’s a theological imperative and while “strong horse” governments do rule their societies, as long as government is not aligned with its society’s mainstream cultural/religious beliefs, its hold on power will rest on “shifting sands”.
Here’s some background intel. Unlike my intuitive prophecies, these can be checked, although I doubt it is so easy.
Trump went around collecting authorities from many of these nations, in the form of say Islam’s sword ceremony, with the ceremonial sword only held by the king. But Trump held it. This transfer of “actual authority” is some kind of behind the curtain deal, that has Trump as the leader of an anti vampiric cabal Alliance, or at least the face/figure head of such an anti cabal alliance.
That means whatever things look on the surface, such as North Korea’s hostility or Russia vs America or the peace accords between the Avrahamic cultures, what is really going on behind the scenes is much like Plato’s cave. What you see on the surface and in the fake news media, is just the shadow on the wall, and the real object is something else.
What is uniting these countries, irrespective of their cultures, religions, faiths, and traditions, is the dreaded power of the vampiric cabal. Which is too dreadful for even the Islamic nations to ignore.
In Islam, there is a saying, at least among Arabs. Me against my brother. Me and my brother against our neighbors. Me, my brother, and our neighbors against the Shia. Me and the Shia vs Christianity.
Now it is “me and humanity vs the Cabal”.
Arafat walked away from the best deal they could ever get,
Eight years later, Ehud Olmert had a meeting with Abbas where he unrolls a map which shows the West Bank and Gaza with some minor adjustments. It was a take it or leave it proffer. Abbas hems and haws.
Jimmy Carter, then POTUS, sent Warren Christopher, then SecState, to Israel to officially apologize for the way the US–actually the State Department–hindered the Jews’ escaping from Germany to the US.
Om:
When you talk about a former State Dept employee who occasionally comments here, I take it you are talking about me.
The F in my moniker is both for my first name and for FSO, as I was a Foreign Service Officer for a full career.
Anyway, by way of quick comment (Tucker Carlson is on, and I hate to miss him), you are absolutely right that overcoming the rot and the inertia in the State Department will take at least another four years of Trump.
As we recently saw with the unmasking of “Anonymous,” the rot is not only in State. It is effectively in every Executive Branch agency, and not just in the very top levels (the so-called “super-grade” employees.). The New York Times called him a senior level employee, even though, at the time he wrote the op-ed, he was not a super grade civil servant. The New York Times did that for me one time, when I was the source of a NYTimes story that I could not have sourced to me. I was momentarily flattered, but realized the NYTimes benefited from my “promotion” more than I did!
But yes, our government employees have an elevated perception of their own importance, whether they’re super grade employees or entry-level GS-06s. (I once had a secretary in Washington tell me she did not do “typing or filing”. Hmmm — what are we paying you for? So I did the Washington thing — I had her promoted up and out. Yeah — I’m not above playing the game.)
It will take a very long time to get those people out of the system. Many of them have 25 years of employment ahead of themselves. Some of them will become Trump supporters in the next few years, some of them will be stuck in their ways until they retire. The good news here (if there is any) is that the policy-level people in State are beginning to change. Any of them who have any pragmatism in their blood stream will gradually come to see that Trump’s policies are good for our country and for International relations. We can hope, can’t we?
F:
Thanks for your insight from the State Dept. There is a 65 minute interview with Stephen A. Cook about the middle east. Cook is a Senior Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations and writes a column for Foreign Policy mag. The voice of the young swap things. It is @ cdrsalamanderblogspot.com the 10/18/2020 “Midrats” podcast. He had nothing negative to say of the BHO foreign policy (debacle) and only faint positivity about the Abrahamic Accords.
He is an example of young swamp rot IMO.
Sorry for long comment, also smartphone keyboarding. :). He also let slip his antipathy for Israel.
I think the real reason the Foreign Policy Elites are miffed is that Peace in the Middle East was supposed to be achieved by replacing Israel with “Palestine”. Fundamental Transformation, you might say.
F and Jack of Spades:
Stephen A. Cook toed the established wisdom about the Palestinian – Israel Gordian Knot, and favored the Palestinians. They haven’t gotten anything right in more than 40 years, but just like communism/socialism their true wisdom just hasn’t been tried. (sarc)
Here is the link:
https://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-middle-easts-future-imperfect-with.html
F:
I did not intend to include you in the swamp denizens who don’t learn and don’t care(?). Thanks again for your insight. Diplomacy isn’t one my many skills. 🙂
I think expertise has become detached from having to deal with the consequences of failed understandings. FDR moved academic expertise into government and it was popularly known as his ‘Brains Trust’. Prior to that we had been led more by what Teddy Roosevelt called “The man in the arena’ aka the man of action. (Wilson was a notable exception.) Now we have a man of action in Trump after rising 90 years of institutional entropy accumulating in unelected bureaucracies which don’t go out of business when they fail. I don’t think the take away is to reject expertise, but rather to not follow it out the window. The experts have gotten such a hold on us that they have become so deeply corrupt that much or our research can only get funded if it supports predetermined ideological goals. But it isn’t simply corruption either. I realised it might be much deeper than we think when I heard Mikhaila Peterson explain how the West – Canada, the US and Western Europe – could offer nothing beyond the treatments that had already failed to help her father. She had to go to Russia and Serbia to find medicine that operated outside the established protocols of the West. That is not venal corruption, it is largely the consequence of getting into routines and gradually narrowing focus until situational blindness occurs. I heard Seb Gorka discuss how a Lt. Colonel in the White House tried to block some Trump policy, because it “went against the agency consensus”. No wonder it has taken four years for Trump to get started, and as we in this community can clearly see he must be prevented from continuing. Irony/off
What is also galling to the “Middle East Peace experts” Martin Indyk and Brian Hook et al is their gravy train has ended. Not only have their inadequacies been exposed, but now they can’t go to those plush conferences in such hardscrabble places like Paris, Vienna and resorts like in Sharm el Sheik. They don’t get to stay in 5 star hotels and eat in 3 star restaurants while their spouses get to shop and vacation while they sit in conference rooms listening to droning speeches and discussion. That a rank amateur like Jared Kushner and his coffee boy, Avi Berkowitz did it shows their world view and assumptions were wrong. We can call them “incompetent” and they have no answer.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/09/jared-kushner-avi-berkowitz
It all started when Trump moved the embassy and the Arab street didn’t explode as they direly warned. Stuck in a time warp, events have passed them by. Good riddance to them.
Ymar @ 8:32 worries will these accords stick after Trump and Netanyahu is gone. The answer is TBD. What is sure is that the ground has shifted. The Arab world focus has shifted from the corrupt and ossified Palestinian leadership and moved to the Iranian threat supporting Hamas. Turkey’s Erdogan Ottoman dreams is also in the calculus. Oil is not longer the panacea papering over the stark under development in the Arab world. The accords may collapse but things will not go back as before. What the Arab regimes know is that there is a regional nuclear power that has similar interests with them. Europe knows this too and they will have to adjust. Also the gas fields off in the East Mediterranean is playing a part.
As Eli Eban said in 1973, “the Arabs “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” can now be said of the Palestinians. But one thing has to be sure is that the Palestinians leadership will have to change. To what form is not known. When the money runs out then the reckoning comes.
Beware the word “process” as in “peace process.” It really means lots of taxpayer-paid trips and stays in nice hotels nice cities without actually accomplishing anything except the need for more process.
Stephen A. Cook toed the established wisdom about the Palestinian – Israel Gordian Knot, and favored the Palestinians.
His twitter feed makes him look like a tool.
Ymar @ 8:32 worries will these accords stick after Trump and Netanyahu is gone.
I can see how that works or not.
Strategically, the Hammer blow from the anti Cabal alliance will come by July 4th, 2021. America’s death and rebirth day. Fitting.
What you see is a potential check or disadvantage trade in chess, in 5 moves, favoring black over white. But checkmate is in 2 moves, favoring white. White just has to “not fk it up”.
By the time Trump leaves office or this Earth realm, which may be sooner than 2024, things will have been setup that world peace is no longer an impossibility.
https://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2020/10/31/recent-letter-by-vigano-retweeted-by-general-flynn-vigano-was-retweeted-by-trump/
Flynn’s retweet of Vigano, provides more context, if you need a more geo political background. GB often complains that my predictions and statements are unsupported. It is just the natural of the beast, for prophecies. If they could be rationally and logically derived, it would not be as much of a magick trick.
ArtDeco:
In the podcast the hosts asked only a few questions. He filled the time without hesitation with the “correct” confident cant. Polishing his credentials for his deserved role in the Harris/Biden regime IMO.
Zaphod…”He doesn’t care for their Glass Bead Games”
Nice formulation!
JFM…”Beware the word “process” as in “peace process.”
Indeed, I think that word is generally an indication of fuzzy thinking, except in the case of certain technical and industry-specific uses. (‘process industries’ such as refineries, for example)
See, the Palestinians persuaded everyone (especially the Israelis) that they wanted to sell Israel this really fabulous carpet…. An incredible carpet, extraordinarily beautiful, one of a kind. The skill. The craftsmanship. The ply. The vivid colors. You can’t find a carpet like this anywhere…. You will have to pay, of course…but it’s worth it. Trust us: WE KNOW it’s worth it because WE KNOW you really, really MUST HAVE this carpet.
(In the intervening 25 odd years, but especially since the second Intifada, the Israelis, or most of them, have gotten really tired of all the haggling, the changes in price, the fine print that sprang up from nowhere, the qualifications, the delays, the stalling, the hemming and hawing, all those “buts”….oh, and getting murdered. They finally realized that the Palestinians, in spite of all the fancy rhetoric, never wanted to sell in the first place. Now, everyone can yell about the Israel being a deal breaker, an intransigent, militaristic fascist state—hey! just like in the good old days! Zionist Entity, par excellence. But of course….)
My impression is that the game changer was the rise of Shiite Iran as a potential nuclear power with the Obama administration ceding the Middle East to Iran as hegemon.
The Sunni powers noticed and were understandably threatened. Now they are finding common cause with Israel against Iran.
Not to take anything from Trump. He is making use of the opening as a Dealmaker should.
Lorenz:
“expertise has become detached from having to deal with the consequences of failed understandings.”
This is certainly true, but it’s an aspect of credentialism. Where those with credentials are assumed competent, and those without are … not.
All the experts have been writing articles and books and giving interviews dispensing with their mostly consensus “wisdom”, and getting plenty of high pay and status for it. But writing books about facts – who did what when where & how – was easy to check. But “why” the leaders and people did what they did, “why” is never a “repeatable fact”, with people.
In science, why something does or doesn’t work, or how well, has unchanging reasons. With people, because people are always changing, why they did something in the past is never a scientific guide to what they’ll do in the future, like tomorrow.
These (not really) experts thought they knew why the actors acted they way they did. What they thought about others was wrong, even about many they thought they knew. Credentialed folk HATE to be wrong.
Sometimes I’m wrong. I hate it. If I’m talking to my wife, she notes that I’m upset at her – but I’m not. I am upset that I was wrong, so I am upset and talking to her while upset. Now we joke about it, because we became conscious of this. But there times in the past it was a problem.
Many experts hate being wrong; and Trump is showing (the world!) that they’re wrong; so their hatred of being wrong becomes hatred of being shown wrong becomes hatred of Trump showing that they’re wrong.
That emotional (but usually unrecognized) feeling is then amplified by media lies and expert rationalizations (??!) and support from their Hate Trump echo chamber, so they even think they have good “reasons” for hating Trump. But a big part of it is that they were wrong, and hate that.
Also note that I work hard to find Truth, so that I’m seldom wrong on facts. People good at avoiding wrong facts are usually the ones who get credentials as experts, and it is good to get facts right. Credentialed folk who are Trump haters are used being better at getting facts right, so it’s tough for them to see how it’s possible for their analysis to be not right.
Fear of Shia Iran’s nukes and loss of Saudi leadership is likely the biggest driver of the Sunni greater willingness to deal above the table with Israel. It was Trump whose artistry got the Deal. (He wrote the book! Read many years ago.)
Here’s the article which impressed me when I was trying to understand Obama’s fixation on Iran. I discovered Iran was part of Obama’s (and Valerie Jarrett’s?) grand strategy from the start of his presidency. It also works as another example of Obama’s remarkable arrogance from the beginning:
_________________________________________________
As far as the president is concerned, the less we know about his Iran plans, the better. Yet those plans, as Rhodes stressed, are not a minor or incidental component of his foreign policy. To the contrary, they are central to his administration’s strategic thinking about the role of the United States in the world, and especially in the Middle East.
Moreover, that has been true from the beginning. In the first year of Obama’s first term, a senior administration official would later tell David Sanger of the New York Times, “There were more [White House] meetings on Iran than there were on Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. It was the thing we spent the most time on and talked about the least in public [emphasis added].” All along, Obama has regarded his hoped-for “comprehensive agreement” with Iran as an urgent priority, and, with rare exceptions, has consistently wrapped his approach to that priority in exceptional layers of secrecy.
…
Instead, [Obama’s] envisioned, in Remnick’s words [the 2014 interview], “a new geostrategic equilibrium, one less turbulent than the current landscape of civil war, terror, and sectarian battle.” Who would help him develop the strategy to achieve this equilibrium? “I don’t really even need George Kennan right now,” the president responded, alluding to the acknowledged godfather of the cold-war strategy of containment. What he truly needed instead were strategic partners, and a prime candidate for that role was—he explained—Iran.
–Michael Doran, “Obama’s Secret Iran Strategy”
https://www.hudson.org/research/10989-obama-s-secret-iran-strategy
Pretty simple, actually.
They’re on the same page vis-a-vis “The Big Satan” and “The Little Satan”.
(It’s called “double track” strategizing. But even so if one wishes, one could stroke one’s chin and analyze it til the cows come home….)
True enough, it was looking pretty clear that The Little Satan was (and is) an easier target.
But come Tuesday, we’ll see just how vulnerable the Obama administration correctly(?) judged the situation in America.
File under: How do you solve a problem like Those Big and Little Satans?….
huxley:
Please see this.
neo: I would find it helpful if you would tell me why I should “please see this.”
Your links usually lead me to something I already know or I’ve already read or, in this case, something I wrote an hour ago.
Generally speaking, I don’t click on blind links anyway. If someone doesn’t have the time to provide a clue why a link is meaningful to me, I don’t have the time to bother clicking.
huxley:
That link was an error for some reason. I don’t have time to find the post right now and link to it again, but it was to an old article of mine (2015) about Iran, about the same person you had linked to.
I’m not sure what you mean by “blind links.” If you mouse over a link you’ll see what it is before you ever click on it. If it had been the link I intended it to be, you would have seen that it was a post on my blog with a title that would have explained the relevance.
huxley on October 31, 2020 at 2:23 pm
Your comment seems to be in sync with George Friedman, of Geopolitical Futures, who suggests that geopolitical forces result from generally evolving situations (often constrained by geography, but other factors can apply as well), and not necessarily something under the control of, or due to the impact of, individual “leaders”. So Iran is incentivized to go nuclear both to counter the strength of Israel and because of its minority Shite position within the Islamic world (and somehow seems to have a greater technological orientation than their Sunni peers). They can also see how North Korea is treated by the Western powers. Did Obama puff Iran up to a position they would not have eventually achieved on their own? If Trump or Kushner had not recognized the impact of Iran on Sunni thinking, would someone else have eventually seen it anyway?
I am kind of surprised that with the push by Iran to go nuclear, that SA did not just already go and buy weapons from Pakistan. But perhaps they don’t trust themselves to have a nuclear capability as they are technically limited and have internal tribal rivalries to manage as well.
Two comments:
Regarding “equilibrium” in “…a new geostrategic equilibrium…”, this is pure Obama-administration Orwellian double-speak: using a neutral—even desirable or positive—term in connection with one of the world’s top sponsors and exporters (if not the top sponsor/exporter) of state terrorism, a tyrannical Islamic state that intimidates and oppresses significant segments of its own population, attacks its neighbors when it feels it has to make a point and consistently threatens to destroy the State of Israel.
To be sure, what Obama calls “equilibrium” is “superiority”.
Of course, there’s no push-back by the media hacks covering the story.
Regarding Iran’s declared and acted-upon intentions “to go nuclear both to counter the strength of Israel and because of its minority Shite (sic) position…” such an assessment appears to ignore—though perhaps it is implied—a) the Mullahs’ threats not merely to “counter” Israel but to destroy it; and b) the religio-ideological dimension of the Islamic “Republic’s” need for Shiite dominance in the Shiite-Sunni feud/battle (for historical reasons going back over 12 centuries), including threats to attack its immediate neighbors should the latter behave in ways the mullahs believe is against Iran’s interests of regional hegemony (AKA “equilibrium” according to Obama).
To be sure, intense paranoia within the Islamic world cultivated successfully down the ages (not always unjustifiedly)—and particularly amongst certain elements of the Shia—is a great motivator to behave aggressively towards one’s perceived enemies.
No doubt that the aggressive policies of Erdogan of Turkey and of the Iranians has prompted some of the Arab nations to reconsider their views of Israel.
Arabs have no illusions about Turkey given the historical treatment of Arabs under the Ottoman Empire and its no secret that the Turks are not too fond of Arabs.
Iranians think even worse of Arabs.
Though Turkey and Iran are now vying for ME hegemony, do not think that their mutual distrust will obviate some sort of alliance betwixt the two. Stranger things have happened as history demonstrates.
In the most cynical sense, one can say that the enemy of my enemy is my friend; thus allowing some Arab nations (and more will jump on this train) to recognize Israel.
That being said, there no way on earth that Obama or Bush II could have done what Trump did.
Extraneous events may grease the skids for major policy changes, but it takes a PERSON(S) to initiate that change or take advantage of that change.
This is where Trump excels.
He saw the futility of all previous peace initiatives in the ME and also saw that these previous failures did not influence in the slightest the world view of the State Dept / foreign affairs “experts;” they were bound by ideology and “process,” and could not / would not see outside of the 30 year old paradigm of no peace unless the Palestinians could be brought around.
Obama bought into this paradigm and given his hate-America-first worldview and his contempt for Israel, he would never would have even considered brokering any deal whatsoever. And I will surmise that all his advisors were selected by him because they would not disagree with him (in which case, why have advisors? mirrors are much cheaper).
Bush II never could have done this deal either; I just don’t think he would have had the foresight nor personality to buck the prevailing foreign affairs “experts.”
REAL leaders – good or bad – know when to jump into the fray and effect change. They see circumstances unfolding and realize they can and should attempt something previously considered impossible.
“That a rank amateur like Jared Kushner and his coffee boy, Avi Berkowitz did it shows their world view and assumptions were wrong. We can call them “incompetent” and they have no answer.”
The Trump-Kushner team found a way to give the Arab countries something they wanted at a price Israel could afford.