RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://carolineglick.com/the-immoral-foreign-policy-of-the-resistance/

One of the constant themes of the “Resistance” — most recently restated in the New York Times’ anonymous op-ed Wednesday — is that President Donald Trump is “amoral” because he is interested in cultivating good relations with dictators.

In the words of the anonymous op-ed author: “In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.”

Notably, this is the same line used by the Israeli left and by Israel’s many critics in the West against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign policy.

There are two aspects of this criticism that are worth pointing out.

First, the criticisms are utterly hypocritical.

The same “Resistance” howling about Trump’s desire to forge a détente with Russia based on a shared interest in fighting Islamic terrorists and preventing Iran from becoming the nuclear hegemon of the Middle East once bent over backwards to empower Iran. They gave the ayatollahs a clear path to a nuclear weapon, as well as $150 billion to finance their wars in Syria and Yemen, and their global terror attacks.

The same Never Trump Republicans attacking Trump for his efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula without war happily supported then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Riceas she cut a deal that only empowered Pyonyang.

The Obama administration alumni who now insist that Putin is America’s number-one enemy did everything they could to appease him – in exchange for nothing — for years.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/shutting-down-the-plo-1536622407

The Trump Administration is blowing the whistle on the Palestine Liberation Organization, and it would be hard to identify a more overdue reality check in U.S. foreign policy.

The Administration announced Monday that it is closing the PLO’s Washington office, citing lack of progress on peace negotiations. The PLO began as a terrorist organization but was allowed to open an office in Washington in 1994 after the Oslo accords produced hope for a new era of reconciliation between the PLO and Israel.

That hope has never been fulfilled, notably since the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat began the second intifada after walking away from the historic and generous Israeli peace offer brokered by Bill Clinton in 2000. Long-term indulgence of the PLO’s recalcitrance has had the effect of allowing a toxic and reflexive anti-Israel sentiment to build in international institutions, not least among academics and students on U.S. campuses.

The Trump Administration has tried to revive the Israeli-Palestinian talks, but it has also shown less tolerance for Palestinian resistance. Last November Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas used his speech at the United Nations to call for the investigation and prosecution of Israeli officials by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Trump Administration said then that the PLO’s Washington office was at risk of closure.

Mr. Abbas’s call for an investigation of Israel by the ICC was consciously provocative, and the PLO’s Washington office would have known that. The U.S. Congress said in 2015—before Donald Trump became President—that the Secretary of State was required to certify that the PLO wasn’t trying to use the ICC against Israel.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bolton-vows-to-not-cooperate-with-international-criminal-court-threatens-sanctions/

WASHINGTON — National Security Advisor John Bolton threatened sanctions against the International Criminal Court, which Bolton opposed long before joining the Trump administration, and hailed the State Department announcement that the D.C. office of the Palestine Liberation Organization would be shut down.

Speaking at a Federalist Society event at the Mayflower Hotel this morning, Bolton slammed the Hague-based ICC as an effort by “self-styled ‘global governance’ advocates” to override national sovereignty through its investigations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Those indicted by the ICC, which was formed in 2002 by the Rome Statute, have included Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and his son Saif Al-Islam for crimes against humanity, Sudan President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur, and Ugandan guerrilla leader Joseph Kony for crimes against humanity and war crimes. The African Union has urged a mass withdrawal from the ICC over the court’s focus on the continent.

“In theory, the ICC holds perpetrators of the most egregious atrocities accountable for their crimes, provides justice to the victims, and deters future abuses. In practice, however, the court has been ineffective, unaccountable, and indeed, outright dangerous,” Bolton said. “Moreover, the largely unspoken, but always central, aim of its most vigorous supporters was to constrain the United States. The objective was not limited to targeting individual U.S. servicemembers, but rather America’s senior political leadership, and its relentless determination to keep our country secure.”

Bolton said the ICC “was created as a free-wheeling global organization claiming jurisdiction over individuals without their consent” and stressed longstanding concerns that American servicemembers could be indicted by the court.

Last November, the ICC prosecutor requested authorization to investigate war crimes and detainee abuse allegations against U.S. servicemembers and intelligence professionals in Afghanistan.

“Today, on the eve of Sept. 11, I want to deliver a clear and unambiguous message on behalf of the president of the United States. The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” Bolton continued. “We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.”

Bolton also criticized “a suggestion that the ICC will investigate Israeli construction of housing projects on the West Bank.”

“The United States will always stand with our friend and ally, Israel. And, today, reflecting congressional concerns with Palestinian attempts to prompt an ICC investigation of Israel, the State Department will announce the closure of the Palestine Liberation Organization office here in Washington, D.C. As President Reagan recognized in this context, the executive has ‘the right to decide the kind of foreign relations, if any, the United States will maintain,’ and the Trump administration will not keep the office open when the Palestinians refuse to take steps to start direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel,” he said. “The United States supports a direct and robust peace process, and we will not allow the ICC, or any other organization, to constrain Israel’s right to self-defense.”CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/good-news-for-the-americas-1536013815

The crisis in Venezuela threatens to destabilize the Western Hemisphere, but doing something about it requires addressing the support from Cuba that is keeping strongman Nicolás Maduro in power despite his overwhelming unpopularity. Ditto for Daniel Ortega, whose government has been killing fellow Nicaraguans.

One man who understands the Cuban role is Mauricio Claver-Carone, who will soon join the Trump White House as senior director of the National Security Council for Western Hemisphere Affairs. The media call Mr. Claver-Carone a “hard-liner” on Cuba and a staunch defender of the U.S. trade embargo, which is true.

But as the son of a Cuban exile, the 43-year-old Mr. Claver-Carone is also a Catholic University-educated lawyer who has spent years fighting for human rights in Cuba. As the editor of the blog Capitol Hill Cubans, he showed a sophisticated understanding of how Cuba uses intimidation and propaganda to attack democracy in the hemisphere. Mr. Claver-Carone has extensive experience working with other countries as a senior adviser for international affairs at the U.S. Treasury and acting U.S. executive director at the International Monetary Fund.

The world has stood by as more than 2.3 million Venezuelans suffering under socialist deprivation have been forced to flee their collapsing country. Mr. Claver-Carone’s arrival is a sign that the White House is serious about addressing the root cause of the problem.

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/on-the-palestinian-refugee-issue-president-trump-is-magnificently-right/

President Trump appears to have undertaken a revolution in Middle Eastern diplomacy. Reportedly, the United States will eliminate refugee status for the descendants of Palestinian refugees of 1948, the only group of people anywhere in the world to inherit refugee status. The U.S. also reportedly will eliminate funding for UNRWA, the only UN agency dedicated to a single group of refugees, namely the Palestinian Arabs.

The Times of Israel reports:

The “right of return” is one of the key core issues of dispute in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians claim that five million people — tens of thousands of original refugees from what is today’s Israel, and their millions of descendants — have a “right of return.” Israel rejects the demand, saying that it represents a bid by the Palestinians to destroy Israel by weight of numbers. It says there is no justification for UNRWA’s unique criteria, by which all subsequent generations of descendants of the original refugees are also designated as having refugee status, including those born elsewhere and/or holding citizenship elsewhere; such a designation does not apply to the world’s other refugee populations.

This is long overdue. The 1948 War led to one of the many exchanges of populations during the 20th century — 1.5 million Greeks were expelled from Turkey and 1 million Turks expelled from Greece in 1923, for example. After World War II, 12 million Germans were expelled from the Czech Republic, Poland, and other parts of Eastern Europe, many of whom had lived there for centuries. Millions of Hindus and Muslims moved across the border when Pakistan separated from India upon independence in 1947. None of the transferred populations are treated as refugees, except for the Palestinians.

Roughly equal numbers of Arabs and Jews were displaced as Arab states expelled Jewish populations that in some cases, e.g. Iraq, had lived there for 2,500 years, long before the Arabs. The young Jewish state absorbed almost a million Jewish refugees from Muslim countries while the displaced Arabs were kept in permanent refugee status as a bargaining chip. “Right of return” simply meant Muslim refusal to accept the existence of a Jewish state. The so-called peace process in the Middle East always has failed due to the asymmetry of demands: as the Israeli cartoon Dry Bones put it, land for peace means the Arabs want land and the Jews want peace. As long as the Western nations humored the Arab delusion that the Jewish state could be eliminated, the Arab side had no incentive to negotiate. The Arab side refused to accept its defeat in 1948. It is the loser who decides when the war is over, and the message from Washington is, “You lost. Deal with it.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/secretary-of-state-mike-pompeo-taps-foreign-policy-scholar-as-chief-state-department-planner-1535623201

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has tapped Carnegie Mellon University Professor Kiron Skinner, a nationally known author and Hoover Institution research fellow, as the State Department’s top planner.

Ms. Skinner, who has worked with former Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and George Shultz, represents what Mr. Pompeo said is a major personnel addition as he moves to fulfill promises to rebuild department staffing.

Mr. Pompeo described Ms. Skinner as “a national security powerhouse” and “a one-woman, strategic thinking tour de force” in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. “I’m confident that she will enhance our influence overseas, protect the American people, and promote our prosperity,” he said.

Foreign policy experts and former holders of the post said Ms. Skinner’s impact will depend on how Mr. Pompeo structures the job, and whether the administration is open to her ideas. “The real question is how will the new director’s role be defined?” said longtime diplomat Dennis Ross, who held the post during the George H.W. Bush administration.

As director of the Policy Planning Staff, Ms. Skinner will be responsible for providing strategic guidance and helping ensure that the day-to-day efforts of the department serve the overall strategy. Ms. Skinner will start on Sept. 4, succeeding Brian Hook, who now heads the State Department’s Iran Action Group.

A key role will be framing U.S. foreign policy against the backdrop of President Trump’s Twitter posts and offhand comments, which frequently catch top advisers by surprise.

During Mr. Trump’s presidential run, Ms. Skinner served as a foreign policy surrogate for the campaign, appearing on television to discuss his objectives. She later joined the State Department and National Security Council “landing teams” during the presidential transition to help staff both entities. She also helped prepare former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for Senate confirmation proceedings.

In an interview, Ms. Skinner described an emerging “Trump Doctrine, or America First foreign policy,” in which the U.S. exercises global leadership while simultaneously sharing the burdens of world crises with other countries. While the past two administrations struggled following the 2001 terrorist attacks, she said, the current administration can craft a longer-term approach.

“I really see the Trump administration as an opportunity to lead us into a grand strategy,” she said.

Ms. Skinner aims to use the administration’s national-security strategy published in December 2017 as the “baseline” for her work, but anticipates updates to the strategy.

Ms. Skinner is director of the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University and the W. Glenn Campbell Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. She previously served on the Defense Department’s Defense Policy Board. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree from Spelman College. She also has been a Fox News contributor.

Ms. Skinner invoked history in describing her new post, citing guidance issued in 1947 by then-Secretary of State George Marshall to George Kennan, founding director of the Policy Planning Staff, to “avoid trivia”—suggesting this will guide her approach to the role.

Born on Chicago’s South Side and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area by parents “deeply involved in the civil-rights movement,” Ms. Skinner said that she shares the commitment—though not the party affiliation—of her grandmother, a Democratic Party precinct captain in Chicago.

“I care more about the republic than partisan politics in the United States,” she said.

“I really feel as an African American that we have a deep stake in the direction of our country and that there’s a natural connection between who we are and America’s role in the world, and that we need to be at the table across all political parties in the United States,” Ms. Skinner said. CONTINUE AT SITE