I love the guy - Tom Sowell!

Zeihan discusses the Russian oil deal and sees a trap. (See 1 below.)


Hamas miscalulated. They thought Israel would cave and not seek to wipe them out. Big miscalculation. (See 2 below.)

Somalians have become equivalent of "rent a pirate" and have been hired by Iran in the hope of re-arming Hamas.(See 3 below.)

Late, nevertheless Olmert has gotten the message and turns a deaf ear to Barak. (See 4 below.)

Update on fighting in Gaza. Senior IDF official asks to let us finish the job. (See 5and 5a below.)

Tom Sowell writes about ugly realities. He makes the point Israel traded land for peace but never got the end of their bargain - peace. Sowell advises Israel: 'take back the land.'

I love the guy. If only he were president.(See 6 below.)

Kissinger sees current crisis can be turned into oportunity. America's pre-imminence has been clipped and thus, other nations must begin to determine what their own role should be. Meanwhile, America must return to a more historical approach and role. (See 7 below.)

Dennis Prgaer offers clarification for those who equate Israel with Hamas. The difference is so obvious it is foolish to try.(See 8 below.)

Obama and Iran. Maybe we will learn what Obama learned at Harvard Law School. (See 9below.)

Dick



1) The Russian Gas Trap
By Peter Zeihan

At the time of this writing, the natural gas crisis in Europe is entering its 13th day.

While the topic has only penetrated the Western mind as an issue in recent years, Russia and Ukraine have been spatting about the details of natural gas deliveries, volumes, prices and transit terms since the Soviet breakup in 1992. In the end, a deal is always struck, because Russia needs the hard currency that exports to Europe (via Ukraine) bring, and Ukraine needs natural gas to fuel its economy. But in recent years, two things have changed.

First, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004 brought to power a government hostile to Russian goals. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko would like to see his country integrated into the European Union and NATO; for Russia, such an evolution would be the kiss of death.

Ukraine is home to most of the infrastructure that links Russia to Europe, including everything from pipelines to roads and railways to power lines. The Ukrainian and Russian heartlands are deeply intertwined; the two states’ industrial and agricultural belts fold into each other almost seamlessly. Eastern Ukraine is home to the largest concentration of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers anywhere in the world outside Russia. The home port of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is at Sevastopol on Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, a reminder that the Soviet Union’s port options were awful — and that Russia’s remaining port options are even more so.

Ukraine hems in the south of European Russia so thoroughly that any hostile power controlling Kiev could easily threaten a variety of core Russian interests, including Moscow itself. Ukraine also pushes far enough east that a hostile Kiev would sever most existing infrastructure connections to the Caucasus. Simply put, a Ukraine outside the Russian sphere of influence transforms Russia into a purely defensive power, one with little hope of resisting pressure from anywhere. But a Russified Ukraine makes it possible for Russia to project power outward, and to become a major regional — and potentially global — player.


The second change in recent years is that Russia now has an economic buffer, meaning it can tolerate a temporary loss in natural gas income. Since Vladimir Putin first came to power as prime minister in 1999, every government under his command has run a hefty surplus. By mid-2008, Russian officials were regularly boasting of their $750 billion in excess funds, and of how Moscow inevitably would soon become a global financial hub. Not surprisingly, the 2008-2009 recession has deflated this optimism to some extent. The contents of Moscow’s piggy bank already have dropped by approximately $200 billion. Efforts to insulate Russian firms and protect the ruble have taken their financial toll, Russia’s 2009 budget is firmly in deficit, and all talk of a Russian New York is on ice.

But Russia’s financial troubles pale in comparison to its neighbors’ problems — not in severity, but in impact. Russia is not a developed country, or even one that, like the states of Central Europe, is seriously trying to develop. A capital shortage simply does not damage Russia as it does, say, Slovakia. And while Russia has not yet returned to central planning, rising government control over all sources of capital means the Russia of today has far more in common economically with the Soviet Union than with even the Russia of the 1990s, much less the free-market West. In relative terms, the recession actually has increased relative Russian economic power — and that says nothing about other tools of Russian power. Moscow’s energy, political and military levers are as powerful now as they were during the August 2008 war with Georgia.

This is a very long-winded way of saying that before 2004, the Russian-Ukrainian natural gas spat was simply part of business as usual. But now, Russia feels that its life is on the line, and that it has the financial room to maneuver to push hard — and so, the annual ritual of natural gas renegotiations has become a key Russian tool in bringing Kiev to heel.

And a powerful tool it is. Fully two-thirds of Ukraine’s natural gas demand is sourced from Russia, and the income from Russian natural gas transiting to Europe forms the backbone of the Ukrainian budget. Ukraine is a bit of an economic basket case in the best of times, but the global recession has essentially shut down the country’s steel industry, Ukraine’s largest sector. Russian allies in Ukraine, which for the time being include Yushchenko’s one-time Orange ally Yulia Timoshenko, have done a thorough job of ensuring that the blame for the mass power cuts falls to Yushchenko. Facing enervated income, an economy in the doldrums and a hostile Russia, along with all blame being directed at him, Yushchenko’s days appear to be numbered. The most recent poll taken to gauge public sentiment ahead of presidential elections, which are anticipated later this year, put Yushchenko’s support level below the survey’s margin of error.

Even if Yushchenko’s future were bright, Russia has no problem maintaining or even upping the pressure. The Kremlin would much rather see Ukraine destroyed than see it as a member of the Western clubs, and Moscow is willing to inflict a great deal of collateral damage on a variety of players to preserve what it sees as an interest central to Russian survival.

Europe has been prominent among these casualties. As a whole, Europe imports one-quarter of the natural gas it uses from Russia, and approximately 80 percent of that transits Ukraine. All of those deliveries now have been suspended, resulting in cutoffs of various degrees to France, Turkey, Poland, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Austria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia and Bulgaria — in rough order of increasing severity. Reports of both mass power outages and mass heating failures have been noted in the countries at the bottom half of this list.

A variety of diversification programs have put Europe well on its way to removing its need for Russian natural gas entirely, but these programs are still years from completion. Until then, not much can be done for states that use natural gas for a substantial portion of their energy needs.

Unlike coal, nuclear energy or oil, natural gas can be easily shipped only via pipeline to previously designated points of use. This means the decision to link to a supplier lasts for decades and is not easily adjusted should something go wrong. Importing natural gas in liquid form requires significant skill in cryogenics as well as specialized facilities that take a couple of years to build (not to mention a solid port). Alternate pipe supply networks, much less power facilities that use different fuels, are still more expensive and require even more time. All European countries can do in the immediate term is literally rely upon the kindness of strangers until the imbroglio is past or a particularly creative solution comes to mind. (Poland has offered several states some of its share of Russian natural gas that comes to it via a Belarusian line.) Some Central European states are taking the unorthodox step of recommissioning mothballed nuclear power plants.

Because Russia’s goal in all this is to crack Kiev, there is not much any European country can do. But one nation, Germany, is certainly trying. Of the major European states, Germany is the most dependent upon Russian resources in general, and energy in particular.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Putin spent three nights this past week on the phone with each other discussing the topic, and the pair has a two-day summit set for later this week. The Germans have three primary reasons for cozying up to the Russians at a time when it seems they should be as angry as anyone else in Europe.

First, because most of the natural gas Germany gets from Russia passes not through Ukraine, but through Belarus — and because the Russians have not interrupted these secondary flows — the Germans desperately want to avoid rocking the boat and politicizing the dispute any more than necessary. The Germans need to engage the Russians in discussion, but unlike most other players, they can afford not to be accusatory, because they have not been too deeply affected so far. (Like all the other Europeans, the Germans are working feverishly to diversify their energy supplies away from Russia, but while Berlin can keep the lights on, it doesn’t want to ruffle any more feathers than it needs to.)

Second, as any leader of Germany would, Merkel recognizes that if current Russian-Western tensions devolve into a more direct confrontation, the struggle would be fought disproportionately with German resources — and perhaps even on German soil. Germany is the closest major power to Russia and would therefore be the focus of any major action, Russian or Western, offensive or defensive. France, the United Kingdom and the United States enjoy the buffer of distance — and in the case of the last two, a water buffer to boot.

German national interest, therefore, is not to find a way to fight the Russians, but to find a way to live with them. Germany traditionally has been Russia’s largest trading partner. Every time the two have clashed, it has been ugly, to say the least. In the German mind, if Ukraine (or perhaps even adjusting the attitude of Poland) is what is necessary to make the Russians feel secure, so be it.

Third, Germany has a European angle to think about. To put it bluntly, Merkel is always on the lookout for any means of easing Germany back into the international community with a foreign policy somewhat more sophisticated than the “I’m sorry” that has reigned since the end of World War II. After the war, France successfully hijacked German submission and used German economic strength to achieve French political desires. Since the Cold War’s end, Germany has slowly wormed its way out of that policy straitjacket, and the natural gas crisis raises an interesting possibility. If Merkel’s discussions with Putin result in restored natural gas flows, then not only will Russia see Germany as a partner, but Germany might win goodwill from European states that no longer have to endure a winter without heat.

Still, it will be a tough sell: the European states between Germany and Russia have always lived in dread that one power or the other — or, God forbid, both — will take them over. But Germany is clearly at the center of Europe, and all of the states affected by the natural gas crisis count Germany as their largest trading partner. If Merkel can muster sufficient political muscle to complement Germany’s economic muscle, the resulting image of strength and capability would go a long way toward cementing Berlin’s re-emergence.

2) Israeli forces storm Gaza City neighborhood
By IBRAHIM BARZAK and CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA,

On the diplomatic front, Egyptian mediators pushed Hamas to accept a truce proposal and, in a hopeful sign, Israel sent its lead negotiator to Cairo for "decisive" talks on a cease-fire. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also headed for the region to join diplomatic efforts.

Israeli military officials say that depending on what happens with what they described as "decisive" talks in Cairo, Israel will move closer to a cease-fire or widen its offensive. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing sensitive policy matters.

Asked if Israel's war aims had been achieved, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said: "Most of them, probably not all of them."

Israeli troops now have the coastal city of 400,000 virtually surrounded as part of an offensive launched Dec. 27 to end years of Palestinian rocket attacks on its southern towns.

Early Wednesday an Israeli warplane fired a missile at the former Gaza city hall, used as a court building in recent years, witnesses said. The 1910 structure was destroyed and many stores in the market around it were badly damaged, they said.

Palestinian medical officials reported at least 42 deaths from the conflict on Tuesday throughout Gaza.

The Israeli military said three soldiers were wounded, including an officer who was searching a northern Gaza house when a bomb exploded.

Palestinian hospital officials say more than 940 Palestinians, half of them civilians, have been killed in the fighting. A total of 13 Israelis, 10 of them soldiers, have died.

Palestinian rocket fire has dropped significantly since the offensive was launched. Some 15 rockets and mortar shells were fired toward Israel Tuesday, causing no injuries, the army said.

Fireballs and smoke plumes from Israeli bombing have become a common sight in the territory of 1.4 million people, who are effectively trapped because of blockaded border crossings. Recent fighting has focused on Gaza City, where Israeli soldiers could be increasingly exposed to the treacherous conditions of urban warfare.

The operation in Tel Hawwa neighborhood, one mile (1.5 kilometers) southeast of downtown, matched fast-paced forays into other areas designed to avoid Israeli casualties. Residents said troops entered overnight, reconnoitered the area, and then pulled back to more secure positions.

One Israeli military officer told The Associated Press that Hamas fighters often operate in small groups of up to four and have largely refrained from confronting Israeli troops at close range.

"Their strategy has mainly been to use lots of booby-traps, shooting guns and missiles from afar," the Israeli officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

"Soldiers are taking lots of precautions, they are being more careful than the army has ever been before in any war," he said. "Soldiers shoot at anything suspicious, use lots of firepower, and blast holes through walls to move around."

Gabi Ashkenazi, chief of staff of the Israeli military, said Hamas militants also have put on Israeli military uniforms to try to approach troops and carry out suicide bombings.

Hamas, which is backed by Iran, cannot hope to score a battlefield victory over the powerful Israeli military, but mere survival could earn it political capital in the Arab world as a symbol of resistance to the Jewish state. Lebanon's Hezbollah, another Iran-backed group, largely achieved that goal in its 2006 war with Israel.

On Tuesday, a Gaza resident said he saw Hamas militants in civilian clothing firing rockets from the southeastern corner of the territory. He spoke by telephone and requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Israel says it will push forward with the offensive until Hamas ends all rocket fire on southern Israel, and there are guarantees the militant group will stop smuggling weapons into Gaza through the porous Egyptian border.

Hamas has said it will only observe a cease-fire if Israel withdraws from Gaza.

"We will not allow our enemy to gain any political achievement from this war on Gaza," said Salah Bardawil, a Hamas envoy in Egypt.

Much of the ongoing diplomacy focuses on an area of southern Gaza just across the Egyptian border that serves as a weapons smuggling route, making Egypt critical to both sides in any deal.

Israel wants smuggling tunnels along the border sealed and monitored as part of any deal, and has bombed suspected tunnel sites throughout its campaign.

One resident, Khader Mussa, said he fled his house while waving a white flag as Israeli forces advanced. He spent the night huddling in the basement of a relative with 25 other people, including his pregnant wife and his parents.

"Thank God we survived this time and got out alive from here. But we don't know how long we'll be safe in my brother's home," Mussa, 35, said by telephone.

The Israeli military said it carried out dozens of airstrikes on squads of gunmen, rocket launching sites and smuggling tunnels along the Egyptian border.

The Gaza fighting has raised tensions around the region and galvanized anger toward Israel throughout the Arab world. On Tuesday, at least one gunman opened fire at an Israeli army patrol along the desert border between Israel and Jordan, the military said. There were no casualties, and Jordan said the claim was "baseless."

In the southern West Bank city of Hebron, the Israeli military said, a Palestinian was shot and injured after he tried to grab a gun from an Israeli soldier whose patrol stopped him for questioning. The man later died, according to an Associated Press reporter who saw his body.

Humanitarian concerns have increased amid the onslaught although some aid is getting through to Gaza during daily three-hour lulls declared by Israel to allow delivery of supplies.

In Brussels, the European Union's aid chief said Israel has not respected international humanitarian aid during the war. In Oslo, Norway, the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, Karen Abu Zayd, urged the Israeli army to do more to allow supplies into the besieged area.

"We are getting a lot of help from the Israeli Defense Forces on the one crossing that's open to get more and more trucks in, but it's just not enough," she said.

3) Iran recruits Somali pirates to replenish Hamas arms stocks
Somali pirates help fellow Islamists

Military sources reveal a secret war waged by the US, Israel and Egypt to shut down Iran's serpentine maritime routes through the Red Sea and Suez for refilling Hamas' depleted arsenal by sea. After Hamas lost an estimated 60 percent of its weapons stocks to Israeli bombardments, Iran enlisted Somali pirates to step up the flow of smuggled hardware to Gaza. Tehran is rearming the Palestinian Islamists at top speed to persuade them to carry on the war against Israel and not surrender to Egypt's ceasefire terms.

According to military sources, the Iranian sealift is conducted along three routes:

1. The Iranian segment: Iranian freighters from the Persian Gulf port of Bandar Abbas sail to the Gulf of Suez. Some are intercepted by the American warships patrolling the sea against Somali pirates. US Marines board the ships and confiscate any weapons cargoes in their holds. But not all are caught; some of the Iranian freighters, especially the small vessels, escape the anti-piracy net.

Western intelligence informants report that in the past week, Iranian agents hired Somali pirates to rendezvous with their freighters before they entered the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea, offload the weapons and carry them in small Somali craft to Eritrea. The pirates have strong ties with Eritrea.

The Iranian freighters sail straight back to Bandar Abbas to reload.

2. The Eritrean route: Some of the Iranian arms freighters put into the Eritrean port of Assab to unload the cargoes, which are then consigned to Sudan, where the authorities turn a blind eye, for transit to southern Egypt. At that point, they are picked up by Egyptian smuggling gangs and carried by boat to Sinai shores.

3. The European route: The Balkan ports at Montenegro and Croatia are the starting points for freighters laden with containers carrying weapons for Hamas - mostly mortars and anti-air and anti-tank missiles. They head for the Suez Canal where they drop their cargoes overboard for waiting pirates' boats to collect.

Iran's seaborne arms corridor to Hamas depends heavily on three Sinai Bedouin tribes: The Tarabin, which controls areas adjoining the Israeli and Gazan borders; the Tiyaha, which rule central Sinai; and the Azazmeh, whose wide spread covers northern Sinai, the Israeli Negev, Jordan and Syria. They form a human chain to relay the Iranian shipments, including heavy Grad rockets, into the Gaza Strip.

4) Olmert ignoring calls from Barak, Livni for immediate Gaza truce
By Aluf Benn, Amos Harel, Anshel Pfeffer and Avi Issacharoff




Defense Minister Ehud Barak is promoting a week-long "humanitarian cease-fire" in the Gaza Strip. In contrast, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert believes the military operation still has not achieved its goals.

Olmert is delaying a meeting with senior ministers in an effort to allow the military operations in Gaza to continue.


On Tuesday, Olmert did not meet with his "troika" - Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, both of whom support a cease-fire. On Wednesday, he will not convene the political-security cabinet to discuss whether the operations should go on.

Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces continued advancing from the northern Gaza Strip toward Gaza City. It is also concentrating forces to potentially deepen the ground offensive.

In northern Gaza, an officer was seriously injured by an improvised bomb. Two other soldiers suffered light to moderate injuries.

In Tuesday's fighting, the IDF killed at least 50 Palestinians, putting the total body count from the 18 days of Operation Cast Lead at 970. Many of the dead are civilians.

The IDF also destroyed a tunnel built by Hamas close to the fence, near Nahal Oz.

The head of the political-security bureau at the Defense Ministry, Amos Gilad, has postponed a visit to Cairo for talks on a cease-fire, and will probably depart for Egypt only on Wednesday.

Responding to a call by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for an immediate cease-fire, Barak said on Tuesday, "We respect the request of the UN Secretary General and are following developments with the Egyptian initiative. However, the fighting is continuing."

A senior political source explained on Tuesday that even though Olmert holds a minority view in the troika, he holds the power because he decides when cabinet meetings will be held, and sets the agenda. The troika is a monitoring and coordinating body, and lacks the authority to broaden or end IDF operations. This can be done only by a cabinet vote.

Barak believes Operation Cast Lead has achieved its main objectives, first and foremost bolstering Israel's deterrent power. He does not believe continuing the offensive will bring further gains, but rather only operational complications and casualties.

On this point, Barak accepts the view of GOC Southern Command Major General Yoav Galant that expanding the operation and occupying Gaza would require a lengthy deployment - possibly up to a year.

Barak is proposing the IDF cease its fire, hold its positions and keep the reservists under arms, and thus negotiate with Egypt and the United States on an arrangement that would include preventing arms smuggling into the Strip.

The defense minister is concerned that when U.S. President-elect Barack Obama takes office next Tuesday, he will demand that Israel immediately cease the operation. A tough UN Security Council resolution is also a risk.

Livni insists Israel must end the operation without an agreement, enjoying its refreshed deterrence against Hamas. She also believes the mission cannot obtain any more major gains.

Meanwhile, senior IDF officers expressed concern on Tuesday that continuing the fighting would increase the number of casualties.

Also on Tuesday, an Iranian vessel bearing an estimated 200 tons of humanitarian supplies turned away from Gaza. Iran says Israel forced the vessel away; Israel says it took no action against it.

5) Incessant fighting in Gaza
By Hanan Greenberg

More than 40 gunmen killed by IDF forces Tuesday; Air Force strikes 50 targets throughout Strip. 'Our job is to continue to strike Hamas, and that's precisely what we're doing,' army official says



While the IDF is beginning to sense that Operation Cast Lead is nearing its end, forces on the ground had one of their most successful days Tuesday since the offensive in Gaza began some two-and-a-half weeks ago.


Palestinian Death Toll



Medical officials in Strip say more than 940 Palestinians killed in Israeli offensive. Deep ground incursion made it impossible for residents to reach Martyrs Cemetery in Gaza City; gravedigger: Gaza is all a graveyard
Full Story





"On the ground no one speaks of end dates, but it's safe to say that the forces can sense that the operation is coming to a close," a military official said, "on the other hand, we are well-aware that the situation can change and that the operation will go on, so our job is to continue to strike Hamas, and that's precisely what we're doing."



According to the IDF, more than 40 gunmen were killed in Gaza on Tuesday in a number of gun battles and encounters with army forces, as well as from aerial strikes and artillery fire. During the day Israeli forces discovered anti-aircraft weaponry and other arms in a mosque located in the Zeitun neighborhood on the outskirts of Gaza City, as well as an underground tunnel that was dug on the Palestinians side of the Nahal Oz fuel terminal, which was meant to be used to carry out a terror attack in Israel.



Army officials said the tunnel was dug before the war began as part of Hamas' preparations for a conflict with Israel, and suspect there are more tunnels in the area.



Following the deployment of reserve soldiers in Gaza, regular army forces were freed up to conduct raids around Gaza City, during which several clashes with Palestinian gunmen were reported.



During a tour of IDF positions in Gaza Tuesday night, Southern Command Chief Major General Yoav Galant and Golani Brigade commander Colonel Avi Peled were briefed by Engineering Corps forces on the numerous underground tunnels and booby-trapped homes they have uncovered.



According to the forces, the explosive devices placed in numerous Palestinian homes throughout the various neighborhoods are connected in such a way that the detonation of one bomb can simultaneously set off the rest.



Soldiers said RPG launchers were found in many homes and that terrorists were carrying large amounts of explosives on their bodies.



Also on Tuesday, Israel's Air Force struck more than 50 targets in Gaza, including some 25 tunnels and eight rocket launching sites. In a joint operation with ground forces, helicopters hit 10 terror cells.



On Monday night an IDF officer was critically injured after an explosive device blew up inside a booby-trapped building in northern Gaza. Two other soldiers were lightly-to-moderately wounded in the incident. Forces later found weapons at the place. Two more soldiers sustained mild injuries Tuesday afternoon when gunmen opened fire at an army bulldozer in south Gaza.

5a) Senior official: Don't put gun to our head
By Roni Sofer


Israel does not face any pressure to complete Gaza operation, campaign will continue until all objectives are secured, senior official tells Ynet. Israel does not wish to see Gaza op end with a Lebanon-style truce deal, he says.


As Operation Cast Lead enters its 19th day, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has made it clear that Israel does not face any pressure to end the campaign, a senior official in Jerusalem says.


"Nobody should stand there with a stop watch or try to put a gun to our head," the official told Ynet Tuesday night.


"We don't want to see another Resolution 1701 like we did in Lebanon," he said after a day of discussions at the Prime Minister's Office. "We don't want to find ourselves tomorrow, in two days, or in five or 10 years facing a terror organization armed with missiles that cover the whole of Israel. A unilateral withdrawal on our part at this time won't guarantee that this won't happen."


"We are seeking guarantees, assurances, and for things to be clear," the official said. "The prime minister defined two objectives – an end to Hamas fire and terror, and an end to the organization's military build-up. As long as these objectives are not secured, we will not be under any pressure (to end the operation).)"


The senior official added that Israel was no longer talking about an exit strategy.


"We are not seeking an exit, but rather, success," he said. "As Olmert defined it, what we need here is a strategy of success, regardless of how much time it takes."



Turning his attention to Barack Obama's move to the White House next Tuesday, the official said this was not one of the considerations weighed by Olmert at this time.




"The prime minister is not in touch with the president-elect or his people as long as there is another serving American president" he said.



Finally, officials at the PM's Office declined to elaborate on the tensions vis-à-vis Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Earlier Tuesday, the State Department said that comments made by Olmert in respect to Rice were "100% not true." However, officials in Jerusalem insisted that Olmert's version of events was accurate, claiming that Rice misled Israel ahead of last week's Security Council vote on a Gaza ceasefire.

6) Pretty Talk and Ugly Realities
By Thomas Sowell

No phrase represents more of a triumph of hope over experience than the phrase "Middle East peace process." A close second might be the once-fashionable notion that Israel should "trade land for peace."


Since everybody seems to be criticizing Israel for its military response to the rockets being fired into their country from the Gaza strip, let me add my criticisms as well. The Israelis traded land for peace, but they have never gotten the peace, so they should take back the land.


Maybe a couple of generations of Palestinians in Gaza living in peace under Israeli occupation and a couple of generations of the occupation troops squelching the terrorists — "militants" for those of you who are squeamish — would set up conditions where the Palestinians would be free to vote on whether they would like to remain occupied or to have their own state — minus terrorists and their rockets.


Casualty totals alone should be enough to show that the Palestinian people are the biggest losers from the current situation, where the terrorists among them, firing rockets into Israel, can bring devastating retaliatory strikes.


Why don't the Palestinians vote for some representatives who would make a lasting peace with Israel? Because any such candidates would be killed by the terrorists long before election day, so nobody volunteers for that dangerous role.


We don't know what the Palestinians really want — and won't know as long as they are ruled by Hamas, Hezbollah and the like.


Whatever the benefits of peace for the Palestinian population, what are the terrorists going to do in peacetime? Become librarians and furniture salesmen?


So-called "world opinion" has been a largely negative factor in this situation. Nothing is easier than for people living in peace and safety in Paris or Rome to call for a "cease fire" after the Israelis retaliate against people who are firing rockets into their country.


The time to cease fire was before the rockets were fired.


What do calls for "cease fire" and "negotiations" do? They lower the price of launching attacks. This is true not only in the Middle East but in other parts of the world as well.


During the Vietnam war, when American clergymen were crying out "Stop the bombing!" they paid little attention to the fact that bombing pauses made it easier for North Vietnam to move more ammunition into South Vietnam to kill both South Vietnamese and Americans.


After Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, if British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had heeded calls for a "cease fire," that would have simply lowered the price to be paid by the Argentine government for their invasion.


Go back a hundred years — before there was a United Nations and before "world opinion" was taken into account.


An Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands at that time would have risked not only a British counter-attack to retake the islands but also British attacks on Argentina itself.


Anywhere in the world, attacks such as those on Israel today would not only have risked retaliation but invasion and annihilation of the government that launched those attacks.


Today, so-called "world opinion" not only limits the price to be paid for aggression or terrorism, it has even led to the self-indulgence of third parties talking pretty talk about limiting the response of those who are attacked to what is "proportionate."


By this reasoning, we should not have declared war on Japan for bombing Pearl Harbor. We should have gone over to Japan, bombed one of their harbors — and let it go at that.


Does anyone imagine that this would have led to Japan's becoming as peaceful today as it has become after Hiroshima and Nagasaki?


Or is the real agenda to engage in moral preening from a safe distance and at somebody else's expense?


Those who think "negotiations" are a magic answer seem not to understand that when A wants to annihilate B, this is not an "issue" that can be resolved amicably around a conference table.

7) The Chance for a New World Order
By Henry Kissinger

As the new U.S. administration prepares to take office amid grave financial and international crises, it may seem counterintuitive to argue that the very unsettled nature of the international system generates a unique opportunity for creative diplomacy.

That opportunity involves a seeming contradiction. On one level, the financial collapse represents a major blow to the standing of the United States. While American political judgments have often proved controversial, the American prescription for a world financial order has generally been unchallenged. Now disillusionment with the United States' management of it is widespread.

At the same time, the magnitude of the debacle makes it impossible for the rest of the world to shelter any longer behind American predominance or American failings.

Every country will have to reassess its own contribution to the prevailing crisis. Each will seek to make itself independent, to the greatest possible degree, of the conditions that produced the collapse; at the same time, each will be obliged to face the reality that its dilemmas can be mastered only by common action.

Even the most affluent countries will confront shrinking resources. Each will have to redefine its national priorities. An international order will emerge if a system of compatible priorities comes into being. It will fragment disastrously if the various priorities cannot be reconciled.

The nadir of the existing international financial system coincides with simultaneous political crises around the globe. Never have so many transformations occurred at the same time in so many different parts of the world and been made globally accessible via instantaneous communication. The alternative to a new international order is chaos.

The financial and political crises are, in fact, closely related partly because, during the period of economic exuberance, a gap had opened up between the economic and the political organization of the world.

The economic world has been globalized. Its institutions have a global reach and have operated by maxims that assumed a self-regulating global market.

The financial collapse exposed the mirage. It made evident the absence of global institutions to cushion the shock and to reverse the trend. Inevitably, when the affected publics turned to their national political institutions, these were driven principally by domestic politics, not considerations of world order.

Every major country has attempted to solve its immediate problems essentially on its own and to defer common action to a later, less crisis-driven point. So-called rescue packages have emerged on a piecemeal national basis, generally by substituting seemingly unlimited governmental credit for the domestic credit that produced the debacle in the first place - so far without more than stemming incipient panic.

International order will not come about either in the political or economic field until there emerge general rules toward which countries can orient themselves.

In the end, the political and economic systems can be harmonized in only one of two ways: by creating an international political regulatory system with the same reach as that of the economic world; or by shrinking the economic units to a size manageable by existing political structures, which is likely to lead to a new mercantilism, perhaps of regional units.

A new Bretton Woods-kind of global agreement is by far the preferable outcome. America's role in this enterprise will be decisive. Paradoxically, American influence will be great in proportion to the modesty in our conduct; we need to modify the righteousness that has characterized too many American attitudes, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

That seminal event and the subsequent period of nearly uninterrupted global growth induced too many to equate world order with the acceptance of American designs, including our domestic preferences.

The result was a certain inherent unilateralism - the standard complaint of European critics - or else an insistent kind of consultation by which nations were invited to prove their fitness to enter the international system by conforming to American prescriptions.

Not since the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy half a century ago has a new administration come into office with such a reservoir of expectations. It is unprecedented that all the principal actors on the world stage are avowing their desire to undertake the transformations imposed on them by the world crisis in collaboration with the United States.

The extraordinary impact of the president-elect on the imagination of humanity is an important element in shaping a new world order. But it defines an opportunity, not a policy.

The ultimate challenge is to shape the common concern of most countries and all major ones regarding the economic crisis, together with a common fear of jihadist terrorism, into a common strategy reinforced by the realization that the new issues like proliferation, energy and climate change permit no national or regional solution.

The new administration could make no worse mistake than to rest on its initial popularity. The cooperative mood of the moment needs to be channeled into a grand strategy going beyond the controversies of the recent past.

The charge of American unilateralism has some basis in fact; it also has become an alibi for a key European difference with America: that the United States still conducts itself as a national state capable of asking its people for sacrifices for the sake of the future, while Europe, suspended between abandoning its national framework and a yet-to-be-reached political substitute, finds it much harder to defer present benefits.

Hence its concentration on soft power. Most Atlantic controversies have been substantive and only marginally procedural; there would have been conflict no matter how intense the consultation. The Atlantic partnership will depend much more on common policies than agreed procedures.

The role of China in a new world order is equally crucial. A relationship that started on both sides as essentially a strategic design to constrain a common adversary has evolved over the decades into a pillar of the international system.

China made possible the American consumption splurge by buying American debt; America helped the modernization and reform of the Chinese economy by opening its markets to Chinese goods.

Both sides overestimated the durability of this arrangement. But while it lasted, it sustained unprecedented global growth. It mitigated as well the concerns over China's role once China emerged in full force as a fellow superpower. A consensus had developed according to which adversarial relations between these pillars of the international system would destroy much that had been achieved and benefit no one. That conviction needs to be preserved and reinforced.

Each side of the Pacific needs the cooperation of the other in addressing the consequences of the financial crisis. Now that the global financial collapse has devastated Chinese export markets, China is emphasizing infrastructure development and domestic consumption.

It will not be easy to shift gears rapidly, and the Chinese growth rate may fall temporarily below the 7.5 percent that Chinese experts have always defined as the line that challenges political stability. America needs Chinese cooperation to address its current account imbalance and to prevent its exploding deficits from sparking a devastating inflation.

What kind of global economic order arises will depend importantly on how China and America deal with each other over the next few years. A frustrated China may take another look at an exclusive regional Asian structure, for which the nucleus already exists in the Asean-plus-three concept.

At the same time, if protectionism grows in America or if China comes to be seen as a long-term adversary, a self-fulfilling prophecy may blight the prospects of global order.

Such a return to mercantilism and 19th-century diplomacy would divide the world into competing regional units with dangerous long-term consequences.

The Sino-American relationship needs to be taken to a new level. The current crisis can be overcome only by developing a sense of common purpose. Such issues as proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, energy and the environment demand strengthened political ties between China and the United States.

This generation of leaders has the opportunity to shape trans-Pacific relations into a design for a common destiny, much as was done with trans-Atlantic relations in the immediate postwar period - except that the challenges now are more political and economic than military.

Such a vision must embrace as well such countries as Japan, Korea, India, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, whether as part of trans-Pacific structures or, in regional arrangements, dealing with special subjects as energy, proliferation and the environment.

The complexity of the emerging world requires from America a more historical approach than the insistence that every problem has a final solution expressible in programs with specific time limits not infrequently geared to our political process.

We must learn to operate within the attainable and be prepared to pursue ultimate ends by the accumulation of nuance.

An international order can be permanent only if its participants have a share not only in building but also in securing it. In this manner, America and its potential partners have a unique opportunity to transform a moment of crisis into a vision of hope.

8) The Difference Between Israel and Hamas
By Dennis Prager

For those individuals -- such as nearly all members of the world news media -- who, in light of Israel's invasion of Gaza -- see moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians, here are some clarifying thoughts.

First, it would be difficult nearly to the point of impossibility, to find Israeli or other Jews who celebrate the deaths of Palestinian civilians. Jews both within and outside of Israel cringe when they see pictures of dead Palestinian men, women, and children in Gaza. For thousands of years at their Passover seders, Jews have removed wine from their cups to ceremonially weep for the Egyptians -- their erstwhile slave owners for 400 years -- who died during the Jews' exodus. Jews have never stopped weeping for enemies.

The opposite is the case with the large majority of Palestinians. It would be quite difficult to find many Palestinians who do not celebrate the deaths of Israeli Jews or non-Israeli Jews. This is not only reflected in Palestinian polls that show majority support for terrorism -- and terrorism means killing innocent Jews -- it is also reflected in Palestinian media, Palestinian schools, and Palestinian mosques that routinely glorify murderers of Jews, and refer to all Jews as "monkeys" and the like.

Take for example, Palestinian reaction to the 2001 Palestinian terror bombing of a Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria in which 15 Jews, five of whom were two sets of parents and their children, were murdered and an additional 130 people were injured, some permanently maimed.

As reported by the Associated Press, a month later, "Palestinian university students opened an exhibition that included a grisly re-enactment" of that mass murder. The students built a replica of the Sbarro pizzeria, with fake blood, splattered pizza, a plastic hand dangling from the ceiling, and a fake severed leg wearing jeans and a bloody black sneaker.

"The exhibit also includes a large rock in front of a mannequin wearing the black hat, black jacket and black trousers typically worn by ultra-Orthodox Jews. A recording from inside the rock calls out: 'O believer, there is a Jewish man behind me. Come and kill him,'" paraphrasing a verse in the Koran. It became a popular tourist attraction for Palestinians, to which Palestinian parents took their little children.

Here's the question: Can anyone even imagine Jews, in Israel or anywhere else on earth -- no matter how right-wing they are politically or religiously -- doing something analogous to celebrate the death of Palestinian civilians? I have spoken to Jewish groups on both U.S. coasts since the Israeli invasion of Gaza, and when the subject of Palestinian civilian deaths is mentioned, all I hear is regret and sadness.

This moral chasm that separates Israel from its enemies, and separates the Jews from their enemies, merely confirms what Hamas repeatedly says about itself: "We love death more than the Jews love life." This motto is so true that Hamas not only doesn't weep for dead Israelis, it doesn't weep for dead Palestinians. It uses living Palestinians as human shields and uses dead Palestinians as propaganda. The moral disequilibrium is such that Jews weep for dead Palestinian far more than Hamas does.

The second point to be raised is about perspective.

If during World War II, Western news media had reported German and Japanese civilian casualties in the same detail and with the same sympathy they report Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza, it is doubtful that the Nazis and the Japanese militarists would have lost that war. Certainly, at the very least, the anti-Nazi, anti-Fascist war effort would have been severely compromised.

The analogy is entirely apt. Hamas is on the same moral level as the two World War II enemies. Do those who condemn Israel for its attacks on Hamas fighters that have tragically resulted in hundreds of civilian Palestinian deaths also condemn the Allied bombings of German and Japanese military targets that resulted in far more civilian deaths? I suspect not since most critics of Israel still regard World War II as a moral war. The overriding issue, therefore, is whether fighting Hamas is moral. If it is, then the unintended death of Palestinian civilians is a tragedy, not an evil (except on the part of Hamas, because it situates its fighters and its missiles among civilians, including schools).

Third, if Hamas had the same ability to bomb Israel as Israel has to bomb Gaza, would the number of Jewish civilians be in the hundreds? Or would there be the Holocaust in Israel that Hamas and its Iranian sponsors dream of?

The answer is so obvious that this consideration alone renders moral Israel's war to destroy Hamas. In a short period of time Hamas will have more accurate missiles and longer-range ones. One of them could kill a thousand or more. Another one could destroy passenger planes coming into Ben-Gurion Airport, thereby causing foreign airlines to stop flying into Israel. It is that inevitability that Israel is fighting to prevent. But in the morally confused world we live in, only with thousands of Israelis dead, would Israel's invasion of Gaza be "proportional," and therefore acceptable. But Israel is more interested in living with world condemnation than in dying with world sympathy.

9) Obama, Iran and the perils of a Grand Bargain
Stephen Blackwell

The anticipation surrounding Barack Obama’s election to the US presidency is based on the promise of a new start in the full range of American foreign and domestic policies. Not least of these is the prospect of initiatives to reverse the hostility that existed between the Bush administration and Iran.

Many hope that Mr Obama will be able to turn a new page by initiating direct talks with Tehran. In a TV interview at the weekend, the President-elect promised to treat the Islamic republic with respect, and signalled a move from confrontation to diplomacy.

These developments are profoundly important for the UAE and the rest of the GCC. There is uncertainty over exactly what shape an approach by the Obama administration would take. Mr Obama sees Iran’s truculent and antagonistic attitude as a direct consequence of the US-led invasion of Iraq. He favours offering “carrots” in the form of support for Iran’s membership of the World Trade Organisation, along with security guarantees.

In a lecture at the Emirates Centre of Strategic Studies last week, the prospects were assessed by Professor Mahmood Monshipouri of the San Francisco State University. Prof Monshipouri argued that Mr Obama should immediately seek to engage with Iran. There was much to be said in favour of direct talks, not only from the perspective of the US, but also Washington’s major allies in Europe and the Arab world, he said. Strategic rivalry between Iran and the GCC countries would prove costly and unsettling, and would be especially unfortunate given the increasingly dense web of commercial and trade links connecting both sides of the Gulf.

The question is whether the President-elect would seek a “Grand Bargain” with Iran that would resolve all the issues of contention. For the GCC states, such an agreement could marginalise their interests. Mr Obama’s willingness to talk to the Iranian leadership runs the risk of becoming a unilateral gesture that would undermine UN Security Council resolutions agreed since 2006 aimed at stopping the Iranian nuclear programme.

The Europeans in particular are anxious to maintain the diplomatic pressure over the nuclear issue. The fear is that a botched initiative by the Obama administration would have the unintended outcome of undermining multinational cooperation on the nuclear issue in the way that the US did over the question of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Indeed, John McCain’s camp went out of its way during the presidential campaign to accuse Mr Obama of proposing “unilateral cowboy summitry” in his policy on Iran.

Despite the promise of a bold initiative, it is more likely that the President-elect’s openness to bilateral talks with Iran will be tempered by the constraints imposed by an array of domestic and international factors. The probably tentative nature of any approach is evident from Obama’s comments during the election campaign.

In his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) last June, Obama dismissed the Bush administration’s policy on Iran as half-hearted, piecemeal talks while the Europeans were left to carry on with sustained diplomatic engagement. However, he did stress the need for “careful preparation” before a US initiative, with measures to “open up lines of communication, build an agenda, coordinate closely with our allies and evaluate the potential for progress”.

Mr Obama must take into account the views of the major European powers towards the Iranian nuclear programme. The British government, in particular, is worried that his willingness to engage with the Iranian leadership will undermine the common front adopted by the UN Security Council permanent five members and Germany in recent years. British intelligence chiefs believe that Iranian nuclear proliferation is the second greatest security threat after Islamist terrorism.

Iran’s continued links with Shiite groups, in particular Hamas and Hizbollah, also remain a concern. As with many other foreign governments, an early objective of British representatives in Washington will be to assess how far Mr Obama wishes to go with his policy of engagement. He will have to take these concerns into account, as he will require Nato support for his proposed “surge” in Afghanistan.

Mr Obama’s promise to consult with allies thus opens up an opportunity to influence the new administration before the mooted approach to Iran crystallises into its final form. The new administration has a vested interest in taking into consideration the views of the UAE and its local allies.

The key interest for the GCC states is the maintenance of the Gulf as a stable region free of weapons of mass destruction. For the UAE, there is also the issue of the islands of the Tunbs and Abu Musa, which have been under Iranian occupation since 1971. In exchange for diplomatic support for US policy initiatives on Iran, the GCC would be entitled to seek reassurances on regional security.

Any dramatic new departure in the first months of Mr Obama’s presidency is unlikely. His cautious response to the Gaza conflict is a reminder that he is, first and foremost, a pragmatist. He will commit himself to an approach to Iran only after exhaustive discussions in Washington and consultations with allies. Before engaging Iran, Mr Obama would seek a commitment from other nations to much tougher sanctions if negotiations failed again.

Given the nature of the US presidency and foreign policymaking, Mr Obama is likely to prioritise short-term tactical rewards over long-term strategic gains in his policy on Iran. The likely result is that any improvement in relations between the US and Iran will be based on progress on an issue-by-issue basis rather than a Grand Bargain. Pragmatism will dictate the outcome of any negotiations between the two countries.







Obama, Iran and the perils of a Grand Bargain
Stephen Blackwell

Last Updated: January 13. 2009 9:30AM UAE / GMT The anticipation surrounding Barack Obama’s election to the US presidency is based on the promise of a new start in the full range of American foreign and domestic policies. Not least of these is the prospect of initiatives to reverse the hostility that existed between the Bush administration and Iran.

Many hope that Mr Obama will be able to turn a new page by initiating direct talks with Tehran. In a TV interview at the weekend, the President-elect promised to treat the Islamic republic with respect, and signalled a move from confrontation to diplomacy.

These developments are profoundly important for the UAE and the rest of the GCC. There is uncertainty over exactly what shape an approach by the Obama administration would take. Mr Obama sees Iran’s truculent and antagonistic attitude as a direct consequence of the US-led invasion of Iraq. He favours offering “carrots” in the form of support for Iran’s membership of the World Trade Organisation, along with security guarantees.

In a lecture at the Emirates Centre of Strategic Studies last week, the prospects were assessed by Professor Mahmood Monshipouri of the San Francisco State University. Prof Monshipouri argued that Mr Obama should immediately seek to engage with Iran. There was much to be said in favour of direct talks, not only from the perspective of the US, but also Washington’s major allies in Europe and the Arab world, he said. Strategic rivalry between Iran and the GCC countries would prove costly and unsettling, and would be especially unfortunate given the increasingly dense web of commercial and trade links connecting both sides of the Gulf.

The question is whether the President-elect would seek a “Grand Bargain” with Iran that would resolve all the issues of contention. For the GCC states, such an agreement could marginalise their interests. Mr Obama’s willingness to talk to the Iranian leadership runs the risk of becoming a unilateral gesture that would undermine UN Security Council resolutions agreed since 2006 aimed at stopping the Iranian nuclear programme.

The Europeans in particular are anxious to maintain the diplomatic pressure over the nuclear issue. The fear is that a botched initiative by the Obama administration would have the unintended outcome of undermining multinational cooperation on the nuclear issue in the way that the US did over the question of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Indeed, John McCain’s camp went out of its way during the presidential campaign to accuse Mr Obama of proposing “unilateral cowboy summitry” in his policy on Iran.

Despite the promise of a bold initiative, it is more likely that the President-elect’s openness to bilateral talks with Iran will be tempered by the constraints imposed by an array of domestic and international factors. The probably tentative nature of any approach is evident from Obama’s comments during the election campaign.

In his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) last June, Obama dismissed the Bush administration’s policy on Iran as half-hearted, piecemeal talks while the Europeans were left to carry on with sustained diplomatic engagement. However, he did stress the need for “careful preparation” before a US initiative, with measures to “open up lines of communication, build an agenda, coordinate closely with our allies and evaluate the potential for progress”.

Mr Obama must take into account the views of the major European powers towards the Iranian nuclear programme. The British government, in particular, is worried that his willingness to engage with the Iranian leadership will undermine the common front adopted by the UN Security Council permanent five members and Germany in recent years. British intelligence chiefs believe that Iranian nuclear proliferation is the second greatest security threat after Islamist terrorism.

Iran’s continued links with Shiite groups, in particular Hamas and Hizbollah, also remain a concern. As with many other foreign governments, an early objective of British representatives in Washington will be to assess how far Mr Obama wishes to go with his policy of engagement. He will have to take these concerns into account, as he will require Nato support for his proposed “surge” in Afghanistan.

Mr Obama’s promise to consult with allies thus opens up an opportunity to influence the new administration before the mooted approach to Iran crystallises into its final form. The new administration has a vested interest in taking into consideration the views of the UAE and its local allies.

The key interest for the GCC states is the maintenance of the Gulf as a stable region free of weapons of mass destruction. For the UAE, there is also the issue of the islands of the Tunbs and Abu Musa, which have been under Iranian occupation since 1971. In exchange for diplomatic support for US policy initiatives on Iran, the GCC would be entitled to seek reassurances on regional security.

Any dramatic new departure in the first months of Mr Obama’s presidency is unlikely. His cautious response to the Gaza conflict is a reminder that he is, first and foremost, a pragmatist. He will commit himself to an approach to Iran only after exhaustive discussions in Washington and consultations with allies. Before engaging Iran, Mr Obama would seek a commitment from other nations to much tougher sanctions if negotiations failed again.

Given the nature of the US presidency and foreign policymaking, Mr Obama is likely to prioritise short-term tactical rewards over long-term strategic gains in his policy on Iran. The likely result is that any improvement in relations between the US and Iran will be based on progress on an issue-by-issue basis rather than a Grand Bargain. Pragmatism will dictate the outcome of any negotiations between the two countries.

Damaged Goods From The Git Go?

The next 100 years by George Friedman. (See 1 below.)

Ne'eman on world hypocrisy repeating itself. (See 2 below.)

More humor. (See 3 below.)

Real time up dates - Here is a real time Israeli web site documenting the war in Gaza. http://muqata.blogspot.com/

My friend, Bret Stepehnes, de-myths Hamas and knocks the propaganda ground out from under it that so many have been buying with non critical abandon. (See 4 below.)

Clinton sleaziness just will not go away. Yes, we will have a Secretary of State who is going to be tainted from the git go by her husband's nefarious dealings.

In her testimony Sen. Clinton highlighted how the Obama Administration will attempt to negotiate directly with the Mullahs. That will be a change for us. It will be interesting to see whether Iran will change or simply play us like a violin as they have the Brits, French, Germans and ourselves for the past eight years. During this time Iran kept pressing forward on their nuclear development. N Korea has been doing that for even more years and with no positive results on our part.

I repeat, Obama has a lot to learn.(See 5 below.)

Dick


1) OVERTURE:An Introduction to the American Age

Imagine that you were alive in the summer of 1900, living in London, then the capital of the world. Europe ruled the Eastern Hemisphere. There was hardly a place that, if not ruled directly, was not indirectly controlled from a European capital. Europe was at peace and enjoying unprecedented prosperity. Indeed, European interdependence due to trade and investment was so great that serious people were claiming that war had become impossible—and if not impossible, would end within weeks of beginning—because global financial markets couldn’t withstand the strain. The future seemed fixed: a peaceful, prosperous Europe would rule the world.

Imagine yourself now in the summer of 1920. Europe had been torn apart by an agonizing war. The continent was in tatters. The Austro-Hungarian, Russian, German, and Ottoman empires were gone and millions had died in a war that lasted for years. The war ended when an American army of a million men intervened—an army that came and then just as quickly left. Communism dominated Russia, but it was not clear that it could survive. Countries that had been on the periphery of European power, like the United States and Japan, suddenly emerged as great powers. But one thing was certain—the peace treaty that had been imposed on Germany guaranteed that it would not soon reemerge.

Imagine the summer of 1940. Germany had not only reemerged but conquered France and dominated Europe. Communism had survived and the Soviet Union now was allied with Nazi Germany. Great Britain alone stood against Germany, and from the point of view of most reasonable people, the war was over. If there was not to be a thousand-year Reich, then certainly Europe’s fate had been decided for a century. Germany would dominate Europe and inherit its empire.

Imagine now the summer of 1960. Germany had been crushed in the war, defeated less than five years later. Europe was occupied, split down the middle by the United States and the Soviet Union. The European empires were collapsing, and the United States and Soviet Union were competing over who would be their heir. The United States had the Soviet Union
surrounded and, with an overwhelming arsenal of nuclear weapons, could annihilate it in hours. The United States had emerged as the global superpower. It dominated all of the world’s oceans, and with its nuclear force could dictate terms to anyone in the world. Stalemate was the best the Soviets could hope for—unless the Soviets invaded Germany and conquered Europe. That was the war everyone was preparing for. And in the back of everyone’s mind, the Maoist Chinese, seen as fanatical, were the other danger.

Now imagine the summer of 1980. The United States had been defeated in a seven-year war—not by the Soviet Union, but by communist North Vietnam. The nation was seen, and saw itself, as being in retreat. Expelled from Vietnam, it was then expelled from Iran as well, where the oil fields, which it no longer controlled, seemed about to fall into the hands of the Soviet Union. To contain the Soviet Union, the United States had formed an alliance with Maoist China—the American president and the Chinese chairman holding an amiable meeting in Beijing. Only this alliance seemed able to contain the powerful Soviet Union, which appeared to be surging.

Imagine now the summer of 2000. The Soviet Union had completely collapsed. China was still communist in name but had become capitalist in practice. NATO had advanced into Eastern Europe and even into the former Soviet Union. The world was prosperous and peaceful. Everyone knew that geopolitical considerations had become secondary to economic considerations, and the only problems were regional ones in basket cases like Haiti or Kosovo.

Then came September 11, 2001, and the world turned on its head again. At a certain level, when it comes to the future, the only thing one can be sure of is that common sense will be wrong. There is no magic twenty-year cycle; there is no simplistic force governing this pattern. It is simply that the things that appear to be so permanent and dominant at any given moment in history can change with stunning rapidity. Eras come and go. In international relations, the way the world looks right now is not at all how it will look in twenty years . . . or even less. The fall of the Soviet Union was hard to imagine, and that is exactly the point. Conventional political analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination. It imagines passing clouds to be permanent and is blind to powerful, long- term shifts taking place in full
view of the world.

If we were at the beginning of the twentieth century, it would be impossible to forecast the particular events I’ve just listed. But there are some things that could have been—and, in fact, were—forecast. For example, it was obvious that Germany, having united in 1871, was a major power in an insecure position (trapped between Russia and France) and wanted to redefine the European and global systems. Most of the conflicts in the first half of the twentieth century were about Germany’s status in Europe. While the times and places of wars couldn’t be forecast, the probability that there would be a war could be and was forecast by many Europeans.

The harder part of this equation would be forecasting that the wars would be so devastating and that after the first and second world wars were over, Europe would lose its empire. But there were those, particularly after the invention of dynamite, who predicted that war would now be catastrophic. If the forecasting on technology had been combined with the forecasting
on geopolitics, the shattering of Europe might well have been predicted. Certainly the rise of the United States and Russia was predicted in the nineteenth century. Both Alexis de Tocqueville and Friedrich Nietzsche forecast the preeminence of these two countries. So, standing at the beginning of the twentieth century, it would have been possible to forecast
its general outlines, with discipline and some luck.

the twenty-first century
Standing at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we need to identify the single pivotal event for this century, the equivalent of German unification for the twentieth century. After the debris of the European empire is cleared away, as well as what’s left of the Soviet Union, one power remains standing and overwhelmingly powerful. That power is the United States. Certainly, as is usually the case, the United States currently appears to be making a mess of things around the world. But it’s important not to be confused by the passing chaos. The United States is economically, militarily, and politically the most powerful country in the world, and there is no real challenger to that power. Like the Spanish-American War, a hundred years from now the war between the United States and the radical Islamists will be little remembered regardless of the prevailing sentiment of this time.

Ever since the Civil War, the United States has been on an extraordinary economic surge. It has turned from a marginal developing nation into an economy bigger than the next four countries combined. Militarily, it has gone from being an insignificant force to dominating the globe. Politically, the United States touches virtually everything, sometimes intentionally and sometimes simply because of its presence. As you read this book, it will seem that it is America- centric, written from an American point of view. That may be true, but the argument I’m making is that the world does, in fact, pivot around the United States.

This is not only due to American power. It also has to do with a fundamental shift in the way the world works. For the past five hundred years, Europe was the center of the international system, its empires creating a single global system for the first time in human history. The main highway to Europe was the North Atlantic. Whoever controlled the North Atlantic controlled access to Europe—and Europe’s access to the world. The basic geography of global politics was locked into place.

Then, in the early 1980s, something remarkable happened. For the first time in history, transpacific trade equaled transatlantic trade. With Europe reduced to a collection of secondary powers after World War II, and the shift in trade patterns, the North Atlantic was no longer the single key to anything. Now whatever country controlled both the North Atlantic and the Pacific could control, if it wished, the world’s trading system, and therefore the global economy. In the twenty-first century, any nation located on both oceans has a tremendous advantage.

Given the cost of building naval power and the huge cost of deploying it around the world, the power native to both oceans became the preeminent actor in the international system for the same reason that Britain dominated the nineteenth century: it lived on the sea it had to control. In this way, North America has replaced Europe as the center of gravity in the world, and whoever dominates North America is virtually assured of being the dominant global power. For the twenty-first century at least, that will be the United States.

The inherent power of the United States coupled with its geographic position makes the United States the pivotal actor of the twenty-first century. That certainly doesn’t make it loved. On the contrary, its power makes it feared. The history of the twenty-first century, therefore, particularly the first half, will revolve around two opposing struggles. One will be secondary powers forming coalitions to try to contain and control the United States. The second will be the United States acting preemptively to prevent an effective coalition from forming.

If we view the beginning of the twenty-first century as the dawn of the American Age (superseding the European Age), we see that it began with a group of Muslims seeking to re- create the Caliphate—the great Islamic empire that once ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Inevitably, they had to strike at the United States in an attempt to draw the world’s primary power into war, trying to demonstrate its weakness in order to trigger an Islamic uprising. The United States responded by invading the Islamic world. But its goal wasn’t victory. It wasn’t even clear what victory would mean. Its goal was simply to disrupt the Islamic world and set it against itself, so that an Islamic empire could not emerge.

The United States doesn’t need to win wars. It needs to simply disrupt things so the other side can’t build up sufficient strength to challenge it. On one level, the twenty-first century will see a series of confrontations involving lesser powers trying to build coalitions to control American behavior and the United States’ mounting military operations to disrupt them. The twenty-first century will see even more war than the twentieth century, but the wars will be much less catastrophic, because of both technological changes and the nature of the geopolitical challenge.

As we’ve seen, the changes that lead to the next era are always shockingly unexpected, and the first twenty years of this new century will be no exception. The U.S.–Islamist war is already ending and the next conflict is in sight. Russia is re-creating its old sphere of influence, and that sphere of influence will inevitably challenge the United States. The Russians will be moving westward on the great northern European plain. As Russia reconstructs its power, it will encounter the U.S.-dominated NATO in the three Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—as well as in Poland. There will be other points of friction in the early twenty-first century, but this new cold war will supply the flash points after the U.S.–Islamist war dies down.

The Russians can’t avoid trying to reassert power, and the United States can’t avoid trying to resist. But in the end Russia can’t win. Its deep internal problems, massively declining population, and poor infrastructure ultimately make Russia’s long- term survival prospects bleak. And the second cold war, less frightening and much less global than the first, will end as the first did, with the collapse of Russia.

There are many who predict that China is the next challenger to the United States, not Russia. I don’t agree with that view for three reasons. First, when you look at a map of China closely, you see that it is really a very isolated country physically. With Siberia in the north, the Himalayas and jungles to the south, and most of China’s population in the eastern part of the country, the Chinese aren’t going to easily expand. Second, China has not been a major naval power for centuries, and building a navy requires a long time not only to build ships but to create well-trained and experienced sailors.

Third, there is a deeper reason for not worrying about China. China is inherently unstable. Whenever it opens its borders to the outside world, the coastal region becomes prosperous, but the vast majority of Chinese in the interior remain impoverished. This leads to tension, conflict, and instability. It also leads to economic decisions made for political reasons, resulting in inefficiency and corruption. This is not the first time that China has opened itself to foreign trade, and it will not be the last time that it becomes unstable as a result. Nor will it be the last time that a figure like Mao emerges to close the country off from the outside, equalize the wealth—or poverty—and begin the cycle anew. There are some who believe that the trends of the last thirty years will continue indefinitely. I believe the Chinese cycle will move to its next and inevitable phase in the coming decade. Far from being a challenger, China is a country the United States will be trying to bolster and hold together as a counterweight to the Russians. Current Chinese economic dynamism does not translate into long-term success.

In the middle of the century, other powers will emerge, countries that aren’t thought of as great powers today, but that I expect will become more powerful and assertive over the next few decades. Three stand out in particular. The first is Japan. It’s the second- largest economy in the world and the most vulnerable, being highly dependent on the importation of raw materials, since it has almost none of its own. With a history of militarism, Japan will not remain the marginal pacifistic power it has been. It cannot. Its own deep population problems and abhorrence of large- scale immigration will force it to look for new workers in other countries. Japan’s vulnerabilities, which I’ve written about in the past and which the Japanese have managed better than I’ve expected up until this point, in the end will force a shift in policy.

Then there is Turkey, currently the seventeenth-largest economy in the world. Historically, when a major Islamic empire has emerged, it has been dominated by the Turks. The Ottomans collapsed at the end of World War I, leaving modern Turkey in its wake. But Turkey is a stable platform in the midst of chaos. The Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Arab world to the south are all unstable. As Turkey’s power grows—and its economy and military are already the most powerful in the region—so will Turkish influence.

Finally there is Poland. Poland hasn’t been a great power since the sixteenth century. But it once was—and, I think, will be again. Two factors make this possible. First will be the decline of Germany. Its economy is large and still growing, but it has lost the dynamism it has had for two centuries. In addition, its population is going to fall dramatically in the next fifty years, further undermining its economic power. Second, as the Russians press on the Poles from the east, the Germans won’t have an appetite for a third war with Russia. The United States, however, will back Poland, providing it with massive economic and technical support. Wars—when your country isn’t destroyed—stimulate economic growth, and Poland will become the leading power in a coalition of states facing the Russians.

Japan, Turkey, and Poland will each be facing a United States even more confident than it was after the second fall of the Soviet Union. That will be an explosive situation. As we will see during the course of this book, the relationships among these four countries will greatly affect the twenty-first century, leading, ultimately, to the next global war. This war will be fought differently from any in history—with weapons that are today in the realm of science fiction. But as I will try to outline, this mid-twenty-first century conflict will grow out of the dynamic forces born in the early part of the new century.

Tremendous technical advances will come out of this war, as they did out of World War II, and one of them will be especially critical. All sides will be looking for new forms of energy to substitute for hydrocarbons, for many obvious reasons. Solar power is theoretically the most efficient energy source on earth, but solar power requires massive arrays of receivers. Those receivers take up a lot of space on the earth’s surface and have many negative environmental impacts—not to mention being subject to the disruptive cycles of night and day. During the coming global war, however, concepts developed prior to the war for space- based electrical generation, beamed to earth in the form of microwave radiation, will be rapidly translated from prototype to reality. Getting a free ride on the back of military space launch capability, the new energy source will be underwritten in much the same way as the Internet or the railroads were, by government support. And that will kick off a massive economic boom.

But underlying all of this will be the single most important fact of the twenty-first century: the end of the population explosion. By 2050, advanced industrial countries will be losing population at a dramatic rate. By 2100, even the most underdeveloped countries will have reached birthrates that will stabilize their populations. The entire global system has been built since 1750 on the expectation of continually expanding populations. More workers, more consumers, more soldiers—this was always the expectation. In the twenty-first century, however, that will cease to be true. The entire system of production will shift. The shift will force the world into a greater dependence on technology—particularly robots that will substitute for human labor, and intensified genetic research (not so much for the purpose of extending life but to make people productive longer).

What will be the more immediate result of a shrinking world population? Quite simply, in the first half of the century, the population bust will create a major labor shortage in advanced industrial countries. Today, developed countries see the problem as keeping immigrants out. Later in the first half of the twenty-first century, the problem will be persuading them to come. Countries will go so far as to pay people to move there. This will include the United States, which will be competing for increasingly scarce immigrants and will be doing everything it can to induce Mexicans to come to the United States—an ironic but inevitable shift.

These changes will lead to the final crisis of the twenty-first century. Mexico currently is the fifteenth-largest economy in the world. As the Europeans slip out, the Mexicans, like the Turks, will rise in the rankings until by the late twenty-first century they will be one of the major economic powers in the world. During the great migration north encouraged by the United States, the population balance in the old Mexican Cession (that is, the areas of the United States taken from Mexico in the nineteenth century) will shift dramatically until much of the region is predominantly Mexican.

The social reality will be viewed by the Mexican government simply as rectification of historical defeats. By 2080 I expect there to be a serious confrontation between the United States and an increasingly powerful and assertive Mexico. That confrontation may well have unforeseen consequences for the United States, and will likely not end by 2100.

Much of what I’ve said here may seem pretty hard to fathom. The idea that the twenty-first century will culminate in a confrontation between Mexico and the United States is certainly hard to imagine in 2009, as is a powerful Turkey or Poland. But go back to the beginning of this chapter, when I described how the world looked at twenty-year intervals during the
twentieth century, and you can see what I’m driving at: common sense is the one thing that will certainly be wrong. Obviously, the more granular the description, the less reliable it gets. It is impossible to forecast precise details of a coming century—apart from the fact that I’ll be long dead by then and won’t know what mistakes I made.

But it’s my contention that it is indeed possible to see the broad outlines of what is going to happen, and to try to give it some definition, however speculative that definition might be. That’s what this book is about.

forecasting a hundred years ahead
Before I delve into any details of global wars, population trends, or technological shifts, it is important that I address my method—that is, precisely how I can forecast what I do. I don’t intend to be taken seriously on the details of the war in 2050 that I forecast. But I do want to be taken seriously in terms of how wars will be fought then, about the centrality of American power, about the likelihood of other countries challenging that power, and about some of the countries I think will—and won’t—challenge that power.

And doing that takes some justification. The idea of a U.S.–Mexican confrontation and even war will leave most reasonable people dubious, but I would like to demonstrate why and how these assertions can be made. One point I’ve already made is that reasonable people are incapable of anticipating the future. The old New Left slogan “Be Practical, Demand the Impossible” needs to be changed: “Be Practical, Expect the Impossible.” This idea is at the heart of my method. From another, more substantial perspective, this is called geopolitics.

Geopolitics is not simply a pretentious way of saying “international relations.” It is a method for thinking about the world and forecasting what will happen down the road. Economists talk about an invisible hand, in which the self-interested, short-term activities of people lead to what Adam Smith called “the wealth of nations.” Geopolitics applies the concept of the invisible hand to the behavior of nations and other international actors. The pursuit of short-term self-interest by nations and by their leaders leads, if not to the wealth of nations, then at least to predictable behavior and, therefore, the ability to forecast the shape of the future international system.

Geopolitics and economics both assume that the players are rational, at least in the sense of knowing their own short-term self-interest. As rational actors, reality provides them with limited choices. It is assumed that, on the whole, people and nations will pursue their self-interest, if not flawlessly, then at least not randomly. Think of a chess game. On the surface, it appears that each player has twenty potential opening moves. In fact, there are many fewer because most of these moves are so bad that they quickly lead to defeat. The better you are at chess, the more clearly you see your options, and the fewer moves there actually are available. The better the player, the more predictable the moves. The grandmaster plays with absolute predictable precision—until that one brilliant, unexpected stroke.

Nations behave the same way. The millions or hundreds of millions of people who make up a nation are constrained by reality. They generate leaders who would not become leaders if they were irrational. Climbing to the top of millions of people is not something fools often do. Leaders understand their menu of next moves and execute them, if not flawlessly, then at least pretty well. An occasional master will come along with a stunningly unexpected and successful move, but for the most part, the act of governance is simply executing the necessary and logical next step. When politicians run a country’s foreign policy, they operate the same way. If a leader dies and is replaced, another emerges and more likely than not continues what the first one was doing.

I am not arguing that political leaders are geniuses, scholars, or even gentlemen and ladies. Simply, political leaders know how to be leaders or they wouldn’t have emerged as such. It is the delight of all societies to belittle their political leaders, and leaders surely do make mistakes. But the mistakes they make, when carefully examined, are rarely stupid. More likely, mistakes are forced on them by circumstance. We would all like to believe that we— or our favorite candidate—would never have acted so stupidly. It is rarely true. Geopolitics therefore does not take the individual leader very seriously, any more than economics takes the individual businessman too seriously. Both are players who know how to manage a process but are not free to break the very rigid rules of their professions.

Politicians are therefore rarely free actors. Their actions are determined by circumstances, and public policy is a response to reality. Within narrow margins, political decisions can matter. But the most brilliant leader of Iceland will never turn it into a world power, while the stupidest leader of Rome at its height could not undermine Rome’s fundamental power. Geopolitics is not about the right and wrong of things, it is not about the virtues or vices of politicians, and it is not about foreign policy debates. Geopolitics is about broad impersonal forces that constrain nations and human beings and compel them to act in certain ways.

The key to understanding economics is accepting that there are always unintended consequences. Actions people take for their own good reasons have results they don’t envision or intend. The same is true with geopolitics. It is doubtful that the village of Rome, when it started its expansion in the seventh century BC, had a master plan for conquering the Mediterranean world five hundred years later. But the first action its inhabitants took against neighboring villages set in motion a process that was both constrained by reality and filled with unintended consequences. Rome wasn’t planned, and neither did it just happen.

Geopolitical forecasting, therefore, doesn’t assume that everything is predetermined. It does mean that what people think they are doing, what they hope to achieve, and what the final outcome is are not the same things. Nations and politicians pursue their immediate ends, as constrained by reality as a grandmaster is constrained by the chessboard, the pieces, and the rules. Sometimes they increase the power of the nation. Sometimes they lead the nation to catastrophe. It is rare that the final outcome will be what they initially intended to achieve.

Geopolitics assumes two things. First, it assumes that humans organize themselves into units larger than families, and that by doing this, they must engage in politics. It also assumes that humans have a natural loyalty to the things they were born into, the people and the places. Loyalty to a tribe, a city, or a nation is natural to people. In our time, national identity matters a great deal. Geopolitics teaches that the relationship between these nations is a vital dimension of human life, and that means that war is ubiquitous. Second, geopolitics assumes that the character of a nation is determined to a great extent by geography, as is the relationship between nations. We use the term geography broadly. It includes the physical characteristics of a location, but it goes beyond that to look at the effects of a place on individuals and communities. In antiquity, the difference between Sparta and Athens was the difference between a landlocked city and a maritime empire. Athens was wealthy and cosmopolitan, while Sparta was poor, provincial, and very tough. A Spartan was very different from an Athenian in both culture and politics.

If you understand those assumptions, then it is possible to think about large numbers of human beings, linked together through natural human bonds, constrained by geography, acting in certain ways. The United States is the United States and therefore must behave in a certain way. The same goes for Japan or Turkey or Mexico. When you drill down and see the forces that are shaping nations, you can see that the menu from which they choose is limited.

The twenty-first century will be like all other centuries. There will be wars, there will be poverty, there will be triumphs and defeats. There will be tragedy and good luck. People will go to work, make money, have children, fall in love, and come to hate. That is the one thing that is not cyclical. It is the permanent human condition. But the twenty-first century will be extraordinary in two senses: it will be the beginning of a new age, and it will see a new global power astride the world. That doesn’t happen very often. We are now in an America-centric age. To understand this age, we must understand the United States, not only because it is so powerful but because its culture will permeate the world and define it. Just as French culture and British culture were definitive during their times of power, so American culture, as young and barbaric as it is, will define the way the world thinks and lives. So studying the twenty-first century means studying the United States.

If there were only one argument I could make about the twenty-first century, it would be that the European Age has ended and that the North American Age has begun, and that North America will be dominated by the United States for the next hundred years. The events of the twenty-first century will pivot around the United States. That doesn’t guarantee that the United States is necessarily a just or moral regime. It certainly does not mean that America has yet developed a mature civilization. It does mean that in many ways the history of the United States will be the history of the twenty-first century.


2) World Hypocrisy, Again
By Yisrael Ne'eman


Similar to the Second War in Lebanon in 2006 much of the world is at its hypocritical best. Most want Israel to smash the Jihadists and then condemn Israel for following through. North America, Europe, China, India (remember Mumbai?), Arab secular regimes and many other nations want Islamist influence crushed but are critical of the Israeli handling of the conflict in Gaza and are calling for a cease-fire, at least publicly. Privately they want Hamas and any other Islamists routed. True, many have accused Hamas of initiating the conflict through its never ending bombardment of southern Israel but once confronted with painful scenes of suffering by Gaza's civilian population they shy away from holding Hamas responsible for the bloodshed.

The Arab world has a long account with the Moslem Brotherhood. In Egypt they attempted to kill Gamal Abdul Nasser and assassinated Anwar Sadat, in Syria Hafez el-Assad crushed them in Hama in Feb. 1982 when they tried to overthrow his regime, they are still engaged in a civil war in Algeria (170,000 killed since the early 1990s), Tunisia has a dictatorial secular regime where the Brotherhood is outlawed, Sudan is Islamist (300,000 killed in Darfur and over 2.3 million killed in the south as a result of a government war against Christian and non-monotheist tribes) and everyone else is on notice of a possible Islamic uprising. In particular mass demonstrations have broken out in Egypt and Jordan, both of whom have peace treaties with Israel.

As usual Israel is getting smacked around diplomatically, in particular at the UN. The Security Council called for an immediate cease-fire (Res. 1860) but with no stipulations on its implementation. The UN calls for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, an immediate cease-fire, the halt of illegal arms shipments, humanitarian assistance and a re-opening of crossing points into Gaza. But as Hamas is not mentioned, one would think Israel moved into Gaza on some ridiculous whim. The resolution has no enforcement apparatus thereby leaving it impossible to implement. The decision is significant as it marks the beginning of UN involvement, signaling to Israel the inevitability of further intensive diplomatic activity to end the operation. More so it appears that Egypt will broker a deal with the UN signing on. Egyptian interests and Middle East stability are the keystones to the diplomatic efforts in the future. As for Israel, Jerusalem's bi-lateral relations with most states world wide are much more favorable than those same nations' behavior when acting collectively at the UN.

Added to the almost universal cynicism and hypocrisy is the news media, in particular television. Unfortunately hundreds of civilians have been killed and thousands wounded. The most popular Arab satellite station Aljazeera along with European CNN are focusing most heavily on this point and either directly or indirectly accusing Israel. True they do interview Israeli spokespeople but either split the TV screen and show scenes of civilian casualties during the interview or present such scenes before and after the interview with vivid commentary from pro-Palestinian reporters and "experts" who never mention Hamas actions in instigating the conflict. Occasionally there is an embarrassing moment such as when English Aljazeera interviewed an expert on international jurisprudence who insisted that Israel was perfectly justified in its offensive and that Hamas was responsible for much of the civilian suffering since they took refuge in heavily populated civilian areas. Or when asking for comments by young men who were said to be civilians, all made it clear their demands for a never ending war against Israel without regard to non-combatant casualties. Best though is their lack of questioning as to why Hamas (and other Palestinian terrorists) almost exclusively target Israeli civilians over the past eight years.

Hamas has few overt allies but receives lip service from Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. Their staunchest allies are the foreign press, in particular CNN, Aljazeera and Al-Arabia. Most foreign media are emphasizing the "humanitarian crisis", downplaying Hamas shelling of Israel and Islamist bravado of battling to the end. Most significantly the media does not even mention the central pillars of the Hamas Covenant which include killing all Jews and world Jihad against Christianity and the Far East. The idea is to hide Hamas and make it look as if Israel is fighting a war against Gaza's civilians.

There are further sins of omission and emphasis. Screaming about the border crossings is a common occurrence but explanations why the borders were closed leave much to be desired. Attacks on the crossings by Hamas/Islamic Jihad and the murders of Israeli personnel helping to facilitate the movement of goods and fuel into Gaza are not mentioned. Sometimes a passing notice of illegal weapons coming through the Rafiah tunnels is voiced but it is almost peripheral to the main story of the "humanitarian crisis". On Saturday Israel once again initiated a three hour humanitarian cease-fire which CNN reported Israel violated. What they "forgot" to explain was the Israeli air strike was in response to a rocket attack during the lull.

The media continues to emphasize anti-Israel demonstrations world wide and speaks of hundreds of thousands marching to "free Gaza". The demonstrations are either in Moslem countries or have almost entirely Moslem participants as pointed out by CNN. There are certain extreme leftist groups in Europe and especially Britain who have joined the anti-Israel chorus and some protests have turned violent. So far it appears that the street in the non-Moslem world is not responding as much as Hamas would like. Maybe Moslem Brotherhood objectives are finally becoming known to the world at large.

On another note the foreign press is furious that their reporters are not being embedded with Israeli forces entering the Strip. At the outset this appeared justified and the journalists took the army to court. The Supreme Court ruled that the IDF must let reporters in. So far a few Israeli journalists have entered Gaza for a limited amount of time but no foreigners. Many in Israel appreciate the news blackout allowing the army to get on with battling terrorism out of the spotlights, something very different than what happened in 2006. However, increasingly the most ardent supporters of the operation believe representatives of the foreign press should be allowed access. It should be pointed out that many are at least attempting to be evenhanded. Overall the policy is too stringent and has begun working against Israel's vital interests which are to show booby trapped Gaza and how Hamas uses the civilian population as a human shield. There are also reports of humanitarian aid being hijacked by Hamas and not reaching civilians. The foreign press must be exposed to such events which can only be done by allowing access (it does not look feasible to have them escorted by Hamas terrorists to tell this story).

Most importantly – freedom of the press exists in Israel as evidenced by the journalistic criticism emanating from reporters working here. No one should try that in Gaza unless they never intend to file another story.

3) LIGHTER SIDE OF GLOBAL MELTDOWN

1. The US has made a new weapon that destroys people but keeps the building standing. It's called the stock market - Jay Leno

2. Do you have any idea how cheap stocks are? Wall Street is now being called Wall Mart Street - Jay Leno

3. The difference between a pigeon and a London investment banker. The pigeon can still make a deposit on a BMW.

4. What's the difference between a guy who lost everything in Las Vegas and an investment banker?
A tie!

5. The problem with investment bank balance sheet is that on the left side nothing's right and on the right side nothing's left.

6. I want to warn people from Nigeria who might be watching our show, if you get any emails from Washington asking for money, it's a scam. Don't fall for it - Jay Leno

7. Bush was asked about the credit crunch. He said it was his favorite candy bar - Jay Leno

8. The rescue bill was about 450 pages. President Bush's copy is even thicker. They had to include pictures - Jay Leno

9. President Bush's response was to meet some small business owners in San Antonio last week. The small business owners are General Motors, General Electric and Century 21 - Jay Leno

10. What worries me most about the credit crunch is that if one of my cheques is returned stamped 'insufficient funds', I won't know whether that refers to mine or the bank's.

4) The No-State Solution: Hamas cares more about Shariah than 'Palestine.'
By BRET STEPHENS

Of all the errors in the West's understanding of Hamas, none is more fundamental than the routine characterization of the group as a Palestinian movement. It is nothing of the sort.

This isn't to say that the Islamic Resistance Movement -- to use Hamas's proper name -- isn't led by Palestinians, or that it's unpopular among them. On the contrary: Even before the current fighting, Hamas was almost certainly more popular than its secular rival Fatah throughout the Palestinian Authority, including the West Bank. The only difference with Gaza is that Israel remains a presence on the West Bank, able to prevent Hamas from gaining sufficient strength to rout Fatah in an armed contest.

Hamas's claim on Palestinian hearts has only gained force in the last three weeks, though whether the feeling lasts will depend largely on how it emerges from the war. But the test of Hamas's Palestinian-ness, as it were, has nothing to do with its popularity. The test is whether it actually believes in something called Palestine. There is scant evidence that it does.

Bear in mind that there has never previously been an independent state by that name; politically, it remains a notional place. The idea of a Palestinian people, referring to the Arab inhabitants of the land, is also of relatively recent vintage. (The late, great Israeli pianist David Bar-Ilan, my predecessor as editor of the Jerusalem Post, was known, as a Jewish child during the British Mandate, as the "Palestinian piano prodigy.")

This isn't to deny, as Golda Meir famously did, the existence of a Palestinian people. But it is to say that a Palestinian people -- as opposed to merely an Arab one -- exists only as a kind of counterpart, perhaps a twin, to the Israeli people. Put simply: No Israel, no Palestine.

That's why the creation of the Palestinian Authority, on the basis of the 1993 Oslo Accords, could only happen once Yasser Arafat's PLO had recognized Israel's right to exist. Israel later learned, at great cost, that Arafat's "recognition" had been a lie. Yet the principle remains valid regardless of the lie.
Hamas, to its perverse credit, does not lie, at least not on fundamental issues. It has never accepted the Oslo Accords. It is sworn to Israel's destruction. Its charter is nakedly and aggressively anti-Semitic; no fig leaf of "anti-Zionism" there. The closest it has ever come to terms with the Jewish state is the offer of a long-term hudna, on the model of the Prophet's 10-year truce with the tribes of seventh century Arabia. "Anyone who thinks Hamas will change is wrong," said supreme leader Khaled Mashal in 2006. Could he be any clearer?

Of course, Hamas enjoys "democratic legitimacy" by virtue of its parliamentary victory in January 2006. And with the quiet expiration last week of Mahmoud Abbas's presidential term, it is the only Palestinian party that enjoys such legitimacy. But this turns out to be no legitimacy at all, since Hamas refuses to recognize the legal basis of the Authority it purports to represent. And this is to say nothing of the putsch through which Hamas came to power in Gaza.
Still, it isn't merely Israel's right to exist, or the Palestinian Authority's, that Hamas denies. It denies Palestine's as well.


The Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is merely an affiliate, has never been keen on the concept of the nation-state. Hamas's charter describes the land of Palestine as an "Islamic Waqf," or trust, "consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day." Hamas's charming slogan -- "God is [Hamas's] target, the Prophet is its model, the Quran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of God is the loftiest of its wishes" -- is tellingly silent on the subject of Palestine.


This isn't so different from the old Soviet model, which disdained nationalism in theory even if it made use of it in practice (and sometimes vice versa). It is nearly identical in its totalitarian aspirations. Above all, Hamas is a revolutionary movement, similar in spirit, if not theology, to Khomeini's revolution in Iran, or Lenin's in Russia.


It's easy to understand why so many Palestinians would be keen to join the movement: What comparable form of moral and political transcendence can a little Palestinian state offer? But in choosing Hamas and the fantasy of pan-Islamism over secular Palestinian alternatives, they are also choosing to abandon Palestine itself. Good luck to them with their corner of the caliphate.


Western pundits and policy experts are now in full-throat about the threat that Israel's war in Gaza poses to the possibility of a two-state solution. It's a shopworn lament. That solution always depended on the willingness of Israelis and Palestinians to treat their conflict as a territorial one, amenable to the drawing of borders, rather than a religious one. Israel made its preferences clear with its Gaza withdrawal. As for the Palestinians, the people who never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity have missed one, again.

5) The Clinton Business: Bill out-negotiated Barack on financial disclosure.


These columns have long believed that a President deserves the cabinet members he wants, barring some major dereliction. So if Barack Obama wants to make Hillary and Bill Clinton part of his governing team, that's his business. We can only hope he understands the Clinton family business he's taking on.


Take Mr. Clinton's post-Presidential fund-raising, the scope of which he finally disclosed in late December after years of refusing and under pressure from the Obama transition. Amid the holidays and economic news, this window on the Clinton political method has received less attention than it deserves. Here is the spectacle of a former President circling the globe to raise at least $492 million over 10 years for his foundation -- much of it from assorted rogues, dictators and favor-seekers. We are supposed to believe that none of this -- and none of his future fund-raising -- will have any influence on Mrs. Clinton's conduct as Secretary of State.

The silence over this is itself remarkable. When Henry Kissinger was invited merely to co-chair the 9/11 Commission, the political left went bonkers about his foreign clients. In this case we have a Secretary of State nominee whose husband may have raised more than $60 million from various Middle East grandees, and Washington reacts with a yawn. Maybe someone will even ask about it at her nomination hearing today.


A Senator should ask, because this has the potential to complicate life for the new President. All the more so because under terms of his agreement with Mr. Obama, Mr. Clinton will be able to keep raising foreign cash as long as the donors send the checks to a Clinton entity other than the "Clinton Global Initiative." Instead of being immediately disclosed, future donations will only be made public once a year and the exact amounts and dates of previous donations will never be made public.

While Mr. Clinton will submit some donations from foreign governments to Administration scrutiny, he need only do so if the donations are new or are of a significantly larger magnitude from a previous donation. In other words, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Sultanate of Oman can keep giving millions without U.S. government review even while Mrs. Clinton is America's chief diplomat. These disclosure limitations suggest that the Clintons seriously out-negotiated Team Obama. We hope the President-elect does better with Iran.

As for potential embarrassment, consider the "up to $5 million" in donations to the Clinton foundation from Gilbert Chagoury, known for his ties to Nigeria's former military dictator, General Sani Abacha. The Journal's John Emshwiller recently noted that unfortunately for Mr. Chagoury, after Abacha died in 1998, "Swiss and other European authorities froze a number of bank accounts, including some related to Mr. Chagoury, as part of an investigation by the Nigerian government and others about whether billions of dollars had been improperly taken out of the country during the Abacha regime, according to news reports and a 2001 British court decision in Abacha-related litigation. Mr. Chagoury later agreed to return funds, estimated to be as much as $300 million, to the Nigerian government in exchange for indemnity from possible charges and to unfreeze his accounts, according to the British court decision."

Another notable donor -- also up to $5 million -- is Viktor Pinchuk, son-in-law of former Ukraine president Leonid Kuchma. Mr. Pinchuk was mentioned in a 2005 Journal story headlined, "Haunted By Suspect Deals Of Old Regime." Suspect indeed. The "privatization" of the country's largest steel plant in a sale to a group including Mr. Pinchuk was later overturned after the country held a democratic election.

And only this month, the New York Times reported that New York developer Robert Congel gave $100,000 to the Clinton foundation in November, 2004, one month after the enactment of a law that gave Mr. Congel access to tax-exempt "green bonds" to build a shopping mall in Syracuse. Mrs. Clinton had supported the law, and within a year of the donation she secured $5 million in taxpayer funds for the complex.

It'd be nice to think Mr. Clinton would forswear this money-hustle while his wife is Secretary of State, but that self-sacrifice would belie his entire career. As for Mrs. Clinton, note the scrutiny that Eric Holder, Mr. Obama's Attorney General nominee, is coming under for his role in aiding pardons for 16 unrepentant Puerto Rican terrorists in 1999. But keep in mind the timing of those pardons was intended to help Mrs. Clinton win Puerto Rican support in her 2000 Senate campaign. Someone should ask her at today's hearing about the role she played in that pardon.

In signing up the Clintons -- always two for the price of one -- Mr. Obama is no doubt hoping to unite his party and mute Democratic criticism when mistakes happen. He is also hiring someone whose prominence and allies make her impossible to fire, even as she and her husband have a history of cutting ethical corners. Good luck.