RUTHFULLY YOURS

On November 11th 1965 the Union Jack came down in Harare Rhodesia one of the saddest tales of decolonization in Africa. Africa’s breadbasket and most thriving nation disintegrated under the rule of Mugabe. Famine, epidemic, and the systematic government seizure and destruction of productive farms led to the chaos that reigns today. The apathy and disinterest of the Congressional Black caucus and prominent Americans proved that African Black lives don’t matter. It is a tragedy and failure of monumental proportions…..rsk

Zimbabwe, one of Africa’s most resource-rich nations, suffered a steep economic decline under the decadeslong rule of Robert Mugabe, and his successor will face an arduous task in reviving it.

Unlike most other sub-Saharan Africans, Zimbabweans are considerably poorer today than they were some three decades ago, according to the World Bank and other agencies, with fewer people employed and more people going hungry.

Once considered Africa’s breadbasket for its productive agricultural sector, Zimbabwe is now the 22nd poorest nation in the world, according to International Monetary Fund data. Millions of its citizens have emigrated in search of work after a cycle of crises stoked an inflation rate that peaked in 2008 at 79.6 billion percent.

The country’s economy is again on a precipice. With the budget deficit ballooning to 10% of gross domestic product, U.S. dollars—Zimbabwe’s effective currency—are in such scarce circulation that people have begun sleeping outside banks.

“Macroeconomic stability is threatened by high government spending, the foreign-exchange regime is untenable, and the pace of reform inadequate,” said Gene Leon, the IMF’s Zimbabwe mission chief.

The country’s stubborn state of economic emergency marks a spectacular decline from when Robert Mugabe took its helm in 1980, ending white-minority rule after years of armed struggle amid widespread jubilation. His first 15 years in power were broadly reformist, characterized by consensus building and large investments in education and infrastructure. In those years the economy continued to expand.

BERLIN—The fate of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, reeling from the collapse of coalition talks, could hinge on a party that has shed almost half its voters and lost every single general election over the past 15 years.

Ms. Merkel’s attempt to forge a disparate alliance of conservatives, free-marketers and environmentalists collapsed on Sunday, putting a spotlight on the Social Democratic Party, which suffered a searing September defeat at the polls.

The country’s president, conservative allies of Ms. Merkel and even prominent opposition figures this week called on the venerable center-left party to help solve the political crisis by joining Ms. Merkel in reassembling their “grand coalition” of ideological rivals.

SPD Chairman Martin Schulz, the party’s eighth leader in 18 years, has so far rejected the overtures. Andrea Nahles, the recently appointed parliamentary leader, said this week that her party wouldn’t act as Ms. Merkel’s “power-political reserve.”

But some experts say the SPD may not have a better option. Should it refuse to be wooed, the result could be snap elections, for which it is woefully unprepared.

“The SPD finds itself in a dilemma…it got caught on the wrong foot,” said Thorsten Faas, a political-science professor at Berlin’s Free University.
Little LeftThe Social Democratic Party, Germany’s largestmainstream left-of-center party, has lost about halfits voters in the past 15 years.SPD general-election vote shareTHE WALL STREET JOURNALSource: Germany’s Federal Returning Officer*Last SPD general-election victory
%2002*’05’09’13’17010203040

After delivering the party’s worst postwar election result, Mr. Schulz has lost authority. Two opinion polls released this week suggest the SPD wouldn’t do any better at the ballot box today.

As with other social-democratic parties in Europe, the 142-year-old SPD has yet to find a solution to the gradual loss of its old audience of blue-collar workers, civil servants and trade unionists.

In Germany, the demographic problem was compounded by the unpopular economic overhauls of Gerhard Schröder, which alienated the party’s left-wing base when he served as the latest Social Democratic chancellor from 1998-2005. Ms. Merkel’s embrace of center-left policies, including a minimum wage and same-sex marriage, also eroded support.

After the poor September election results, SPD leaders had hoped a four-year spell in opposition would re-energize the party and give it a good shot at the chancellery in 2021.

“The SPD has to be careful about its election results. If it falls below 20%, people will get nervous there,” said Tilman Mayer, politics professor at Bonn University. “To simply steal away and say we will only do opposition, that’s simply not enough. And I’m not sure this would be rewarded in snap elections.” CONTINUE AT SITE

The Palestinians have made up their mind: The Trump peace plan is bad for us and we will not accept it. The plan is bad because it does not force Israel to give the Palestinians everything.

If and when the Trump administration makes public its peace plan, the Palestinians will be the first to reject it, simply because it does not meet all their demands.

Trump will soon learn that for Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians, 99% is just not enough.

The Palestinians are once again angry — this time because the Trump administration does not seem to have endorsed their position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians are also angry because they believe that the Trump administration does not want to force Israel to comply with all their demands.

Here is how the Palestinians see it: If you are not with us, then you must be against us. If you do not accept all our demands, then you must be our enemy and we cannot trust you to play the role of an “honest” broker in the conflict with Israel.

Last week, unconfirmed reports once again suggested that the Trump administration has been working on a comprehensive plan for peace in the Middle East. The full details of the plan remain unknown at this time.

However, what is certain — according to the reports — is that the plan does not meet all of the Palestinians’ demands. In fact, no peace plan — by Americans or any other party — would be able to provide the Palestinians with everything for which they are asking.

Palestinian requirements remain as unrealistic as ever. They include, among other things, the demand that millions of Palestinian “refugees” be allowed to enter Israel. Also, the Palestinians want Israel to withdraw to indefensible borders that would bring Hamas and other groups closer to Tel Aviv.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leader, 82-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, now in the twelfth year of his four-year term, continue to insist that they will accept nothing less than a sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital, on the entire lands captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.

Most dangerous is that even in the unlikely event that Abbas would sign some deal, another leader can come along later and legitimately say that Abbas had no authority to sign anything as his term had long since expired.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist terror group controlling the Gaza Strip, maintains that it will never accept the presence of Israel on “Muslim-owned” land. Hamas wants all the land Israel supposedly “took” in 1948. Translation: Hamas wants the destruction of Israel in order to establish an Islamic Caliphate where non-Muslims would be granted the status of dhimmi (“protected person”).

From the Punic Wars (264–146 b.c.) and the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) to the Arab–Israeli wars (1947–) and the so-called War on Terror (2001–), some wars never seem to end.

The dilemma is raised frequently given America’s long wars (Vietnam 1955–75) that either ended badly (Iraq 2003–11) or in some ways never quite ended at all (Korea 1950–53 and 2017–?; Afghanistan 2001–).

So what prevents strategic resolution? Among many reasons, two throughout history stand out.

One, such bella interrupta involve belligerents who are roughly equally matched. Neither side had enough of a material or spiritual edge (or sometimes the desire) to defeat, humiliate, and dictate terms to the beaten enemy. Think Rome and Carthage from 264 to 146. For 118 years, they fought three Punic Wars until greater Roman growth and vitality finally allowed it to dominate the Mediterranean and dictate terms on the North African coast, which finally resulted in the destruction of the Carthaginian Empire rather than another defeat of it. There was no fourth Punic War.

Certainly over the length of the Hundred Years’ War, England and France were often either too equally matched, or both lacked the necessary military clout to destroy their adversary’s army, march on the respective enemy capital, occupy it, and end both the material and political ability of the losing side to make war.

In contrast, there was not another American Civil War, because after the invasions of Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan between 1864 and 1865, the Confederacy lost the ability to resist, and Union armies forced an unconditional surrender and a mandated reentry into the Union. The same sort of resolution was true of the Second World War, in which the victorious Allies agreed that they should and could destroy the political regimes — at whatever cost — of Germany, Italy, and Japan. The combined manpower, GDP, and munitions of Britain, the USSR, and the United States allowed them to crush the Axis — once they had the willingness to pay a high price in blood and treasure to avoid a World War I–like armistice that they believed would have led to World War III.

In the post-war nuclear age, America’s enemies having roughly equal military power was never the reason that America failed to achieve victory in conventional wars. Rather, for a variety of reasons — political, cultural, social, economic — the U.S., at times, both wisely and foolishly, chose not to apply its full strength to pursue the unconditional surrender of its enemies.