;
A company in Israel is making beautiful items out of Hamas rockets.
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Politics may be everything to Obama and virtually dictates all his moves, policies and thinking but do not underestimate his ability to destroy America!
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Demographics are far more predictable than economic forecasts. What does this mean for China? (See 1 below.)
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The new world order and America's retrenchment. (See 2 below.)
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Even the U.N. concluded Israel used restraint. WOW! (See 3 below.)
The IDF provides insight post their Gazan battle with Hamas. (See 3a blow.)
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Some of my more rational Liberal friends buy Obama's claim that Republicans are America's greatest enemy and threat to everything they hold dear. Why? (See 4 below.)
Meanwhile, as I have often written, Republicans are their own worst enemy because , lacking leadership and failing to have a unified message, they believe they can win against Obama by not offering a smorgasbord of ideas of how to correct problems about which they complain.
They must give voters sensible ideas that will attract votes. Negativism has become more of a turn off than turn on!
We need a legitimate look at our tax structure and make changes that will encourage entrepreneurship and make us more competitive. We need to take a sincere look at government welfare and design programs that truly help the disadvantaged and not reward loafers and cheats. Government red tape but also be looked at with pruning eyes so , again, our nation can become competitive and those engaged in trying to make it own their own have a fighting chance to survive. We need to live within our means yet, we also must rebuild our military and it can be done if Republicans are willing to quit playing politics with pet projects designed to buy votes. Once the public sees legitimate efforts Republicans will garner more votes than they lose by goring a few favored oxen.(See 4a below.)
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Bibi's next battle! (See 5 below.)
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Ukraine abandoned and Iran will be allowed to go nuclear. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)Urbanization and Demographics Could Skew China's Economic Rebalancing
Stratfor Analysis
Summary
China's urban population may grow by as many as 230 million people in the next 15 years. But most growth will take place not in metropolises like Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing but in the myriad small- and medium-sized satellite cities around them. And as residents flock to these cities, China's working-age population will begin to decline, and its elderly population will grow dramatically.
Together, these processes will underpin major changes not only in China's overall economic structure, but also in the financial, fiscal and political relationship between central and local government. The added burdens facing small- and medium-sized cities, especially those located deep inside China that are sequestered from mainstream global trade, will be substantial and perhaps socially and politically destabilizing.
Together, these processes will underpin major changes not only in China's overall economic structure, but also in the financial, fiscal and political relationship between central and local government. The added burdens facing small- and medium-sized cities, especially those located deep inside China that are sequestered from mainstream global trade, will be substantial and perhaps socially and politically destabilizing.
Analysis
In July, the Chinese government announced that a revision to the one-child policy had been implemented throughout the country's provinces and regions. The announcement of the revision, which allows couples in which either partner is an only child to have up to two children, heralded the end of the controversial policy. More relaxed family planning measures have long been in place for rural and ethnic minority communities, and most urban Chinese of childbearing age now were the only children in their families, so the revision dramatically narrows the portion of China's population to which the original one-child policy still applies.
The purpose of the one-child policy -- limiting the population shaping demographic trends -- was superseded many years ago by the far more fundamental forces of industrialization and urbanization. Two decades ago, China's fertility rate fell below 2.1, the generally accepted population replacement rate. Since then, it has dropped to roughly 1.5 or, by some measures, as low as 1.4. These are comparable to fertility rates in Russia and Italy but well below those of the United States, Australia, the Netherlands and many other more advanced economies.
It is a coincidence, but a symbolically loaded one, that China's fertility rate fell below the population replacement rate in the same year that the Chinese government enacted new fiscal policies and other measures that would necessitate and drive the housing construction booms of the 1990s, early 2000s and post-global financial crisis era. The almost continuous two-decade property boom cycle underpinned rapid growth in the portion of China's population living in cities -- from less than 30 percent in the early 1990s to the current 54 percent. In doing so, it introduced hundreds of millions more Chinese to urban life, with all its associated costs. Far more than the one-child policy, these costs have shaped family planning practices in China in recent years, as have rising education levels and the transition from an agriculture-based economy to one based on manufacturing and construction.
The urbanization of the past two decades has altered the country's demographic balance rapidly and profoundly. The change has hastened the decline in fertility and population growth rates, particularly those of China's working-age population, as the size of the country's elderly population has risen.
In the next two decades, these trends will only grow as the Chinese government attempts to push the country's urbanization rate above 70 percent, thus bringing the proportion of China's rural and urban populations more in line with those of advanced industrial economies with robust domestic consumer bases. If the government achieves its target, China's urban population will grow by more than 230 million between now and 2030, reaching approximately 975 million.
One-Way Street
For China's leaders, further urbanization on a significant scale is not optional: It is imperative. China is in the early stages of an effort to rebalance toward an economic model grounded in robust domestic consumption and characterized by greater economic integration between, and equality across, its diverse regions. Because of its large population, China has one of the world's largest domestic consumer markets, but relative to the country's economy as a whole, private consumption remains weak. In 2013, China's household consumption was equivalent to only 34 percent of its gross domestic product, compared with 70 percent in the United States, 61 percent in Japan, 57 percent in Germany and 52 percent in South Korea. Even if private consumption is somewhat stronger than official statistics show, it is nonetheless far from enough to support China's current rates of growth. As a result, too rapid a drop-off in housing construction activity before domestic consumption has had time to grow would likely cause a dramatic decline in China's overall economic activity and employment.
Moreover, private consumption is highly concentrated geographically and socially in more heavily urbanized coastal provinces and in a handful of major inland urban centers. Much of China's population, not only in rural regions but also in the hundreds of small cities that dot China's interior, does not participate meaningfully in the country's consumer economy.
The Chinese government wants to change this. It is experimenting with several reforms and tools to boost domestic consumption, including financial liberalization, expansion and modernization of the country's logistics industry (to more efficiently transport goods from the coast to the interior and back), and expansion of social security and health insurance programs. These measures are intimately tied to urbanization: Their success will depend on the progress Beijing makes with efforts to urbanize and integrate the country's interior, along with less developed parts of coastal provinces, into its more developed and largely coastal urban industrial economy.
Whatever form it takes, continued urbanization will have important implications for China's overall demographic balance and its political and economic structure for the next two decades. But how it affects Chinese demography, and how this in turn plays into major underlying issues in Chinese political economy, will depend very much on how China urbanizes.
After three decades of focusing on coastal urban development to suit the needs of China's heavily export-oriented economy, Beijing has redirected its attention to the interior in the past five to seven years. Now, with major inland metropolises like Chengdu, Chongqing and Wuhan approaching levels of development and population comparable with top-tier coastal cities, the government's attention appears to be shifting once again, this time to smaller cities in the interior and, to a lesser extent, along the coast. These cities are satellites of larger metropolises, once-forgotten river towns along the Yangtze and its tributaries, and other minor outposts on the rail and highway trunk lines that connect China's north and south and its coastal and interior regions.
It is these smaller cities that Beijing expects to drive future urbanization in China -- to house, employ, care for and educate most of the new urbanites China hopes to create by 2030. In the government's vision, these cities will serve not only as manufacturing bases and lower-end service providers for consumers in China's wealthier top-tier cities, but also as sources of marginal but rising consumer demand.
The government has made clear its intent to limit immigration into top-tier coastal cities, and it will continue to use tools like the household registration (hukou) system to make it harder for all but the most established non-resident workers to live and raise families in these cities. Meanwhile, it will use those same tools -- relaxed hukou restrictions, programs to bring rural laborers into small- and medium-sized inland cities, greater job availability and other social and economic incentives -- to encourage laborers from the interior to migrate or re-migrate to these cities.
Small-Town Demographics
In under a decade more than a quarter of China's population will be over the age of 60, compared with slightly less than 15 percent today. In that time, the portion of China's population too young or too old to work will rise from approximately 38 percent to 46 percent, with the balance of China's dependent population shifting substantially from young to old.
At the same time, with China's working-age population (defined here as ages 20-59) set to decline by as much as 80 million people between 2015 and 2030, China will need to increase worker productivity significantly to sustain growth rates even remotely close to present levels. For example, for China to sustain 5 percent average annual growth between now and 2020 and then 2 percent between 2020 and 2030, worker productivity must almost double. Given China's low productivity levels, some gains will come naturally as Chinese industry gradually moves up the value chain and incorporates more advanced machinery. But those gains will also require less tangible improvements in education levels and skills, increased market competition, greater freedom of movement for labor and increased financial support to small businesses, which account for most of the employment and manufacturing output in China.
As China's workforce shrinks and its elderly population grows, pressure will mount to raise wages and expand the social services necessary to help that workforce manage the social and financial pressures of caring for the elderly while continuing to spend more. This pressure will translate to significantly higher fiscal expenditures for local governments, which are responsible for almost 90 percent of total government spending, and in turn will necessitate significant expansion of local governments' ability to raise capital by means other than land sales.
All of this will take place against a backdrop of massive and, except for the past two decades in China, unprecedented urbanization. Urban growth will not be primarily in the major cities with the greatest concentrations of wealth and greatest capacity to raise capital through municipal bonds or hefty taxes on high value-added manufacturing and high-end services industries. Rather, it will be borne by the small- and medium-sized satellite cities or even very small rural townships. Most of these cities and towns are in the interior and separated by distance and often unforgiving geography from overseas markets. Their prospects as manufacturing hubs are questionable at best, and their avenues for raising capital, whether through taxes or bond sales, are more limited.
Known Unknowns
A number of variables will further shape this process. Some, such as the progress and direction of agricultural modernization, could aggravate the challenges and constraints facing China's plan to urbanize small- and medium-sized cities. For example, if the Chinese government's vision for agricultural modernization involves clearing large tracts of land for use in industrial-scale agriculture in existing agricultural basins, the local governments that absorb the farming populations could find themselves caring for the parents and children of migrant laborers previously left behind to tend the now-defunct family farm. (With the exception of Jiangsu, the provinces with the top five dependent-to-working population ratios are inland.) Urbanization that results in the transfer of unproductive demographic groups to small- and medium-sized cities will only add to those local governments' financial, fiscal and social burdens.
Other factors could mitigate the financial and fiscal constraints on local governments in small- and medium-sized cities. A notable example is rural land reform, which aims to strengthen rural land ownership rights, thus giving rural landholders means to generate capital while giving local governments a new market with which to trade and generate revenues. However, rural land reform faces numerous complications, not least of which is the potential tension between expanding rural land markets and the government's imperative to maintain a base level of arable land. How exactly rural land reform plays out in context of broader urbanization and agricultural modernization efforts without infringing on Beijing's goals for either is unclear.
There is the more distant problem that rapid urbanization over the next 15 years will most likely exacerbate current demographic trends. As more people move from the countryside to cities, China's fertility rate will likely decline further, leaving future generations of Chinese urbanites even more constrained in their efforts to care for elderly and child populations and remain active consumers than those coming of age in the 2020s.
Finally, there is the question of how the Chinese government will manage the social stresses created by decades of uneven demographic growth between male and female populations driven at least in part by the one-child policy in its early years. In the next decade, this imbalance will come to a head as tens of millions of Chinese men, especially from rural regions where male children have traditionally been prized above female, come of age with little to no prospect for finding partners and forming families. This demographic will be of particular concern for Beijing as the low value-added manufacturing and construction industries best suited to absorb it decline further.
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To Obama, the retrenchment of the West was not only inevitable but to be welcomed.
Barack Obama apparently believes that such a retrenchment was both inevitable and to be welcomed. He thought that most U.S. interventions abroad had been either wrong or futile or both; he questioned the world’s status quo and certainly felt, for example, that the widespread persecution of Christians in the Middle East was not nearly as much of a problem as Islamophobia in the West. He came into office believing that Iran, Hamas, and Russia had all been unduly demonized, especially by George W. Bush, and could be reached out to by a sensitive president whose heritage and attitudes might not appear so polarizing.
To Obama, old allies like Britain and Israel either did not need unflinching U.S. support or did not necessarily warrant it. The postwar world that the U.S. had once ensured was no fairer a place than is America at home, and certainly did not justify the vast investment of American time and money — resources that could be far better be spent at home addressing inequality and unfairness. A program of higher taxes, huge budget deficits, and enormous increases in entitlement spending did not have budgetary space for the sort of defense required to keep things calm abroad.
As a result, we now are witnessing a world in transition — a world of regional hegemonies that are filling the vacuum after the abdication of the United States. And we have no idea how it will eventually pan out. Barack Obama, for example, believes the chaos is only superficial. He thinks the reported universal warring is a sort of artifact of global social networking that too easily lets us know, for example, what Putin is doing in a way we could not with just radio and TV. But old-fashioned television lets us know perfectly well that Russia now determines the course of events in the huge area of the former Soviet republics — and from time to time steps into the Middle East to remind the U.S. that it is clueless. Putin just reminded the West that his nuclear arsenal makes it unwise to “mess” with Russia.
Those regions that Putin has already bullied into compliance — Georgia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine — serve as a warning to others of what might be their fate should they resist, and why it is thus wiser to make the necessary adjustments. Should Vladimir Putin suddenly discover persecuted Russian speakers in Estonia, we know the script. He will give speeches about the historical ties of Estonia to Russia; he will list his worries about the supposed maltreatment of Russian speakers; he will warn the world that his Russia is a nuclear, and sometimes unpredictable, power and therefore the world should butt out; and then he will snooze through a “You are on the wrong side of history” or “This behavior has no place in the 21st century” canned sermon from Barack Obama — before sending in paramilitary thugs and, if necessary, Russian troops. Soon the Russian Union could dwarf the European Union, as the former consolidates and the latter threatens to fragment.
Do Facebook and Twitter explain why President Obama, in one of his now-customary sports metaphors, first dismissed the Islamic State as “jayvees,” then later (as we bombed it) confessed that we had no strategy by which to confront it?
China is patiently demonstrating to its neighbors — Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand — that it iswiser to join the new Chinese co-prosperity sphere than to oppose it. China will be as solicitous over its new subservient associates as it is now unforgiving to those who are uncooperative. And those who join the Chinese team get a determined patron; those who don’t are free to figure out what exactly the next Obama red line, deadline, or step-over line actually means.
In the Middle East, friends are not looking to the U.S. for help, and enemies are not looking at us in fear. If the Islamic State threatens Kurdistan, the Kurds — whom we liberated from Saddam Hussein — will be more likely to be able to get arms from Iran. If Iraq, which we once rebuilt, is falling apart, Iran is there waiting to be the first to help. If we need help with Syrian WMD, Putin is there to offer negotiations.
If enemies like Hezbollah and Hamas have problems, Iran has cash and mercenaries. In contrast, our friends — and there are now few, mostly the Israelis and the Gulf Monarchies — receive philosophical admonishments about their shortcomings and dozens of moral-equivalency, Cairo Speech–like platitudes. Sunnis, Shiites, and Israelis assume that Iran will soon have the bomb, and will use its new possession of nuclear weapons for far more effective political purposes than have even Pakistan and North Korea.
China, Russia, and a not-too-distant Iran all have one thing in common as the new regional thugs: They have at one time or another in recent years had someone in power who has reminded the world in general, and the U.S. in particular, that they have (or soon will have) nuclear weapons and may not be shy about using them. Putin, Chinese generals, and Iranian theocrats are starting to spout off like North Koreans.
Europe has learned that its much-ballyhooed good-cop “soft power” qualified as power only if its ally, America, in conjunction had lots of bad-cop hard power — and was on occasion apt to use it. But, in contrast, two soft powers equate to softy power. NATO is dying on the vine, without American leadership and with the European Union desperately afraid that Putin might bully his way across the border of a NATO member, thereby exposing the interventionist Article V to be mush, and with it NATO itself.
Many of our so-called friends are acting instead like de facto enemies. Our special relationship with Recep Erdogan was always a fraud. Think of Turkey’s friends, and there you can find our enemies; think of its enemies, and you will likely find our friends. If Turkey found itself in a war, we would more likely sympathize with its adversaries. CENTCOM is based in Qatar, but it would be hard to find a more anti-American host. Add up Al Jazeera, support for Hamas, sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood, and the stealthy funding of all sorts of Middle Eastern insurgents and terrorists, and you do not find a reliable friend of the United States.
Is Mexico a friend? Deliberately encouraging about a million of its own citizens each year to break the law and try to enter the U.S. illegally and facilitating the transit across its territory of thousands of Central Americans to swarm and overwhelm the U.S. border seem hardly amicable acts. In truth, Mexico invades a country with far greater numbers and with far more finesse than does Putin’s Russia.
Can the old, pre-Obama postwar order be rebuilt? Of course, but it will require budgetary discipline, a visionary president, experienced national-security advisers, skillful diplomats, and a public that is informed and cares. In other words — not for another two years and five months.
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3)Israel vindicated by UN damage assessment in Gaza
By Dan Smith
An analysis of the damage assessment data collected - on the Gaza War - by the UN Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (which has never been biased in Israel's favor), confirms that Israel attacked Hamas targets in a restrained manner:
*Israel did not retaliate by rote against Hamas' systematic attacks on civilian targets; Israel bombed areas which harbored Hamas missile launching grounds and facilities, command posts, terrorists homes and hideouts, operational bases, weapon inventory and tunnels.
*Most of the damage concentrated in very limited areas of 25 square meters of less, while most of Gaza was not damaged at all or in a very limited manner. Less than 5% of Gaza was hit by The Israel Defense Forces.
*The most populated areas of Gaza City, Jabaliya, Khan Yunes, Rafah and Deir el-Balah were disproportionally-undamages: damaged in a very limited way or not damaged at all.
*The areas highlighted by the UN damage assessment report are compatible with the Israel Defense Forces briefings on the location of Hamas facilities, especially in the Shuja'iya area, which was the arena of the most intense battles.
*While Hamas concentrated its terror facilities - systematically and deliberately targeting Israeli civilians - in densely populated urban areas in Gaza, the vast majority of these urban areas were undamaged.
*Israel demonstrated exceptional efforts to minimize collateral damage - by urging civilians to evacuate ahead of bombings, thus forfeiting the surprise effect - guided by security requirements and not by retaliatory or political expediency.
*Israel followed surgical bombing tactic and not carpet bombing. The attacks were not random nor indiscriminate.
*Most of the Israeli bombing hit areas which housed multiple tunnel entrances and shafts, as well as launching sites for mortars and missiles and other terror-related infrastructures.
*15% of Hamas rockets and mortars were short, hitting civilian targets inside Gaza.
3a) Israeli military briefing provides unprecedented insight into Operation Protective Edge battlefield tactics
A range of outlets and analysts are working to unpack newly revealed evidence - first released by the Israeli military during a Wednesday briefing held at its Tel Aviv headquarters - documenting Israeli and Hamas tactics during the recent 50-day hot conflict fought in the Gaza Strip. Reuters led its coverage of the army's extensive slide show by focusing on "photographs indicating that militants stored and fired rockets from schools," a deployment of civilian infrastructure that hadalready engulfed UNRWA, the United Nations organization responsible for those schools. The wire also described "photographs showing how rocket launchers were hidden in graveyards and a school playground," including one set that showed "a [school] canopy, where a hole had been torn for a rocket launching, was further frayed after a projectile was fired from underneath." The Daily Mail more broadly described Israeli intelligence about the force structure of Gaza terror groups, with Hamas fielding "at least 16,000 operatives organised into six brigades across the Gaza Strip, each with its own commander, while [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] has a similar structure and a total of around 6,000 operatives." Hamas's use of human shields over the course of several previous conflicts had long ago driven innovations in Israeli battlefield techniques. Previous engagements had already seen the Israelis deploying unique technology, enabling unprecedented battlefield awareness, allowing them to warn individual Gazans of impending attacks and minimize civilian casualties. TheWashington Post conveyed current Israeli assessments, also revealed at the Wednesday press briefing, evaluating that at least 616 of the estimated 2,127 Palestinian casualties are known with "100 percent certainty" to have been combatants. A senior defense official emphasized that Jerusalem eventually expects to confirm that there was a "one to one" civilian-to-casualty ratio. If that estimate holds it will be taken as confirmation of nearly unparalleled Israeli precision targeting. Col. (res.) Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, testified in front of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Wednesday that the global average in similar conflicts is closer to a 4-to-1 civilian-to-combatant ratio. Kemp categorically declared that "no army in the world acts with as much discretion and great care as the IDF in order to minimize damage" and that "the US and the UK are careful, but not as much as Israel."
*Israel did not retaliate by rote against Hamas' systematic attacks on civilian targets; Israel bombed areas which harbored Hamas missile launching grounds and facilities, command posts, terrorists homes and hideouts, operational bases, weapon inventory and tunnels.
*Most of the damage concentrated in very limited areas of 25 square meters of less, while most of Gaza was not damaged at all or in a very limited manner. Less than 5% of Gaza was hit by The Israel Defense Forces.
*The most populated areas of Gaza City, Jabaliya, Khan Yunes, Rafah and Deir el-Balah were disproportionally-undamages: damaged in a very limited way or not damaged at all.
*The areas highlighted by the UN damage assessment report are compatible with the Israel Defense Forces briefings on the location of Hamas facilities, especially in the Shuja'iya area, which was the arena of the most intense battles.
*While Hamas concentrated its terror facilities - systematically and deliberately targeting Israeli civilians - in densely populated urban areas in Gaza, the vast majority of these urban areas were undamaged.
*Israel demonstrated exceptional efforts to minimize collateral damage - by urging civilians to evacuate ahead of bombings, thus forfeiting the surprise effect - guided by security requirements and not by retaliatory or political expediency.
*Israel followed surgical bombing tactic and not carpet bombing. The attacks were not random nor indiscriminate.
*Most of the Israeli bombing hit areas which housed multiple tunnel entrances and shafts, as well as launching sites for mortars and missiles and other terror-related infrastructures.
*15% of Hamas rockets and mortars were short, hitting civilian targets inside Gaza.
3a) Israeli military briefing provides unprecedented insight into Operation Protective Edge battlefield tactics
A range of outlets and analysts are working to unpack newly revealed evidence - first released by the Israeli military during a Wednesday briefing held at its Tel Aviv headquarters - documenting Israeli and Hamas tactics during the recent 50-day hot conflict fought in the Gaza Strip. Reuters led its coverage of the army's extensive slide show by focusing on "photographs indicating that militants stored and fired rockets from schools," a deployment of civilian infrastructure that hadalready engulfed UNRWA, the United Nations organization responsible for those schools. The wire also described "photographs showing how rocket launchers were hidden in graveyards and a school playground," including one set that showed "a [school] canopy, where a hole had been torn for a rocket launching, was further frayed after a projectile was fired from underneath." The Daily Mail more broadly described Israeli intelligence about the force structure of Gaza terror groups, with Hamas fielding "at least 16,000 operatives organised into six brigades across the Gaza Strip, each with its own commander, while [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] has a similar structure and a total of around 6,000 operatives." Hamas's use of human shields over the course of several previous conflicts had long ago driven innovations in Israeli battlefield techniques. Previous engagements had already seen the Israelis deploying unique technology, enabling unprecedented battlefield awareness, allowing them to warn individual Gazans of impending attacks and minimize civilian casualties. TheWashington Post conveyed current Israeli assessments, also revealed at the Wednesday press briefing, evaluating that at least 616 of the estimated 2,127 Palestinian casualties are known with "100 percent certainty" to have been combatants. A senior defense official emphasized that Jerusalem eventually expects to confirm that there was a "one to one" civilian-to-casualty ratio. If that estimate holds it will be taken as confirmation of nearly unparalleled Israeli precision targeting. Col. (res.) Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, testified in front of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Wednesday that the global average in similar conflicts is closer to a 4-to-1 civilian-to-combatant ratio. Kemp categorically declared that "no army in the world acts with as much discretion and great care as the IDF in order to minimize damage" and that "the US and the UK are careful, but not as much as Israel."
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4)The President's Public Enemies
Forget ISIS and Putin; Obama has identified the real enemy—the Republicans.
By Daniel Heninger
Barack Obama went on the attack late last week. The president delivered blistering speeches at a Democratic fundraiser in Westchester County, N.Y., at the Seafair mansion in Newport, R.I., and to unionists in Milwaukee on Labor Day.
Mr. Obama's purpose in these three similar speeches was to leave his audiences with one thought, one takeaway. The following two quotations are from the speech at Seafair, where some 60 people paid up to $32,400 to hear the president talk about the world. Herewith a pop quiz for readers who couldn't be there: Who did President Obama identify as the greatest threat to mankind?
"Internationally, we're going through a tumultuous time. And I don't have to tell you, anybody who has been watching TV this summer, it seems like it is just wave after wave of upheaval, most of it surrounding the Middle East. You're seeing a change in the order in the Middle East. But the old order is having a tough time holding together and the new order has yet to be born, and in the interim, it's scary."
Now this:
"The reason government does not work right now is because the other party has been captured by an ideological, rigid, uncompromising core that ignores science, is not particularly interested in facts, is not particularly interested in compromise, but is interested in having its own way 100 percent of the time—and that way, in large part, includes dismantling so much of what has created this incredible middle class and this incredible wealth here in America."
John Boehner and Mitch McConnell: America's Most Wanted? Getty Images
Getty Images
As is his habit, Mr. Obama answered the question himself: "So the answer to our challenges is actually pretty simple—we need a better Congress." That's right, the greatest threats to America today are . . .Mitch McConnell and John Boehner. Looking at events the past five years, we'd say Mr. Obama has cut Vladimir Putinmore slack than he has the Speaker of the House.
One can understand how Mr. Obama might feel it's necessary to campaign in the North to protect Democratic senators at risk in the South and West. And that this requires minimizing the world's real dangers while maximizing the brawny Republican threat to the homeland. But even by the low bar of campaign logic, the speeches were filled with weird flights.
"The reason people are feeling anxious," Mr. Obama said in Westchester, "is that if you watch the nightly news, it feels like the world is falling apart." And while "the world has always been messy," Mr. Obama said, "we're just noticing now because of social media."
Videotaped beheadings of American journalists, mass atrocities, rolling tank armies in Iraq and eastern Ukraine, Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamic terrorists kidnapping and slaughtering people are bad, but TV, YouTube and Twitter TWTR +2.68% are making it . . . worse than it is?
Notwithstanding the media's exaggeration of the world's troubles, Mr. Obama offered solace: "Here's the message I have for you, American military superiority has never been greater." Besides, "Russia's economy is going nowhere." What's more: "The good news is that American leadership has never been more necessary." All true. And that leaves us . . . where?
But it was when Mr. Obama's thoughts turned to the home front that the most revealing convolutions appeared, especially on the economy before Milwaukee's union members.
He began with preposterous hyperbole: In 2008, "our financial system collapsed." But today, despite "a lock-step opposition that is opposed to everything we do," we're better off "by almost every measure," including a "booming" stock market.
Moments after claiming credit for the Federal Reserve's market boom, Mr. Obama took a nine iron to the upscale people who have captured most of it. He said the "average persons" in his audience aren't looking for—his words—a yacht, their own plane, a mansion or "vacationing in St. Bart's ." Here's the line that came right before these targets: "I'm not stirring up class resentment."
Weirder still: When the president spoke to upper-bracket donors in Westchester or Newport, he sounded like one of them. Mr. Obama mocked "the crazy money that's floating around" in politics, and then asked his moneyed audience to give him some. But when speaking to the "average" people in Milwaukee, his English downshifted: "You should want your wife to get paid fair." "They ain't looking for nothing fancy." TV news is "just kind of a whole downer." One thing middle-class people aren't looking for is presidential condescension.
Mr. Obama says the gridlock in Washington is the result of "a certain cynical genius." On the evidence, who could disagree? It's more than that, though.
Speaking in Estonia Tuesday about the ISIS threat, Mr. Obama said the U.S. will lead "an international effort," but "that's going to take some time." Speaking in Newport, he spoke of the economy's "long-term challenges." With Barack Obama—whether it's friends or enemies at home or abroad—every problem is always disappearing toward the horizon. Presidential decision-making is a can that he kicks down the road. With the whole world along for the wild ride.
4a) Republicans for What?
The GOP won't get the victory it seeks without a positive agenda.
The post-Labor Day election campaign is underway, and the early conventional wisdom is that Republican hopes of a 2010-style wave are fading. GOP gains in the House could only be a few seats and the six pickups to take the Senate are still uncertain. This is coming from the usual liberal suspects, but it is also whispered by GOP strategists. Maybe Republicans should try to improve their odds by telling voters what they would do if they win.
By any typical political measure, this ought to be a great Republican year. President Obama is widely unpopular, the Senate playing field is largely in conservative states, the tide of war is rising around the world, and gains in stocks and other asset prices haven't translated into higher wages for most Americans. Many Republicans look at this and think they can win merely by running to be a check on Mr. Obama.
It's true that individual candidates are running on their own issues. Repeal ObamaCare is popular in GOP precincts, even if can't happen with Mr. Obama in office. And everyone favors the Keystone XL pipeline.The trouble is that the House GOP already provides that check, and voters are even more unhappy with Congress than they are with Mr. Obama. The kamikaze government shutdown, among other fits of temper, has so tarnished the GOP reputation that even many voters who dislike Mr. Obama might stay home in November.
But the lack of any common GOP agenda is leading to the perception of a policy vacuum that plays into Mr. Obama's critique that Republicans are opposed to everything. The President's proposal to raise the minimum wage may be irrelevant to most Americans, but at least it's something. And something usually beats nothing.
The current GOP campaign also plays into the Democratic strategy to make every Senate race an ugly brawl between two equally tarnished candidates. Harry Reid's SuperPac is spending millions of dollars to define GOP challengers as creatures from the black lagoon. Since they're mostly defending incumbents who are better known, Democrats figure they have the better chance to win a character fight. This is one reason races in Arkansas, North Carolina, Louisiana and Alaska continue to be close.
Especially as Election Day nears and disengaged voters pay attention, Republicans need to show voters what they're for. This doesn't have to be another Contract with America, a la Newt Gingrich in 1994. Given intra-GOP differences, the better model might be the Pelosi Democrats in 2006. Despite being dominated by war horses from the Great Society, those Democrats focused on six smallish ideas that united their ranks and didn't scare moderates unhappy with George W. Bush.
The political point is to focus on a few proposals that address voter concerns and that Republicans could pass and put on Mr. Obama's desk if they win both houses of Congress. This would give the GOP something positive to talk about, beginning the long process of repairing their public image.
It would also educate their own voters about what is achievable if they do take Congress. The worst outcome would be for Republicans to take the Senate by one or two seats and then fail to deliver anything because their yahoos demand the impossible. That would set up Hillary Clinton to run against the failures of a GOP Congress in 2016, and perhaps deny them a governing majority if a Republican does win back the White House.
We don't know what the GOP House and Senate campaign committees might agree on, but here are a couple of ideas that would combine GOP principles with populist notes that fit the public mood:
• Pick up former Senator Phil Gramm's proposal to offer the freedom option in health insurance, letting individuals opt out of ObamaCare's regulations to buy the policies they want. This would address the concerns of voters who lost the insurance they liked or are paying more. The White House and left would howl, but many Democrats would find it hard to oppose.
• Promise to repeal "too big to fail." Even Mr. Obama's regulators recently admitted this policy remains in place when they rejected the "living wills" that banks must propose under Dodd-Frank. This is a populist way to reopen the issue of financial regulation.
• Go beyond Keystone XL by promising to quickly and greatly increase domestic energy production and exports. This would appeal to union voters as a jobs measure, to consumers in potentially lower energy costs, and to Americans concerned about growing turmoil in Europe and the Middle East. U.S. natural gas exports could make our allies less dependent on Gazprom. GAZP.RS -12.44%
This is far from a complete list, but the point is to run a campaign that is about more than attacking Mr. Obama. Most Americans already regret re-electing him. But they are more likely to give Republicans the big majorities they seek if they also sense their lives might be better with a GOP Congress.
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5) BIBI'S NEXT BATTLE
Author: Gregg Carlstrom
5) BIBI'S NEXT BATTLE
Author: Gregg Carlstrom
Children across Israel went back to school on Monday, after a summer of war and unrest, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stopped by several classrooms for the obligatory photo ops.
At a school in the southern town of Mabu'im, he asked a student to name his favorite animal. “Snakes,” the boy replied.
A grinning Netanyahu couldn't resist: “Snakes? Come on, I'll give you a few,” he quipped.
It's a testament to Israel's bitter domestic politics that Netanyahu's remark was widely interpreted as a dig at his unruly cabinet members, rather than at Hamas or other foreign enemies. With the fighting in Gaza seemingly concluded after Netanyahu and Hamas accepted a cease-fire on Aug. 26, the prime minister is now digging in for a long political war.
The truce satisfied almost nobody in his government, particularly its restive right wing, which wanted to see Hamas completely crushed. Polls show that the prime minister's approval rating has plunged as low as 32 percent, after hitting the mid-80s in July. Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman called it a deal with “contemptible murderers,” creating the odd spectacle of the top Israeli diplomat rejecting a major Israeli foreign-policy decision. Economy Minister Naftali Bennett warned that the cease-fire would prevent Israel from bombing a hypothetical Hamas “rocket factory” in Gaza; he has been such an acerbic critic that Netanyahu at one point asked him to shut up.
Both Liberman and Bennett have their eyes on Netanyahu's job, and have spent this summer trying to position themselves as the true candidates of the Israeli right. Each has deep ties to Netanyahu: Liberman helped him take control of Likud in the 1990s, and ran on a joint ticket with Bibi last year; Bennett was once the prime minister's campaign manager. But now, they're his most dangerous rivals.
In an apparent effort to cover Netanyahu's right flank, the government claimed nearly 1,000 acres of the occupied West Bank as “state land” this week — Israel's largest single land grab in the West Bank in decades. The move, which is a likely first step toward major settlement construction, drew fierce international condemnation. However, it also won Netanyahu domestic praise from the right, including from Bennett himself.
Nonetheless, Bibi increasingly seems like a centrist in Israel's ever more conservative politics. A new poll found that 39 percent of Israelis think Bennett “best represents the views of the right,” compared to 28 percent for Netanyahu.
Coming in third in that survey was Liberman, whose political star may be fading. He suffers from a growing reputation as a political opportunist, after opportunistically breaking his party's unity pact with Likud in July, but declining to leave the government. The foreign minister described himself last month as a leader of the “pragmatic right,” contrasting himself with Bennett and the “dogmatic right.” But while he routinely issues inflammatory statements — in recent months, he urged supporters to boycott Palestinian-owned businesses in Israel, and threatened to ban Al Jazeera from the country — he can point to few practical accomplishments. Asked on Channel 1 this week to outline his diplomatic successes during the Gaza war, all he could muster was that “200 Hollywood stars” came out in support of Israel.
His Yisrael Beytenu party, meanwhile, has struggled to make inroads outside of its traditional base — immigrants from the former Soviet Union. According to the polls, if elections were held today, the party would be reduced to perhaps the fourth- or fifth-largest bloc.
Even Lieberman has acknowledged that early elections are not in his best interests, and that his political position does not allow him to leave the government at this time.
“We have a cabinet, and I'm sorry to recognize that I was a minority in our cabinet,” he told CNN. “But we won a very important part of this coalition, and we will support our government, because the alternative, new elections, early elections, I think it's a really bad choice for the state of Israel.”
It may be Bennett who poses a greater long-term threat to Netanyahu's position. He is a charismatic newcomer to the Knesset, a former officer in an elite army unit and an entrepreneur who made millions in the software industry. His Jewish Home party won 12 seats in last year's election, the fourth-largest bloc. The party caters to religious Zionists, and promotes an aggressive nationalism, but it won broader support by adding a focus on social and economic issues, like ending army draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews.
“Liberman and Bennett behaved the same … but with Liberman it's seen as political maneuvering,” said Tal Schneider, an Israeli political analyst. “Bennett, maybe you don't like what he says, but you can't argue that he's inconsistent.”
There are some wild cards who could upset this three-way political contest. Netanyahu could face a challenge from within Likud: Primary elections in 2012 pushed the party far to the right, and Danny Danon, the chairman of the party's central committee, is a vocal critic of the prime minister. Netanyahu fired Danon from his job as deputy defense minister in July because of his public attacks.
Another possible challenge comes from Yuval Diskin, a former Shin Bet chief now widely seen as preparing to enter politics. He seems prepared to challenge Netanyahu on security issues, long seen as the prime minister's home turf. “Israel today is led by a flaccid leadership,” he wrote in an op-ed for Yedioth Aharonot this weekend, warning that diplomatic paralysis is weakening the country.
But for all the incipient threats and this summer's political drama, Netanyahu's unwieldy coalition for now appears oddly stable. The postwar polls show a major drop in the prime minister's popularity, but they are basically a return to prewar averages. Netanyahu has not collapsed like former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose approval rating eventually hit 2 percent after the 2006 war in Lebanon.
Crucially, the public does not see an alternative to Netanyahu. A Haaretz-Dialog poll released last week found that 42 percent of respondents still believe he's the best choice for prime minister. The second-most popular candidate, with 20 percent of the vote, was “I don't know.”
“He has lots of political problems, but when you ask the general public, they're sort of satisfied,” said Schneider.
A Knesset Channel poll released on Sept. 1 gave Netanyahu 26 seats in the next election, compared to 19 for Bennett and 18 for the Labor Party. Combined with Liberman and Bennett, the center-right bloc would hold 53 mandates by itself, eight shy of a majority.
It's ironic, then, that the main short-term threat to the coalition could come from the center-left. These figures are not particularly influential: Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni were co-opted into the coalition, while nobody has heard from Labor in months. (A post circulating on Facebook recently compared party leader Isaac Herzog to the golem, a silent creature from Jewish mythology.)
But Lapid might be the one to bring down the government, in order to shore up his ever-weaker position. The TV personality turned centrist politician capitalized on widespread socioeconomic grievances in the previous election, running on a platform of strengthening the middle class that garnered his Yesh Atid party 19 seats in the Knesset, the second-largest bloc.
Netanyahu rewarded Lapid with the post of finance minister — which, as intended, proved to be a poisoned chalice. To avoid raising taxes after the war, Lapid imposed spending cuts and enlarged the budget deficit to more than 3 percent of Israel's GDP. Next year's budget will likely require further cuts to social services.
Meanwhile, Lapid's flagship initiative, a plan to exempt first-time home buyers from taxes, has been tabled. If elections were held today, polls suggest that Yesh Atid would be cut in half, from 19 seats to nine or ten.
Lapid said last week that he does not plan to pull Yesh Atid from the coalition. But analysts say he might try to fail at his central job: passing a budget. If the Knesset does not approve a spending plan by March 31, the country will automatically head for early elections.
“[He's] not really thinking about what has to be done about Israel's economic problems,” said Avi Temkin, a columnist for the Israeli financial daily Globes. “He's thinking about what he has to do in order to get to the next elections in a better situation.”
But even if the left forces early elections, Netanyahu's fight will be on the right. For the moment, he seems to have the upper hand: Bennett and Liberman have toned down their rhetoric over the past few days, and the Knesset is in recess until next month. Still, with talks over the Gaza blockade due to resume in Cairo later this month and the international community pushing for renewed negotiations with the Palestinians, the attacks from the right are bound to resurface.
It seems clear that Netanyahu's right-wing antagonists will have ample fodder with which to attack him. After Israel's recent land annexation in the West Bank, Netanyahu reportedly shelved plans for another 2,500 homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The move prompted a prominent settler leader to accuse him of imposing a “covert freeze.”
Netanyahu was worried about the international backlash; Bennett, though, has no such constraints. He toured the settlement site on Monday and effusively praised the planned construction. “We are building, and the world never liked our building,” he said. “We're still building.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6) Ukraine abandoned
Children across Israel went back to school on Monday, after a summer of war and unrest, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stopped by several classrooms for the obligatory photo ops.
At a school in the southern town of Mabu'im, he asked a student to name his favorite animal. “Snakes,” the boy replied.
A grinning Netanyahu couldn't resist: “Snakes? Come on, I'll give you a few,” he quipped.
It's a testament to Israel's bitter domestic politics that Netanyahu's remark was widely interpreted as a dig at his unruly cabinet members, rather than at Hamas or other foreign enemies. With the fighting in Gaza seemingly concluded after Netanyahu and Hamas accepted a cease-fire on Aug. 26, the prime minister is now digging in for a long political war.
The truce satisfied almost nobody in his government, particularly its restive right wing, which wanted to see Hamas completely crushed. Polls show that the prime minister's approval rating has plunged as low as 32 percent, after hitting the mid-80s in July. Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman called it a deal with “contemptible murderers,” creating the odd spectacle of the top Israeli diplomat rejecting a major Israeli foreign-policy decision. Economy Minister Naftali Bennett warned that the cease-fire would prevent Israel from bombing a hypothetical Hamas “rocket factory” in Gaza; he has been such an acerbic critic that Netanyahu at one point asked him to shut up.
Both Liberman and Bennett have their eyes on Netanyahu's job, and have spent this summer trying to position themselves as the true candidates of the Israeli right. Each has deep ties to Netanyahu: Liberman helped him take control of Likud in the 1990s, and ran on a joint ticket with Bibi last year; Bennett was once the prime minister's campaign manager. But now, they're his most dangerous rivals.
In an apparent effort to cover Netanyahu's right flank, the government claimed nearly 1,000 acres of the occupied West Bank as “state land” this week — Israel's largest single land grab in the West Bank in decades. The move, which is a likely first step toward major settlement construction, drew fierce international condemnation. However, it also won Netanyahu domestic praise from the right, including from Bennett himself.
Nonetheless, Bibi increasingly seems like a centrist in Israel's ever more conservative politics. A new poll found that 39 percent of Israelis think Bennett “best represents the views of the right,” compared to 28 percent for Netanyahu.
Coming in third in that survey was Liberman, whose political star may be fading. He suffers from a growing reputation as a political opportunist, after opportunistically breaking his party's unity pact with Likud in July, but declining to leave the government. The foreign minister described himself last month as a leader of the “pragmatic right,” contrasting himself with Bennett and the “dogmatic right.” But while he routinely issues inflammatory statements — in recent months, he urged supporters to boycott Palestinian-owned businesses in Israel, and threatened to ban Al Jazeera from the country — he can point to few practical accomplishments. Asked on Channel 1 this week to outline his diplomatic successes during the Gaza war, all he could muster was that “200 Hollywood stars” came out in support of Israel.
His Yisrael Beytenu party, meanwhile, has struggled to make inroads outside of its traditional base — immigrants from the former Soviet Union. According to the polls, if elections were held today, the party would be reduced to perhaps the fourth- or fifth-largest bloc.
Even Lieberman has acknowledged that early elections are not in his best interests, and that his political position does not allow him to leave the government at this time.
“We have a cabinet, and I'm sorry to recognize that I was a minority in our cabinet,” he told CNN. “But we won a very important part of this coalition, and we will support our government, because the alternative, new elections, early elections, I think it's a really bad choice for the state of Israel.”
It may be Bennett who poses a greater long-term threat to Netanyahu's position. He is a charismatic newcomer to the Knesset, a former officer in an elite army unit and an entrepreneur who made millions in the software industry. His Jewish Home party won 12 seats in last year's election, the fourth-largest bloc. The party caters to religious Zionists, and promotes an aggressive nationalism, but it won broader support by adding a focus on social and economic issues, like ending army draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews.
“Liberman and Bennett behaved the same … but with Liberman it's seen as political maneuvering,” said Tal Schneider, an Israeli political analyst. “Bennett, maybe you don't like what he says, but you can't argue that he's inconsistent.”
There are some wild cards who could upset this three-way political contest. Netanyahu could face a challenge from within Likud: Primary elections in 2012 pushed the party far to the right, and Danny Danon, the chairman of the party's central committee, is a vocal critic of the prime minister. Netanyahu fired Danon from his job as deputy defense minister in July because of his public attacks.
Another possible challenge comes from Yuval Diskin, a former Shin Bet chief now widely seen as preparing to enter politics. He seems prepared to challenge Netanyahu on security issues, long seen as the prime minister's home turf. “Israel today is led by a flaccid leadership,” he wrote in an op-ed for Yedioth Aharonot this weekend, warning that diplomatic paralysis is weakening the country.
But for all the incipient threats and this summer's political drama, Netanyahu's unwieldy coalition for now appears oddly stable. The postwar polls show a major drop in the prime minister's popularity, but they are basically a return to prewar averages. Netanyahu has not collapsed like former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose approval rating eventually hit 2 percent after the 2006 war in Lebanon.
Crucially, the public does not see an alternative to Netanyahu. A Haaretz-Dialog poll released last week found that 42 percent of respondents still believe he's the best choice for prime minister. The second-most popular candidate, with 20 percent of the vote, was “I don't know.”
“He has lots of political problems, but when you ask the general public, they're sort of satisfied,” said Schneider.
A Knesset Channel poll released on Sept. 1 gave Netanyahu 26 seats in the next election, compared to 19 for Bennett and 18 for the Labor Party. Combined with Liberman and Bennett, the center-right bloc would hold 53 mandates by itself, eight shy of a majority.
It's ironic, then, that the main short-term threat to the coalition could come from the center-left. These figures are not particularly influential: Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni were co-opted into the coalition, while nobody has heard from Labor in months. (A post circulating on Facebook recently compared party leader Isaac Herzog to the golem, a silent creature from Jewish mythology.)
But Lapid might be the one to bring down the government, in order to shore up his ever-weaker position. The TV personality turned centrist politician capitalized on widespread socioeconomic grievances in the previous election, running on a platform of strengthening the middle class that garnered his Yesh Atid party 19 seats in the Knesset, the second-largest bloc.
Netanyahu rewarded Lapid with the post of finance minister — which, as intended, proved to be a poisoned chalice. To avoid raising taxes after the war, Lapid imposed spending cuts and enlarged the budget deficit to more than 3 percent of Israel's GDP. Next year's budget will likely require further cuts to social services.
Meanwhile, Lapid's flagship initiative, a plan to exempt first-time home buyers from taxes, has been tabled. If elections were held today, polls suggest that Yesh Atid would be cut in half, from 19 seats to nine or ten.
Lapid said last week that he does not plan to pull Yesh Atid from the coalition. But analysts say he might try to fail at his central job: passing a budget. If the Knesset does not approve a spending plan by March 31, the country will automatically head for early elections.
“[He's] not really thinking about what has to be done about Israel's economic problems,” said Avi Temkin, a columnist for the Israeli financial daily Globes. “He's thinking about what he has to do in order to get to the next elections in a better situation.”
But even if the left forces early elections, Netanyahu's fight will be on the right. For the moment, he seems to have the upper hand: Bennett and Liberman have toned down their rhetoric over the past few days, and the Knesset is in recess until next month. Still, with talks over the Gaza blockade due to resume in Cairo later this month and the international community pushing for renewed negotiations with the Palestinians, the attacks from the right are bound to resurface.
It seems clear that Netanyahu's right-wing antagonists will have ample fodder with which to attack him. After Israel's recent land annexation in the West Bank, Netanyahu reportedly shelved plans for another 2,500 homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The move prompted a prominent settler leader to accuse him of imposing a “covert freeze.”
Netanyahu was worried about the international backlash; Bennett, though, has no such constraints. He toured the settlement site on Monday and effusively praised the planned construction. “We are building, and the world never liked our building,” he said. “We're still building.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6) Ukraine abandoned
6) Ukraine abandoned
U.S. President Barack Obama is seated with Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko as they meet with other countries regarding Ukraine at the NATO summit at Celtic Manor in Newport, Wales, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014. At rear center is U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) (Charles Dharapak/AP)
At his first press briefing after the beheading of American James Foley, President Obama stunned the assembled when he admitted that he had no strategy for confronting ISIS, a.k.a. the Islamic State, in Syria. Yet it was not nearly the most egregious, or consequential, thing he said.
Idiotic, yes. You’re the leader of the free world. Even if you don’t have a strategy — indeed, especially if you don’t — you never admit it publicly.
However, if Obama is indeed building a larger strategy, an air campaign coordinated with allies on the ground, this does take time. George W. Bush wisely took a month to respond to 9/11, preparing an unusual special ops-Northern Alliance battle plan that brought down Taliban rule in a hundred days.
We’ll see whether Obama comes up with an ISIS strategy. But he already has one for Ukraine: Write it off. Hence the more shocking statement in that Aug. 28 briefing: Obama declaring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — columns of tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and a thousand troops brazenly crossing the border — to be nothing new, just “a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now.”
And just to reaffirm his indifference and inaction, Obama mindlessly repeated his refrain that the Ukraine problem has no military solution. Yes, but does he not understand that diplomatic solutions are largely dictated by the military balance on the ground?
Vladimir Putin’s invasion may be nothing new to Obama. For Ukraine, it changed everything. Russia was on the verge of defeat. Now Ukraine is. That’s why Ukraine is welcoming a cease-fire that amounts to capitulation.
A month ago, Putin’s separatist proxies were besieged and desperate. His invasion to the southeast saved them. It diverted the Ukrainian military from Luhansk and Donetsk, allowing the rebels to recover, while Russian armor rolled over Ukrainian forces, jeopardizing their control of the entire southeast. Putin even boasted that he could take Kiev in two weeks.
Why bother? He’s already fracturing and subjugating Ukraine, re-creating Novorossiya (“New Russia”), statehood for which is one of the issues that will be up for, yes, diplomacy.
Which makes incomprehensible Obama’s denial to Ukraine of even defensive weapons — small arms, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. Indeed, his stunning passivity in the face of a dictionary-definition invasion has not just confounded the Ukrainians. It has unnerved the East Europeans. Hence Obama’s reassurances on his trip to the NATO summit in Wales.
First up, Estonia. It seems to be Obama’s new “red line.” I’m sure they sleep well tonight in Tallinn now that Obama has promised to stand with them. (Remember the State Department hashtag #UnitedforUkraine?)
To back up Obama’s words, NATO is touting a promised rapid-reaction force of about 4,000 to be dispatched to pre-provisioned bases in the Baltics and Poland within 48 hours of an emergency. (Read: Russian invasion.)
First, we’ve been hearing about European rapid-reaction forces for decades. They’ve amounted to nothing.
Second, even if this one comes into being, it is a feeble half-measure. Not only will troops have to be assembled, dispatched, transported and armed as the fire bell is ringing, but the very sending will require some affirmative and immediate decision by NATO. Try getting that done. The alliance is famous for its reluctant, slow and fractured decision-making. (See: Ukraine.) By the time the Rapid Reactors arrive, Russia will have long overrun their yet-to-be-manned bases.
The real news from Wales is what NATO did not do. It did not create the only serious deterrent to Russia: permanent bases in the Baltics and eastern Poland that would act as a tripwire. Tripwires produce automaticity. A Russian leader would know that any invading force would immediately encounter NATO troops, guaranteeing war with the West.
Which is how we kept the peace in Europe through a half-century of Cold War. U.S. troops in West Germany could never have stopped a Russian invasion. But a Russian attack would have instantly brought America into a war — a war Russia could not countenance.
It’s what keeps the peace in Korea today. Even the reckless North Korean leadership dares not cross the DMZ, because it would kill U.S. troops on its way to Seoul, triggering war with America.
That’s what deterrence means. And what any rapid-reaction force cannot provide. In Wales, it will nonetheless be proclaimed a triumph. In Estonia, in Poland, as today in Ukraine, it will be seen for what it is — a loud declaration of reluctance by an alliance led by a man who is the very embodiment of ambivalence
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
U.S. President Barack Obama is seated with Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko as they meet with other countries regarding Ukraine at the NATO summit at Celtic Manor in Newport, Wales, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014. At rear center is U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) (Charles Dharapak/AP)
At his first press briefing after the beheading of American James Foley, President Obama stunned the assembled when he admitted that he had no strategy for confronting ISIS, a.k.a. the Islamic State, in Syria. Yet it was not nearly the most egregious, or consequential, thing he said.
Idiotic, yes. You’re the leader of the free world. Even if you don’t have a strategy — indeed, especially if you don’t — you never admit it publicly.
However, if Obama is indeed building a larger strategy, an air campaign coordinated with allies on the ground, this does take time. George W. Bush wisely took a month to respond to 9/11, preparing an unusual special ops-Northern Alliance battle plan that brought down Taliban rule in a hundred days.
We’ll see whether Obama comes up with an ISIS strategy. But he already has one for Ukraine: Write it off. Hence the more shocking statement in that Aug. 28 briefing: Obama declaring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — columns of tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and a thousand troops brazenly crossing the border — to be nothing new, just “a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now.”
And just to reaffirm his indifference and inaction, Obama mindlessly repeated his refrain that the Ukraine problem has no military solution. Yes, but does he not understand that diplomatic solutions are largely dictated by the military balance on the ground?
Vladimir Putin’s invasion may be nothing new to Obama. For Ukraine, it changed everything. Russia was on the verge of defeat. Now Ukraine is. That’s why Ukraine is welcoming a cease-fire that amounts to capitulation.
A month ago, Putin’s separatist proxies were besieged and desperate. His invasion to the southeast saved them. It diverted the Ukrainian military from Luhansk and Donetsk, allowing the rebels to recover, while Russian armor rolled over Ukrainian forces, jeopardizing their control of the entire southeast. Putin even boasted that he could take Kiev in two weeks.
Why bother? He’s already fracturing and subjugating Ukraine, re-creating Novorossiya (“New Russia”), statehood for which is one of the issues that will be up for, yes, diplomacy.
Which makes incomprehensible Obama’s denial to Ukraine of even defensive weapons — small arms, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. Indeed, his stunning passivity in the face of a dictionary-definition invasion has not just confounded the Ukrainians. It has unnerved the East Europeans. Hence Obama’s reassurances on his trip to the NATO summit in Wales.
First up, Estonia. It seems to be Obama’s new “red line.” I’m sure they sleep well tonight in Tallinn now that Obama has promised to stand with them. (Remember the State Department hashtag #UnitedforUkraine?)
To back up Obama’s words, NATO is touting a promised rapid-reaction force of about 4,000 to be dispatched to pre-provisioned bases in the Baltics and Poland within 48 hours of an emergency. (Read: Russian invasion.)
First, we’ve been hearing about European rapid-reaction forces for decades. They’ve amounted to nothing.
Second, even if this one comes into being, it is a feeble half-measure. Not only will troops have to be assembled, dispatched, transported and armed as the fire bell is ringing, but the very sending will require some affirmative and immediate decision by NATO. Try getting that done. The alliance is famous for its reluctant, slow and fractured decision-making. (See: Ukraine.) By the time the Rapid Reactors arrive, Russia will have long overrun their yet-to-be-manned bases.
The real news from Wales is what NATO did not do. It did not create the only serious deterrent to Russia: permanent bases in the Baltics and eastern Poland that would act as a tripwire. Tripwires produce automaticity. A Russian leader would know that any invading force would immediately encounter NATO troops, guaranteeing war with the West.
Which is how we kept the peace in Europe through a half-century of Cold War. U.S. troops in West Germany could never have stopped a Russian invasion. But a Russian attack would have instantly brought America into a war — a war Russia could not countenance.
It’s what keeps the peace in Korea today. Even the reckless North Korean leadership dares not cross the DMZ, because it would kill U.S. troops on its way to Seoul, triggering war with America.
That’s what deterrence means. And what any rapid-reaction force cannot provide. In Wales, it will nonetheless be proclaimed a triumph. In Estonia, in Poland, as today in Ukraine, it will be seen for what it is — a loud declaration of reluctance by an alliance led by a man who is the very embodiment of ambivalence
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