RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://victorhanson.com/history-and-ukraine-and-israel/

After the heroic late February and early March 2022 salvation of Kyiv by ad hoc Ukrainian forces, ebullience swept the West. Putin and his thuggish invasion were seemingly defeated and the war all but won. Amid such euphoria, billions of dollars of weapons poured into Ukraine. European and American politicos outdid each other in becoming the most ardent and generous supporters of Ukrainian resistance. Some European rhetoric of support was almost Churchillian.

The Russians were laughed at for their arrogant incompetence. Even when Russian troops persisted all through early 2023, the received wisdom remained that the looming “Spring Offensive” of 2023, replete with Western armor, artillery, and advisors, would slash through occupied Ukraine, expel the invaders, and teach Putin a lesson.

Some of us pointed to two problems with such naivete. One, historically, while it is true that the Russian military fares poorly invading, or fighting far abroad against, other countries (e.g., Japan 1905, Poland 1919–1921, Finland 1939, etc.), it eventually wins, despite blunders, stupidity, and brutality, in or anywhere near land that it considers Mother Russia, which may include Ukraine for a great deal of its history.

Two, Russia enjoys nearly four times the population, 30 times the territory, and 10 times the GDP of Ukraine. Such disparity is hard to overcome in a stationary border war, fought almost exclusively on the ground.

Consequently, many of us, while hoping Ukraine would expel the Russians back to their February 24, 2022 starting point, feared, despite massive Western supplies and training, it would slowly be ground down into a Verdun/Somme stalemate, in which losing one Ukrainian to kill or wound three Russians would still prove a losing proposition.

And here we are.

Ukrainians are still fighting heroically. But Europe, buffeted by natural gas cutoffs, inadequate munitions reserves, and upset over Ukrainian corruption, are not so loud or generous in their support.

The U.S. is sharply divided over its support, in part because those who most loudly call for defending the borders of Ukraine at nearly all costs are themselves either complicit in or indifferent to a now nonexistent southern American border. Its utter disappearance has resulted in eight million illegal aliens, many of whom are involved in drug smuggling, human trafficking, and cartel work, and all are completely unaudited.

In sum, history matters

https://www.frontpagemag.com/iran-at-war-with-the-usa/

Apparently, it is still controversial to acknowledge the state of war that currently exists between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Biden administration certainly doesn’t want to acknowledge this fact.

But, it is fact, and as I have said before, facts are stubborn things.

There is no definition of “war” in the United States code of law, but 8 USC § 2331(4) does define an “act of war.”  “The term “act of war” means any act occurring in the course of— (A) declared war; (B) armed conflict, whether or not war has been declared, between two or more nations; or (C) armed conflict between military forces of any origin.”  “Armed conflict” is defined by the Geneva Protocols, Common Article 2, which the U.S. has adopted, as “all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the (states), even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.”  This “exists whenever there is a resort to armed force between States” and “can always be assumed when parts of the armed forces of two States clash with each other.”

So, if parts of the armed forces of the U.S. and the Islamic Republic of Iran clash, then there is an armed conflict between those two states. And if there is an armed conflict between them, with acts of war, then they are at war.

As we all know, on January 28, 2024, an Iranian proxy terror group, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, struck U.S. service members in Jordan with a drone and killed three of them, and also wounded another 40 American troops. “The Islamic Resistance in Iraq is a clearinghouse or front group for attack claims against the U.S. military in Iraq and Syria by smaller Iran-backed militias, which are likely fronts for larger militias such as Hezbollah Brigades, Asaib Ahl-al Haq, Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada.” The Hezbollah Brigades are further described as being led by an (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) IRGC Quds Force officer, and he and the “(o)ther militia commanders have sworn to unquestionably follow the orders of Iran’s Supreme Leader. The IRGC armed, trained​,​ and funded these militias, as well as gave them safe haven on Iranian territory.”  In fact, the IRGC also plans their attacks, as admitted by their leader, who said “I will not shy away from mentioning the support of the Islamic Republic of Iran in terms of weapons, advising, and planning.”

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/11/how-xi-misreads-the-taiwan-battlefield/

In any war between China on the one hand and Taiwan, Japan, the US and their allies on the other, Chinese vessels of all kinds will be prevented from significant access to the Pacific Ocean. The Chinese (and Russian) Pacific fleets will almost certainly be enclosed in their coastal waters.

This is because the First Island Chain running parallel to the mainland from Sakhalin Island in the north down through Japan, the Ryukyu islands, Taiwan, and on to the Philippine Islands and Indonesia, is a natural barrier now being fortified by the Japanese and Taiwanese militaries and the US Marines. The Commander of the US Marine Corps, General David Berger, recently announced that the Marines were changing their policies and missions in reaction to developments in Asia. He said a “new mission” for the Marines would be “island hopping” in the Indo-Pacific armed with anti-ship missiles to meet the growing China threat. (see The Times, London dispatch, Weekend Australian 6-7/11/21). Presumably, they would carry Tomahawk anti-ship missiles and be supported by US specifically designed shallow-hulled coastal patrol vessels, armed with the same Tomahawks, as well as Japanese submarines.

This would make transit through the Chain almost impossible for hostile surface ships and submarines. One of the difficulties for Chinese and Russian submarines is the difference between the relatively shallow waters of the seas between mainland China and the First Island Chain and the vast depths and trenches of the Pacific Ocean east of the Chain. Submarines would have to surface or near surface to transit the Chain either way, making them easily detectable and vulnerable.

Furthermore, at the southern end of the Chain, other US forces along with the navies of Australia, France, Britain and hopefully India and Indonesia could block Chinese and Russian naval and merchant shipping transiting the Malacca Strait and contiguous Indonesian waterways and passages. As a result, China could suffer a serious trade blockade.

As I argued in an earlier article in Quadrant (April 2021), Taiwan is a key link in the First Island Chain and its conquest by China would constitute an existential threat to Japan. Over many decades Japan has sought to preserve and strengthen the Chain as a protective instrument. If China took control of Taiwan it would gain access to the North Pacific and be able to surround Japan, which is a nation lacking geographical strategic depth. A China attack on Taiwan would lead to a Third Sino-Japanese War and the US would be obliged to support Japan (and therefore Taiwan) under the US-Japan Mutual Defense and Security Treaty. China’s recent threats to Taiwan have led to Japan announcing it would double its defence expenditure and invest heavily in new technology including robots and drones. Twenty years ago, China openly and seriously threatened Taiwan and, as a result, Japan immediately intensified its pressure on the US, imploring it to provide ABM (anti-ballistic missile) protection against China with the latest in US technology. The result was the 2004 US-Japan ABM Agreement which presumably also covered Taiwan (see below).

While many of us were discussing the possibilities of the “looming war over Taiwan”, the AUKUS agreement was announced on September 16, 2021. The major aspect of this agreement was the decision by the US, the UK and Australia to build at least eight nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) for Australia. Initially, nothing much else was mentioned, at least not in the press.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20387/middle-east-question

The question is defective for several reasons.

[I]t turns the estimated 600 million people who live in more than 20 countries into mere objects in their own story; it is up to outsiders to decide what to do about them.

The “what-shall-we-do about them?” approach is a relic of the colonial era, when the European empires could regard subject nations as mere pawns in a global game of chess.

Dealing with the Middle East today isn’t as easy as it was even a decade ago, let alone a century ago, when sending a gunboat and greasing a few moustaches could do the trick. Today, soft power is more effective than hard power, especially when those who have it in bucketfuls lack the courage to use more than a teaspoonful of it at any given time, while those who have a little of it are suicidal enough to use all of it.

As the Gaza war seethes through its fifth month, policymakers and think-tankers in the West form a chorus demanding: what shall we do about the Middle East?

The best short answer may be “mu,” the Japanese word that means “unask your question”.

The word is used when the question is defective and whatever answer that is given could plunge the whole discussion into a deeper misunderstanding.

The question is defective for several reasons.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20384/global-order-nuclear-iran

America’s actions now – or else its inaction – will determine the ability of global powers to mold an international order that either upholds democratic values or succumbs to the dominance of terror groups and dictatorships.

Inaction or a failure to adopt a resolute stance against the ascent of Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism armed with nuclear capabilities, can only pave the way for a world where autocratic regimes and extremist factions dictate the course of international affairs.

As Iran is on the verge of achieving a significant milestone in obtaining nuclear weapons, concerns are mounting over the Biden administration’s lack of a coherent strategy to prevent Iran from going nuclear. Since the Biden administration took office, Iran has been rapidly advancing its uranium enrichment, approaching levels of 83.7% close to the 90% needed for nuclear weapons capability.

The consequences of Iran possessing nuclear weapons should not be downplayed or overlooked. The Iranian regime has repeatedly threatened to annihilate Israel, and views that goal a central pillar of its ideology. This commitment is rooted in religious prophecies from the regime’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, foreseeing the eventual eradication of Israel.

General Hossein Salami, chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has explicitly outlined the regime’s aggressive stance, stating on Iran’s state-controlled Channel 2 TV in 2019, “Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global political map.” Khamenei’s 416-page guidebook, Palestine, further emphasizes the regime’s dedication to Israel’s destruction.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/02/07/us_asset_or_us_adversary_why_qatar_looks_worryingly_like_both_1008791.html

After Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, one of the terrorist organization’s chief financial sponsors, hosts of its leaders, and backers of its propaganda found itself singled out by America’s leaders – not for condemnation, but praise.

Timmy Davis, Biden envoy: “Qatar could not have done more than it did in 2023 to play an indispensable role on the world stage.” 
Department of State/Wikimwedia

“The U.S.-Qatar partnership could not be stronger, and Qatar could not have done more than it did in 2023 to play an indispensable role on the world stage,” U.S. ambassador to Qatar Timmy Davis wrote on X last December.

The Biden administration, from the president on down, has lauded the emirate throughout the Israel-Hamas war, especially for its shepherding of negotiations between the two sides for a ceasefire and hostage releases – a role Qatar is singularly capable of filling in part because it maintains Hamas’ “political office” in its capital city, Doha.

At the annual Qatar-led Doha Forum last December, Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham echoed the Democratic administration, while also thanking Qatar for its assistance evacuating Americans during the deadly Afghanistan withdrawal – a success attributed in part to its harboring of another terrorist group, the Taliban.

Graham too thanked Qatar for accommodating “10,000 American airmen who live better than [at] any air base in the … world” – a reference to Al Udeid, the largest such facility in the region

House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Jack Bergman, a Michigan Republican, highlighted the irony of this bipartisan praise, noting, “Our brave men and women in uniform who have served out of Al Udeid … have gone on missions to combat terrorist groups funded by Qatar.”

Richard Goldberg: Qatar’s playing a “kind of terror-finance double game.”
Foundation for Defense of Democracies

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20340/21st-century

If you add to this the European Union’s obsession with the environment, which has become little more than a machinery for imposing constraints, vexations, punishments and taxes in the name of “energy transition”, it appears that stagnation is a problem from which Europe might have the greatest difficulty in freeing itself.

China talks tough about Taiwan, but seems leery of using its considerable military force if it can count on the US failing to respond.

Above all, the Chinese regime is a ruthless dictatorship in which people and their property disappear, and there are no mechanisms for peaceful reform.

If there is a single element of the American system that Europe should replicate, it is this flexibility in the labor market.

Will that never happen? No, of course not. That is why Europe will continue to stagnate, while America, despite all its current difficulties, opens up the way of the future.

If the economic and geopolitical facts examined here are anything to go by, the 21st century will be more American than ever.

We are not quite a quarter of the way into the 21st century, but already a few clear structural trends have emerged, even if it is impossible to predict the next “black swans” — radically unpredictable events with far-reaching consequences – that might occur. Here are four of the trends.

Since 2000, Europe has stagnated on many fronts — anemic growth, a crashing birth rate, military disinvestment — from which countries such as Belgium and Germany have still not emerged. Perhaps most worrying of all, according to criteria such as patents, capital investment, and stock market giants such as GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon), Europe has stopped innovating. People innovate in the United States; they still innovate in Asia, but in Europe – hardly at all. If you add to this the European Union’s obsession with the environment, which has become little more than a machinery for imposing constraints, vexations, punishments and taxes in the name of “energy transition”, it appears that stagnation is a problem from which Europe might have the greatest difficulty in freeing itself.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20382/war-with-iran

There are, of course, alternatives less than all-out war, and more than attacks on proxies. They involve the bombing of military targets inside Iran. These include sites used for Iran’s nuclear program, its naval bases and ships, its military drone production, its oil and gas facilities and its command centers. All of these could be accomplished from the air and sea without a ground invasion, and without the loss of American lives an invasion would risk.

One conclusion is clear: in the short term, a US attack on Iran itself would contribute to destabilization in the region. But in the longer term, it might well contribute to stability by reducing the power and influence of the most destabilizing entity in the Middle East, namely Iran.

Israel, too, is at war with Iran. Iranian operatives have targeted Israeli civilians and Jews around the world. Iran has effectively called Israel a “one bomb state” and has threatened to destroy it with nuclear weapons. Israel, too, has a perfect right to respond to these acts of war. Indeed, it may have no choice but to do so, to prevent Iran from carrying out its threats of nuclear annihilation.

The Middle East and the world would be a safer place without the current Iranian regime. It would be a far more dangerous place with a nuclear-weaponized Iran that could protect its surrogates under a nuclear umbrella.

So, Biden’s strategy should be given a chance to work. But if it fails — as history suggests it may— all options must be kept on the table. These include attacks within Iran, even if that means war. That may be the least worst among the many available options.

Every discussion about the current Middle East conflict begins with the mandatory mantra, “We don’t want war with Iran.” Why not? That question is rarely asked.

Iran has declared war on the United States — militarily, legally, diplomatically, morally and politically. They have engaged in repeated casus belli (legal causes for war) since the mullahs took Americans hostage in 1979. Since that time, they have used their surrogates to attack American targets. We are entitled to respond militarily, as we are doing. But we are also entitled to go much further and treat them as aggressors who have effectively declared war on us. We are entitled to destroy their capacity to continue to wage war against us and our allies. The policy question in not whether we have a right to wage war against Iran. It is whether it is in our interest to do so.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20368/christians-persecuted-worldwide

Overall, the global persecution of Christians remains higher than ever, with 365 million believers suffering “high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.”

Christians suffer “extreme levels of persecution” in the top 13 of the 50 nations. They are: 1) North Korea, 2) Somalia, 3) Libya, 4) Eritrea, 5) Yemen, 6) Nigeria, 7) Pakistan, 8) Sudan, 9) Iran, 10) Afghanistan, 11) India, 12) Syria, 13) and Saudi Arabia.

In the worst of the Muslim nations, Christianity has been so stamped out over the years that there are no indigenous Christians to persecute, only converts—apostates, who, according to most interpretations of Islamic law, deserve death.

The wildly popular late Sunni cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi noted on television that if not for the apostasy law [proposing death], Islam would have died out long ago.

Afghanistan: “When the Taliban came to power, they did so with pledges to recognize more freedoms than in the past. But that hasn’t happened—if an Afghan’s Christian faith is discovered, it can be a death sentence, or they can be detained and tortured into giving information about fellow believers.” — World Watch List 2024, opendoors.org

In 2023, around the world, 4,998 Christians — on average, 13 a day — were “killed for faith related reasons.” Another 4,125 Christians were illegally detained or arrested, and 14,766 churches and other Christian institutions were attacked.

Overall, the global persecution of Christians remains higher than ever, with 365 million believers suffering “high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-u-n-s-long-history-of-failure/

No one should be shocked or surprised by the news that some United Nations Relief Works Agency staff directly participated in the heinous savagery of Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7.

According to Israeli intelligence, AJC reports, “six UNRWA workers were part of the wave of terrorists who breached the Gaza-Israel border and massacred civilians inside of Israel. Additionally, two helped to kidnap Israelis, two others were tracked to sites where hundreds of Israeli civilians were shot and killed. Others coordinated logistics for the assault, including procuring weapons.” Seven were identified as primary school teachers, and one is a Hamas commander.

By the way, U.S. taxpayers finance a third of the UNRWA’s budget, including paying for schools where terrorist sympathizers indoctrinate half a million students with murderous hatred for Jews. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres implied that those staffers were just a few bad apples, but Israeli intelligence estimates that 10% of UNRWA’s 12,000 employees have links to Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

Again, no surprise there. Ever since its birth, the UN has been rife with corruption, politicization, and failure. Until we start making this “cockpit in the tower of Babel” ––as Churchill in 1946 presciently warned that the most important institution of the “new world order” might become–– accountable to U.S. taxpayers, our national interests and security will remain hostages to those of other nations, many of whom are sworn enemies of the free world.

That failure should have been predictable from the start, given the sorry record of its precursor, the League of Nations, which included future aggressors like Germany, Japan, and Italy as signatories. The UN repeated the same incoherence that compromised the League. The Versailles settlement had enshrined the sovereign, self-governing nation as the universal political order, but at the same time created a supranational institution that required member states to cede some of their sovereignty, and be bound by its rules and resolutions, which reflected Western political principles and goods like political freedom and human rights.

Given the complex, cultural diversity of the world’s nations and governments, there could be no “harmony of interests” that could satisfy every nation and honor its particular culture and political ideology. National self-interest and cultural goods like religion would trump the UN’s collective interests, usually by exploiting for illiberal and tyrannical ends the lofty Western rhetoric of “national liberation,” “national self-determination,” and “human rights.”

Moreover, like the League, no credible force was created to enforce the UN’s decrees that often collide with a nation’s interests or territorial ambitions. The UN quickly became a paper tiger, its offices and resolutions hostage to such interests, especially those of the great powers that comprise the permanent, veto-bearing, nuclear-armed members of the Security Council.  Parochial political ambitions––including those of autocratic, totalitarian, and gangster states–– and economic interests replaced the UN’s lofty principles.