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FOREIGN POLICY

Let’s Not Make a Deal with the Taliban A minefield is ahead if we do. September 9, 2019 Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274857/lets-not-make-deal-taliban-bruce-thornton

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 began a needed reassessment of our ossified foreign policy doctrines. Trump has rejected in part the shibboleths of “multilateralism,” “transnational institutions,” “democracy promotion,” and “diplomatic engagement” as the most important elements of foreign relations. He’s returned the focus to America’s national interests and security, and to America’s military strength as the guarantor of both. Allies now are valued insofar as they complement our interests, and honor reciprocal obligations. Matching action to words, he’s withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accords and the multinational agreement with Iran on limiting its program to develop nuclear warheads and the missiles to deliver them, and scolded NATO allies over their meager spending on defense.

These moves have all been a welcome corrective to the Obama-era globalist prejudices and received ideas that reduced the U.S. to just one of many international players, one “mindful of its own imperfections,” as Obama put it, and morally obligated to cede sovereignty to supranational institutions and multinational treaties. The subsequent howling of the decrepit internationalist establishment about Trump’s “disrespecting” allies and violating the “rules-based, liberal international order” is the sound of feckless, moribund institutional oxen being gored.

Yet it is testimony to the staying power of such globalist institutions that even Trump seemingly ascribes to some of their dogma. Foremost is the idea that diplomatic negotiation, what Trump would call “the art of the deal,” can resolve differences and settle conflicts without a credible threat of overwhelming force to punish violations of the agreement. Hence the ongoing negotiations with the Taliban, the jihadist movement that nurtured al Qaeda in the years before 9/11, and continues to shelter and support other jihadist outfits like ISIS bent on attacking our interests and security.

The U.S.-Taliban Negotiations: A Deadly Qatari Trap by Yigal Carmon

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14816/us-taliban-negotiations-qatar

One can understand President Donald Trump’s wish to leave Afghanistan. There are, however, ways to leave without losing people, respect, and allies. Mr. Trump, instead of leaving unilaterally, while reinforcing the democratically elected government in Kabul without boots on the ground, is unfortunately empowering his Taliban enemy by protracted negotiations, where America makes successive concessions and ultimately throws its Afghan allies under the bus.
Afghan officials are the first to sense that the sellout of the Kabul government is impending, and are scurrying to defect to the Taliban (in July alone there were 800 defections).
As opposed to what many Americans think, Qatar did the US no favors in building the base in the mid-1990s. It needed an American base for its own self-protection and this dependence still persists. Without this base, this Lilliputian energy Gulliver would be taken over by its neighbors (whether Iranian or Saudi) within a day. The US military establishment ignores this reality to its own detriment, and behaves as if America is in Qatar’s debt rather than the reverse.
Qatar is already threatening to limit potential operations against Iran from Al-Udeid, should they be needed, and Qatar’s Tamim told Rouhani that “only countries [placed] along the coast [of the Persian Gulf] should keep security in the region.”

What is happening in Afghanistan is already beyond grief. The United States is negotiating with the Taliban, without the Taliban first agreeing to a cease-fire as a precondition for talks, and although President Trump has emphatically announced his determination to withdraw from the country, American soldiers are still being killed (in recent days, three American servicemen died). [1]

One can understand President Donald Trump’s wish to leave Afghanistan. Whether the US can sustain its strategic and economic leadership in the context of an isolationist policy, is a legitimate debate. This is the president’s and Congress’s purview. There are, however, ways to leave without losing people, respect, and allies. Mr. Trump, instead of leaving unilaterally, while reinforcing the democratically elected government in Kabul without boots on the ground, is unfortunately empowering his Taliban enemy by protracted negotiations, where America makes successive concessions and ultimately throws its Afghan allies under the bus.[2] Afghan officials are the first to sense that the sellout of the Kabul government is impending, and are scurrying to defect to the Taliban (in July alone there were 800 defections).[3]

Jason Greenblatt, diplomat pushing Middle East peace plan, to leave Trump administration by Alex Pappas

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/jason-greenblatt-diplomat-pushing-middle-east-peace-plan-to-leave-trump-administration

President Trump on Thursday announced the departure of Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt from his administration as he commended the diplomat for his efforts to pursue peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Greenblatt, a former Trump Organization lawyer, has served as the president’s special representative for international negotiations and was tasked with developing a Middle East peace plan.

“After almost 3 years in my Administration, Jason Greenblatt will be leaving to pursue work in the private sector,” Trump said. “Jason has been a loyal and great friend and fantastic lawyer.”

The president continued, “His dedication to Israel and to seeking peace between Israel and the Palestinians won’t be forgotten. He will be missed. Thank you Jason!”

A senior administration official said Greenblatt has decided to return to New Jersey to be with his wife and six children.

“It has been the honor of a lifetime to have worked in the White House for over two and a half years under the leadership of President Trump,” Greenblatt said in a statement. “I am incredibly grateful to have been part of a team that drafted a vision for peace.”

Greenblatt worked in concert with White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, on the Middle East peace plan.

Why Is Trump Surrendering To The Taliban? Thomas McCardle

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/05/why-is-trump-surrendering-to-the-taliban/

President Trump may be the author of The Art of the Deal, but how can someone who knows so well that the Obama-Kerry agreement with terrorist Iran was a bad deal, and who understood the importance of annihilating ISIS (and who then did so) at the same time think the terrorist Taliban in Afghanistan will be restrained by a piece of paper backed up by no credible U.S. military pressure?

The administration has enlisted the diplomatic prowess of an admittedly impressive personage in Afghan-American former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (and, before that, to Afghanistan and to Iraq) Zalmay Khalizad, who held numerous foreign policy posts under Reagan and both Bushes.

But has there ever been a more impressive diplomat than Henry Kissinger? Yet the deal he negotiated with North Vietnam in 1973, for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize, was followed two years later by the Communist North’s conquest of South Vietnam. As the disaster materialized, South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu justifiably declared: “the United States did not keep its word … The United States did not keep its promise to help us fight for freedom.”

The Vietnam Syndrome must stop. There is simply no way to negotiate successfully with an anti-democratic aggressor without military force hanging close over that aggressor’s head. And yet President Trump has already announced that U.S. troops in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has been making territorial gains for years, will soon be reduced by more than a third, from 14,000 to 8,600. A deal would reportedly mean the withdrawal of most U.S. forces by November 2020.

It will soon be 18 years that our military has been in Afghanistan. Let’s scan the early history. “In late 2001, the CIA led a campaign to topple the Taliban with the support of the Northern Alliance, the Taliban’s foe inside Afghanistan,” the Brookings Institution’s Bruce Riedel wrote in 2009, noting that, “the results were spectacular and came quickly. By early 2002 the Taliban were routed, al-Qaida was on the run and the two were retreating into Pakistan.”

Why is the US Training and Equipping the Lebanese Army? Shoshana Bryen

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

LAF soldiers on a foot patrol along the Blue Line in the vicinity of Meiss el Jabel.

American security assistance generally is predicated on the principle that a smaller or poorer country that has U.S. equipment and training will be better able to defend common interests than one that doesn’t. Sometimes it works that way. But sometimes it puts the U.S. in bed with people who want our weapons and training but do not share our bottom line — their enemy is not ours; their rules of engagement are not ours; their government, in fact, is not a friend of ours, but maybe if we reward it thoroughly enough it won’t actively oppose our interests.

In that latter category is Lebanon.

As Hezbollah announced it is preparing to attack Israel, we must consider the role of the United States in arming and training the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the national army of Lebanon that technically is an arm of the Hezbollah-dominated government in Beirut.

Lebanon is not a functional country and there are those — the Assad family in Syria, for example — who don’t think it should be a country at all. Syria didn’t recognize the independence of Lebanon until 2008, after a 29-year occupation that ended in 2005. By law, power is shared among religious and ethnic groups — 19 in the current parliament.

Hezbollah, created, armed and run by Iran as a Shiite supremacist military force, has both the majority in the political cabinet in Beirut and a separate, private army complete with precision missiles and rule-making authority in the southern part of the country. Lebanon has little economy, but Hezbollah runs rackets — mostly arms and drugs, mostly in South America — and kills people in Europe, and Jews and Israelis around the world.

Hezbollah kills Americans, too. Until 2001, it had killed more Americans than any other terror organization — including 241 American service members in 1983 in their barracks in Beirut, the greatest loss of American Marines since the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945.

Macron: “Rouhani Is Not at Trump’s ‘Level’ By Matthew Continetti (huh???!!!)

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/rouhani-is-not-at-trumps-level/

French president Emmanuel Macron made news by inviting Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif to the sidelines of the G-7 summit in Biarritz last weekend. Macron wants to renew European leadership on the global stage — as well as his standing at home — by jump-starting diplomacy between the United States and Iran. At a press conference yesterday, Macron said he’d given President Trump prior notice. “He was informed at each minute about the solution — the situation, sorry,” Macron said. “And the idea for me was, in case of structural move and — important move and important solutions — perhaps to have meeting between ministers, not at President Trump’s level, because President Trump’s level is President Rouhani.”

Pardonnez-moi, monsieur le président. Rouhani is not “Trump’s level.” Rouhani is prime minister of Iran. He plays an important role in Iranian politics. He is the public face of the regime. But he is neither head of state nor, in actuality, head of government.

America’s Other ‘Special Relationship’ Remains Worth Preserving By Kevin D. Williamson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/america-israel-special-relationship-worth-preserving/

There is no convincing argument that the destabilized Israel sought by the Ilhan Omars and Rashida Tlaibs of the world would serve U.S. interests.

Clifford May tells this story about George Schultz sending off newly confirmed ambassadors as secretary of state: “He would show them a very large globe. And he would spin the globe, and he would say, ‘Show me your country.’ And with great pride, they’d point out Brunei or Equatorial Guinea or some place in Latin America. And he would invariably shake his head and say, ‘No, that’s not your country. Your country is the United States of America. You should never, ever forget that.’”

“America First!” is the slogan of the day, and not only on the right, though populist Democrats generally prefer a slightly different rhetorical formulation. (Barack Obama called for “nation-building here at home” and complained about “free riders” abroad, and even tried to rehabilitate Theodore Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism.” To-MAY-to, to-MAH-to.) One might be forgiven for wondering how seriously people take that slogan: Democrats do not act as though, e.g., our immigration policies should be shaped according to the interests of the American people; Republicans’ “America First!” proclamations often end up meaning “Boeing First!” or “Nucor First!” But we all, it is supposed, know which one is our country.

Of course, Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) doesn’t believe that. She has argued in the past that American Jews suffer from divided loyalties vis-à-vis Israel, an ancient anti-Semitic libel that should be obvious enough to Representative Omar, who no doubt is aware that certain knuckle-dragging elements in our national life believe roughly the same thing about Muslims, that they can never really be good citizens and good Muslims both.

Israel is the other special relationship. The original “special relationship,” the one we have with the United Kingdom, has received some attention from President Donald Trump and his administration, partly because Trump believes he sees his watery reflection in the Brexit movement, which is at least a little bit true. (Who, then, is the Nigel Farage of U.S. politics? Steve King, maybe?) But Israel is much more on the political map.

Why?

America Can Stop China from Dominating Artificial Intelligence–And Should by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14731/america-can-stop-china-from-dominating-artificial

The People’s Republic of China, nonetheless, is already an AI powerhouse, and for America to maintain its edge—and to prevent U.S. tech from being used for exceedingly disturbing purposes —Washington should force U.S. companies to end cooperative AI projects in China.

The West should be seriously concerned: whoever wins at AI will both dominate the global economy and field the most destructive conventional military force.

Unfortunately, American companies are helping China’s leaders in what many call—correctly—crimes against humanity. For instance, AI researchers from Microsoft, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Michigan State University gave keynote speeches at the Chinese Conference on Biometric Recognition in Xinjiang in August of last year on facial recognition, a social-control technology.

Some of Google’s research is in China. The company has three AI operations there: the Google AI China Center in Beijing, established in 2017, and partnerships with China’s two premier educational institutions, Peking University and Tsinghua University….If the labs remain open, the net flow of AI learning will be out of the U.S. into China.

Moreover, Chinese researchers, if they could not work for American companies in China, would not, as Vox suggests, necessarily find employment in their homeland. Some of those seeking research slots would follow other Chinese to the United States, and that would exacerbate one of Beijing’s big AI vulnerabilities. “China’s Path to AI Domination Has a Problem: Brain Drain,” is the title of an August 7 article posted by the MIT Technology Review. The U.S. can make that crucial problem even more severe.

China, writes Amy Webb in Inc., has been “building a global artificial intelligence empire, and seeding the tech ecosystem of the future.” It has been particularly successful, Webb, the founder of the Future Today Institute, believes. “China is poised to become its undisputed global leader, and that will affect every business,” she notes.

Bolton In London Lauds Brexit On National Security Grounds by Thomas McArdle

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/08/14/bolton-

he British love their chips, but they’d best be careful not to let them get fishy. The most provocative thing U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said during his visit to No. 10 Downing Street this week was that the British don’t want their “telecommunications system in the 5G world to be compromised by the ‘Manchurian chip phenomenon’ any more than we do” — referring to the dangers posed by the Chinese 5G telecom pioneer Huawei.

I&I outlined the Huawai threat in some detail in May. Its hardware and future software upgrades could be used by Beijing for espionage, or even to attack the military and civilian computer resources of the countries using it.

Even liberal Democrats recognize the threat. “Allowing Huawei’s inclusion in our 5G infrastructure could seriously jeopardize our national security and put critical supply chains at risk,” Senate Intelligence Committee top Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia wrote in March. “Software reviews of existing Huawei products are not sufficient to preclude the possibility of a vendor pushing a malicious update that enables surveillance in the future. Any supposedly safe Chinese product is one firmware update away from being an insecure Chinese product.”

Bolton said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s new government was “looking really from square one on the Huawei issue” — which some British officials claimed was an inaccurate account of Bolton’s meetings — and Bolton offered to arrange briefings on the U.S. findings on Huawei.

Democrats Fiddle While Iran Burns: Andrew Harrod

https://spectator.org/democrats-fiddle-while-iran-burns/

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces seized the British oil tanker Stena Impero on July 19, an outrage that follows Iran’s June 13 attacks on two oil tankers and the June 20 downing of an American drone. Yet rather than focusing on an increasingly volatile Iran, congressional Democrats are more interested in political gamesmanship than national security when dealing with the defense budget.

Cornered by international sanctions, Iran is lashing out with escalating viciousness, as ongoing economic turmoil has truly made both people and government desperate. This has culminated in the regime’s mostrecent proclamation of capturing 17 “U.S. spies.” Likely untrue, this claim illustrates how Iran’s hunger for conflict threatens American national security.

Accordingly, President Donald Trump correctly announced July 22 that the United States is bracing for the “absolute worst” with Iran. He already came to the brink of an airstrike against Iran following Iran’s destruction of the American drone in international airspace. Concern over Iranian casualties caused him to abort the mission at the very last minute.

While Trump’s administration is wisely taking seriously the magnitude of Iran’s dangers, on July 12 House Democrats passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Department of Defense’s (DoD) annual budget, by strict party-line vote, with not one Republican among 220 congressional supporters. Unsurprisingly, the legislation is a transparently partisan piece of political theater.