Lest you think we overstate, on Monday the Italian newspaper La Repubblica quoted Vladimir Putin telling European Commission President José Manuel Barroso that "if I want, I can take Kiev in two weeks"—a statement the Kremlin did not deny (though it did denounce the leak). Mr. Putin is talking openly about "New Russia," with specific mention of the cities of Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine as well as Odessa on the Black Sea.
Such talk may be bluster, but the stealthy seizure of Crimea was supposed to be unthinkable only a few months ago. So was Russia's invasion of eastern Ukraine last month. The problem with calling something unthinkable is that it tends to dull the thinking needed to keep it that way. Europeans also thought the world wars of the last century were unthinkable right up until they broke out.
Wars happen when aggressors detect the lack of will to stop them. After Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia, we warned that "Ukraine, which has been pushing Russia to move its Black Sea fleet's headquarters, could be next." ("Vladimir Bonaparte," Aug. 12, 2008.) We also noted that "the [NATO] alliance needs to respond forcefully." It didn't. Here we are.
The good news is that NATO's institutional leaders, civilian and military, have been awake to reality for some time. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the alliance's energetic Secretary General, was warning well before Russia's invasion of Ukraine that NATO's European members needed to spend a great deal more on defense. "We must shift the argument from the cost of defense to the cost of no defense," Mr. Rasmussen said last October.
NATO Supreme Commander Philip Breedlove has also been clear in describing the nature and sophistication of Russia's military moves. "Surprise, deception and strategic ambiguity have been adeptly employed by Russia against Ukraine," the general wrote in these pages on July 16, adding that "this strategy, quite simply, has significant implications for Europe's future security."The good news is that NATO's institutional leaders, civilian and military, have been awake to reality for some time. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the alliance's energetic Secretary General, was warning well before Russia's invasion of Ukraine that NATO's European members needed to spend a great deal more on defense. "We must shift the argument from the cost of defense to the cost of no defense," Mr. Rasmussen said last October.
Far from clear, however, is whether Western political leaders share this sense of urgency. The European Union has refused to impose serious sanctions in response to Russia's attack on Ukraine, and French President Francois Hollande has ruled out military aid to Kiev while selling warships to Moscow.
As for the ostensible leader of the Free World, President Obama is busy downplaying the threats to world order by saying, as he did on Monday, that "the world has always been messy" and the new global disorder is something "we're just noticing now because of social media." Social media aren't sending those Russian tanks toward Donetsk.
President Obama's visit this week to Estonia, a NATO member on the Russian frontier, is a more realistic political statement because that could be where Mr. Putin strikes next. Like Ukraine, the Baltic states have sizable Russian-speaking minorities whose petty discontents could be used as pretexts for Moscow's mischief. Mr. Putin might act against the Balts precisely because he wants to show Russians and Europeans that NATO is a spent promise.
The only way to deter such military aggression is with a show of comparable military and political resolve. NATO officials are floating the idea of a brigade-sized rapid-reaction force, capable of being deployed on two-days notice, with equipment pre-positioned in frontline NATO states from Norway to Romania. This is useful as a way to counter Mr. Putin's infiltration tactics without forcing NATO to scatter resources among multiple potential targets.
But it isn't enough. NATO will also need to begin permanently stationing troops in eastern Europe, an idea floated a decade ago by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The 1997 NATO-Russia "Founding Act" is supposed to forbid such a move, but that text was carefully written with a view toward "the current and foreseeable security environment." In 1997 Russia wanted to join the world of democracies. Now it is an autocracy seeking to dominate its neighbors.
NATO states—including the U.S.—will have to reverse the trend of cuts to military spending. The entire British Army fields 156 tanks—and Britain has one of NATO's larger militaries. Of NATO's 28 states, only four spend 2% of GDP on defense, the technical minimum for membership. "NATO is currently not well-prepared for a Russian threat against a NATO Member State," warned a report this summer from a U.K. parliamentary committee.

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The temptation of democracies is to believe that autocrats treasure peace and stability as much as we do. Europeans in particular want to believe that their postwar institutions and economic integration have ended their violent history. But autocrats often prosper from disorder, and they need foreign enemies to feed domestic nationalism. This describes Russia under Mr. Putin, who is Europe's new Bonaparte. His goal is to break NATO, and he'll succeed unless the alliance's leaders respond forcefully to his threat.

2a) A World of Trouble for Obama

Public support for the president's foreign policy is waning—and he's losing Democratic lawmakers

By William A. Galston

In March my Brookings colleague Robert Kagan memorably observed that President Obama was giving the American people the foreign policy they wanted—and they didn't much like it. Overseas events have only deepened public concern. A Pew Research Center survey released Aug. 28 found that only 35% of people approve of the president's handling of the crises in Iraq and Ukraine. Only 15% think we play a more important and powerful role in the world than we did a decade ago, compared with 48% who think our role is less important. And 65% believe that we live in a world more dangerous than it was a few years ago.
The Pew study also finds compelling evidence that Americans are beginning to change their minds about what they want. The share of those who think the U.S. does too much in the world has fallen to only 39% today, from 51% in November, while the share who thinks it does too little has nearly doubled, to 31% from 17%. In the early months of the Obama presidency, only 38% thought the president was "not tough enough" on national security; today, 54% believe that—a figure that includes more than one third of all Democrats.
Leading Democrats are starting to reflect this shift. Responding to Mr. Obama's post-vacation remarks on Iraq and Ukraine, Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that Mr. Obama "is very cautious. Maybe, in this instance, too cautious."
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The president, with Secretary of State John Kerry and Ambassador to Poland Stephen D. Mull, in Warsaw in June. European Pressphoto Agency
The perception of rising threats is also changing the public's willingness to countenance the use of American military power. Fearing that neither Congress nor the people would support him, Mr. Obama famously shied from bombing Syrian regime forces last September. In early August a Pew Research Center/USA Today survey found 54% approval for airstrikes against Islamic State terrorists in Iraq. There is no reason to believe that the public would reject extending these strikes to the group's strongholds in Syria—if the president offers a clear and compelling justification for taking that step.
This brings us to the other burning issue of the day—Vladimir Putin's blatant aggression against a sovereign state in the heart of Europe. It turns out that the American people have been paying attention. In November only 38% believed that growing tension between Russia and its neighbors was a major threat to American interests; now 53% see it that way. Notably for these polarized times, the view is shared across partisan lines: 54% of Republicans, 54% of Democrats and 52% of independents.
Here again, leading Democrats are beginning to speak out. On Sunday Robert Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, characterized recent events in Ukraine as a "direct invasion by Russia," adding pointedly that "we must recognize it as that." (Mr. Obama has thus far declined to do so.) The senator added that the U.S. should provide the Kiev government with the weapons it needs to defend itself against well-armed Russian and separatist forces. Mr. Putin, Sen. Menendez observed, had decided that the West would not help arm Ukraine, adding that "we have to prove him wrong." Indeed we do.
As Mr. Obama ponders this advice, he should consider how unlikely it is that economic sanctions alone will deter Russia from continuing its westward advance. He should seize the opportunity to unite Democrats and Republicans in defending American interests. And he should make it clear that although the U.S. must be cautious about engaging its own forces abroad, we will not hesitate to help our friends. The government in Kiev deserves to hear this message; so do the Kurds in Irbil.
Events overseas present Mr. Obama not only with policy challenges, but also with an opportunity to re-energize his depleted presidency. They also have implications for Republicans. As recently as last November, 52% of Republicans said that the U.S. does too much abroad; only 18% thought we do too little. But their sentiments have shifted dramatically. Now, the share of Republicans who think we do too little abroad has surged by 28 points, to 46%, while the share of those who think we do too much has fallen by 15 points, to 37%.
This sea change could reconfigure the race for the Republican presidential nomination. By advocating a less assertive stance overseas, with a narrower definition of core American interests, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has had the wind in his sails. But the wind has shifted, creating new opportunities for Republican aspirants—such as Florida Sen.Marco Rubio —who are preparing to run as the heirs of Ronald Reagan's muscular internationalism. We will soon find out whether he—or any other Republican—has what it takes to seize the moment.

2b) THE TROUBLE IS THAT OBAMA DOES HAVE A STRATEGY
Author: David P. Goldman

 Obama’s “we-don’t-have-a-strategy” gaffe was so egregious as to distract attention from the fact that he does indeed have a strategy, which has blown up in his face. His strategy is accommodation with Iran at all costs. As I wrote earlier this month, our ISIS problem derives from our Iran problem: Bashar Assad’s ethnic cleansing, which has displaced 4 million Syrians internally and driven 3 million out of the country, was possible because of Iranian backing. The refugee flood in Iraq and Syria gives ISIS an unlimited pool of recruits. Iraqi Sunni support for ISIS, including the participation of some of Saddam Hussein’s best officers, is a response to Iran’s de facto takeover of Iraq.
Now we have analysts as diverse as Karen Elliott House and Angelo Codevilla proposing that the Saudis should use their considerable air force to degrade ISIS. Unless the U.S. commits its own forces in depth, the Saudis never will do so (unless they are defending their own territory, which ISIS is not stupid enough to attack). It is a sad day when America’s appetite for a fight is so weak that we count on the Saudi monarchy to do our dirty work for us. Codevilla writes:
Day after day after day, hundreds of Saudi (and Jordanian) fighters, directed by American AWACS radar planes, could systematically destroy the Islamic State—literally anything of value to military or even to civil life. It is essential to keep in mind that the Islamic State exists in a desert region which offers no place to hide and where clear skies permit constant, pitiless bombing and strafing. These militaries do not have the excessive aversions to collateral damage that Americans have imposed upon themselves.
That is entirely correct: in that region, air power could drastically weaken ISIS, if not quite eradicate it. It certainly could contain its advances (as fewer than 100 American sorties already have in northern Iraq). But the underlying problem will remain: Iran’s depredations have triggered an economic and demographic catastrophe in the region, and that catastrophe has created the snowball effect we call ISIS.
It may be entirely academic to argue that America should bomb not only ISIS, but also Iran’s nuclear facilities and the bases of its Revolutionary Guards. No Republican candidate I know is willing to argue this in advance of elections. Nonetheless, I repeat what I wrote Aug. 12: “The region’s security will hinge on the ultimate reckoning with Iran.”
On Canada’s Sun TV earlier today, commentator Ezra Levant asked me what Obama will do now. My guess is: very little. The reported Egyptian-UAE attack on Libyan Islamists is a harbinger of the future. Other countries in the region will take matters into their own hands in despair at American paralysis. Russia and China will play much bigger roles. And the new Thirty Year War will grind on indefinitely.


2c) War Hawks Beating TomToms

 The war hawks in Washington are again beating the tom-toms.  Despite the fact that we’re $17.5 trillion in debt, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain are doing their best to goad President Obama into attacking the Islamic State In Syria (ISIS), which has now occupied most of northern Iraq.  Obama seems to want to be goaded into more war; he has – despite his announcement a few days ago that he has no real strategy – already ordered air strikes against ISIS.  His secretary of state, John Kerry, announced that ISIS “must be destroyed.”  And White House spokesman Josh Earnest announced that the U.S. would pursue ISIS beyond Iraq into Syria, “regardless of borders.”  (No mention was made of asking Congress to declare war, which that little inconvenience called “the Constitution” requires.)The ironies of all of this are most profound.  It was, after all, Mr. Obama who failed – perhaps refused – to negotiate a status of forces agreement with Iraq, withdrawing all American forces in 2011.  Despite the loss of 4,500 American lives in the Iraq war, Obama was quite comfortable leaving a power vacuum in Iraq that has now been filled by the ISIS jihadists.  Mr. Obama’s disdain for the lives of 4,500 American troops lost in Iraq can likely be explained by his characterization of the Iraq War as a “dumb” war when he campaigned for office in 2008.

But that’s when George Bush was president.  Now that Iraq is collapsing on his watch, Obama seems to think that what happens in Iraq requires an American military response.  The irony is compounded by the fact that Vice-President Biden, supposedly a major contributor to Obama’s foreign policy, once proposed that Iraq be partitioned.  Today, partition of Iraq is essentially what has happened; yet now we are to believe that this somehow profoundly undermines U.S. security.
Even more ironic – if not bizarre – is the fact that the Obama administration has called for the ouster of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad and covertly aided the Syrian insurgents.  Now, Obama and the Republican war hawks want war against Assad’s most effective opponents.

Perhaps it’s time to take a deep breath and ask, “Why should we care about ISIS?” and “How does a fundamentalist Islamic state in the barren desert of eastern Syria and northwestern Iraq affect American security interests?”  The answers are simple: we shouldn’t, and it doesn’t.

The casus belli of the war hawks seems to be the savage beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff by ISIS radicals.  While these murders are horrific indeed, they are no cause for war.  The plain fact is that the Islamic world is convulsed by violent, savage radicals from one end to the other.  Boko Haram in Nigeria kidnapped some 300 schoolgirls recently.  Libyan al-Qaeda militants burned our consulate and murdered our ambassador in Benghazi.  A few years back, an Islamic sharia court in Pakistan sentenced an 18-year-old girl to be gang-raped as punishment for being in the presence of a 12-year-old boy without a chaperone.  Palestinians in Gaza have kidnapped and murdered Israeli soldiers, and Pakistani militants shot dead nearly 300 people in India.  And, lest we forget, Foley and Sotloff are not the first Westerners beheaded by Islamic radicals – Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl met the same fate back in 2004.

(It’s worth noting that Sotloff, Berg, and Pearl were all American Jews.  Of course, you’re not supposed to notice that – you’re supposed to put one of those “Coexist” bumper stickers on your Subaru and nod in agreement when President Obama says, “The future does not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.”)

All of this is horrible stuff, but it’s difficult to see how any of it truly affects American security.  After all, the type of savagery that ISIS is willing to engage in doesn’t seem to be very different from what goes on routinely in Saudi Arabia, our chief “ally” in the region.  In Saudi Arabia, apostates and “witches” are sentenced to death, adulterers are flogged, and thieves are subject to “judicial amputation.”  Women must be veiled and chaperoned in public and are forbidden to drive.  It’s illegal to possess a Bible there.  Yet I don’t hear anyone proposing that the U.S. bomb Riyadh or Mecca.  (Maybe we should – after all, 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis.)  Our other main “ally” in the region is Pakistan, a seething cauldron of fanatics and assassins who harbored Osama bin Laden for a decade and possess dozens of nuclear warheads.  Iran, a theocratic dictatorship that puts teenage girls to death for “crimes against chastity,” shoots dissenters down in the streets, and threatened to “wipe Israel off the map,” is in the process of acquiring nuclear weapons.  The Obama administration has ruled out the use of force against Iran, and all but acquiesced to an Iranian A-bomb.  Why is it that the U.S. can live with violent Muslim radicals in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran, but not in the desert wasteland of northern Iraq?

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates once remarked that anyone who proposes sending a land army into Asia again ought to have his head examined.  Five times in the last century – six if you include the invasion of the Philippines in 1898 – the U.S. sent armies to Asia.  What have we gotten for it?  Sixty years after the Korean War, North Korea is still communist – but now has a crackpot dictator with nukes.  Vietnam has been communist for the last 40 years, and hasn’t threatened us at all in that time.  Why, then, did we lose 58,000 American lives there?  We inconclusively confronted three bloody Islamic insurgencies, in the Philippines, Afghanistan, and Iraq.  Iraq is now certainly far worse off than it was in 2003.

Of course, McCain and Graham argue that they’re talking about “only” air strikes and special forces, not “ground troops.”  (Precisely the same argument made regarding Vietnam in the early 1960s.  How’d that work out?)  And what would we do about pilots and spec ops troops lost or captured?  John McCain, of all people, should understand that when you “merely” engage in air strikes against a foreign enemy, they will try to shoot you down, capture, imprison, and torture you.  Perhaps McCain learned nothing during his five years of captivity in the “Hanoi Hilton.”  
Is ISIS truly a threat to the U.S.?  The following proposal should answer the question decisively: let’s renew the draft, invade the Middle East once again, and send Malia Obama, Alexandra Kerry, and Meghan McCain to lead the troops.  If you hear crickets chirping in Washington after that proposal is made, you’ll have your answer.
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3) While Nato swills champagne, it’s Putin who calls the shots
This week’s lavish Nato summit won’t change the fact that it has been outmanoeuvred and humiliated in Ukraine by a puffed-up Putin
By Simon Jenkins


More than 2,500 have been killed in the conflict in Ukraine, and relations between Russia and the west are more tense than at any time since the cold war

This week’s absurdly lavish Nato summit in Wales could not be worse timed. It will be a public display of the impotence of what preens itself as the world’s most powerful alliance. Vladimir Putin, its historic foe, has been allowed to engineer its humiliation. He lies, he bullies, he invades, he shrugs off sanctions. He knows Nato will not go to war. He can therefore gain a buffer zone of Russian interest along his borders with added domestic glory.

In the matter of detail, Putin is right. The Russian-speaking area of east Ukraine should have been granted internal autonomy after the coup that toppled the corrupt but elected Kiev regime backed by the east. The message is spreading across an ever-more integrated Europe, that dissident provinces are calmed only through greater self-government. Look at the Kosovans, the Basques, the Scots.

It is currently impossible to hear a speech or open a newspaper in which defence experts do not beat their breasts, bang their drums and demand “the west stand firm ... show resolve ... teach Russia a lesson ... show Putin who is boss.” They call for more economic sanctions – which have never seemed more counterproductive. They demand backing for Ukraine, aid for Kiev, support for other border states, more spearhead battalions and seemingly endless rapid reaction forces. But they all end up asserting “we cannot mean war” and “a diplomatic solution is inevitable”.

All intelligence out of Moscow says the same, that this bombast merely emboldens Putin. He can do what he wants in eastern Ukraine, because he has an army there and it enjoys widespread support among the Russian-speaking population. There is no question Putin has infringed the integrity of Ukrainian sovereignty. But so did America in its Latin American “sphere of influence” during the cold war. Meanwhile, Britain kowtowed to China for economic gain and Olympic glory when Beijing was treating Tibet far worse.

Foreign policy always involves double standards. The best policy is to avoid one’s own weaknesses and instead test those of one’s opponents. Peace and trade were slowly eroding the juggernaut of Russian power across eastern Europe. Now Nato’s pseudo-support for Kiev has played to Putin’s one strength: his support among Russian peoples along his borders. Kiev, the EU and Nato have played a dangerous game with Russia over Ukraine for years. Putin has laid down a marker for an armistice, talks on autonomy, one that is bound to look like a victory for him. It is for Kiev to pick it up. Nato can go on swilling champagne in Wales.
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4)- Steven Sotloff

IDC Herzliya expresses its deepest sorrow for the death of Steven Sotloff, who was cruelly and brutally murdered by the “Islamic State” (ISIS). Steven was kidnapped a year ago, in August 2013, near the Turkish-Syrian border, and was held hostage in Syria.

Steven, 31, was a graduate of Government studies at the Raphael Recanati International School at IDC Herzliya. Steven grew up in Florida, and before attending IDC he studied journalism at the University of Central Florida.

In his work as a freelance journalist Steven covered the Middle East, visiting countries such as Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Libya and Bahrain. His writing and articles were published in variety of places, including Time, The National Interest, Media Line and Foreign Policy.

Prof. Uriel Reichman, President and Founder of IDC Herzliya, expressed his horror at the brutal murder of Steven, and stated that “This Jihad Islamic group has by this act removed itself from the human race. The murder of Steven ignored the immunity civilized society grants even in times of war to journalists, whose goal is to protect the truth and freedom of expression.

Reichman further stated that “Terror stands against all values of freedom. We will continue to educate and fight against these phenomena, and will not abandon the values of freedom and tolerance. The murder of Steven again reminds us who it is humanity must fight against, but also teaches us the values of tolerance, humanity, the search for justice, and freedom of speech. The Daniel Pearl International Journalism Institute established at IDC Herzliya with the aim of promoting the importance of objective journalism even in areas of conflict will continue to serve as a center for free speech in journalism in the Middle East. IDC Herzliya mourns the tragic death of Steven Sotloff. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family”. 
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