RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://richard-kemp.com/our-afghan-retreat-is-a-surrender-to-iran/

Over 50 per cent of Afghanistan is now controlled or violently contested by the Taliban, down from about three quarters before US-led forces threw them out of power after 9/11. Despite the country’s army and police being strengthened by two decades of international training and investment, it is hard to see how the Islamist militants can be prevented from regaining their 2001 position now that Joe Biden has announced the withdrawal of all US forces by September this year.

The Trump administration planned to pull out all US forces four months earlier, subject to conditions including a significant reduction of violence, meaningful negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government, the breaking of Taliban relations with Al-Qaida and an undertaking not to allow Afghanistan to be used as a base to attack the West. Predictably, none have been met. But that will not affect Biden’s plan which is based not on conditions but an arbitrary date.

We should now be prepared for a civil war even bloodier than anything witnessed so far and the downfall of the democratic government in Kabul. As well as an incessant campaign of violence against women, girls’ schools and anyone transgressing strict sharia laws in the distant provinces, the Taliban have been waging a vicious purge in Kabul and other cities against leaders of the more progressive civil society that has emerged since 2001. Targets for assassination include politicians, judges, lawyers, human rights worker, teachers, university lecturers and journalists: anyone who might lead or influence opposition to a return to fundamentalist rule.

More than 450 British troops have been killed and thousands more maimed in Afghanistan since 2001. As well as fighting the Taliban and other insurgents, our soldiers have been heavily engaged in supporting the Afghan security forces. More than 70,000 of their number have been killed, including nearly 10,000 since the ‘agreement for bringing peace’ was signed between the US and the Taliban in Doha last year.

It is difficult to see total withdrawal of US and other coalition forces as anything but a betrayal of all those that sacrificed so much. High on the Taliban hit list will be Afghans that assisted our troops, in particular the thousands of local interpreters who played such a key role and helped save many lives. One of my own teenage interpreters in Kabul in 2003 is today a general in the Afghan National Army and I dread to think what his fate might be if the Taliban take over.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/bidens-bad-foreign-policy-deals/

Because Barack Obama struck me as a clever fellow, I never understood why, when negotiating with despots, he failed to utilize the leverage available to him.

For instance, he might have said to Russian President Vladimir Putin: “I want to reset our relations, but many Americans haven’t forgotten the Cold War. So, I need you to make clear that Russia today isn’t just the USSR 2.0.”

To Raul Castro, he could have said: “It’s high time for us to open diplomatic relations, but you know the Miami crowd! If you’ll just ease up on dissidents a little, we can meet and go to a baseball game together in Havana, and maybe I’ll even have my picture taken under a portrait of Che Guevara!”

To Iran’s rulers, he should have said: “Many members of Congress, even within my own party, won’t approve the deal you want me to sign off on. So, at a minimum, I need you to demonstrate—verifiably—that you’re permanently out of the nuclear weapons business and won’t threaten your neighbors anymore.”

Instead, of course, Obama gave without getting and then postured as though he’d achieved spectacular victories. President Joe Biden is now doing likewise. A few examples follow.

In February, the Biden administration lifted the foreign terrorist designation of the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Since then, they’ve been launching missiles and armed drones at Saudi cities and oil facilities, and have turned down proposals for ceasefires. Mission unaccomplished.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has become a club for chronic human rights abusers—China, Russia and Cuba among them. The Trump administration withdrew from it. The Biden administration plans to return. What reforms have been undertaken in exchange for the United States again lending its legitimacy to the UNHRC? None.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/14/how-to-start-a-war/

Wars often arise from uncertainty. When strong powers appear weak, truly weaker ones take risks they otherwise would not. 

Sloppy braggadocio and serial promises of restraint alternatively trigger wars, too. Empty tough talk can needlessly egg on aggressors. But mouthing utopian bromides convinces bullies that their targets are too sophisticated to counter aggression.

Sometimes announcing “a new peace process” without any ability to bring either novel concessions or pressures only raises false hopes—and furor. 

Every new American president is usually tested to determine whether the United States can still protect friends like Japan, Europe, South Korea, Israel, and Taiwan. And will the new commander-in-chief deter America’s enemies Iran and North Korea—and keep China and Russia from absorbing their neighbors?

Joe Biden, and those around him, seem determined to upset the peace they inherited. 

Soon after Donald Trump left office, Vladimir Putin began massing troops on the Ukrainian border and threatening to attack.

Putin earlier had concluded Trump was dangerously unpredictable, and perhaps better not provoked. After all, the Trump Administration took out Russian mercenaries in Syria. It beefed up defense spending and upped sanctions.

The Trump Administration flooded the world with cheap oil to Russia’s chagrin. It pulled out from asymmetrical missile treaties with Russia. It sold sophisticated arms to the Ukrainians. The Russians concluded that Trump might do anything, and so waited for another president before again testing America.

In contrast, Biden too often talks provocatively—while carrying a twig. He has gratuitously called Putin “a killer.” And he warned that the Russian dictator “would pay a price” for supposedly interfering in the 2020 election. 

Unfortunately, his bombast follows four years of a Russian-collusion hoax, fueled by a concocted dossier paid for by 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton. Biden and others swore Trump was—in the words of Barack Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper—a “Russian asset.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/back-to-irans-nuclear-future-11618354043?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

‘America is back” has been a mantra of the early Biden Presidency, and back how is the question. So far regarding Iran it seems to mean back to the future of 2015-2016 and another bad nuclear deal.

The U.S. on Wednesday will resume talks in Vienna to revive the nuclear agreement, but the bigger news is the explosion over the weekend at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. No one has taken credit, but Israel has been notably public in saying it will do whatever it must to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

Unlike past cyber attacks, the U.S. was quick to say it had nothing to do with the Natanz attack. A fair conclusion is that Israel feels it must act because it sees President Biden rushing back to a deal that clearly hasn’t stopped Iran from continuing to make progress toward a nuclear breakout.

Washington and Tehran are so far speaking through European intermediaries, but the focus of the talks is also back to the Obama future. The Iranians, who outmaneuvered the same American negotiators six years ago, are demanding the removal of all sanctions as the price for a return to the deal. Donald Trump’s sanctions have increased domestic economic pressure on the mullahs, who want access to global oil markets and investment.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17273/iran-biden-administration

A basic rule in negotiations is to keep or gain leverage against the other party. The Biden administration, mystifyingly, is doing exactly the opposite in its negotiations with the regime of Iran.

Iran enriching uranium at any level — it is a negligibly small step to enrich uranium from “acceptable levels” to “nuclear” levels — puts the world at risk, especially as other countries in the region might well feel compelled launch their nuclear programs as a deterrent.

The US and the UN Security Council also would do well to impose sanctions on Tehran for its violation of Resolution 2231, which “calls upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.”

A basic rule in negotiations is to keep or gain leverage against the other party. The Biden administration, mystifyingly, is doing exactly the opposite in its negotiations with the regime of Iran.

Right before heading to Vienna to negotiate rejoining the disastrous 2015 nuclear deal, which, incidentally, Iran never signed, US State Department spokesman Ned Price dropped a bombshell when he told reporters that the US is prepared to lift sanctions against Iran:

“We are prepared to take the steps necessary to return to compliance with the JCPOA, including by lifting sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA. I am not in a position here to give you chapter and verse on what those might be”.

Why on earth would the administration tell the Iranian leaders before negotiations that it is ready to lift sanctions while it has not yet received anything in return from the mullahs? The Iranian regime, of course, immediately scented weakness and desperation and began increasing its demands. The Biden administration then offered $1 billion to the mullahs in exchange for the regime freezing its production of 20% uranium enrichment. No, Iran wants more. Its leaders demanded $30 billion for one month of freeze.

Presumably to gain additional leverage and extort more concessions, the regime announced during those negotiations that it had begun testing its newest advanced nuclear centrifuges.

The Biden administration does not seem to understand that it is the Iranian regime that is desperate for the nuclear deal, not the US.

https://townhall.com/capitol-voices/congressmanmarkgreen/2021/04/13/while-america-slept-the-story-of-a-distracted-military-and-a-rising-china-n2587805

Rep. Mark Green is a physician and combat veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He served on the mission to capture Saddam Hussein, and he interviewed Saddam Hussein for six hours on the night of his capture. He serves on the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.

President Biden has diverted our military away from its mission. Instead of prioritizing military readiness, our new Commander in Chief is redirecting the military’s focus from fighting and winning wars, to using the military as a vehicle to advance the radical left’s agenda.

Redirecting precious time and resources to appease the woke mob is dangerous to our national security, and it’s putting America at risk. 

It began in January when the Biden Administration announced that climate change is now a national security priority. Instead of focusing on growing threats to our country from foreign adversaries such as China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia, President Biden will now direct our military’s resources to combat climate change, including replacing 173,000 gas-powered military vehicles with ones powered by electricity. While electric Humvees sound tempting, after three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, I know how dangerous active duty can be. The last thing I ever want to hear is that a unit got stranded in the middle of the desert because their vehicle ran out of electricity—all to appease the left’s woke agenda.

Then, the Biden Administration reinstated controversial Critical Race Theory seminars, forcing servicemembers to participate in hours of training, teaching them that they are either victims or oppressors. President Trump rightly disbanded these seminars throughout the Federal government because they promote division over unity. He understood that when soldiers put their uniform on, the only color they should see are the colors of our flag. Yet the Biden Administration has brought them back in full force—promoting a leftist ideology that poisons our combat effectiveness and unit morale.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17235/gray-zone-conflict

The gray zone is the space between peace and war involving coercive actions that fall outside normal geopolitical competition between states but do not reach the level of armed conflict…. They usually seek to avoid a significant military response, though are often designed to intimidate and deter a target state by threatening further escalation.

[B]ut do liberal democracies in the 21st Century have the political will to do the dirty work that is necessary to win?

Western nations have multiple pre-emptive and reactive options to respond to gray zone actions directed against them or their allies, most effectively involving multilateral coordination. The objective should be to frustrate or deter, avoiding escalation that might lead to all-out conflict. Broadly, options fall into four categories: diplomatic, informational, economic and military.

Democracies’ fear of escalation is a significant deterrent against the use of violent military options in the gray zone, and that is exactly the fear that authoritarian states like Iran wish to instil…..[F]ear of escalation is not the greatest obstacle to the use of a military option — transparency is.

Deterrence is not down to the military option alone. Where possible, diplomatic, informational and economic actions are preferable in providing the necessary punishments. But gray zone opponents who are willing to use military action must also be confronted with a credible military jeopardy to them, and not just a paper capability which will quickly be seen for what it is.

How confident can we be that liberal democracies mean business in the gray zone? When British troops were being killed and maimed in large numbers in Iraq by Iranian proxies… more than a decade ago, the UK government would not even consider any form of gray zone military action, even non-lethal, against Iran, despite a clear capability to do so. Instead they relied on diplomatic démarches — and the killings continued. The consequences of such weakness are still being played out in Iran’s widespread gray zone aggression. If back then — in the face of the slaughter of dozens of their own troops — political leaders’ fear of escalation and political fallout caused such paralysis, how likely is it that they will seriously contemplate violent gray zone operations today….

In March, US President Joe Biden issued his Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. Across the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson presented the Integrated Review of Security, Defense, Development and Foreign Policy to parliament. Both leaders expressed concern over the increasing challenges in the gray zone and promised measures to respond more effectively.

http://And makes a mockery of his democracy agenda

That didn’t take long. One week after piously and erroneously repudiating the Commission on Unalienable Rights established by his predecessor Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed the hollow selectivity of this administration’s commitment to human rights and democratic reform.

On April 7, Blinken said he was “pleased to announce” the reinstatement of tens of millions of dollars in aid to the West Bank and Gaza and of some $150 million to support the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). “All assistance will be provided consistent with U.S. law,” Blinken added.

Easier said than done. The Taylor Force Act, signed into law in 2018, withholds aid from the Palestinian Authority until the State Department certifies that the ruling party of the West Bank has terminated payments to family members of terrorists. It hasn’t. That was one reason the Trump administration slashed the aid in the first place. Nor is there evidence that suddenly the Palestinians have curtailed the so-called pay-to-slay schemes that incentivize the murder of civilians and the perpetuation of conflict. On the contrary: They bristle at the idea of changing their corrupt and self-destructive ways.

A second law from 2018, the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act, holds beneficiaries of foreign assistance legally and financially responsible for terrorism committed against U.S. citizens. This notion — that the Palestinian Authority might actually have to pay a price for its incitement to anti-Semitic violence — so terrified the leadership in the West Bank that it sent a letter to the Trump administration in February 2019 renouncing U.S. aid. I must have missed the make-up note postmarked Ramallah.