Category Archives: foreign policy

A Thought on a European Polity

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I wrote about this a bit ago. Daniel Hannan, Conservative Party MEP for South East England, has a more recent thought.

Churchill [as early as 1946] makes clear that this United States of Europe should not include Britain:

There is already a natural grouping in the Western Hemisphere. We British have our own Commonwealth of Nations. Why should there not be a European group which could give a sense of enlarged patriotism and common citizenship to the distracted peoples of this turbulent and mighty continent and why should it not take its rightful place with other great groupings in shaping the destinies of men?

In case anyone had missed the point, Churchill ended with a call for Britain and the Commonwealth, along with the United States and perhaps even Russia, to “be the friends and sponsors of the new Europe, and champion its right to live and shine”.

Hannan and a number of his fellow Center-Right MEPs are working out the details of a new proposal to achieve that:

a European Common Market—a lightly but effectively regulated free trade area, stretching from Iceland and the Faroe Islands to Turkey and Armenia—within which a smaller group of states could form a political union without prejudice to the non-participants.

At this point, it’s a long shot, but today is different from 1946. There’s a better chance. I say good luck to Hannan and his fellows.

Funding Israel’s Enemies

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Last week, Hamas terrorists butchered three Israeli teenagers—one of them holding dual citizenship: he was an American, too. Shortly after, a Palestinian was butchered in an act of claimed vengeance. The Israelis promptly tracked down and arrested six suspects in the Palestinian’s murder. Hamas celebrated the butchery of the three Israelis (and American) and have pressed their terrorism with a continuing barrage of rocket attacks into Israel, ostensibly to “punish” Israel for its impertinence in objecting to the murders and, more so, for Israel’s rudeness in existing.

The Obama administration has pushed both the Israelis and Palestinians to “show restraint,” as though President Barack Obama seriously believes there is a moral equivalence between the two acts and between the two societies. Indeed, Obama wrote in his op-ed for Haaretz

[I]n President Abbas, Israel has a counterpart committed to a two-state solution and security cooperation with Israel.

We’re seeing now the Hamas Palestinian Authority leader’s view of “security” cooperation with Israel.

Yet, the moral equivalence which Obama insists exists between a democratic Israel—a democracy that includes its Arab citizens—and the terrorist organization that the Palestinian Authority has become since its integration with Hamas acts to justify $400 million in annual aid, first to the PA, and now to Hamas.

Whether it’s the intent or not, the effect is that this continued aid funds a terrorist gang whose primary goal is the destruction of Israel. And Obama knows this.

Some Folks Know What They’re About

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The leader of Iraq’s Kurds said his forces won’t relinquish territory they are defending against Sunni rebels, adding to worries that continued fighting could speed the breakup of Iraq along ethnic and religious lines.

After Sunni insurgents led by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham launched their military offensive in northern Iraq three weeks ago, Kurdish fighters stepped into the breach left by the Baghdad government’s ineffective and retreating armed forces.

On Friday, Massoud Barzani, president of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, said that control of Kirkuk and other towns now guarded by Kurdish forces wouldn’t revert to the central government in Baghdad when the crisis subsides.

“Now this [issue]…is achieved,” he said, alluding to the Kurds’ long-running aspiration for self-rule in their northern Iraqi stronghold.

I’m not convinced this is all bad. The Kurds know who’ll defend the territory against invaders and terrorists—and it’s not the Iraqi army. After all, aside from both Shia and Sunni animosity toward the Kurds, the Iraqi “army” is showing it’s not capable of defending much of anything, as their failing attempt to resecure Tikrit is demonstrating.

An aside for Mr Bradley’s benefit: these aren’t “Sunni rebels,” nor are they “Sunni insurgents;” they’re ISIS terrorists. It’d be good to cut out the disingenuous euphemisms and refer to a shovel as the shovel that it is.

An Iraqi Mess

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Iraqi leadership, such as it is, thinking it’s helpless to devise solutions on its own, depends entirely on the US to “wave a wand” and make things all better.

[A] State Department briefer portrayed the central Iraqi government as desperate for the Americans to solve the problem for them. “All of them look to us for answers and solutions and like a magic wand,” the briefer said. “There’s a lot of that.”

And this:

[S]oon after ISIS overran Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, the Kurdish military force known as the Peshmerga swiftly moved to seize control of Kirkuk, the strategically important city with enormous reserves of oil that the Kurds have long viewed as their historic capital in their quest for full autonomy.
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“Just look at where the Peshmerga is now compared to where they were two weeks ago,” the [same] State Department briefer instructed reporters. “… Some facts on the ground can be created that might not be reversed.”

This is some of what comes of an attempt to lift a tribal society, reduced by a generation of barbaric tyranny, into nationhood when that attempt is cut short before the task is seriously begun. The environment created by Saddam Hussein’s butchery and madness required answers handed down from the outside just to stabilize the situation and begin to repair emotional, economic, and infrastructure damage. The task of erecting a nation—the political requirements, the societal needs, the things that must be interactively taught, not handed down from on high—had barely begun when the US left Iraq in toto.

Iran, on the other hand, while willing to “help” the existing Iraqi government does not want US involvement at all. Iran wants a puppet state west of the Shat al-Arab and the Hawizah Marshes and not the sovereign nation that might result from US aid to Iraq in this crisis. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei [Supreme Leader of Iran] had this to say on the matter:

We strongly oppose the intervention of the US and others in the domestic affairs of Iraq. The main dispute in Iraq is between those who want Iraq to join the US camp and those who seek an independent Iraq.

The US aims to bring its own blind followers to power.

Iran wants to halt the Iraqi efforts to erect a nation in place of a tribal polity buried under the ashes of Saddam’s barbarity. Iran will “take care of” Iraq and the Iraqis.

Don’t Lead. Act. They’ll Follow, or Not

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Secretary of State (and Secretary of the Treasury) James Baker offered A Roadmap for Restoring American Leadership in a recent Wall Street Journal, and it’s worth a careful read. While his seven steps are entirely appropriate, though, it occurs to me that they must come as steps two through eight, instead.

There are many things we need to do first, and we need to do them unilaterally, without waiting on other nations to…follow. Consult, certainly. Attempt to persuade, certainly. Attempt to get others to act, also if not in concert, certainly.

But, to paraphrase a man, some things can’t wait.  Some things need prompt action. We’re still big enough, prosperous enough, strong enough to do those things alone, and where the urgency of the matter won’t pause for consensus, we have an obligation to act first and build consensus later. See Russia’s partition of Ukraine, ISIS’ dismantling of Iraq, if you doubt that.

There’s another aspect of leading that’s missed in the multilateralist, gotta have a UN imprimatur, gotta have European/Russian/Chinese/whomever agreement to our leading before we can…lead, also. That aspect is “by example.”

We can’t set any kind of useful example if we aren’t acting.