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"Gifted Hands", the story of Dr. Carson. (See 1 below.)
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Syria's Assad to greet Obama with chemical attack on rebels? (See 2 below.)
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Sabato and Kondik dope the 2014 mid-term elections. Sabato is one of the best. (See 3 below.)
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Jeffrey Goldberg writes, Israel's fate is in Obama's hands. I understand what he is saying but Israel's fate is in Israel's hands. That is the way Israelis want it and that is the way it is.
Yes, Obama can jerk on Israel's chain and create problems for the tiny nation but Israelis have been through such before and they are resourceful and as Golda once said, 'they have no where else to go.'
Obama may have clout but if push comes to shove Obama will lose some of his clout because Congress and Americans will not desert Israel even though a feckless Obama might.
George Friedman concludes both America and Israel are on different paths and this weakens the relationship. I tend to agree but again, Obama is not the sole voice though he has basically abdicated and/or certainly downgraded our involvement in The Middle East and for that matter in the world. We are no longer feared or respected. (See 4 and 4a below.)
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A far more crude statement by a black to his fellow blacks than Bill Cosby's similar message but still it hits the mark.
"Subject: Black Vote - Got to see
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1)
Gifted Hands
A remarkable book titled Gifted Hands tells the personal story of Benjamin Carson, a black kid from the Detroit ghetto who went on to become a renowned neurosurgeon.
At one time young Ben Carson had the lowest grades in his middle school class, and was the butt of teasing by his white classmates. Worse yet, he himself believed that he was just not smart enough to do the work.
Fortunately for him, his mother, whose own education went no further than the third grade, insisted that he was smart. She cut off the television set and made him and his brother hit the books--books that she herself could scarcely read.
As young Ben's school work began to catch up with that of his classmates, and then began to surpass that of his classmates, his whole view of himself and of the wider world around him began to change. He began to think that he wanted to become a doctor.
There were a lot of obstacles to overcome along the way, including the fact that his mother had to be away from time to time for psychiatric treatment, as she tried to cope with the heavy pressures of trying to raise two boys whose father had deserted the family that she now had to support on a maid's wages.
In many ways the obstacles facing young Ben Carson were like those faced by so many other youngsters in the ghetto. What was different was that he overcame those obstacles with the help of a truly heroic mother and the values she instilled in him.
It is an inspiring personal story, told plainly and unpretentiously, including the continuing challenges he faced later as a neurosurgeon operating on the brains of people with life-threatening medical problems, often with the odds against them.
To me it was a personal story in another sense, that some of his experiences as a youngster brought back experiences that I went through growing up in Harlem many years earlier.
I could understand all too well what it was like to be the lowest performing child in a class. That was my situation in the fourth grade, after my family had moved up from the South, where I had been one of the best students in the third grade -- but in a grossly inferior school system.
Now I sometimes found myself in tears because it was so hard to try to get through my homework.
But in one sense I was much more fortunate than Ben Carson and other black youngsters today. The shock of being in a school, whose standards were higher than I was able to meet at first, took place in an all-black school in Harlem, so that there was none of the additional complications that such an experience can have for a black youngster in a predominantly white school.
By the time I first entered a predominantly white school; I had already caught up, and had no trouble with the school work. Decades later, in the course of running a research project, I learned that the Harlem school, where I had so much trouble catching up, had an average IQ of 84 back when I was there.
In the predominantly white school to which I later went, I was put in a class for children with IQs of 120 and up, and had no trouble competing with them. But I would have been totally wiped out if I had gone there two years earlier -- and who knows what racial hang-ups that might have led to?
Chance plays a large part in everyone's life. The home in which you are raised is often a big part of luck being on your side or against you. But you don't need parents with Ph.D.’s to make sure that you make the most of your education.
The kinds of things that statisticians can measure, such as family income or parents' education, are not the crucial things. The family's attitude toward education and toward life can make all the difference.
Virtually everything was against young Ben Carson, except for his mother's attitudes and values. But, armed with her outlook, he was able to fight his way through many battles, including battles to control his own temper, as well as external obstacles.
Today, Dr. Benjamin Carson is a renowned neurosurgeon at a renowned institution, Johns Hopkins University. But what got him there was wholly different from what is being offered to many ghetto youths today, much of which is not merely futile but counterproductive.
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2)Witnesses report onset of chemical warfare in Syria
Extensive preparations by Syrian army units for launching chemical weapons against rebel forces have been sighted in the northern town of Homs, Western intelligence agencies told military sources Tuesday, March 19.
The Israelis have always assumed that the
United States can control areas where they lack control. And some Israelis have condemned the United States for not doing more to manage events in Egypt. But the fact is that the United States also has few tools to control the evolution of Egypt, apart from some aid to Egypt and its own relationship with the Egyptian military. The first Israeli response is that the United States should do something about problems confronting Israel. It may or may not be in the American interest to do something in any particular case, but the problem in this case is that although a hostile Egypt is not in the Americans' interest, there is actually little the United States can do to control events in Egypt.
The Syrian situation is even more complex, with Israel not even certain what outcome is more desirable. Syrian President Bashar al Assad is a known quantity to Israel. He is by no means a friend, but his actions and his father's have always been in the pursuit of their own interest and therefore have been predictable. The opposition is an amorphous entity whose ability to govern is questionable and that is shot through with Islamists who are at least organized and know what they want. It is not clear that Israel wants al Assad to fall or to survive, and in any case Israel is limited in what it could do even if it had a preference. Both outcomes frighten the Israelis. Indeed, the hints of American weapons shipments to the rebels at some point concern Israel as much as no weapons shipments.
The Iranian situation is equally complex. It is clear that the Israelis, despite rhetoric to the contrary, will not act unilaterally against Iran's nuclear weapons. The risks of failure are too high, and the consequences of Iranian retaliation against fundamental American interests, such as the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, are too substantial. The American view is that an Iranian nuclear weapon is not imminent and Iran's ultimate ability to build a deliverable weapon is questionable. Therefore, regardless of what Israel wants, and given the American doctrine of military involvement as a last resort when it significantly affects U.S. interests, the Israelis will not be able to move the United States to play its traditional role of assuming military burdens to shape the region.
The Changing Relationship
For the United States, there are now more important issues than the Middle East, such as the domestic economy. The United States is looking inward both because it has to and because it has not done well in trying to shape the Islamic world. From the Israeli point of view, for the moment, its national security is not at risk, and its ability to control its security environment is limited, while its ability to shape American responses in the region has deteriorated due to the shifting American focus. It will continue to get aid that it no longer needs and will continue to have military relations with the United States, particularly in developing military technology. But for reasons having little to do with Israel, Washington's attention is not focused on the region or at least not as obsessively as it had been since 2001.
Therefore Israel has turned inward by default. Frightened by events on its border, it realizes that it has little control there and lacks clarity on what it wants. In the broader region, Israel's ability to rely on American control has declined. Like Israel, the United States has realized the limits and costs of such a strategy, and Israel will not talk the United States out of it, as the case of Iran shows. In addition, there is no immediate threat to Israel that it must respond to. It is, by default, in a position of watching and waiting without being clear as to what it wants to see. Therefore it should be no surprise that Israel, like the United States, is focused on domestic affairs.
It also puts Israel in a reactive position. The question of the Palestinians is always there. Israel's policy, like most of its strategic policy, is to watch and wait. It has no inclination to find a political solution because it cannot predict what the consequences of either a solution or an attempt to find one would be. Its policy is to cede the initiative to the Palestinians. Last month, there was speculation that increased demonstrations in the West Bank could spark a third intifada. There was not one. There might be another surge of rockets from Gaza, or there might not be. That is a decision that Hamas will make.
Israel has turned politically inward because its strategic environment has become not so much threatening as beyond its control. Enemies cannot overwhelm it, nor can it control what its enemies and potential enemies might do. Israel has lost the initiative and, more important, it now knows it has lost the initiative. It has looked to the United States to take the initiative, but on a much broader scale Washington faces the same reality as Israel with less at stake and therefore less urgency. Certainly, the Israelis would like to see the United States take more aggressive stands and more risks, but they fully understand that the price and dangers of aggressive stands in the region have grown out of control.
Therefore it is interesting to wonder what Obama and Netanyahu will discuss. Surely Iran will come up and Obama will say there is no present danger and no need to take risks. Netanyahu will try to find some way to convince him that the United States should undertake the burden at a time suitable to Israel. The United States will decline the invitation.
In private I expect a sullen courtesy and in public an enthusiastic friendship, much as an old, bored married couple, not near a divorce, but far from where they were when they were young. Neither party is what it once was; each suspects that it is the other's fault. In the end, each has its own fate, linked by history to each other but no longer united.
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2)Witnesses report onset of chemical warfare in Syria
Extensive preparations by Syrian army units for launching chemical weapons against rebel forces have been sighted in the northern town of Homs, Western intelligence agencies told military sources Tuesday, March 19.
Damascus paved the way for resorting to unconventional weaponry with an accusation run by the state news agency SANA Tuesday that Syrian rebels had fired a rocket containing chemical substances in the Khan al-Assad area of rural Aleppo, allegedly killing 15 people, mostly civilians.
Rebels quickly denied the report and accused regime forces of “firing a chemical weapon on a long-range SCUD, after which 20 people died of asphyxia and poisoning.”
Neither of the accusations could immediately verified.
But a Reuters photographer said he had seen people come into two Aleppo hospitals with breathing problems after the attack. They claimed people were suffocating on the streets.
Western intelligence sources reckoned that for the Assad regime, Homs, the scene of fierce battles between government and rebel forces in recent days, is likely to be the first place where the Assad government resorts to chemical warfare. A rebel victory there would be a grave setback for the regime because it would sever the main highway linking the Syrian military forces fighting in the towns of Damascus, Latakia, Aleppo and Idlib.
Monday and Tuesday, therefore, heavy government reinforcements from the South and Damascus were piled onto the embattled town, along with large numbers of warplanes and attack helicopters, in an all-out effort to cut short the rebel advance.
Military sources report that the importance Assad attaches to carrying the day in Homs is represented by the elite units he has assembled in and around the city: Heavy armored forces of the 4th and 5th Republican Guard Divisions were imported from Damascus and the 18th and 19th Divisions are there too, issued in the last few hours with chemical warfare gear.
Syrian ruler Bashar Assad can on no account afford to be defeated in the key town of Homs just when US President Barack Obama is scheduled to arrive in the Middle East Wednesday. He will therefore use whatever it takes to prevent this happening, even chemical weapons if they are the only answer.
The allegation that the rebels have resorted to chemical warfare strongly points to an Assad ploy to go there himself and maintain it was only after the opposition went first.
The allegation that the rebels have resorted to chemical warfare strongly points to an Assad ploy to go there himself and maintain it was only after the opposition went first.
The emergence of dread unconventional weapons on the Syrian battlefield during the US president’s stay in the region is bound to dominate his talks with its leaders. It may even have the effect of altering his schedule and affect his itinerary.
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3)Larry Sabato and Kyle Kondik: The Early Line on the 2014 Midterms
The Obama goal is to regain the House, but holding the Senate is no sure thing.
By LARRY J. SABATO AND KYLE KONDIK
President Obama's greatest setback to date has been the 2010 midterm elections. Gains that Republicans scored in the House and Senate still circumscribe his agenda. It is no surprise, then, that the Obama White House wants to achieve something no other president has ever done: Retake full control of Congress in a midterm.
The party of an incumbent president traditionally loses seats in midterm elections. The usual strategy is simply to minimize the damage. Yet Mr. Obama and many Democrats are so buoyed by national polls and the buzz from the November election that they sense a chance to make history by holding their 10-seat Senate majority (counting the two independents who caucus with them) and picking up the needed 17 House seats. That would clear the way for Democratic legislative aims.
A few factors work in the Democrats' favor. After all, the Democratic Senate majority might be secure if for no other reason than the GOP's habit of squandering opportunities by nominating weak candidates. House Republicans are much more unpopular than House Democrats—on average 15 percentage points lower in nine postelection national polls.
A grand sweep will be harder than Democrats think, though. Electoral history and the nature of the 2014 races indicate that Democrats actually stand a greater chance of losing the Senate than they do of winning the House.
Since the start of the modern two-party system in the mid-19th century, the party of an incumbent president has never captured control of the House from the other party in a midterm election. While many presidents have held the House for their party, in 35 of 38 midterms since the Civil War the incumbent's party has lost ground.
One reason is turnout. Since 1866, the average turnout rate in presidential elections has been 63%, while it has been 48% at midterm. The drop-off comes disproportionately from the presidential party. Voters from the out-of-power White House party are usually energized—read: angry and eager—to vote against the president, especially by the six-year mark.
Events can encourage voter frustration. Midterm setbacks may be spurred by bad economies, which partly explain losses suffered by the parties of FDR (1938); Harry Truman (1946); Dwight Eisenhower (1958); Ronald Reagan (1982); and Mr. Obama (2010). War fatigue has contributed to other midterm disappointments: LBJ's Vietnam (1966) and Mr. Bush's Iraq (2006). Scandals can take their toll, too, as the GOP's disastrous 1974 Watergate midterm demonstrated.
On the flip side, Americans traumatized by 9/11 rallied around the party of the Republican incumbent in 2002, just as the frustration with efforts to impeach Bill Clinton boosted Democrats in 1998. Even so, history shows that a troubled economy usually trumps everything else.
But don't those polls showing the deep unpopularity of House Republicans mean that Democrats can make up the necessary ground? Not really. Partisan redistricting and an inefficient concentration of the Democratic electorate generally favors the Republicans. Democrats won nearly 1.4 million more House votes than Republicans in 2010 and still lost the House
Based on historical measures, it would take a massive popular preference for Democrats to overcome their logistical disadvantage, perhaps an almost unheard-of lead of 13 points in the generic ballot questions pollsters use ("will you vote Democratic or Republican for House in the next election?"). Currently, the generic ballot shows a slight Democratic lead of two to three points.
If Democrats do defy history next year, population changes will underlie the move, just as demographics did in the Obama-Romney contest. Smaller midterm electorates are older and whiter than presidential electorates, yet no iron law of politics says they must remain so. Whites now prefer Republicans by as much as 60%-40%, but about 80% of all minorities favor Democrats—and the white proportion of the electorate (both presidential and midterm) has been declining a couple of points every four years.
With each 2% increase in the proportion of minorities in the electorate, Democratic candidates gain a net 1.6% or so of the overall vote. That kind of increase is entirely possible in 2014, when whites may be about 75% of the turnout (down from 77% in 2010) and minorities will likely be about 25% (up from 23%).
Meanwhile, Democrats are focusing their social media and voter-contact technology on engaging minorities and young people to turn out next year. Although Republicans hope to attract more young voters and minorities, and to come closer to matching the Democrats' vote-tech edge, the GOP has a long way to go and relatively little time.
But what if the more competitive chamber in 2014 is the Senate? Democrats are defending seats in seven states that Mitt Romney won in last year's presidential race: Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia. Mr. Obama won an average of just 40.5% of the vote in these states. In addition, the retirements of longtime Sens. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) and Carl Levin (D., Mich.) make those previously safe seats much more competitive. Factor in some freshmen Democratic senators elected from swing states in Obama's 2008 wave (the last time this batch of seats was contested), and Republicans could run competitive challenges in 10 or more Democrat-held seats. Incompetent GOP nominees could change the picture, but almost all of the seats that Republicans are defending are in solid-red states.
The historical Senate midterm dynamic isn't as clear-cut as the one in the House. The president's party has picked up Senate seats in six of 25 midterms since 1914—the first election after the 17th Amendment mandated statewide elections of senators instead of leaving it to state legislatures—but over the past century the president's party has lost an average of about four Senate seats per midterm. Republicans need to net six seats to win control in 2014—precisely the average number of seats gained, in post-World War II "sixth-year itch" elections, by the party not holding the White House.
Playing the averages sets the 2014 scene. Can Republicans match the modern average gain for the opposition party in the Senate in a president's second midterm? Can Democrats greatly exceed the historical average for the president's party in the House? It may be that neither party can meet these expectations. Yet as next year's battle for Congress begins to intensify, the odds favor the Republicans holding the House and getting yet another shot at the Senate.
Mr. Sabato is the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and editor of "Barack Obama and the New America" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), to which Mr. Kondik, a political analyst at the center, was a contributor.
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4)Israel’s Fate Is Now in Barack Obama’s Hands
When President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet this week for what will almost certainly be an intense and lengthy conversation about Iran’s nuclear program, it will be the president, not the prime minister, who drives the discussion.
This represents a significant shift in their relationship. For much of the past year, Netanyahu set the agenda in talks about Iran. His ceaseless and dire warnings about Iran’s deadly plans helped persuade Obama to strengthen sanctions, launch a series of expensive and possibly dangerous sabotage efforts against the nuclear program, promise repeatedly that the U.S. was ready to use force, and build an international coalition of sometimes unwilling partners to check Iran’s ambitions.
Netanyahu’s ephemeral power was partly due to the U.S. election calendar. Last year, he had the power to derail Obama’s campaign. If Israel had struck Iran before the election in November, as Netanyahu was considering doing, the U.S. might have found itself in the midst of yet another Middle East war. Such a conflict, the conventional wisdom went, would not have been of great help to Obama’s re-election effort.
Red Line
But last September, Netanyahu gave Obama a gift. At the United Nations, Netanyahu announced that, in his considered view, the world had perhaps six to nine months more before Iran would be ready to enrich enough uranium to make a bomb.
“By next spring, at most by next summer at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage,” he said, famously holding up a drawing of a cartoon bomb to illustrate his point. “From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.”
By establishing this new red line in 2013, Netanyahu allowed Obama to run for re-election without fear that the Persian Gulf would soon be catching fire. The president was thankful for the gesture. He called Netanyahu shortly after the speech to express his appreciation for the “time and space” Netanyahu’s speech gave the U.S. Their relationship subsequently soured (for the fifth or sixth time) when Netanyahu’s government announced plans to build new settlements in a sensitive area east of Jerusalem, but for a while, it could have been reasonably argued that the two men were getting along.
Although Netanyahu achieved much of what he wanted -- he concentrated the attention of the most powerful man in the world on a rogue nuclear program that is more of a threat to Israel than to the U.S. -- what he did at the UN was out of character for a man who believes that the state of Israel exists so that Jews will never again be dependent on outsiders for their safety.
The Israeli columnist Ari Shavit, writing in Haaretz, was brutal last week about the consequences of Netanyahu’s decision to defer action. Shavit argued that Iran is moving rapidly to the point where it would be immune to the sort of one-time, pinpoint airstrike that Israel could plausibly achieve. “Israel’s counter-threat is dissipating and losing its strength,”he wrote. “As a result, for the first time in its history, Israel will soon have to place its fate in the hands of others. The Israelis will not decide whether to be or not to be -- President Barack Obama will decide.”
How did this unlikely situation come to pass? Obama and Netanyahu spent 2011 and 2012 in a staring contest, and Netanyahu blinked. He blinked because he seems to have realized the limits of Israeli independence. A core component of Israeli national-security doctrine holds that no regional adversary should be allowed to gain control of a nuclear weapon. A second component is to avoid getting on the bad side of the U.S., Israel’s main benefactor and diplomatic protector. These two ideas came into conflict over the Iran nuclear issue, and the relationship with the U.S. has, at least provisionally, won out.
Nightmare Scenarios
Obama cleverly put his thumb on the scale by dispatching American generals and intelligence officials to Israel, where they painted nightmare scenarios for their counterparts about the possible consequences of an Israeli strike. Partly as a result, Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Ehud Barak, found themselves without the support of many of their national- security officials at crucial moments.
For public consumption, of course, both American and Israeli officials say that their governments see eye-to-eye on Iran. Both Obama and Netanyahu oppose containment -- the idea that the West could acquiesce to a nuclear Iran while checking its aggression -- and both have threatened to use military force.
But their threat clocks aren’t in sync, and Netanyahu’s real worry is that Iran will use the next year or so to make the costs of a potential American strike appallingly high. Two Israeli officials, who requested anonymity to speak frankly, told me that if they were in charge of defending the Iranian nuclear program, they would spend the next year building duplicate facilities in heavily populated areas and spreading out the program in such a way as to obviate the chance that a limited American military operation would work. Many Israelis, of course, are predisposed to think that Obama’s promise to stop Iran is only rhetorical. If it came time to act, they assume he would balk. And the likelihood of balking is higher, they argue, if the Iranian nuclear program becomes harder to hit.
Netanyahu will raise these concerns when he meets Obama. But unlike last year, Obama won’t be facing an election. This time, he might be in a position to tell Netanyahu things he doesn’t want to hear.
(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist and a national correspondent for The Atlantic. The opinions expressed are his own.)
4a)America and Israel: Linked by History, but No Longer United
By George Friedman
U.S. President Barack Obama is making his first visit to Israel. The visit comes in the wake of his re-election and inauguration to a second term and the formation of a new Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Normally, summits between Israel and the United States are filled with foreign policy issues on both sides, and there will be many discussed at this meeting, including Iran, Syria and Egypt. But this summit takes place in an interesting climate, because both the Americans and Israelis are less interested in foreign and security matters than they are in their respective domestic issues.
In the United States, the political crisis over the federal budget and the struggle to grow the economy and reduce unemployment has dominated the president's and the country's attention. The Israeli elections turned on domestic issues, ranging from whether the ultra-Orthodox would be required to serve in Israel Defense Forces, as other citizens are, to a growing controversy over economic inequality in Israel.
Inwardness is a cyclic norm in most countries. Foreign policy does not always dominate the agenda and periodically it becomes less important. What is interesting is at this point, while Israelis continue to express concern about foreign policy, they are most passionate on divisive internal social issues. Similarly, although there continues to be a war in Afghanistan, the American public is heavily focused on economic issues. Under these circumstances the interesting question is not what Obama and Netanyahu will talk about but whether what they discuss will matter much.
Washington's New Strategy
For the United States, the focus on domestic affairs is compounded by an emerging strategic shift in how the United States deals with the world. After more than a decade of being focused on the Islamic world and moving aggressively to try to control threats in the region militarily, the United States is moving toward a different stance. The bar for military intervention has been raised. Therefore, the United States has, in spite of recent statements, not militarily committed itself to the Syrian crisis, and when the French intervened in Mali the United States played a supporting role. The intervention in Libya, where France and the United Kingdom drew the United States into the action, was the first manifestation of Washington's strategic re-evaluation. The desire to reduce military engagement in the region was not the result of Libya. That desire was there from the U.S. experience in Iraq and was the realization that the disposal of an unsavory regime does not necessarily -- or even very often -- result in a better regime. Even the relative success of the intervention in Libya drove home the point that every intervention has both unintended consequences and unanticipated costs.
The United States' new stance ought to frighten the Israelis. In Israel's grand strategy, the United States is the ultimate guarantor of its national security and underwrites a portion of its national defense. If the United States becomes less inclined to involve itself in regional adventures, the question is whether the guarantees implicit in the relationship still stand. The issue is not whether the United States would intervene to protect Israel's existence; save from a nuclear-armed Iran, there is no existential threat to Israel's national interest. Rather, the question is whether the United States is prepared to continue shaping the dynamics of the region in areas where Israel lacks political influence and is not able to exert military control. Israel wants a division of labor in the region, where it influences its immediate neighbors while the United States manages more distant issues. To put it differently, the Israelis' understanding of the American role is to control events that endanger Israel and American interests under the assumption that Israeli and American interests are identical. The idea that they are always identical has never been as true as politicians on both sides have claimed, but more important, the difficulties of controlling the environment have increased dramatically for both sides.
Israel's Difficulties
The problem for Israel at this point is that it is not able to do very much in the area that is its responsibility. For example, after the relationship with the United States, the second-most important strategic foundation for Israel is its relationship -- and peace treaty -- with Egypt. Following the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the fear was that Egypt might abrogate the peace treaty, reopening at some distant point the possibility of conventional war. But the most shocking thing to Israel was how little control it actually had over events in Egypt and the future of its ties to Egypt. With good relations between Israel and the Egyptian military and with the military still powerful, the treaty has thus far survived. But the power of the military will not be the sole factor in the long-term sustainability of the treaty. Whether it survives or not ultimately is not a matter that Israel has much control over.
United States can control areas where they lack control. And some Israelis have condemned the United States for not doing more to manage events in Egypt. But the fact is that the United States also has few tools to control the evolution of Egypt, apart from some aid to Egypt and its own relationship with the Egyptian military. The first Israeli response is that the United States should do something about problems confronting Israel. It may or may not be in the American interest to do something in any particular case, but the problem in this case is that although a hostile Egypt is not in the Americans' interest, there is actually little the United States can do to control events in Egypt.
The Syrian situation is even more complex, with Israel not even certain what outcome is more desirable. Syrian President Bashar al Assad is a known quantity to Israel. He is by no means a friend, but his actions and his father's have always been in the pursuit of their own interest and therefore have been predictable. The opposition is an amorphous entity whose ability to govern is questionable and that is shot through with Islamists who are at least organized and know what they want. It is not clear that Israel wants al Assad to fall or to survive, and in any case Israel is limited in what it could do even if it had a preference. Both outcomes frighten the Israelis. Indeed, the hints of American weapons shipments to the rebels at some point concern Israel as much as no weapons shipments.
The Iranian situation is equally complex. It is clear that the Israelis, despite rhetoric to the contrary, will not act unilaterally against Iran's nuclear weapons. The risks of failure are too high, and the consequences of Iranian retaliation against fundamental American interests, such as the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, are too substantial. The American view is that an Iranian nuclear weapon is not imminent and Iran's ultimate ability to build a deliverable weapon is questionable. Therefore, regardless of what Israel wants, and given the American doctrine of military involvement as a last resort when it significantly affects U.S. interests, the Israelis will not be able to move the United States to play its traditional role of assuming military burdens to shape the region.
The Changing Relationship
For the United States, there are now more important issues than the Middle East, such as the domestic economy. The United States is looking inward both because it has to and because it has not done well in trying to shape the Islamic world. From the Israeli point of view, for the moment, its national security is not at risk, and its ability to control its security environment is limited, while its ability to shape American responses in the region has deteriorated due to the shifting American focus. It will continue to get aid that it no longer needs and will continue to have military relations with the United States, particularly in developing military technology. But for reasons having little to do with Israel, Washington's attention is not focused on the region or at least not as obsessively as it had been since 2001.
Therefore Israel has turned inward by default. Frightened by events on its border, it realizes that it has little control there and lacks clarity on what it wants. In the broader region, Israel's ability to rely on American control has declined. Like Israel, the United States has realized the limits and costs of such a strategy, and Israel will not talk the United States out of it, as the case of Iran shows. In addition, there is no immediate threat to Israel that it must respond to. It is, by default, in a position of watching and waiting without being clear as to what it wants to see. Therefore it should be no surprise that Israel, like the United States, is focused on domestic affairs.
It also puts Israel in a reactive position. The question of the Palestinians is always there. Israel's policy, like most of its strategic policy, is to watch and wait. It has no inclination to find a political solution because it cannot predict what the consequences of either a solution or an attempt to find one would be. Its policy is to cede the initiative to the Palestinians. Last month, there was speculation that increased demonstrations in the West Bank could spark a third intifada. There was not one. There might be another surge of rockets from Gaza, or there might not be. That is a decision that Hamas will make.
Israel has turned politically inward because its strategic environment has become not so much threatening as beyond its control. Enemies cannot overwhelm it, nor can it control what its enemies and potential enemies might do. Israel has lost the initiative and, more important, it now knows it has lost the initiative. It has looked to the United States to take the initiative, but on a much broader scale Washington faces the same reality as Israel with less at stake and therefore less urgency. Certainly, the Israelis would like to see the United States take more aggressive stands and more risks, but they fully understand that the price and dangers of aggressive stands in the region have grown out of control.
Therefore it is interesting to wonder what Obama and Netanyahu will discuss. Surely Iran will come up and Obama will say there is no present danger and no need to take risks. Netanyahu will try to find some way to convince him that the United States should undertake the burden at a time suitable to Israel. The United States will decline the invitation.
In private I expect a sullen courtesy and in public an enthusiastic friendship, much as an old, bored married couple, not near a divorce, but far from where they were when they were young. Neither party is what it once was; each suspects that it is the other's fault. In the end, each has its own fate, linked by history to each other but no longer united.
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