RUTHFULLY YOURS

The chimerical prospect of peace in the Middle East, which has eluded every well-meaning American president since the founding of Israel in 1948, has now claimed its latest victim.

President Trump has met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. (Their joint press conference can be seen here.)

Abbas has signed a declaration of principles which is as meaningless as any other declaration of principles signed by Palestinian leaders, and has been allowed to engage in the same meaningless rhetoric which has characterized the “peace process” since it began in 1993.

Immediately after the announcement, two things occurred which guarantee the failure of any new peace initiative. First, Abbas’ empty rhetoric about seeking peace based on the “two-state solution” was immediately denounced by Hamas, the governing party in the Gaza Strip. Second, and equally predictive of failure, was the denunciation of any attempt to reopen negotiations with the Palestinians by members of Israel’s HaBayit haYehudi party. The defection of this party would topple the current governing coalition, leading to new elections in which the alignment might be quite different than it is now.

A recent poll shows the following results for parties currently represented in the Knesset: Yesh Atid, 25; Likud, 23; HaBayit haYehudi, 13; Joint List (Arab), 13; Zionist Camp, 11; Yahaduth haTorah, 9; Kulanu, 7; Shas, 6; Yisrael Beytenu, 7; Meretz, 6.

Either a coalition would be formed with Yesh Atid’s head, Ya’ir Lapid, as prime minister, with unpredictable results, or (more likely) an even more right-wing coalition than at present would result, with a weaker Likud and a much larger Bayit Yehudi faction than now.

For comparison purposes, the current coalition is: Likud, 30; Kulanu, 10; HaBayit haYehudi, 8; Shas, 7; Yahadut haTorah, 6; Yisrael Beytenu, 6.

Abbas, in his remarks, demands “peace” on the basis of the “two-state solution” with Israel’s withdrawal to the 1967 borders and a Palestinian capital in Eastern Jerusalem. This completely ignores that, according to current Israeli census figures, there are now 406,302 Jewish Israelis residing in the West Bank. They are not all going to be evacuated; it simply isn’t going to happen.

Another factor is the mendacity of Abbas’ speech. He asserts, for instance, that Palestinian Arab children are being raised with the desire for peace with Israel. This is outrageously false. Cartoons on PA television encourage children to aspire to kill Jews. Killing Jews is a regular topic of sermons in mosques and on radio and television broadcasts. No Arab leader has been willing to prepare the Palestinian Arabs for the painful compromises a real peace solution would entail. Palestinians have been encouraged always to take maximalist positions concerning Arab refugees and their descendants in the camps, and concerning the use of violence and terror. There are near daily reports of stabbings and attempts to murder with vehicles.

To show how convoluted the path toward this “peace” is, consider one major point which Mr. Trump raised with Abbas — that he pays salaries to terrorists.

For years, the PA has been paying terrorists salaries to conduct attacks in Israel, and has been paying the families of terrorists who are killed or captured and imprisoned by Israel.

WASHINGTON—Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. will pursue national security and economic interests before turning to human rights concerns in its relationships with other countries, signalling a shift in Washington’s global outlook.

Mr. Tillerson’s remarks, to U.S. diplomats and employees at the State Department on Wednesday, amounted to the clearest expression yet of President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy doctrine, in which the U.S. won’t condition its approach to other countries based on “how they treat people,” he said.

“We really have to understand, in each country or each region of the world that we’re dealing with, what are our national security interests, what are our economic prosperity interests, and then, as we can advocate and advance our values, we should,” he said.

In separating U.S. policies from values such as human rights, democracy, press freedom and the treatment of minorities, Mr. Tillerson appeared to outline a departure from priorities pursued during both the Bush and Obama administrations.

Since taking office, Mr. Trump has sought to strengthen ties with leaders who have drawn criticism for their human rights records. He hosted Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi last month at the White House for his first state visit since he took power in 2014 and has invited the Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte to Washington.

Human rights groups and some lawmakers have raised concerns about what they’ve described as a U.S. turn away from an emphasis on human rights and basic freedoms. On Wednesday, Amnesty International USA director Margaret Huang said the Trump administration is “literally trying to erase human rights before our own eyes.”

But Mr. Tillerson said emphasizing rights can impede other imperatives. CONTINUE AT SITE

The looming crisis with North Korea provides a perfect illustration of what’s gone wrong with the way Washington works. Everyone is so eager to propose a policy, no one can be bothered to articulate an objective. So policymakers start arguing about what to do, before deciding what they want to accomplish. That’s like arguing over what route to take, before deciding where you want to go. (Which, to point out the obvious, is why we keep ending up in the middle of nowhere, or upside down in a ditch.)

Here’s one possible objective that would defuse this crisis and perhaps even bring a few decades of stability: to turn North Korea into a modern version of East Germany.

For those of you too young to remember the Cold War, during those decades after World War II Germany was divided. West Germany was free, prosperous, and an American ally. East Germany was a miserable dictatorship, not very prosperous, and a Soviet satellite. (To get a feel for what life was like in East Germany, watch the great movie The Lives of Others, and the German television series Weissensee.) But during all these decades, East Germany was never a threat to West Germany, or to the U.S. Its communist regime wanted only to be left alone. And in return, the West Germans and the Americans made it absolutely clear they had no intention of unifying Germany by attacking or otherwise bringing down the East.

When the Korean war ended with an armistice in 1953, that country was divided. South Korea became free, prosperous, and an American ally. North Korea became a miserable dictatorship, not very prosperous, and a sort-of satellite of China. The difference between Germany and Korea is that while East Germany wanted only to be left alone, North Korea keeps threatening to conquer South Korea and reunify the country under its control, and to fire nuclear-armed missiles at the U.S. itself.

President Trump’s Got Their Attention

But now, for the first time in its history — and thanks entirely to President Trump — North Korea faces the real possibility of a massive military attack, certainly to destroy its nuclear facilities and perhaps even to obliterate the regime itself. And there’s nothing like the looming prospect of an attack by the United States to get a government’s attention.

Simply put, it may be possible to defuse the current crisis without a war by cutting a deal along these lines: If North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons and cease threatening South Korea and the U.S., the U.S. and South Korea will guarantee North Korea’s sovereignty.

Once again, there’s an historic parallel between Korea and Germany: Adolf Hitler was crazy; a foaming-at-the-mouth, chewing-the-carpet raving lunatic. He was also a brilliant, cunning politician who not only held onto power, but who kept within his grip the total loyalty of Germany’s military leaders. These generals weren’t crazy; they were hard, practical, highly intelligent men who had fought and lost World War I and then rebuilt Germany’s war machine. They knew in their bones that another world war would devastate their country. They understood that invading Russia would end in catastrophe.

Over the past two weeks National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Defense Secretary James Mattis have taken quiet trips to Afghanistan. They are the president’s eyes on the war our military has been fighting for almost 16 years.

Their trips come more than two months after Army Gen. John Nicholson, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that, “I believe we’re in a stalemate.” Gen. Nicholson said that while he has sufficient counter-terrorism forces he needs a few thousand more troops to continue training the Afghan military. U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan is now close to 10,000.

Gen. Nicholson described a stalemate that was created by former President Obama’s Afghanistan policy, which kicked the can down the road so that his successor would have to deal with it.

In early 2009, Mr. Obama said that our policy was to “secure” Afghanistan but that “victory” wasn’t our goal. Mr. Obama described Afghanistan as “the just war” in his speech accepting his aspirational Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. From then on he micromanaged the war and created the existing stalemate.

Later in 2009, Gen. Stanley McChrystal — then U.S. commander in Afghanistan — sent Mr. Obama a report that requested about 40,000 more troops and said that unless those reinforcements were received, we would reach the point where defeating the Taliban was no longer possible.

Mr. Obama fussed and fretted over the report for months. When he finally decided his policy, it was not what Gen. McChrystal wanted. Instead, Mr. Obama came up with a policy that amounted to “McChrystal lite.”