Hezbollah’s ongoing missile and drone attacks on Israel are increasing the chances of a war on the northern front that would bring devastating destruction to Lebanon.
At least 11 Israelis were wounded, one critically, when two explosive-laden drones launched by Hezbollah slammed into the Israeli community of Hurfeish.
The two drones exploded within a few minutes of each other, with the second reportedly targeting rescue crews who arrived to treat those wounded by the first strike -- a tactic used numerous times by Hezbollah since it began attacking Israel eight months ago.
Prime Minister Netanyahu warned today that Israel is prepared for an "extremely powerful" response to the terror group's attacks.
“Anyone who thinks that they can harm us and that we will sit on our hands is sorely mistaken,” he said.
Following the attack, the IDF struck numerous Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.
“Iran is trying to choke us and encircle us and we are fighting back directly and with its proxies," the prime minister added. “We can’t accept the continuation of the situation in the north, it won’t continue. We will return the residents to their homes and bring back security."
Israeli President Isaac Herzog echoed the warning and asserted that Israel will respond to Hezbollah forcefully.
“The world needs to wake up and realize that Israel has no choice but to protect its citizens, and you shouldn’t be surprised when it does so with greater and greater strength and resolve. Don’t come to us with complaints when the situation gets out of control.”
Hezbollah is responsible for the war it is bringing to Lebanon. As Israel prepares for what would be a massive, costly, and extremely difficult war against Iran's terror army, America must stand by our ally and ensure Israel has the resources and diplomatic support it needs to win.
A “(Pr)eulogy”: President Carter and the Anti-Semitic Corruption of U.S. Policy
By Abraham Katsman
Carter may not have been the first president hostile toward Jews or Israel; but his was the first administration to allow that hostility to seriously skew policy to the self-inflicted detriment of America and its allies.
This column originally appeared in the Daily Caller (under a slightly different title).
It does not feel good to write an essay raising uncomfortable truths about a dying man; but sometimes, it’s more important to set the record straight. In the case of former President Jimmy Carter, such record-straightening is mandatory.
Carter, 99, is in the late stages of hospice care for cancer. Carter’s death will, inevitably, trigger a wave of glowing retrospectives on his life and presidency. As it should: we can honor a president’s service no matter how vehemently we criticize his policies.
But eulogistic revisionism will color those retrospectives, especially as they reflect on Carter’s Iran/Mideast policy, his “humanitarianism,” and his increasingly evident — and I choose my words carefully — pathological antisemitism and hatred of Israel.
Carter may not have been the first president hostile toward Jews or Israel; but his was the first administration to allow that hostility to seriously skew policy to the self-inflicted detriment of America and its allies.
Understanding Carter’s true legacy adds perspective to the Obama and Biden administrations’ decisions to step back from America’s once-principled, muscular, largely bipartisan Mideast policies and alliances. Today, tail-between-the-legs appeasement of America’s enemies and morally inverted treachery toward allies (particularly Israel) has become disturbingly normal among Democrats.
Carter, in a sense, was ahead of his time. Long before pro-Hamas encampments became all the rage at America’s elite universities, our 39th president was subordinating broader American interests to an obsessive antagonism toward Israel. His timing is unsettling in light of the precariousness of the times. These were the dark days of the Cold War, and shortly after the Munich Olympics massacre, the Yom Kippur War, the Arab Oil Embargo and the Entebbe hostage crisis.
The clearest example is Carter’s disastrous empowerment of Iranian Islamists, arguably the most self-destructive presidential decision of the past half-century. The effects still reverberate: the Islamic “Republic” and its proxies have by now killed U.S. servicemembers and citizens by the hundreds, sown regional chaos, destabilized our allies, tyrannically subjugated its own citizens and aligned itself with China and Russia. Of the numerous Mideast crises, few are without Iranian fingerprints.
To Israel, the threats Carter unleashed are existential: Islamist Iran is sworn to Israel’s destruction, and methodically pursues that goal. It devotes staggering resources to developing nuclear and ballistics capabilities, surrounds Israel with hundreds of thousands of missiles and sponsors the direct terrorist murder and suicide bombing (and kidnapping, and rape) of thousands of U.S.-allied Israelis.
Some excuse Carter’s role in the Islamic Republic’s rise, attributing it to naïveté on the president’s part. Don’t you believe it.
Carter’s Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism is not a charge to be made lightly. But it is increasingly clear that Carter has deeply anti-Semitic and profoundly anti-Zionist inclinations, and has for a long time. This realization strips away the veneer of his self-promoted image — the saintly, do-gooder human rights champion — and reveals true shabbiness underneath.
Carter famously taught Bible lessons in his church. But published transcripts reveal a distressing, raw, theological hostility to Jews and modern Israel. Carter views modern Israel through an odd New Testament tunnel-vision, obsessively focused on the refusal of powerful Roman-era Jews to accept Jesus as their messiah (instead, they “decided to kill him”) and the resulting forfeiture of Jewish national and covenantal rights. He projects disparaging characterizations of Jews from 2,000 years ago onto today’s Israel. He's taught that Jews despise Christians as “dogs.” Does that sound like any Sunday school you attended?
As President, Carter reneged on the Nixon and Ford administration commitments to not ask Israel to return to the pre-1967 lines. Carter’s high-pressure tactics and bias toward the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) made not only Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin irate, but also his predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin. At the United Nations, Carter’s representatives broke the taboo against meeting with the PLO and voted in the Security Council for a resolution calling Jerusalem “Arab territory.” The U.S. remained silent in the face of crude, anti-Semitic speeches in the General Assembly, and declined to veto a series of pernicious anti-Israel resolutions.
Journalists Andrew and Leslie Cockburn are harsh critics of Israel. But they recorded what Carter said when he heard that Begin had been advising his political opponents: “If I get back in … I’m going to f*ck the Jews.”
Presidential historian Tevi Troy notes that hostility to Israel and the American Jewish community were the only unifying positions on Carter’s bickering national security team. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski clashed hard on every issue but one: they were eye-to-eye, along with Carter, about being tough on Israel.
Vice President Mondale, an old-style liberal Zionist, complained that the administration’s relentless hostility toward Israel “made my life miserable.” Brzezinski scolded U.S. Jews: “You people better learn that you don’t dictate foreign policy.” Vance, according to Carter adviser Stu Eisenstat, was “impossible” and “very pro-Arab.”
Then there is Carter’s book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” Useless for sober students of policy, it is an exemplary text for malicious anti-Israel propagandists. When the terror-affiliated Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) mails your book to libraries across America, that is quite an endorsement.
According to Carter, the treatment Palestinians endure from Israel is “worse than it was [for blacks] in South Africa,” and their persecution even worse than the genocide in Rwanda (where a million civilians suffered rape, torture, limb-hacking and slaughter by machete-armed tribal militias). Carter’s rewrite of history is rife with one-sided, conveniently placed factual distortions, all painting Israel as the villain.
If countries could sue for libel, Israel might have hauled him into court. Alan Dershowitz’s 2008 “The Case Against Israel’s Enemies” devotes an entire chapter (plus 22 single-spaced pages of refutational footnotes) to eviscerating Carter’s dozens of gross misstatements and inversions of easily verifiable, fundamental historical facts. Accidental oversights, perhaps? Well, considering that every single one of Carter’s misrepresentations casts Israel in a far worse light than the truth, what are the odds?
The book oozed too much Israel-hatred even for Carter’s inner circle. The Carter Center saw 14 board members resign in protest, including former executive director Professor Kenneth Stein.
Carter’s response? He declined Dershowitz’s invitation to publicly debate the book. He did, however, claim that the “Jewish lobby” was responsible for the criticism, as well as “voices from Jerusalem dominating American media.” Very helpful, thanks.
Embarrassingly for a former U.S. president, Carter even became a shill for Hamas. He advocated US recognition of Hamas, and denied that Hamas refused to recognize Israel — notwithstanding the genocidal Hamas charter. He parroted former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s preposterous claim that the PLO “never advocated for the annihilation of Israel”, and he “wouldn’t equate Palestinian antipersonnel rockets with terrorism aimed at Israel’s people” — notwithstanding the genocidal PLO covenant. Incredibly, Carter wouldn’t condemn suicide bombings against Israel on moral grounds, but only as counterproductive tactics in the cause of Palestinian liberation.
Toxic hatred of Israel pulsates through the Carter record.
Empowering Islamist Iran
Iran had been ruled for decades by the Shah when Carter’s term began in 1977. A staunchly anti-communist, anti-Islamist ruler, the Shah was no democrat (what Persian Gulf leader was?), and wielded his feared secret police against his many enemies. Still, he was a steadfast U.S. ally and enemy of the Soviet Union with a powerful U.S.-equipped military. He had even supplied Israel and the U.S. with oil during the 1973-74 Arab Oil Embargo.
As allies go, the Shah’s Iran had a fairly solid record. Yet, as Islamist anti-Shah protests came to a boil, Carter facilitated the ascent to power of the Shah’s uber-Islamist antagonist, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a man with deadly designs on Israel and the West.
That, evidently, was no innocent miscalculation: the Carter administration was hardly oblivious to what Khomeinism meant for Israel or the United States. Serial revelations have since uncovered just how much about Khomeini — particularly his antisemitism — was already clear to the Carter administration as well as the extent to which the administration just flat-out lied about it.
Weeks before Carter green-lighted Khomeini’s triumphant return to Iran, the CIA had translated Khomeini’s most recent work, which made no effort to hide the cleric’s antipathy toward Israel and Jews. A publisher would later describe the book as “Khomeini’s Mein Kampf.” The Carter administration knowingly empowered a man who had written that “Jews are killing Islam in the name of religion;” that “we must try to liberate the lands of the Muslims in Palestine…;” and that “if we attain power” we “must make these traitors taste the worst torture for what they have done.”
It was also already known to the administration that Khomeini’s forces were coordinating with the PLO, who supplied weapons and operatives to Khomeini’s revolutionaries. (Khomeini would soon reward Arafat with Tehran’s Israeli Embassy compound, which the PLO still controls.)
Any other president in Israel’s first 60 years would have balked at Khomeini’s overt jihadism, antisemitism and menacing of Israel. Any president would have sought to stop the ominous rise of so obvious a threat to American interests and regional allies, and recognized the implications of empowering Islamists who considered Israel only the “Little Satan” — but America their “Great Satan.”
But Carter was not just any president. In spite of that knowledge, Carter and his team publicly touted Khomeini as a harmless, simple, religiously inspiring figure. “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint,” proclaimed Andrew Young, Carter’s ambassador to the UN; Khomeini is a “Gandhi-like figure,” announced William Sullivan, Carter’s U.S. Ambassador to Iran; Khomeini was a “holy man of impeccable integrity and honesty,” declared advisor James Bill.
A 2016 BBC Report on declassified State Department cables revealed Carter’s invaluable assistance to Khomeini. Carter defused opposition from Iran’s powerful, Western-aligned military, still loyal to the Shah and his prime minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, thus ensuring that there would be no military overthrow of Khomeini.
Now, at least two things are indisputable about Carter and his foreign policy team: first, that they were not stupid men; and second, that they loathed Israel — particularly once Menachem Begin became prime minister in 1977. Paving the way for Khomeini was not mere foreign policy negligence. The Carter team was not averse to knocking Israel down a peg or two, a precursor to the regional “strategic balancing” of Iran against Israel pursued by the Obama and Biden administrations.
And just like the Obama and Biden administrations, the Carter team’s animus toward Israel got the better of them, making them excessively downplay the dangers that a hostile, Islamist Iran presented to the region, to the Western world, and to America itself. The immediate result was Iranian “students” taking the U.S Embassy staff hostage; America has continued paying dearly for the blunder ever since.
Carter’s “Humanitarianism”
Carter never tired of proclaiming his faith-rooted fundamental commitment to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering. But in practice, Carter wasn’t so holy; just holier-than-thou.
Carter, in fact, benefitted magnificently from the largesse of the Islamic world’s worst human rights violators. Saudi Arabia (and not today’s liberalizing regime) bailed out Carter’s peanut farm in 1976 in a murky pre-election loan transaction (worth over $2.5 million in current dollars), using warehoused peanuts — which had apparently already been sold — as collateral. What, one wonders, did Carter promise in return?
The Carter Center has been funded primarily, as far as is transparent, by tens of millions of dollars from Arab despots (including those with “think tanks” promoting Holocaust denial and claims that “Zionists” — not Nazis — killed Europe’s Jews), and by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), history’s largest criminal banking and money laundering enterprise. Carter traveled with the slippery BCCI founder and chairman, Pakistani Agha Hasan Abedi, making introductions to the rich and powerful. BCCI was later discovered to have helped finance the Islamist takeover of Iran, the Saudi Bin Laden group, and assorted terror and narcotics operations.
Carter’s brother and business partner, Billy Carter, also managed to obtain election-year business loans of worth over $30 million (in today’s dollars) from a bank run by crony Bert Lance. Lance then became Carter’s director of OMB, until chased out of office on ethics charges. Lance ultimately was implicated for work done with … BCCI.
Billy Carter also squired a high-level group of Libyans (his “best friends”) around the US, visited Libya, and blamed the poor American perception of Libya on (what else?) “Jewish media.” Oh, plus he lied to the Justice Department when he denied receiving any compensation. President Carter later admitted to discussing confidential State Department cables with Billy prior to his first Libya trip.
As president, Carter recognized Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge as Cambodia’s legitimate rulers after their murder of millions. Carter sold out our Taiwanese allies, severing American diplomatic relations and simultaneously recognizing Communist China.
And in 1980, the oh-so-compassionate Carter administration took steps to extradite the dying Shah from his wandering exile to Iran as part of an exchange for U.S. hostages. The deal fell through, though not for lack of effort by the Carter team.
Carter maintained a close relationship with his “dear friend” and fellow humanitarian, Yasser Arafat, even after Arafat was discovered to have pocketed hundreds of millions of U.S. aid dollars. Carter laid a wreath on Arafat’s grave in 2008; he did not visit the graves of Arafat’s many victims, not even the U.S. citizens among them.
The Arafat friendship was no aberration. Carter was fascinated by, met with and spoke glowingly about Syrian butchers Haffez al-Assad and son Bashar; he met with Hamas heads, including Khaled Mashaal (over State Department objections), and called on the EU to break with the U.S. and recognize Hamas. He also successfully sought out meetings with the dictators of Cuba and North Korea.
His “dear friends” and benefactors shared two characteristics: they had abominable human rights histories; and they had lethal enmity toward Israel.
Carter’s True Legacy
We’ll hear plenty about Carter’s “legacy” focusing on the Camp David Agreements between Egypt and Israel. But while Carter deserves credit for hammering out the actual accords, the Egypt-Israel peace process was already underway due to both countries’ exasperation with Carter’s cultivation of a renewed role for the Soviets in regional diplomacy. Camp David thus came about in spite of administration policy, not because of it: Carter actually opposed Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem, impeded the negotiation process by insisting that no bilateral-only agreement be reached without “solving” the plight of the Palestinians, and pressured Israel and Egypt to participate in a multilateral peace conference with the Soviets, Syrians and PLO.
Carter’s real legacy is strewn chaotically throughout the region. He engineered the takeover of an allied oil-rich Iran by radical Islamists and Jew-hating jihadists who have exported religious terrorism ever since. The Khomeinist “Islamic Republic” likely could not have taken power without Carter’s acquiescence, assistance, and concealment of its rabid antisemitism.
Carter’s interconnected disdain for Israel and willingness to appease Iranian terror-sponsors at the expense of Israel’s security were catastrophic to U.S. interests and security. Unfortunately, the Obama and Biden administrations have reinstated that positioning.
Carter’s true legacy is Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis; it is Islamic Jihad and every other Islamist extremist group or militia founded or funded by Iran; it is the ruin and wreckage of Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and every other “host” nation in which Iran’s proxies carry out their reign of terror; it is the graves of thousands of America’s servicemen and the maimed bodies of thousands more, from the Beirut Marine barracks bombing to Iranian IEDs in Iraq; it is the carnage of nearly every suicide bombing and jihadist terror attack in the world; it is the thousands of Jews wounded, tortured, raped, mutilated and kidnapped on Oct. 7, including dozens of U.S. citizens; it is the trillions of defense dollars and millions of hours spent over 44 years to counter Iranian threats that Carter unleashed; it is the gaslighting provocateurs and useful idiots on our streets and campuses cheering on the Jew-killers supported by Iran.
So, when the military gives its 21-gun salute to President Carter, let’s show honest respect; but let’s also remember the harm he caused to America, and to a world now riddled with metastasizing anti-Americanism, antisemitism and Islamism. We should honor his service; but we mustn’t ignore his true legacy of dishonesty, disservice and dishonor.
Abe Katsman is an American lawyer and political commentator living in Israel. He serves as Counsel to Republicans Overseas Israel.
This column originally appeared in the Daily Caller
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The stress of Biden's inability to do anything is causing serious health and accelerating mental issues. He is sinking fast like our ship of State.
Will he even be able to debate?
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Biden Gets Caught With Embarrassing Hot Mic Moment During D-Day Ceremonies
By Nick Arama |
The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.
There were a lot of ceremonies for D-Day in Normandy on Thursday.
So that's a lot for Joe Biden, who normally has a very limited schedule — and doesn’t even seem up to that.
As I noted earlier, Biden seemed very tired, both speaking to David Muir from ABC and earlier on Thursday in the ceremonies.
He appeared to try to sit down when everyone else was standing in a truly weird moment. Then Jill hustled him out of there while French President Emmanuel Macron was still greeting the honored veterans.
Then the group went to Omaha Beach for the next segment of the ceremonies. When Biden got out of his SUV, he had another one of those weird moments, where he holds his arms out a little and does a little bit of a crouch as he appears very confused.
People speculated about what was going on there, but whatever it was, it was very strange and not normal, just like the earlier moment. And they need to acknowledge it. But we all know they won't.
Then he got caught on a hot mic as he was stumbling down the red carpet, embarrassingly telling Macron: "My advance team said I [gotta] be the first one to leave because I hold people up."
So that sounds like he wants to get out of there, just like Jill rushing him out of the earlier ceremony. Maybe he shouldn't be concerned about getting out of there when he's at such an important event. Sounds a bit like a "check the watch" kind of an inappropriate moment. Actually, if you're the last one to leave, you're not holding anyone up.
And hasn't all that been worked out in advance? And if you say that to Macron, that sort of sounds like you're saying, "Hey buddy, I'm more important than you in your own country, so let me go first." Macron just claps him on the back like, "Sure, Joe, whatever you say."
Also, it's rather ironic, given that Biden has made up all kinds of things about what former President Trump said or did in France — like not going to a cemetery because of weather — for Biden to talk about getting out of there first.
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Consul Update (Edited.)
- Over the past day, IAF fighter jets and additional aircraft struck dozens of terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip, including weapon storage facilities, military structures, terror tunnel shafts, and additional terrorist infrastructure. During one of the strikes, an IAF aircraft struck a military post from which terrorists previously fired toward Israeli territory.
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- At the same time, Hamas terrorists were struck using tank fire and aerial strikes. The strikes targeted terrorists from Hamas's Rockets Array unit.
- Yesterday (June 5), a terrorist cell fired mortar shells toward Kibbutz Kissufim and they fell in an open area. No injuries were reported. IAF fighter jets struck the launcher in the area of al-Farouk in central Gaza and eliminated the terrorist cell that fired the mortar shells.
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- The Givati Brigade under the command of the 162nd Division is conducting targeted operations in the Rafah area. The brigade’s troops eliminated armed terrorists who posed a threat, located tunnel shafts and destroyed terrorist infrastructure over the past day.
- During a targeted operation by the Tzabar Battalion, the troops located a weapons production workshop. Dozens of various weapons were found in the area, including rifles, grenades, munitions, and more. In addition, troops of the Givati Reconnaissance Battalion identified a house rigged with explosives in the area using a drone, and located a weapons cache containing dozens of mortar shells.
- IDF troops are continuing intelligence-based, targeted operations in the Rafah area. The troops located several terror tunnel shafts in the area and are continuing to operate to dismantle them. During a targeted raid on a military structure in the area, the troops located large quantities of weapons, including firearms, grenades, explosives, vests, and additional military equipment.
- IDF troops operating in the area of the security fence identified several suspects who approached the border from the Gaza Strip and moved toward Israel in an attempt to cross the security area in the area of Rafah.
- The troops engaged the terrorists who opened fire at them. The troops then returned fire at the terrorists.
- An IAF aircraft that monitored the terrorist cell struck the terrorists and eliminated two of them. Another terrorist was eliminated by means of tank fire shortly afterward.
- It should be emphasized that the terrorists did not cross the fence built along the Gaza Strip.
- The incident is under review by Israeli security authorities.
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- Over the past few hours, IAF fighter jets struck several military structures in the area of Aitaroun in southern Lebanon. Additionally, an IAF aircraft struck two Hezbollah terrorists that were identified operating in the area.
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IDF Troops Locate Terror Tunnel Shaft Inside Child's Room in Rafah |
The terror tunnel shaft located by IDF troops inside a child's room in Rafah. |
Over the past few weeks, the soldiers of the 828th Infantry Training School Brigade under the command of the 162nd Division have been conducting precise, intelligence-based, targeted operations in the Rafah area. The soldiers located weapons, eliminated terrorists and destroyed terrorist infrastructure in the area.
This week, the troops located a tunnel shaft inside a child's room in a house in Rafah. In addition, the troops identified six terrorists near a school in the area of the troops. The terrorists were eliminated by a UAV and tank fire.
Below is footage of the 828th Brigade's operational activity in Rafah: |
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The 828th Brigade Combat Team has completed its mission in the Rafah area and is now preparing for future operations. |
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Palestinian Terrorists Fire on IDF Troops From Inside School Compound |
Yesterday (June 5), IAF fighter jets, directed by IDF intelligence and the ISA, conducted a precise strike on a Hamas compound embedded inside a UN Palestinian Agency (UNRWA) school UNRWA in the area of Nuseirat, central Gaza.
Terrorists belonging to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) were identified operating within the school. Members of both terror organizations took part in the murderous Oct. 7th terror attack on southern Israel.
The terrorists directed attacks from the area of the school while exploiting it and using it as a shelter. Several terrorists who planned to carry out imminent terror attacks against IDF troops were eliminated in the strike.
Before the strike, a number of steps were taken to reduce the risk of harming uninvolved civilians during the strike, including conducting aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence information. |
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Spotlight on Terror: Iran's Ayatollah Regime |
THIS REPORT from Israel's Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center provides an overview of Iran's Ayatollah regime's recent terror activities. |
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America Can Choose to Be Great Again
By Kurt Schlichter ++++ Here’s How the Left Is Going to Lie to Voters Ahead of November
By Derek Hunter ++++ WSJ Reveals What's Happening to Biden Behind Closed Doors
By Matt Vespa ++++ The Hoover Institution Briefing On National Security
Welcome to the Hoover Institution’s briefing on national security. In this issue we are looking at anti-American alliances and how the United States can weather its current period of crisis; how to understand Putin’s Russia and strengthen our global partnerships to combat his ambitions; the dependency on missiles by non-Western actors; the need to combine deterrence with offensive capabilities; the US need to have a comprehensive policy to combat China; the Biden administration’s foreign policy failures; cultivating closer economic and political relationships with our neighbors; and the need for the US to reassess its Taiwan policies. Finally, we highlight a new collection on Royal Leonard, a pioneering American aviator and Chiang Kai-shek's pilot before World War II, from the Hoover Library & Archives.
FEATURED ANALYSIS
A Rising Tide of Foes In his analysis of the present security challenges faced by the United States, Botha-Chan Senior Fellow Phillip Zelikow describes the anti-American alliances of the past and offers contemporary comparisons, noting the defense-industrial cooperation among key countries today. In outlining the coalition that formed the Axis powers in World War II, “that core was looser and less harmonized than the one that exists now.” Zelikow is optimistic with regard to the US ability to engage in medium- and long-term conflict, but any near-term confrontation would strain our deficiency in weapons manufacture. Should it choose escalation against any of its foes, the US faces a weaker political, financial, and industrial base to do so than it did in the past. “The task for this period of crisis is to weather it with America’s core strengths and advantages preserved, or even enhanced.”
Putting Putin in His Place In his interview for the Wall Street Journal’s Potomac Watch podcast of May 6, Kleinheinz Senior Fellow Stephen Kotkin addresses the challenges of dealing with Putin’s Russia. If diplomacy is the overriding policy goal, it must be about leverage—and the threat of force must be taken seriously. Kotkin asserts that in our dealings with Putin, we have not understood Russia, nor have we answered the question of illiberal regimes’ place in a liberal world order. For Putin, the goal is the survival of his regime, and this is achieved by simply eliminating all alternatives. Our goal should be “cultivation of the possibility of political alternatives in their space.” Regarding Ukraine, Kotkin asserts that we need an endgame, and that goal should be Western unity. Further, he argues, a significant threat has emerged in the sharing of highest-end military technology between Moscow and Beijing, while our own defenses need to be brought up to speed.
Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket Hoover Fellow Jacquelyn Schneider discusses the increased employment of missiles by non-Western actors and posits: “Why missiles now? And will they change who fights and wins wars?” Iran has launched missiles into Israel, Houthi rebels have used them to attack shipping in the Middle East, and Russia has employed them to destroy Ukrainian cities and vital energy facilities. Missiles were developed during World War II and have been used by great powers over the years, but with the advancement of missile technology, it has become the weapon of choice by smaller players as well. Schneider cautions, “Right now the advantage is with states such as Iran, Russia, and North Korea who can raise costs for defenders while staying under a threshold of war.” But ultimately, “they may inadvertently start a war they don’t have the arsenal to win.”
Take Off the Kid Gloves National Security Visiting Fellow Jakub Grygiel argues that in the face of aggression on multiple fronts worldwide, attempts by the Western powers to control escalation have backfired. Playing a strictly defensive game has invited more aggression. Even when the strategy has been successful, it has come at a significant financial expense to the defender. For Israel, the price tag to defend against Iran’s recent drone and missile onslaught was tenfold what it cost Tehran. As for Russian aggression, “The unmistakable message to Moscow is that Washington and other Western capitals would rather see Ukraine under military duress than Russia under attack.” The result of this strategy is that “by limiting Russia’s and Iran’s risks and costs, it lowers the bar for further aggression.” As the author asserts, “for deterrence to be restored or strengthened, these states have to be able to retaliate with offensive actions.”
Carry a Big Stick In looking at America’s response to China’s behavior, Distinguished Visiting Fellow Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher note that the present short-term thaw does not negate the need for a long-term “victory over their malevolent strategy.” The authors offer a detailed prescription based on the premise that, the “US should not manage competition with China, it should win it.” Beijing’s goal, they say, is to undermine the Western democratic order, and our complacency fuels their ambitions. They write that the Biden administration’s foreign policy has helped create the worldwide chaos that is “a useful development” for China. The authors liken our present policy to that of detente with the Soviet Union in the 1970s: “Tearing down . . . the ‘Great Firewall’ of China must become as central to Washington’s approach today as removing the Berlin Wall was for Reagan’s.” For China, control of information via the internet is key to its ideological campaign “to set the terms of global discourse.”
Keeping an Eye on the Ball In analyzing the shifting geopolitical landscape since the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, Distinguished Visiting Fellow Josef Joffe describes the realignment of American politics as the Biden administration shapes its policies with an eye to the November elections. In Joffe’s assessment, national security concerns “dwarf the [presidential campaign] claims of the Democratic Left as well as the weight of fifteen electoral votes held by Michigan.” Not only has Biden’s two-state solution been “stillborn” since 1993, but recent polls cited by the author show that a majority of Americans “think that Israel has ‘valid’ reasons to fight Hamas.” Far more consequential to the region and the West is “Tehran’s grasping theocracy” and the other players of the “Great Game, 2.0,” China and Russia. Joffe systematically tracks events since October 7 to arrive at one conclusion: “The big profiteer is Iran.” Only when the Biden administration looks past election-year politics will that equation shift.
It's Time to Re-seed the Garden George Shultz’s first two foreign trips as secretary of state were to Canada and Mexico, exhibiting Shultz’s belief that “foreign policy starts in your own neighborhood,” writes Hoover Fellow Joseph Ledford. In his essay, Ledford queries why the US has abandoned that foreign policy maxim, saying, “American policymakers can learn from Reagan and Shultz’s neighborhood policy.” Reagan actively encouraged economic and political freedom in the Western Hemisphere, which impacted Soviet influence in the region. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are actively engaged in our hemisphere, Ledford asserts, and America must confront these advances. As Ledford concludes, “Ensuring stability, stimulating development, and fostering friendly relations in the Western Hemisphere is fundamental to the national security, economy, and global standing of the United States.”
Treat Them Like Grown Ups Enacted 45 years ago, the Taiwan Relations Act requires updating, argue Robert Alexander Mercer Visiting Fellow Miles Maochun Yu and Mike Pompeo, to address the reality of today’s independent and democratic Taiwan. The legislation, which curbs executive action by requiring congressional input, emerged as a bipartisan rebuke to President Carter’s abrupt abandonment of official ties to Taiwan in favor of Communist China. At the time, it failed to address either Beijing’s true ambitions or the strategic importance of Taiwan. Since then, US-China-Taiwan relations have become far more complex and Taiwan has developed “into a mature and sovereign nation.” Therefore, “the US must reassess its strategy toward Taiwan and China.” ++++
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