Although I hope that much of this blog will be historical in nature, in order to contextualize current events, and to have it focus on the Middle East itself rather than American policy toward the region, from time to time it will be necessary for me to discuss American foreign policy. I do not think that we have a grand strategy or policy toward the region, other than "Stay out as much as possible, and get out, if possible" and "Let's be hard on our friends and soft on our enemies." Because that is exactly the case. It's become quite clear that Obama wants very little to do with the region - we have no troops left in Iraq, we will soon have none in Afghanistan, and Obama is and has been decidedly standoffish about the civil war in Syria. President Obama is not an isolationist, but he wants out of the region. The most that he wants to do is fire a missile from a drone at Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen and Pakistan, and here and there give the go for a SEAL raid.
The purpose of this post is not, however, to criticize President Obama's grand strategy toward the Middle East. Rather, it is to discuss the absurd naivete and, frankly, idiocy of his Secretary of State, John Kerry.
While in Israel recently for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the two disagreed vociferously about upcoming negotiations with the Iranian regime concerning its drive for a nuclear weapon. Meanwhile, peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians over the past months have gone nowhere. Kerry vented his spleen on Israel's Channel 2, putting the entire onus for the failure of peace on Israel, called the settlements "illegitimate" (rather than "unhelpful", which is usual American rhetoric), and said that, should the peace process fail, Israel will likely be faced with a third intifada. This was a very clumsy, immature attempt to bully the Israeli government into making concessions that it is not prepared to make. By putting the onus on Israel, John Kerry infantilized the Palestinians, as Western politicians do often. They never have agency - they only react to what the Israelis do or do not do. By saying that a failure of the peace talks would lead to a third intifada, John Kerry more or less gave a green light for such an eventuality. Should anyone need a reminder, the Second Intifada killed thousands of people. For Kerry to air his frustrations in such an immature fashion, in public, was a diplomatic faux pas of the highest order.
Kerry's statement is historically inaccurate and feeds into Palestinian propaganda. That propaganda suggests that the Palestinians will play nice so long as there are concessions, but if Israel continues to play the obstructionist by building housing in settlements and not budging on other matters being negotiated on, then the Palestinians will have no choice but to return to "resistance." In other words, this argument gives carte blanche for acts of violence. The fact remains, however, that this "argument" is propaganda - its exponents know that, realistically, the Israeli government is not going to stop building apartments in East Jerusalem and settlements close to Jerusalem, including Maale Adumim, the Etzion Bloc, Har Gilo, etc. And even if the Israeli government did permanently freeze such construction (it will not), the exponents of this propaganda could argue that because of Israeli obstructionism on other issues - say, the right of return, or the final status of Jerusalem, or a million other things - there will still be the right to "resistance." This line of argument puts the entire onus for the success or failure onto the Israelis, and depending upon what the Israelis do or say, or do not do or say, the Palestinians will be justified in either waiting patiently or in launching an intifada.
This is all hogwash, however, because the Second Intifada, which was appallingly violent, was launched after the Israelis had agreed to unprecedented concessions to the Palestinians. Ninety plus percent of the West Bank (with the balance made up with land now in Israel-proper), all of Gaza, and East Jerusalem (which includes the Old City) would have come under Palestinian control. The Palestinian Authority would have had custodianship over the Temple Mount and Israel would keep control over the Western Wall, the one area in East Jerusalem in which this would be the case. The Israelis agreed to a token "right of return" for the descendants of Palestinian refugees (up to 100,000) and also agreed to financially compensate all of the descendants, with the assistance of other countries (this fund would amount in the billions). Arafat, however, refused, and in September 2000, on the flimsy pretext of Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, the Second Intifada was launched. It was not spontaneous - it was preplanned by Arafat and his officials within the Palestinian Authority. There were killings of Israelis, including the famous lynching of two reservists in Ramallah; suicide bombings in major Israeli cities, most of whose perpetrators originated in the West Bank; and so on. This ultimately led to Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, which sought to wipe out "terrorist nests" in major Palestinian cities in the West Bank, most famously Jenin (where many Palestinians and anti-Israeli Westerners falsely accused Israel of committing a massacre), and to the construction of the security barrier between Israel proper and the West Bank to keep out suicide bombers. It should be noted that this barrier has nothing to do with racism or apartheid, and it was not a right-wing dream; Ariel Sharon only gave in to building it under immense (north of 90% approval) pressure to build it in the face of Palestinian violence. The right wing of Israel had historically opposed any separation between Palestinians and Israelis; conversely, it sought to maintain territorial contiguity between Israel and the West Bank, which would allow Israelis to live on either side of the Green Line. Rather, it had been the Israeli left (including Yitzhak Rabin) who began to call for such a barrier in the early 1990s. Just want to clear that up so that the nonsense of it being an "apartheid" wall conceptualized by the racists in Likud can be laid to rest.
All of this violence happened even though Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak gave Yasser Arafat everything he could have possibly wanted (minus a full right of return, to which no Israeli government, even a left-oriented one, will ever concede). It did not happen because of Israeli obstructionism. Similarly, Israel has had to go back to every single place from which it has ever withdrawn, with the marked exception of Sinai (into which it has made brief incursions, however). For example, Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000; it returned to fight Hezbollah in 2006. The IDF withdrew from cities in the West Bank after the Oslo Accords; the Palestinians immediately destroyed Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, as one example, and then launched suicide operations from the West Bank. The IDF returned with massive force in 2002, as mentioned above. In 2005, Israel disengaged from Gaza; it has carried out three military assaults, most intensively in 2008-9 in Operation Cast Lead, since then. In other words, the pattern seems to be that, the more Israel concedes, the more violence that it faces. This is because, when Israel makes these concessions, their enemies smell blood and try to press for the kill. This pattern is the exact opposite of what John Kerry stated on Israeli television; however, his statement may in the end become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Please note that the First Intifada is not relevant in this case as it did not occur in the aftermath of Israeli withdrawals or of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks).
Secondly, we need to discuss John Kerry's performance concerning the talks with Iran in Geneva. This is not only Kerry, mind you - it reflects much of the thinking within the Beltway, particularly in Foggy Bottom, as well as the European powers sans France. The thinking is hopelessly naive. I understand the desire to come to an agreement with the Iranians on their nuclear program - no one wants to go to war with Iran. Every reasonable person strongly prefers a diplomatic solution. The talks in Geneva were to be the first phase; they would call for Iran to freeze its nuclear activities for 6 months in return for the unfreezing of Iranian currency reserves abroad. This would ease the pain of sanctions, which have had significant impact on the Iranian economy, which is experiencing inflation and a devalued currency. The problem is that Iran is probably already close to break-out capacity - it has 19,000 centrifuges, 3,000 of which are of a more advanced model that can enrich uranium at a quicker pace. Iran would have had to stop enriching uranium, especially at a 20% level, but it would not be required to get rid of the uranium that has already been enriched. In other words, the agreement does not have the teeth necessary to get a good deal. Eventually France stepped in because of its concerns about Iran's heavy water reactor in Arak (whose waste product is plutonium - an alternative route to a nuclear bomb) and Iran protested its "right" to enrich uranium. New talks will begin on November 20, so we shall see where it goes.
The ironic thing is that Kerry, since the failure of the talks, has tried his best to convince congressmen that they must not pass a new sanctions bill because that would be warmongering. This is stupid. If the congressmen wanted war, they would call for war. They are calling for sanctions precisely because they weaken Iran and provide the U.S. with more leverage in diplomatic negotiations - they serve the purpose of diplomacy, real diplomacy - not the diplomacy that is talking for talking's sake, photo ops, cocktails while overlooking Lake Geneva, and putting one's head in the sand. The only reason that the Iranians are agreeing to these talks to begin with is because the sanctions are really biting. So how are sanctions opposed to the spirit of diplomacy, as Kerry and the State Department argue? Beats me. There is an obsession in Washington to get an agreement, any agreement, with Iran, and now there is an opening because of the "moderate" Rouhani. I understand that this was to be but a preliminary stage in a series of stages of diplomacy, but the six months on the table would provide Iran with vital time and at the same time ease their economic pain. In return for...maintaining their nuclear infrastructure and not building anything for six months.
Lastly, there is Kerry's championing of the Geneva 2 talks (why always Geneva? God, that lake must be something) concerning the civil war in Syria. These would, hopefully, create a transitional government for a postwar Syria. The problem is that it doesn't make any sense. At all. The civil war right now is basically a stalemate, but Assad, with the assistance of Iran, Iraqi Shiite militias, and Hezbollah, has made military advances in Aleppo and in the Damascus suburbs. He literally has no reason to talk with anyone about anything while he has the upper hand. He knows that, should his regime fall, he is done for - even if there was a hypothetical agreement with some of the rebel factions in Geneva to keep him somehow within a postwar government - because, the fact is, the rebel factions that count are boycotting Geneva. The most militarily effective opposition brigades are not interested in talking with Assad - they want him fallen from power and dead, and they want the destruction of his regime. Even if there were an agreement with Bashar al-Assad and some of the more willing-to-talk rebels, because of the unorganized and decentralized nature of the rebels (who are fighting each other on the ground), there would be no enforcement mechanism for the agreement's stipulations. Who is going to enforce it? The UN? The U.S.? The weaker rebel factions in the face of strong opposition from Islamists and others who will not talk? And what would happen should Bashar al-Assad and his backers continue to shell civilians areas and continue their onslaught? Because there is no enforcement mechanism, it's kinda useless. And because the U.S. and its Western allies have little to no leverage in Syria at this point, I don't think either side really cares what we have to say any more. The states that have leverage are Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey because they are actively arming, financing, and/or actively fighting on either side of the civil war. Because we have remained so standoffish, and because we erased whatever leverage we had left after President Obama backed off from striking Assad and agreed with Russia to get rid of Assad's chemical weapons (although 99% of the dead have been killed with conventional arms), we don't pack any punch. The Geneva 2 talks are deeply unserious, as our Secretary of State increasingly seems to be.
The purpose of this post is not, however, to criticize President Obama's grand strategy toward the Middle East. Rather, it is to discuss the absurd naivete and, frankly, idiocy of his Secretary of State, John Kerry.
While in Israel recently for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the two disagreed vociferously about upcoming negotiations with the Iranian regime concerning its drive for a nuclear weapon. Meanwhile, peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians over the past months have gone nowhere. Kerry vented his spleen on Israel's Channel 2, putting the entire onus for the failure of peace on Israel, called the settlements "illegitimate" (rather than "unhelpful", which is usual American rhetoric), and said that, should the peace process fail, Israel will likely be faced with a third intifada. This was a very clumsy, immature attempt to bully the Israeli government into making concessions that it is not prepared to make. By putting the onus on Israel, John Kerry infantilized the Palestinians, as Western politicians do often. They never have agency - they only react to what the Israelis do or do not do. By saying that a failure of the peace talks would lead to a third intifada, John Kerry more or less gave a green light for such an eventuality. Should anyone need a reminder, the Second Intifada killed thousands of people. For Kerry to air his frustrations in such an immature fashion, in public, was a diplomatic faux pas of the highest order.
Kerry's statement is historically inaccurate and feeds into Palestinian propaganda. That propaganda suggests that the Palestinians will play nice so long as there are concessions, but if Israel continues to play the obstructionist by building housing in settlements and not budging on other matters being negotiated on, then the Palestinians will have no choice but to return to "resistance." In other words, this argument gives carte blanche for acts of violence. The fact remains, however, that this "argument" is propaganda - its exponents know that, realistically, the Israeli government is not going to stop building apartments in East Jerusalem and settlements close to Jerusalem, including Maale Adumim, the Etzion Bloc, Har Gilo, etc. And even if the Israeli government did permanently freeze such construction (it will not), the exponents of this propaganda could argue that because of Israeli obstructionism on other issues - say, the right of return, or the final status of Jerusalem, or a million other things - there will still be the right to "resistance." This line of argument puts the entire onus for the success or failure onto the Israelis, and depending upon what the Israelis do or say, or do not do or say, the Palestinians will be justified in either waiting patiently or in launching an intifada.
This is all hogwash, however, because the Second Intifada, which was appallingly violent, was launched after the Israelis had agreed to unprecedented concessions to the Palestinians. Ninety plus percent of the West Bank (with the balance made up with land now in Israel-proper), all of Gaza, and East Jerusalem (which includes the Old City) would have come under Palestinian control. The Palestinian Authority would have had custodianship over the Temple Mount and Israel would keep control over the Western Wall, the one area in East Jerusalem in which this would be the case. The Israelis agreed to a token "right of return" for the descendants of Palestinian refugees (up to 100,000) and also agreed to financially compensate all of the descendants, with the assistance of other countries (this fund would amount in the billions). Arafat, however, refused, and in September 2000, on the flimsy pretext of Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, the Second Intifada was launched. It was not spontaneous - it was preplanned by Arafat and his officials within the Palestinian Authority. There were killings of Israelis, including the famous lynching of two reservists in Ramallah; suicide bombings in major Israeli cities, most of whose perpetrators originated in the West Bank; and so on. This ultimately led to Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, which sought to wipe out "terrorist nests" in major Palestinian cities in the West Bank, most famously Jenin (where many Palestinians and anti-Israeli Westerners falsely accused Israel of committing a massacre), and to the construction of the security barrier between Israel proper and the West Bank to keep out suicide bombers. It should be noted that this barrier has nothing to do with racism or apartheid, and it was not a right-wing dream; Ariel Sharon only gave in to building it under immense (north of 90% approval) pressure to build it in the face of Palestinian violence. The right wing of Israel had historically opposed any separation between Palestinians and Israelis; conversely, it sought to maintain territorial contiguity between Israel and the West Bank, which would allow Israelis to live on either side of the Green Line. Rather, it had been the Israeli left (including Yitzhak Rabin) who began to call for such a barrier in the early 1990s. Just want to clear that up so that the nonsense of it being an "apartheid" wall conceptualized by the racists in Likud can be laid to rest.
All of this violence happened even though Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak gave Yasser Arafat everything he could have possibly wanted (minus a full right of return, to which no Israeli government, even a left-oriented one, will ever concede). It did not happen because of Israeli obstructionism. Similarly, Israel has had to go back to every single place from which it has ever withdrawn, with the marked exception of Sinai (into which it has made brief incursions, however). For example, Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000; it returned to fight Hezbollah in 2006. The IDF withdrew from cities in the West Bank after the Oslo Accords; the Palestinians immediately destroyed Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, as one example, and then launched suicide operations from the West Bank. The IDF returned with massive force in 2002, as mentioned above. In 2005, Israel disengaged from Gaza; it has carried out three military assaults, most intensively in 2008-9 in Operation Cast Lead, since then. In other words, the pattern seems to be that, the more Israel concedes, the more violence that it faces. This is because, when Israel makes these concessions, their enemies smell blood and try to press for the kill. This pattern is the exact opposite of what John Kerry stated on Israeli television; however, his statement may in the end become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Please note that the First Intifada is not relevant in this case as it did not occur in the aftermath of Israeli withdrawals or of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks).
Secondly, we need to discuss John Kerry's performance concerning the talks with Iran in Geneva. This is not only Kerry, mind you - it reflects much of the thinking within the Beltway, particularly in Foggy Bottom, as well as the European powers sans France. The thinking is hopelessly naive. I understand the desire to come to an agreement with the Iranians on their nuclear program - no one wants to go to war with Iran. Every reasonable person strongly prefers a diplomatic solution. The talks in Geneva were to be the first phase; they would call for Iran to freeze its nuclear activities for 6 months in return for the unfreezing of Iranian currency reserves abroad. This would ease the pain of sanctions, which have had significant impact on the Iranian economy, which is experiencing inflation and a devalued currency. The problem is that Iran is probably already close to break-out capacity - it has 19,000 centrifuges, 3,000 of which are of a more advanced model that can enrich uranium at a quicker pace. Iran would have had to stop enriching uranium, especially at a 20% level, but it would not be required to get rid of the uranium that has already been enriched. In other words, the agreement does not have the teeth necessary to get a good deal. Eventually France stepped in because of its concerns about Iran's heavy water reactor in Arak (whose waste product is plutonium - an alternative route to a nuclear bomb) and Iran protested its "right" to enrich uranium. New talks will begin on November 20, so we shall see where it goes.
The ironic thing is that Kerry, since the failure of the talks, has tried his best to convince congressmen that they must not pass a new sanctions bill because that would be warmongering. This is stupid. If the congressmen wanted war, they would call for war. They are calling for sanctions precisely because they weaken Iran and provide the U.S. with more leverage in diplomatic negotiations - they serve the purpose of diplomacy, real diplomacy - not the diplomacy that is talking for talking's sake, photo ops, cocktails while overlooking Lake Geneva, and putting one's head in the sand. The only reason that the Iranians are agreeing to these talks to begin with is because the sanctions are really biting. So how are sanctions opposed to the spirit of diplomacy, as Kerry and the State Department argue? Beats me. There is an obsession in Washington to get an agreement, any agreement, with Iran, and now there is an opening because of the "moderate" Rouhani. I understand that this was to be but a preliminary stage in a series of stages of diplomacy, but the six months on the table would provide Iran with vital time and at the same time ease their economic pain. In return for...maintaining their nuclear infrastructure and not building anything for six months.
Lastly, there is Kerry's championing of the Geneva 2 talks (why always Geneva? God, that lake must be something) concerning the civil war in Syria. These would, hopefully, create a transitional government for a postwar Syria. The problem is that it doesn't make any sense. At all. The civil war right now is basically a stalemate, but Assad, with the assistance of Iran, Iraqi Shiite militias, and Hezbollah, has made military advances in Aleppo and in the Damascus suburbs. He literally has no reason to talk with anyone about anything while he has the upper hand. He knows that, should his regime fall, he is done for - even if there was a hypothetical agreement with some of the rebel factions in Geneva to keep him somehow within a postwar government - because, the fact is, the rebel factions that count are boycotting Geneva. The most militarily effective opposition brigades are not interested in talking with Assad - they want him fallen from power and dead, and they want the destruction of his regime. Even if there were an agreement with Bashar al-Assad and some of the more willing-to-talk rebels, because of the unorganized and decentralized nature of the rebels (who are fighting each other on the ground), there would be no enforcement mechanism for the agreement's stipulations. Who is going to enforce it? The UN? The U.S.? The weaker rebel factions in the face of strong opposition from Islamists and others who will not talk? And what would happen should Bashar al-Assad and his backers continue to shell civilians areas and continue their onslaught? Because there is no enforcement mechanism, it's kinda useless. And because the U.S. and its Western allies have little to no leverage in Syria at this point, I don't think either side really cares what we have to say any more. The states that have leverage are Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey because they are actively arming, financing, and/or actively fighting on either side of the civil war. Because we have remained so standoffish, and because we erased whatever leverage we had left after President Obama backed off from striking Assad and agreed with Russia to get rid of Assad's chemical weapons (although 99% of the dead have been killed with conventional arms), we don't pack any punch. The Geneva 2 talks are deeply unserious, as our Secretary of State increasingly seems to be.
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