Tag: Israel/Palestine
Stevenson’s army, March 16
- The most important news is about the coronavirus: how to stay safe; what authorities are doing [and not just what they are saying], and what works. [BTW, since monetary policy and zero interest rates can’t open public paces or restore lost income, I agree with the need for fiscal measures, the easiest of which is direct cash.]
- Look what Israel is doing: using secret cellphone data to track contacts with the infected.
- A professor notes there are 52 remaining emergency authorities that might be used.
- And look at the US military buildup in the Middle East.
- If and when the Senate takes up crisis measures, you can follow it on this regular site.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, March 11
The Cyber Solarium Commission [note that meme from 1953] is releasing its report. I can’t find the actual document on its site, but here are good articles from WaPo and from NYT.
WSJ notes US troops now leaving the Middle East.
Vox notes the competing ideas on a stimulus package to offset the coronavirus recession.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Biden v Trump
I’ve testified many times before Joe Biden, who was a stalwart of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before becoming Vice President. He was knowledgeable, inquisitive, and amiable. In other words, the precise opposite of Donald Trump, who is ignorant, uninterested, and grumpy. Biden will be the Democratic candidate who gets a chance to take down this entirely unworthy, corrupt, and egotistical sham of a president.
He’ll be doing it with a base the opposite of Trump’s as well. Biden will be strong among blacks and other minorities, college graduates, and women. Trump is strong among whites, high school dropouts, and men. The presidency will be decided largely by which of them gets more people out to the polls. Turnout will be crucial. This means the campaign will be ferocious, as each candidate tries to motivate his own voters with negative images of the other.
Trump will come down hard on the false allegations of Biden misbehavior in Ukraine. Rudy Giuliani will return in his role as attack dog. Biden will try to stay above that fray but will need to clarify his own and his son’s roles, about which nothing illegal has even been alleged, much less demonstrated. Biden will come down hard on Trump’s many foibles: his intemperate tweeting, his expensive golf outings, his failure to separate himself from his business interests, his appointment of incompetents, his erratic decisions, his botching of the response to Covid-19, and his softness on Putin and other autocrats.
I suppose the vice presidential candidates will be of some importance. Biden’s best bets are Amy Klobuchar, who might be able to help deliver Minnesota, and Stacy Abrams, who will turn out black voters and Sanders supporters in droves. Trump will likely dump Vice President Pence, who is a nonentity he can blame for the corona virus mess, in favor of a woman. Nikki Haley is the odds on favorite at the moment. She has been anxious to preserve her relationship with Trump after quitting her job as Ambassador to the United Nations.
On domestic policy, Trumpworld and Bidenworld are far apart. Trump wants to wreck Obamacare while Biden wants to widen it. Trump wants to roll back environmental regulations while Biden would expand them, especially in response to global warming. Trump favors tax breaks for the well off, Biden favors them for the working class and poor. Trump has increased the Federal deficit by close to 50%; Biden helped to halve it during the Obama administration. Trump opposes abortion while Biden favors a woman’s right to choose. Trump has failed to favor any serious gun control while Biden would tighten registration.
The candidates are also far apart on foreign policy. Biden supports America’s alliances, favors multilateralism when possible, and will be prepared to act unilaterally when necessary to protect American national security and prosperity. Trump has been willing to abandon American allies in favor of dubious autocrats, acts impulsively without consulting others (or even his own advisors), and favors foreign leaders willing to flatter him. On trade, Biden has long supported agreements that lower barriers to American exports while Trump has been willing to impose burdensome tariffs that raise the prices of imports, to the detriment of both American producers and consumers.
In the parts of the world I worry most about, the two are also far apart. Both men favor reducing American commitments in the Middle East, but Trump has done it without the necessary diplomatic backfilling whereas Biden is acutely aware of the need for continued American leadership even as the number of troops goes down. Trump has supported the Greater Israel fantasy of the settler movement while Biden is a two-stater. Trump has pursued a so far failed policy of maximum pressure on Iran in order to get Tehran back to the negotiating table. Biden would take the US back into the nuclear deal and seek to negotiate further agreements from inside it.
In the Balkans, Biden is a strong supporter of the Dayton agreements and the independence of Kosovo. Trump doesn’t know where the Balkans region is, even if his wife is Slovene. Trumpworld is nevertheless pushing changes of borders and threatening Kosovo’s prime minister if he doesn’t unilaterally back down from tariffs imposed on Serbian and Bosnian imports by his predecessor. Some in Trumpworld are even threatening withdrawal of US troops from Kosovo, forgetting that they are there these days mainly to protect the Serbs.
There haven’t been any clearer choices in my lifetime. Biden is my choice.
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Retreat from Afghanistan
The United States has decided to retreat from Afghanistan, promising a complete withdrawal within 14 months if the Taliban keep their commitments, including to not allowing international terrorists to operate from territory they control. The agreement was signed Saturday in Doha.
This is a necessary, even if less than glorious, end to US participation in a war that has gone on far too long. Eighteen years after toppling the Taliban regime in the aftermath of 9/11, the diminishing returns are insufficient to keep the US committed, especially in an election year. America and its NATO allies are leaving the field to the Afghan government and its opponents, which will now be expected to negotiate a political settlement, after a major prisoner exchange.
Everything now depends on the intra-Afghan political settlement. Negotiations on this agreement are supposed to start on March 10. Will it protect the human rights many Afghans have come to enjoy? Will women be forced out of politics and girls out of school? Will minorities suffer as they did under the previous Taliban regime? Will the margins of freedom of speech and religion shrink? Will politics continue in the semi-democratic direction they have taken for two decades, or will a religious autocracy be restored, especially in the countryside from which it has never entirely disappeared.
There can be no doubting President Ashraf Ghani’s commitment to maintaining what he can of liberal, modern Afghanistan. But he will need to compromise with a potent insurgency that backs Taliban political demands. Few think the Taliban can overrun or seize Kabul, but they can certainly displace the Afghan security forces in many provinces and bring enormous pressure to bear on the capital once the Americans are gone. After the Soviets left, their guy lasted three years in power, but he eventually ended up tortured and hung from a “traffic control box.” I imagine Ghani, who literally wrote the book (or at least a very good book) on statebuilding, will not wait around for that to happen.
Are all the Americans really leaving? I doubt it. I suspect Washington has insisted on some remaining, covert presence for counter-terrorism forces. The Taliban, though religious extremists like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, unlike them do not have ambitions beyond Afghanistan. All three jihadist forces compete for the same political space inside Afghanistan, so it is not completely unreasonable to think the Taliban might secretly welcome the Americans doing their dirty work for them by killing their jihadi competitors.
Only time will tell whether the peace agreement with the Taliban will hold and some sort of political settlement among the Afghans will emerge. The Taliban have good reason to keep the peace during the American withdrawal, which is supposed to slow if they don’t. But they have little incentive to compromise with Ghani once the Americans are gone, unless the Afghan security forces do much better in fighting them than has so far been the case. US and UN sanctions on the Taliban are supposed to come off early in the process.
With this agreement, President Trump gets some bragging rights on foreign policy that he has lacked. Nothing else he has tried has worked: there is no nuclear or missile agreement with North Korea, Iran is not returning to the negotiating table despite “maximum pressure,” Venezuela is still in the hands of President Maduro, only Israel has welcomed the Middle East “deal of the century,” and the trade war with China has failed to produce progress on the main issues, even if a mutual but partial stand-down of tariffs has attenuated some of its worst impacts on Trump’s farming supporters. Trump needs this Afghanistan agreement more than the Taliban and gave up a lot to get it.
For the sake of the Afghans, let’s hope it holds.
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Making retreat sound good
The United States is getting ready to retreat from Afghanistan. After more than 19 years of war following the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks, Washington has reached an agreement for a seven-day lull in attacks (not a formal ceasefire), after which the Taliban will negotiate a broader peace with Afghanistan government officials supposedly acting in their personal capacities. The US will reduce its presence from 13,000 troops to below 9,000 within months, whether or not the Afghans reach an agreement. Other arrangements remain secret but presumably include some sort of Taliban pledge not to provide safe haven to international terrorists as well as commitments on human rights, though these are likely to be vague, unenforceable, and perhaps worthless.
What this amounts to is US retreat from a theater in which more than about 2500 American military have lost their lives, and something like 10 times that number have been wounded. President Trump will vaunt this as fulfilling his campaign promise to end endless wars, but a substantial number of troops will remain at risk. The Afghanistan government may survive in Kabul, but the Taliban already control about 18% of its districts and contest another 48%:
US withdrawal and refocus on counterterrorism will likely increase those percentages, unless the Afghan security forces demonstrate much greater capability than they have to date.
At this point, there isn’t much of an alternative. The American public, pliable as it is on use of force in a crisis, doesn’t want recommitment to the fight in Afghanistan. President Trump has long been impatient with the war there. The Democrats don’t like it either. It has been clear since last fall’s abortive agreement, which Trump cancelled at the last minute due to renewed violence, that the American envoy, Zal Khalilzad, had no mandate or desire to press the Taliban for more than a decent exit and commitment to staving off Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
The Taliban see them at least in part as rivals for establishing Islamic governance, so there may be some reason to hope that they won’t quickly provide the kind of safe haven that Osama bin Laden enjoyed in the 1990s. Taliban ambitions mainly focus on restoring the Islamic Emirate inside Afghanistan, not projecting power beyond or provoking further intervention. They may even be prepared to fight the more internationally minded jihadis, if only to keep the Americans from renewed activity.
Afghanistan’s President Ghani, however, will have a lot to worry about once the Americans have drawn down. New York and Washington will not be at immediate risk, but Kabul will be. The population there may not want the Taliban to return, but history suggests the government has a hard time defending itself from insurgents in the countryside. Factiousness is endemic in Afghanistan. Ghani is not a man who compromises readily, and he wrote the book on Western-style statebuilding: Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. Protecting the human rights of women, minorities, and Afghans committed to real democracy is going to be a tall order.
This is not the first of Trump’s retreats. He settled for little in the renegotiation of NAFTA, caved on the tariff war with the Chinese, backed off denuclearization of North Korea, all but abandoned the opposition to President Maduro in Venezuela, and floated a peace plan for Israel and Palestine that dropped like a stone. While he remains verbally belligerent to Iran, he thankfully seems to have given up on the drive to war. He has little to nothing to show for his belligerence and bravado on the world stage, where he is regarded more as buffoon than champion, except in Israel and Russia.
Being able to claim that he has ended the long war in Afghanistan will stand Trump in good stead with those who know nothing about Afghanistan during the coming election campaign. The flim-flam man will make a necessary retreat sound good.
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Realism redefined
Different from previous plans, Trump’s Middle East Peace Plan addresses key issues like borders, Jerusalem, settlements, and refugees. Although the plan has enraged the Palestinians , it has received a much more favorable reception from many states than experts predicted, such as Europe and the Middle East. Without a Palestinian partner, is the plan destined, as its critics argue, to fail? Or will it, as its supporters claim, reshape the conflict in significant, beneficial, and lasting ways?
On February 11, the Hudson Institute hosted a panel discussion on the topic of “President Trump’s Plan for Peace in the Middle East.” The discussion featured two speakers: Michael Doran and Jon Lerner. Both serve as senior fellows at the Hudson Institute.
Previous plans vs Trump’s
Lerner and Doran noted that Trump’s plan addresses all final status topics in detail, including Jerusalem, settlement, borders, and right to return, while previous plans left out these issues. Lerner believes that Trump’s plan accepts the reality, contrary to previous plans that sought to change reality on the ground. This plan guarantees Israel’s control over a unified Jerusalem rather than dividing the city. Since it is impossible for Israelis to uproot settlements from the West Bank, Trump legalizes Israeli settlements. Although this plan is a setback for Palestinians, it creates an independent Palestinian state with a capital, grants economic support to Palestinians, allows Palestinians access to Israeli ports, and proposes a tunnel connecting the West Bank and Gaza.
Bilateral or trilateral?
Because most Arab states have more concerns other than than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they didn’t offer united supports to pressure Israel into concessions, Lerner says. Due to the lack of support, Palestine should consider engaging with the US and Israel. Lerner predicts that,
- If the Palestinian were to engage in negotiations but didn’t accept the plan, they would receive a receptive audience, which could force Israel to stop its annexation.
- If the Palestinians don’t engage in negotiations, which is likely, Israel will keep moving forward and weaken the Palestinians further.
Lerner thinks the Palestinian made a wrong choice to cut all dialogue with the US after Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017. Instead, the Palestinians should have rejected Trump’s decision and worked with him on a plan until they achieved what they want. Lerner urges the Palestinian to engage in negotiations, or they will be more likely to lose ground.
US interests
Doran argues that the US has more issues in the region nowadays and needs to cooperate with its allies. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has weakened its Israeli ally, especially after Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza failed to bring stability. If the US forced Israel out of the West Bank and handed its control to Abbas, he would not have the capability to maintain control and fend off Hamas. Jordanian security could not be guaranteed either. Lerner added that the US avoided the unproductive perception of even-handedness with allies on one side, and sympathy towards Palestinians on the other. Trump’s plan is rooted in realism and the administration’s support for allies.
Lerner pointed out that irrespective of who wins the presidential election in November, the content of this plan has changed political dynamics in both Israel and the US. It will be hard for the Israeli government to accept a less generous plan than Trump’s in the future. It will also be difficult for future US administrations to propose any plan more like previous plans and less like Trump’s plan.
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