Wiser this time: the international community is working to Very-Stable-Genius-proof its goals and strategies

 The world stage, after having gotten a taste of Donald Trump's special brand of chaos, is taking precautions in the event the VSG is once again at the helm in post-America:

In Brussels, NATO officials have devised a plan to lock in long-term military support for Ukraine so that a possible Trump administration can’t get in the way.

In Ankara, Turkish officials have reviewed the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policy road map for clues into Donald Trump’s designs on Syria.

In Atlanta, Austin and Lincoln, Nebraska, top ministers from Germany and Canada have met with Republican governors to shore up relations on the American right.

And in Washington, Trump’s return is the dominant topic at monthly breakfast meetings of ambassadors from European countries. At one of those meetings, the top envoy from one country asked his colleagues whether they were engaged in a fool’s errand.

“Can we really prepare for Trump?” this person asked, according to another top diplomat. “Or do we rather have to wait and see what the new reality would look like?”

Folly or not, the preparations are underway.

There are three components to NATO's preparations:

First, there is extensive personal outreach to Trump and his advisers, in the hope of building relationships that will help minimize conflict.

Second, there are policy shifts aimed at pleasing Trump and his political coalition, chiefly by soothing Trump’s complaints about inadequate European defense spending.

Third, there are creative diplomatic and legal measures in the works to armor NATO priorities against tampering by a Trump administration.

Taken together, it starts to look like a plausible strategy for managing the turbulence of a Trump-led world. Still, even the NATO leaders driving this approach acknowledge that much of this project may ultimately be at the mercy of Trump’s individual whims.

“Of course, the biggest challenge is we don’t know — and I think nobody knows, exactly — what he will do,” said one diplomat from a NATO country.

A prudent way to proceed when dealing with Mr. Do-Whatever-The-Hell-They-Want.  

 

 

 

A bracing world-stage snapshot

 Yes, I know much on the domestic front bears watching. All the drool-besotted, performative clowns in he House of Representatives (including George Santos, who is even too hot a potato for his fellow drool-besotted performative clowns) have their committee assignments. Kevin McCarthy is even speaking in a laudatory manner about Marjorie Taylor Greene ("I will always take care of her"). Nobody on either side of the aisle has the clarity, maturity or courage to address the real causes of the debt and deficit situation. The latest incident of police brutality, this one in Memphis, is leading, in clockwork fashion, to a fresh round of civil unrest. 

But some current developments on the world stage are enough to stand one's hair on end.

Let's start with this:

A four-star Air Force general sent a memo on Friday to the officers he commands that predicts the U.S. will be at war with China in two years and tells them to get ready to prep by firing "a clip" at a target, and "aim for the head."

In the memo sent Friday and obtained by NBC News, Gen. Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command, said, “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me will fight in 2025.” 

Air Mobility Command has nearly 50,000 service members and nearly 500 planes and is responsible for transport and refueling.

Minihan said in the memo that because both Taiwan and the U.S. will have presidential elections in 2024, the U.S. will be “distracted,” and Chinese President Xi Jinping will have an opportunity to move on Taiwan. 

I agree with Tom Nichols that the West must supply Ukraine with M1 Abrams and Leopard II tanks. Western nation really ought to send F-16s as well.  The stakes are existential. But Russia is, as one might expect, furious about it, becoming more explicit in its wider-war talk:

"There are constant statements from European capitals, from Washington, that the sending of various weapons systems, including tanks, to Ukraine in no way means the involvement of these countries or the alliance [NATO] in the hostilities that are taking place in Ukraine," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday. "We categorically disagree with this... everything that the alliance I mentioned and the capital [Washington] does is perceived as direct involvement in the conflict, and we see that it is growing."

A senior Russian politician and ally of President Vladimir Putin cast a dire warning exactly one week ago of how Moscow might respond to a perceived military defeat in Ukraine.

"The defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war can trigger a nuclear war," former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of the Security Council, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

North Korea is taking the opportunity to strengthen the notion of an alliance of rogue states:

North Korea condemned on Friday the decision by the United States to supply Ukraine with advanced battle tanks to help fight off Russia’s invasion, saying Washington is escalating a sinister “proxy war” aimed at destroying Moscow.

The comments by the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un underscored the country’s deepening alignment with Russia over the war in Ukraine as it confronts the United States and its Asian allies over its own growing nuclear weapons and missiles program.

North Korea has blamed the United States for the crisis in Ukraine, insisting that the West’s “hegemonic policy” forced Russia to take military action to protect its security interests. 

It has also used the distraction created by the war to accelerate its own weapons development, test-firing more than 70 missiles in 2022 alone, including potentially nuclear-capable weapons believed able to target South Korea and the U.S. mainland.

 

 

She elaborates:

 Kim said the Biden administration was “further crossing the red line” by sending its main tanks to Ukraine and that the decision reflects a “sinister intention to realize its hegemonic aim by further expanding the proxy war for destroying Russia.”

“The U.S. is the arch criminal which poses serious threat and challenge to the strategic security of Russia and pushes the regional situation to the present grave phase,” she said.

“I do not doubt that any military hardware the U.S. and the West boast of will be burnt into pieces in the face of the indomitable fighting spirit and might of the heroic Russian army and people,” she said, adding that North Korea will always “stand in the same trench” with Russia. 

North Korea is the only nation other than Russia and Syria to recognize the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, two Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, and has also hinted at plans to send workers there to help with rebuilding efforts. 

Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have been heating up again, to levels not seen in years.  

The situation is not helped by the fact that conservative-leaning political parties in Israel have of late been skewing toward the kind of nutty populism we see out of, say, Hungary, or the U.S. Republican Party. Netanyahu is trying to tamp down the crazy to some extent:

For now, Mr. Netanyahu has restrained some of his more hard-line ministers from fully exerting their will in the West Bank.

This month, he ignored demands from Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right minister, to stop the army from evicting an unauthorized Israeli settlement in the territory. But it is unclear how long he can continue to deny his coalition partner: He has promised to give Mr. Smotrich power over the military department that oversees construction and demolition in Israeli-administered parts of the territory.

We shall see how that goes. On Friday, the Jerusalem Post gave column space to a speculation about how close the country is to civil war. 

And there's the development I noted here the other day: Iran's intention to station warships in the Panama Canal. 

So let's keep our distractions under control. A number of people are emotionally invested in the outcome of the AFC championship and the Super Bowl. Awards season is getting underway for the entertainment industry. There's always some cool new restaurant to try. Our dogs and cats are cute.

The backdrop for such pleasantries merits out attention, though. Serious people with evil intent are not resting. Our times are as historic as any we've lived through or read about. 

Why did Turkey suddenly okay Sweden and Finland joining NATO? It was a case of the necessary prevailing over the ideal

 The American Enterprise Institute's Elizabeth Braw, writing at Defense One, explains that it was a matter of waiting out some internal dynamics in the Scandanavian countries:

What happened? In their trilateral June 28 memorandum—which NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and the Biden administration had no small part in bringing about—the three countries agree that “as prospective NATO Allies, Finland and Sweden extend their full support to Turkiye against threats to its national security. To that effect, Finland and Sweden will not provide support to YPG/PYD [Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units and the associated Democratic Union Party], and the organisation described as FETO in Turkiye.” It went on: “Finland and Sweden unambiguously condemn all terrorist organisations perpetrating attacks against Turkiye, and express their deepest solidarity with Turkiye and the families of the victims.”

There was one particular Swedish legislator who was driving a lot of the support for the Kurdish groups:

This was a victory for Turkey. Last November, Sweden’s governing Social Democrats had promised to deepen their cooperation with PYD, a left-wing Syrian Kurdish party that is also an affiliate of Turkey’s PKK. Why would the Social Democrats promise to deepen their cooperation with this unlikely partner? Because they were trying to find a parliamentary majority for their minority government, and to reach the already-precarious position of a one-vote parliamentary majority, they had to assuage Amineh Kakabaveh, a member of parliament who had been sacked from the Left Party and was sitting as an independent. And Kakabaveh, a former Peshmerga fighter, made maximum use of the leverage by demanding support for Kurdish causes. In fact, she seemed to take delight in her sudden power.

But time was not on Kakabaveh's  side:

But in late June, the Swedish parliament completed its term; it will resume after the country’s parliamentary elections in September. Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson no longer owed anything to Kakabaveh, who can’t be reelected, and could sign the memorandum with Turkey. So, of course, could Finland, which was never really a concern of Turkey’s in the first place.

The bargain finally struck certainly has a lot of benefits for Turkey:

Although the devil of every intergovernmental agreement is in the implementation, the Swedish-Finnish-Turkish memorandum was a certainly a victory for Turkey. In addition to denouncing support for the PYD, Sweden and Finland promised to lift their suspension of arms exports to Turkey and to “address Turkey's pending deportation or extradition requests of terror suspects expeditiously and thoroughly, taking into account information, evidence and intelligence provided by Turkey.” 

What that means was explained by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkish media: Sweden will have to extradite 73 suspected terrorists to Turkey, he announced. Washington, meanwhile, signaled that it’s willing to sell Ankara new F-16 fighter jets and modernization kits for its existing F-16s.

Mutual security comes with costs:

. . . as a senior official in a NATO member state told me, “Sweden and Finland have learned their first lesson in collective defense”: some members of the collective may be difficult, obnoxious even, but for the benefit of enhanced security for all you have to work with them. 

History provides many examples of nation-states having to hold their noses to pursue bigger-picture objectives. This is one of them. At a time of gruesome behavior and alarming rhetoric on the part of Russia, the West needs to provide the most united front it can muster. 

 

 

 

That was not okay, Joe

 You don't let loose with an attack on the judicial branch of government on foreign soil, at a NATO summit, no less:

President Joe Biden said Thursday that the Supreme Court's decision ending a constitutional right to abortion is “destabilizing," but he maintained the ruling does not affect U.S. standing on the world stage as he took credit for modernizing the transatlantic alliance to adapt to new threats from Russia and China.

Biden was speaking to reporters at the conclusion of a five-day foreign trip to huddle with NATO allies in Madrid and the leaders of the Group of Seven advanced democratic economies in the Bavarian Alps, which came as the nation was still grappling with the fallout from Friday's Supreme Court decision.

“America is better positioned to lead the world than we ever have been,” Biden said. “But one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of United States in overruling not only Roe v. Wade, but essentially challenging the right to privacy.”

He added: “I could understand why the American people are frustrated because of what the Supreme Court did."

You seem to have learned well from your time as the Most Equal Comrade's veep. He of the apology tour  and the acceptance of the book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent from Hugo Chavez at an Americas summit, in full view of the world's press cameras.

It just makes anything you have to say about US leadership on the world stage come across like so much horses---. When you were running for president, you marketed yourself as the foil to Trump's chaos and bombast. You're not living up to your advertising. 

Turkey finally gets on board with Finland and Sweden joining NATO

 This ought to give Putin pause:

Office of the President of the Republic of Finland
Press release 41/2022
28 June 2022

Today in Madrid, before the beginning of the NATO Summit, we had a thorough meeting with President of Türkiye Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prime Minister of Sweden Magdalena Andersson, facilitated by Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg.

As a result of that meeting, our foreign ministers signed a trilateral memorandum which confirms that Türkiye will at the Madrid Summit this week support the invitation of Finland and Sweden to become members of NATO. The concrete steps of our accession to NATO will be agreed by the NATO Allies during the next two days, but that decision is now imminent.

Our joint memorandum underscores the commitment of Finland, Sweden and Türkiye to extend their full support against threats to each other’s security. Us becoming NATO Allies will further strengthen this commitment.

I realize that this afternoon's avalanche of big news (Maxwell's 20-year sentence, Cassidy Hutchinson's J6 testimony, the Rasmussen poll showing that half of likely voters approve of SCOTUS ruling in Dobbs) presents us with a dizzying number of claims on our cognitive faculties, but this must not get lost in the shuffle. It shows that a unified front against Russia's barbarism in Ukraine still exists.

 

Leave it to Erdogan to throw a wrench in the works

 The push for NATO expansion and strengthened Western resolve has hit a road bump:

Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has come out against allowing Sweden and Finland to join Nato, putting the two Nordic countries’ hopes of joining the western military alliance in jeopardy.

 

In a move that could undermine Turkey’s efforts to strengthen ties with the US and Europe in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Erdoğan — whose country has been a Nato member since 1952 — on Friday said he could not take a “positive view” of the two nations’ potential bids for membership.

 

The obstacle was their support for the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long armed insurgency against the Turkish state, he said. It is classified as a terrorist organisation by Ankara, the US and the EU. Turkey’s president also named a far-left extremist group.

 

“Scandinavian countries are like some kind of guest house for terrorist organisations,” Erdoğan told reporters, referring to the Nordic countries. “They are even in parliament.”

 

He added: “At this point, it’s not possible for us to look positively at this.”

 

Some Swedish officials and MPs have been worried that Turkey could pose the most dangerous opposition to a potential Nato bid, which appears to be backed by most of the alliance’s other 29 members but requires unanimous support.

 

“There are a lot of Kurds in Sweden, there are a lot of MPs with Kurdish background, Sweden has been active on the Kurdish issue — I’m afraid there could be a backlash,” one senior Swedish official said earlier this month.

 

Finnish and Swedish diplomats have been crossing Europe and the Atlantic to curry favour with Nato members, whose ratification is necessary for them to become members.

The Turkish president has a different set of criteria for weighing factors on a situation like this. 

But then, he's harbored prejudice against Kurds all his political life and has a track record of acting on it: 

In troubled times, people worship self-assured leaders, and Erdogan sees himself as the anointed vessel of Ottoman resurrection. He allowed Islamic State to murder Kurds and unleashed his army on them. He must and can be stopped.

 

Kurds, formerly referred to as Mountain Turks, constitute more than 20% of the country's citizens. Many want independence, but in 1999, the inspirational, formerly separatist Marxist leader of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, urged peace after being captured and jailed. Most obeyed, but many still dream of uniting with Kurdish enclaves in Syria, Iraq and Iran to re-establish historic Kurdistan.

In 2013, Erdogan promised to recognize Kurdish identity and language, and increase Kurdish liberties. A truce followed, but hostilities resumed in 2015. Erdogan said he was responding to PKK terrorism. The PKK claimed Erdogan destroyed the ceasefire by building dams and security stations in Kurdish regions. In either case, a war was on. Erdogan attacked with helicopter gunships, artillery and armored divisions, murdering thousands and displacing 335,000 mainly Kurdish citizens. A UN report described destroyed villages as moonscapes. 

 Erdogan perceives Kurdish nationalism as an existential threat. 

Recalling the Armenian Genocide, Turkish Nobel Prize winning novelist Orhan Pamuk lamented Erdogan's mass killings of Kurds. Pamuk er was prosecuted for insulting "Turkishness," and public Pamuk book-burnings followed. International outcry spared Pamuk imprisonment, but he sees his once democratic moderate Muslim country heading towards "a regime of terror."

So where do things stand regarding Erdogan vis-a-vis the Kurds at present and in the near-term future?

The economic and foreign struggles of Turkey combined with the fact that the Turkish government historically has pushed its failures onto minority groups means that the ultra-nationalist alliance in Turkey will further scapegoat, persecute, and brutalize minorities, especially the Kurds, because much of their ongoing foreign policy is centered around the Kurds and the alleged existential threat they present. 

There's been a feeling in a lot of quarters for some time that Turkey was arguably the iffiest member of NATO. We now have a rather high-stakes example of this that is going to be thorny to deal with. 

 

 

 

The Very Stable Genius is so completely without self-control, he'll say anything, even if it undermines him

 He picked a hell of a time, what with Ukraine getting mercilessly raped by Russia for all the world to see, to lay this humdinger on the folks in attendance at a Heritage Foundation pow-wow:

Former President Donald Trump told a conference on Thursday that he once told a NATO country leader that the U.S. would not protect NATO members from a Russian attack if they did not pay more into the alliance.

Trump made the headline-grabbing remarks while giving the keynote address at the Heritage Foundation’s leadership conference on Amelia Island, Florida. The remarks quickly reverberated throughout the news media as pundits and observers noted the remarks were Trump’s “most explicit statement to date” about breaking NATO treaty commitments.

“Everyone was delinquent, they didn’t pay,” Trump told the crowd at the Ritz Carlton. “And they asked me, one of the presidents of the countries at a closed meeting…he said, ‘Does that mean that you won’t protect us in case – if we don’t pay, you won’t protect us from Russia — was the Soviet Union but now Russia?’”

“I said, ‘That’s exactly what it means,'” Trump continued, claiming he would violate the treaty’s key mutual protection clause. “Now, if I said, ‘No, I don’t mean that,’ then why would they pay? So somebody had to say it. I was amazed it didn’t get out. I was amazed. The fake news didn’t pull it out.”

“The money started to flow in,” Trump added, noting his threat to break the treaty’s Article 5 provision was very “risky.”

Just remember: he's still the frontrunner among names discussed as GOP presidential candidates in 2024.  

 

 

The West says, "We stand with you, Ukraine"; Ukraine says, "Could have fooled us"

 Much note has already been made of the fact President Biden's Warsaw speech yesterday took a jarring turn at the very end. Up to that point, it was the kind of speech the moment called for, a declaration of how the great historical forces were arrayed on the world stage. It was a sober and eloquent blend of context and resolve. Then came the "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power" remark, referring to Putin.

For my money, Stephen Hayes has the kind of take on it that is has some usefulness:

Stephen Hayes

@stephenfhayes

He was obviously discussing Putin's power in Russia. He was plainly right on substance - of course it'd be better not to have a nihilistic authoritarian running a nuclear state committing war crimes daily. But he was foolish to say it. The walkback is insulting - damage is done.

I don't think the kind of take I'm seeing some examples of  - the take that says, "Oh, dandy, now Putin has license to get as ugly as he pleases, given that the West, as embodied by Biden, is determined to remove him" - is helpful. Biden committed a characteristically Bidenesque gaffe, but it's not as if the US has spooks in the Kremlin waiting for the moment to hog-tie Putin and cart him out. 

I think that as the new week unfolds, sufficient weight will be given to the brunt of the speech, which was appropriately grand and resolute. At least I hope so. The West does indeed need to remain unified against the expansionist aims of Putin and his ilk. 

But I think we'd better pay some attention to where Ukrainian president Zelesnskyy is coming from:

In the wake of President Joe Biden’s trip to Europe to rally Ukraine's allies, the country's leader reiterated his view that the West has not done enough to support Kyiv. 

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanded in a video message late Saturday that Western nations provide a fraction of the military hardware in their stockpiles and asked whether they were afraid of Moscow.

Zelenskyy said Kyiv needed planes, tanks, air-defense and anti-ship systems.

"That is what our partners have, that is what is just gathering dust there," he said in the address. "This is all for not only the freedom of Ukraine, but for the freedom of Europe."

"We are waiting for 31 days already. So who is governing the Euro-Atlantic community? Is it really still Moscow through intimidation?" Zelenskyy said.

It's increasingly looking like a possibility that Ukraine, assuming it - or any of us - skate past the potential Armageddon that looms way too uncomfortably, may eke out a future that is other than conventionally Western. Zelenskyy has the overwhelming support of his citizens. He articulates their plight, and they appreciate it. 

I completely understand the West's trepidation about NATO going toe-to-toe with Russia (see above reference to a potential Armageddon), but at what point is this going to be a matter of history recording that the West stood by and let Russia complete its rape of Ukraine? Is Zelenskyy's frustration turning into a bitterness that will steer Ukraine's course if it can survive?

I'm still not ready to take the hard-and fast position that NATO ought to bring to bear the kind of weaponry that risks direct confrontation with Russia. On the other hand, I'm not ready to take the hard and fast position that we shouldn't.

This is about as sticky a wicket as we've ever found ourselves in. 

As of right now, I'd just say that we may be contributing to the evolution of a Ukraine that doesn't have much use for Western assurances of solidarity. It's not going to surrender to Putin, but it may not feel much kinship with any of us, either. 

The no-fly zone question and the ultimate existential stakes

 I honestly don't have a hard and fast position on this. We're facing a Sophie's-choice scenario that leaves me with a grinding in my gut that will not go away.

Ukrainian president Zelensky convincingly implored the West in a televised news conference a while ago to impose a no-fly zone, basically in the next minute if not sooner:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated his plea for NATO to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, stressing on Thursday that this would be the “most important step” as Ukraine faces “incessant bombing” by Russia.

“We want a no-fly zone because our people are being killed. From Belarus, from Russia — these missiles, these Iskander missiles and bomber planes, are coming,” Zelensky said. 

“I asked President Biden, and Scholz and Macron…and I said, if you can’t provide a no-fly zone right now, then tell us when?” 

Speaking during a televised news conference in Kyiv, the Ukrainian president went on to ask how many more people in Ukraine must be killed before NATO agrees to enact a no-fly zone.  

“If you can’t give Ukrainians a date, how long do you need? How many people should be blown up? How many arms and legs and heads should be severed, so that you understand? I will go and count them, and we will wait until we have a sufficient number,” Zelensky said in an impassioned plea. 

“If you don’t have the strength to provide a no-fly zone, then give me planes. Would that not be fair?” he continued. 

On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that using US troops to create a no-fly zone in Ukraine is “not a good idea.” Speaking during an interview with MSNBC, Psaki said the implementation of a no-fly zone by the US military “would essentially mean the US military would be shooting down planes, Russian planes.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also said Wednesday that NATO allies “do not seek conflict with Russia,” stressing that NATO is a “defensive alliance.”

In a Twitter thread, Garry Kasparov likewise frames the situation with maximum grimness:

We are witnessing, literally watching live, Putin commit genocide on an industrial scale in Ukraine while the most powerful military alliance in history stands aside. It's impossible not to be emotional, but let us also be rational and focus our rage on the facts. 1/13

Putin once again told Macron to go to hell, no surprise. NATO/EU has already told Putin they won't touch his forces, so why should he listen? Russia is lifting target limitations and the death toll is rising every hour and lack of water & electricity is critical. 2/13

No treaty forbids NATO nations from fighting to defend in Ukraine. It's a choice based on the risk of Putin going nuclear, many say. That arming Ukrainians is an acceptable risk of WWIII & the citizenship of the pilot or soldier changes Putin's nuclear calculus, or NATO's. 3/13

If they care so much about the fine print and think Putin does too, ask Zelensky to issue Ukrainian passports to any volunteer to fly in combat. Sell jets to Ukraine for €1 each and paint UKR flags on them. Do you think Putin will care? Is it worth the lives lost? 4/13

This is already World War III. Putin started it long ago & Ukraine is only the current front. He will escalate anyway, and it's even more likely if he succeeds in destroying Ukraine because you have again convinced him you won't stop him even though you could. 5/13

Biden & others insist NATO would retaliate should Putin attack Baltic members. Watching Ukraine, I am not sure of that at all, and Putin won't be either. If the calculation is about nuclear risk, it's no different over Estonia than Ukraine. Don't say "Putin would never". 6/13

If this sounds familiar, it's the same argument from 2014, when Putin invaded E Ukraine and annexed Crimea. It was too risky to stop him, I was told, as I pleaded for intervention and warned he would never stop there. Here we are, with bombs raining down. 7/13

Risk and costs are higher now because the "reasonable" people in the West always choose lower risk today to guarantee higher risk tomorrow. Clearing the UKR skies after a warning period is risky. Letting Putin destroy Ukraine is riskier, & a human and moral disaster. 8/13

There is no waiting this out. This isn't chess; there's no draw, no stalemate. Either Putin destroys Ukraine and eventually hits NATO with an even greater catastrophe, or Putin falls in Russia. He cannot be stopped with weakness. 9/13

The corridors to get weapons, food, and medicine in and refugees out are narrowing and can be closed. Putin can bomb the trains, close the borders with NATO nations. The odds of Russian forces hitting a NATO asset are increasing, and then what? Still watching? 10/13

If your answer is no, that if a wing of a RU jet crosses Polish airspace, of course NATO will engage immediately, ask why thousands of Ukrainians civilians dying first matters less than a treaty, and what that says to Putin. That you're honorable, or a fool? We know. 11/13

As I said in 2014 and a fateful week ago, the price of stopping a dictator always goes up. What would have been enough to stop Putin 8 years or 6 months or 2 weeks ago is not enough today, and the price will rise again tomorrow. Fight. Find a way. 12/13

Putin vows to exterminate Ukrainians while we watch. Ukraine did nothing wrong but try to join the democratic world that is now witnessing crimes against humanity in real time. Not unable. Unwilling. #CloseTheSky 13/13

Still, in his latest Atlantic piece, Tom Nichols makes a compelling case, not icily, but rather fraught with humanity and the deepest compassion for Ukraine's plight, for not heading these pleas:

In my rage, I want someone somewhere to do something. I have taught military and national-security affairs for more than a quarter century, and I know what will happen when a 40-mile column of men and weapons encircles a city of outgunned defenders. I want all the might of the civilized world—a world of which Putin is no longer a part—to obliterate the invading forces and save the people of Ukraine.

Others share these impulses. In recent days, I’ve heard various proposals for Western intervention, including support for a no-fly zone over Ukraine from former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Philip Breedlove and the Russian dissident Garry Kasparov, among others. Social media is aflame with calls to send in American troops against the invading Russians.

And yet, I still counsel caution and restraint, a position I know many Americans find impossible to understand. Every measure of our outrage is natural, as are the calls for action. But emotions should never dictate policy. As President Joe Biden emphasized in his State of the Union address, we must do all we can to aid the Ukrainian resistance and to fortify NATO, but we cannot become involved in military operations in Ukraine.

But public figures and ordinary voters who are advocating for intervention also do so from the comfort of offices and homes where they can sound resolute by employing clinical euphemisms such as no-fly zone when what they mean is “war.” For now, fidelity to history requires us to remember that this isn’t the first time we’ve had little choice but to stand by and watch a dictator murder innocents.

Anybody embracing either position has to keep one thing in mind: there is no reversing the probable consequences of that first hostile encounter between a NATO plane and a Russian plane.

This is the extreme to which the human condition gets taken sometimes in this fallen world. When faced with nothing but rotten choices, what is the humane way to proceed? 

 

 

 

 

Three major situations going on in the Middle East / Mediterranean - one encouraging, two that are jitters-worthy

 The recent peace agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are laudable and fraught with possibilities for long-term regional stability and comity. 

Some aspects of the background leading up to these deals are noteworthy. One, the process of the groundwork being laid had been ongoing for some time. In each case, each party knew that trade and technology interests - and, at least as importantly, a common interest in seeing that Iran cannot establish its Tehran-to-the-Mediterranean crescent - provided the impetus for focusing on commonalities rather than differences. Two, these two Arab nations have a much different history than a lot of their neighbors. They have evolved out of a distillation of a national identity based on many ethnicities, for reasons of their locations along trade routes, participating in their development. They are smaller by comparison to, say, Iraq or Syria or Saudi Arabia. And, say what one will about strong monarchical forms of government, that element has shaped them differently that how things have evolved in countries that have earnestly tried to adopt, or at least ape, Western-style representative democracy. 

These factors make possible a considerable degree of confidence that the dynamic is shifting in the Middle East, at least to some degree, that the relative influence of various players of even fairly recent times is giving way to something new. 

A glaring obstacle to this path forward is Lebanon. Lebanon is one of the great tragedies of history. It's well-known that Beirut was, for many years, called the Paris of the Middle East. Broad boulevards, fashionable shops, a vital banking industry, a rich culture the ingredients of which included such influences as a few types of Christianity, Druze culture, the presence of both Sunni and Shiite Islam, and natural beauty gave it a global reputation as a desirable place to visit. Then came the 1975 - 1990 civil war, with its complex web of players and carnage and intrigue that would permanently impact the country's identity. 

It's now a failed state. The shell of its government is pretty much just a vehicle for Hezbollah to take the reins of power:

Lebanon, trapped in a constitutional vise evolved to ensure representation for its many sectarian communities while impeding the rise of cross-sectarian or secular parties, is hurtling toward full-scale breakdown. It is one of the most heavily indebted countries in the world, owing to entrenched patronage networks run by sectarian fiefs. The governing class plays each tribe against the other, Sunni against Shia against Christian against Druze, to enrich themselves while immiserating the nation. Woeful economic mismanagement has proceeded for many long years without respite. Combined with the arrival of the pandemic, rising unemployment has now plunged more than half the country—pushing upwards to three-quarters—into poverty.

To make matters worse, the power behind the throne in Lebanon resides with a vicious militia-cum-political party that is resistant to change and that refuses to treat Lebanese as fellow citizens. Hezbollah is the most conspicuous legacy of Syria’s long occupation of the country, and it has increasingly disfigured the proper operations of the government. Facilitated by Persian power and largesse, the Shia terrorist organization has risen to become the primus inter pares of Lebanese affairs. In concert with its domestic allies, the Party of God holds the majority in Parliament and dominates the government’s security and foreign policies.

This has global implications, and that doesn't just mean Iran. China sees a juicy opportunity to exert its influence:

If the people of Lebanon were pushed up against a wall of destitution and despair, they would lose hope, so the diabolical reasoning goes. Hopelessness would prepare them to accept anything, including a new overseer in the form of China offering a lifeline of billions of dollars in “aid” and pledging to rebuild vital infrastructure like the hammered Beirut port. This would effectively sever ailing Lebanon from its traditional Western and Arab strategic, political, and cultural moorings, taking it eastward toward Iran and China. It is no secret that Hezbollah is the designated agent entrusted with engineering such a shift, premised on compounding the misery of the already exhausted Lebanese as a quick way to oust the West permanently from the Arab Levant. Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of Hezbollah, even came on television several weeks ago to declare that he had secured a commitment from Beijing to “help,” if only the Lebanese would jump on this opportunity. Among other hidden benefits, China would gain a naval foothold for the first time on the Mediterranean Sea, close to Israel, and decisive economic influence in a vital gateway linking Europe through the Levant to the rest of the Middle East. Lebanon would thus become another feather in the cap of China’s expanding Belt and Road scheme with its not-so-concealed military dimension.

French president Emmanuel Macron has been to Lebanon twice since the gargantuan ammonium nitrate explosion last month, offering aid and signaling that the West is aware of the stakes. 

Europe has reason to be concerned about another situation in that region. Two NATO members, Greece and Turkey, are squaring off over gas and oil interests in the eastern Mediterranean:

The crisis has been deepening in recent months with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, leading those inside the EU opposing Turkey’s increasingly military foreign policy and saying Turkey can no longer be seen as partner in the Mediterranean. He has offered French military support to the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, including the possible sale of 18 Rafale jets.

The issue was on the agenda of a meeting of the Med7 group of southern Mediterranean leaders on the French island of Corsica on Thursday and again at an EU council meeting on 23 September that will discuss imposing severe sanctions on the already struggling Turkish banking sector over its demand for access to large swaths of the eastern Mediterranean.

Germany, the lead mediator between Turkey and Greece, is exploring an enhanced customs union between Turkey and the EU to calm the dispute, which has been exacerbated by vast hydrocarbon discoveries over the past decade in the eastern Mediterranean.

Turkey has long sought a broader customs union with the EU, and although Greece might see any such offer as a reward for bullying, Germany believes both carrots and sticks are needed to persuade Turkey to change its strategy..

But Germany is also warning Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, that his current unilateral strategy is a commercial dead end, since no private gas company is going to touch cooperation with Turkey if it is trying to exploit illegal claims on gas reserves.

The stakes are getting higher. Once again, Macron is very much involved:

Macron has already increased the French naval presence in the sea, and called for withdrawal of the Turkish reconnaissance ship Oruç Reis, accompanied by Turkish naval ships. The ship is undertaking seismic surveys in Greek waters south of Cyprus. A key moment may come on 12 September, when the Turkish Navtex warning for Oruç Reis is due to end. If it is extended, the risk of a naval clash between Greece and Turkey two Natopartners either by accident or design rises.

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The fear that the conflict could spiral out of control has led to an urgent search for a neutral arbitrator and an agreed agenda for talks. An effort by Nato to start technical naval deconfliction talks was delayed after Greece objected to Nato’s involvement. The Greek foreign minister, Nikos Dendias, insisted that the talks would start only when the threats stopped. He then flew to New York to enlist the help of the UN secretary general, António Guterres.

So the current situation is a mixture of hopeful signs and increasingly heated tensions. 

Western nations interested in seeing stability and a tilt toward Western alliance will have to base their participation in this confluence of events on an understanding that assumptions about regional dynamics from even fairly recently are giving way to new realities.