RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/tony-blinken-mideas

The U.S. secretary of state and his regional envoy Robert Malley played in the sandbox together as children in Paris but speak different languages when it comes to American foreign policy. The results may be the same.

Antony Blinken has been secretary of state for less than 100 days. On the most important strategic issue facing the United States, China, and on the most important moral issue, human rights, he has marked those days with a brand of muscular internationalism that has been absent from Foggy Bottom for too long. He has labeled China’s treatment of its Muslim Uyghur minority as genocide and taken a tough stance on trade imbalances, while committing to work with China on issues like the environment—using exact but firm language backed by coherent policy.

For the most part, Blinken’s stated policies have been strong yet moderate. On the one hand, for example, he will probably not press for international sanctions or reparations from China when it comes to its responsibility for the COVID outbreak. He will probably not use a boycott of the Beijing Olympics to respond to China’s crimes against the Uyghurs. On the other hand, he will push to sanction Chinese officials for their clear, documented, ongoing violations of human rights in Hong Kong. The Biden administration has warned Wall Street not to expect government support for corporate expansion in China—a stand with real substance, since it affects both daily investments and America’s ethical position in the world. For its part, the Treasury Department is pushing for a global minimum tax rate to constrain corporate outsourcing.

But Blinken does have blind spots when it comes to both rhetoric and policy, and these could have large consequences for him and the Biden administration in its larger project of promoting human rights abroad while confronting China. The twinned issues where Blinken has remained conspicuously reticent and indistinct are the Middle East and the elephant in the Middle East, Iran. In lieu of asserting himself, the secretary of state has approved the reopening of nuclear talks with Iran and outsourced them to Robert Malley, whom he appointed or allowed to be appointed U.S. special envoy to that country. Blinken’s reliance on Malley, and Malley’s own history of finding any opportunity to engage with groups and countries that demonstrably align themselves against American interests, point to a large lacuna, so far, in the otherwise sober vision Blinken has laid out.

It is worth noting here that Malley, besides being an architect of President Barack Obama’s Iran deal and a longtime proponent of outreach to Iran and Hamas, is a childhood friend of Blinken’s: The two grew up together in Paris, Malley as the son of a European-style Jewish communist with anti-imperialist politics and links to Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro, and Blinken as the stepson of an active and influential Zionist businessman and philanthropist who was also a public supporter of détente between the West and the Soviet Union. The divergences and convergences of their fathers’ politics are not irrelevant to understanding the sons.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/sentimental-antisemi

It’s not hard to see the dilemma facing John Brennan, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Decades of U.S. intelligence assessments of the Middle East, including many he composed and greenlit himself, were trashed during the past four years, as Donald Trump crossed virtually every red line previously drawn by the CIA and other U.S. spy services. Even pro-Israel organizations had assumed that it doesn’t matter what presidential candidates say on the stump—like Bill Clinton, like George W. Bush, and like Barack Obama, they all inevitably walk back their campaign promises. Sure, all presidents would like to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. But after seeing the top-secret intelligence and consulting with their well-connected spy chiefs, what president would risk the war that such a move would start?

But the so-called Arab street didn’t erupt when Trump moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. Islamists didn’t topple the regimes in Cairo and Amman when the U.S. recognized Israel’s sovereignty in the Golan Heights. Saudi Arabia, the custodian of the two holy shrines in Mecca and Medina, gave all but explicit approval when the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalized relations with Israel.

That left Brennan with egg on his face. Now out of government, Brennan believes that despite “dealing with a dizzying array of domestic and international problems,” the Biden administration should prioritize “the Palestinian quest for statehood.” Why? To put an end to Israel’s “oppressive security practices,” Brennan wrote on Tuesday for The New York Times. But the case he makes for bumping Palestinian nationalism to the top of the White House’s to-do list is not strategic or rational. It’s sentimental, with a dollop of antisemitism on top—just like his decades of poor intelligence assessments.

“I always found it difficult to fathom how a nation of people deeply scarred by a history replete with prejudice, religious persecution, & unspeakable violence perpetrated against them would not be the empathetic champions of those whose rights & freedoms are still abridged,” Brennan tweeted Tuesday, promoting his Times op-ed.