Displaying posts categorized under

FOREIGN POLICY

Putting an End to Government Funding of Islamism Extremist movements disguise their activities as schools or charities. By Sam Westrop

In Tuesday’s speech, President Trump denounced the flow of U.S. money to Pakistan while that nation harbors terrorists. South Asian Islamism is an enormous problem, and yet a great deal of the discussion in America surrounding Islamism focuses on the Egyptian-founded Muslim Brotherhood. But the Muslim Brotherhood is far from the only Islamist network in the United States; it is simply the best known. Other Islamist movements also benefit from government ignorance about the diversity of Islam and Islamism across the globe. The South Asian Islamist movement Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), for instance, has received millions from the U.S. taxpayer for its powerful network of charities and welfare services, which are designed to obtain external funding as well as legitimize JI as a representative voice of Muslims, in both America and South Asia.

Although JI has its own ideologues, literature, and infrastructure, it is often described as the South Asian “cousin” of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qazi Ahmad Hussain, head of JI in Pakistan, has declared: “We consider ourselves as an integral part of the Brotherhood and the Islamic movement in Egypt. . . . Our nation is one.” JI’s history is bloody. During the 1971 Liberation War in Bangladesh, JI fighters helped Pakistani forces massacre hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis seeking independence from Pakistan. Several JI leaders guilty of these war crimes fled to the West, where they helped establish JI organizations that operated as community leadership groups. Two western JI leaders have since been sentenced to death in absentia for these killings by a UN-backed war-crimes tribunal.

One of those convicted, Ashrafuzzaman Khan, served as a leading official of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a prominent American Muslim organization. Twice a year, ICNA jointly hosts a conference with the Muslim American Society (MAS), a leading Muslim Brotherhood institution. Unsurprisingly, these conferences are filled with extremist preachers. Ahmed Taha, an ICNA-MAS official who organized their conference in December, has republished posts on social media stating: “O Muslim, O servant of God. There is a Jew behind me, come kill him.”

Despite its long history of extremism, in 2016 ICNA received $1.3 million of taxpayers’ money as part of a grant awarded by the Department of Homeland Security.

ICNA is not the only JI organization in America. Nor is it the only JI group to have received taxpayer funds. Behind ICNA and other front groups around the world, JI operates an enormous network of registered charities and community organizations. One of the most prominent is the Rural Education and Development (READ) Foundation.

If This is Strategy . . . Empty, Swaggering words….By Angelo Codevilla

Strategy is neither more nor less than a map for getting from here to there—a reasonable plan for using what you have to accomplish what you want. President Trump’s August 21 speech, touted as “a new strategy” for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is not a strategy, because it did not even try to show that what it proposes—in fact it proposed nothing concrete—should be expected to achieve anything at all.

The president made zero attempt to connect ends and means. Nor was anything new about his proposal, other than the application of new adjectives to what the U.S. government has been doing in Afghanistan and elsewhere for two generations. The one new element, announcing that henceforth the United States would take India’s side in its multifaceted, existential quarrel with Pakistan, is pregnant with far more trouble than today’s U.S. foreign policy establishment is capable of imagining.

The speech’s substance was Trump’s surrender of his—and of the 2016 electorate’s—point of view on foreign affairs. Trump said that, having been schooled by the foreign policy establishment’s expertise, he now concludes that he and those who voted for him had been wrong. U.S troops would stay in Afghanistan. More would go. But now they would “fight to win.” Win what? How? No attempt to answer. Just empty, swaggering words. They wouldn’t “nation build” but establish the security environment in which the government could do that. These are the very words used to describe the U.S. “strategy” in the Vietnam War, and in the Iraq. It is also what Americans have been saying since they set up Afghanistan’s government in 2002.

Unlike Obama in Iraq, and unlike what Trump had promised the voters, he pledged to stay in Afghanistan practically forever. But he threatened the Afghan government with leaving unless it played its part. Bush had done the same in Iraq. In the end, it was the Iraqi government that had asked the Americans to leave.

So, just what can we expect the “Trump Strategy” to do, for how long, and with what results? Because our establishment does not know how to do anything other than what it has been doing, more of the same is the best that any reasonable person, of any political persuasion may expect.

The U.S. formula is inflexible: set up a centralized government comprising as much of the political opposition as possible, and “secure” the country on its behalf by promoting “social programs.” The government’s opponents are America’s enemies.

This formula is especially surreal in Afghanistan. The Taliban are ethnic Pashtun, tied politically as well as ethnically to Pakistan. Their dalliance with Afghan Arabs such as Osama bin Laden ended when Pakistan’s president, General Pervez Musharraf, pulled the string on them in 2001, and the United States helped the Northern Alliance of Tajiks and Uzbeks to defeat them. But then we set up a centralized government that was mostly Pashtun but excluded the remnant Taliban, while disarming the Tajiks and Uzbeks. This application of the standard U.S formula started a civil war among the Pashtun, with the other groups trying to take care of themselves as best they could by providing mercenaries to either side, but certainly not helping the Americans. Add to this the massive corruption engendered by billions of U.S. dollars, and we get a political disaster for America.

First Hurdle in Trump’s Mideast Peace Gambit: Persuading Adversaries to Talk Jared Kushner leads delegation to try to advance talks between Israelis, Palestinians—but two sides are stuck over basic question of statehood By Rory Jones in Tel Aviv and Paul Sonne in Washington

President Donald Trump, who has pledged to broker the “ultimate deal” between the Israelis and Palestinians, faces major obstacles to getting them to even negotiate as his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner arrives in Israel this week.

The White House says the discussions will focus on “the path to substantive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks,” combating extremism and economic and humanitarian issues in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Mr. Kushner’s delegation is set to meet with Israeli and then Palestinian officials separately on Thursday.

But the U.S. hasn’t received assurances that the two sides will talk to one another—let alone take steps to resolve the decadeslong conflict. A White House official emphasized that the U.S. is still in the initial stages of the process and has yet to formally propose a new peace dialogue.

The Palestinians’ quest for statehood is among the biggest hurdles to direct negotiations.

Many Israeli officials won’t support the creation of a Palestinian state; Palestinian officials don’t want to negotiate without statehood as the goal. The White House hasn’t said how it plans to bridge the gap, say Israeli and Palestinian officials.

The deadlock underscores the tough task Mr. Trump faces in forging Middle East peace—a signature foreign policy goal that has eluded American leaders for decades. Mr. Trump in February backed off the U.S.’s longstanding commitment to a two-state strategy, saying he would support whatever solution both parties prefer.

Mr. Trump has deputized Mr. Kushner, a 36-year-old former real-estate developer with no experience negotiating foreign conflicts, to spearhead the peace efforts.

In leaked comments from an off-record meeting with congressional interns this month, Mr. Kushner said “there may be no solution” to the conflict but said he would try because it was “one of the problem sets the president asked us to focus on.”

Accompanying Mr. Kushner on the trip is Jason Greenblatt, a former Trump Organization lawyer turned White House special representative for international negotiations, and Deputy National Security adviser Dina Powell. They will also meet with leaders from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt over the peace process and other issues. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Afghan Donut Speech by Linda Goudsmit

President Trump faced the nation last night (8.21.17) and delivered an impassioned three-part speech on American involvement in Afghanistan. The first part eloquently addressed the military from the perspective of a grateful nation. President Trump thanked the military and complimented their extraordinary service and sacrifice. President Trump promised the troops full support for the equipment they need and for the freedom of the military generals in the field to make decisions without interference from Washington politicians sitting behind desks. President Trump announced a change to the rules of engagement – he promised a commitment to winning when engaged. The President spoke at great length about the exemplary military model of cohesion – the unity of men and women from all races and religions united by common cause and commitment to their pledge of allegiance to the United States of America. We are one family – one American family. The President implored the country to follow the military model of cohesion and heal the divisiveness at home.

The second part of the President’s speech announced a powerful new shift in purpose. The United States will no longer participate in nation building – we are finally out of the business of trying to build democracies in unwilling nations. Instead, our international involvement will focus on common cause that serves American national interests. President Trump expects our friends and allies to participate in the funding of these efforts – America will no longer unfairly accept the financial burden of military engagement alone.

The third part of President Trump’s speech was directed at our terrorist enemies. The President spoke to the terrorists directly saying America will stay the course and we will prevail. Here is the problem. President Trump never identified the terrorist enemies as radical Islamists. That is the donut hole. Candidate Trump was very specific about naming radical Islam as the enemy and identifying its existential threat to Western freedom. President Trump did not. Candidate Trump understood that the misrepresentation and censorship of the colluding mainstream media gives safe haven to the radical Islamic terrorists because the void in the coverage deceitfully minimizes the Islamic threat. President Trump ignored the fake news contribution that emboldens radical Islamic terrorism.

Wars cannot be won without clarity and an explicit identification of the enemy. Worldwide Islamic terrorism is ideological. Our terrorist enemies abroad and at home are inspired by their religious commitment to Islam and their Koranic dream to re-establish the caliphate and impose supremacist Islamic sharia law worldwide. Islam is a comprehensive socio-political expansionist movement with a religious wing (mosques and imams), a military wing of jihadists (terrorists), and a political wing (Muslim Brotherhood/CAIR/MSA). Islamic terrorism is a war of ideas as much as it is a savage physical war. The war of ideas can only be won by an informed West that understands the comprehensive ideology driving the Islamic terrorism.

President Trump’s eloquent speech of determination and commitment to the troops collapses into the donut hole because without naming the ideological inspiration of Islamic megalomania the Muslim Brotherhood remains free to recruit and infiltrate every government agency in America. CAIR operatives continue to disinform the public, and the Muslim Student Association continues to infiltrate and incite violence on campuses across America. The Muslim Brotherhood is a radical Islamic terrorist organization and must be designated a terrorist organization. Candidate Trump had the courage to say so – President Trump did not.

The Big Mistake: Trump Doubles Down In Afghanistan By Michael van der Galien

As Roger L. Simon reported earlier, President Trump has announced he will send more troops to Afghanistan to fight against the Taliban. Although he didn’t mention a specific number, other media outlets report that number to be around 4.000 soldiers. Those soldiers are supposed to deliver the final blow to the Taliban, the radical Islamic group that has been resurgent for the last few years.

Roger agrees with Trump’s decision, considering it absolutely “necessary” to defeat the Taliban while refraining from “nation-building.” Although that may sound wonderful and all, the fact of the matter is that 4,000 troops aren’t even almost sufficient to truly annihilate the Taliban (in short order). In other words, these troops won’t be sent to deliver the Taliban a death blow, but to… nation-build.

Trump, then, does exactly what George W. Bush and Barack Obama did before him.

That’s bad enough, but what makes this even worse is that Trump knows better. See this tweet of his from 2011:

The president knows that the nation-building experiment is doomed to fail, yet he repeats it nonetheless. The only possible reason? The establishment types who now surround him have drawn him into the swamp. He has bought into the same ‘logic’ that is already costing the American taxpayer 45 billion dollar per year, without them getting anything back for it.

It’s nice and all to call yourself a ‘hawk,’ but a real foreign policy hawk believes in completely destroying threats, after which you move on. Being a ‘hawk’ doesn’t mean sending in a meager 4.000 extra troops, giving a country a blank check to rebuild itself, and then brag that you’re doing something useful when the entire world can see you aren’t.

Trump had the choice. He could declare war on the Taliban and send in tens of thousands of extra troops and use every weapon available to him to destroy them, he could do nothing, or he could double down on the failed nation-building policies of the past. He has clearly chosen the last option, which is the worst possible choice he could’ve made.

The thanks of a grateful world go with Steve Bannon: David Goldman

My friend Steve Bannon did the world an inestimable favor in his final dictum from the West Wing of the White House by telling The American Prospect that there is no military solution to North Korea’s nuclear provocations. In an Aug. 17 interview, Bannon stated: “There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”

Bannon is right, of course; despite public remonstrations to the contrary, the whole of the Defense Department agrees with Bannon.

During late July and early August I met with Bannon twice in the West Wing office at his invitation, to discuss means of reversing America’s strategic decline. Although I do not agree with Bannon on every detail, he has a brilliant grasp of grand strategy and a deep sense of urgency about its implementation. Because I was advising Bannon rather than interviewing him, I cannot report his remarks.

But I can state unequivocally that he has a better understanding of America’s vulnerabilities than any senior official I have met in a generation, and some excellent ideas about how to get out of the mess. There was no mention of any antagonism or rivalry in the Administration in these meetings, which were focused strictly on policy matters.

His departure is a loss for the Trump Administration, but not necessarily for the country. As he told associates over the weekend, he had influence at the White House, but as executive chairman of Breitbart News, he has power.

A hostile press portrays Bannon as a bomb-thrower. His Parthian shot last week, on the contrary, qualifies him as the most level-headed realist in the Administration, and the only one with the guts to stand up to the president.

According to Newsmax and other media, President Trump was “furious” about the American Prospect interview, which deflated the president’s “fire and fury” threats against North Korea. Defense Secretary James Mattis the next day warned of a military response if North Korea “initiates hostilities” by attacking America or its allies.

Press accounts portrayed this as a rebuttal to Bannon, who said something quite different: the departed White House strategist warned that there was no military means to prevent North Korea from acquiring a nuclear arsenal. I don’t know whether his remarks on Korea or some other issue prompted Bannon’s departure, but it was well that he made them.

Trump’s bellicosity apparently reflects the kind of negotiating technique that he elucidated in “The Art of the Deal,” and used to some effect in his real estate business: start with a tantrum and outlandish demands in order to move the goal posts of the negotiation. That’s well and good for bankruptcy lawyers, but irresponsible in the extreme for a president dealing with a rogue regime led by the volatile Kim Jong Un. The military option is imaginary.

As I wrote Aug. 14, “If the United States conducted a limited conventional strike on North Korea, North Korea would fire an artillery barrage at the South Korean capital of Seoul, just 35 miles from the border. A nuclear strike on North Korea could destroy the regime and silence its artillery, to be sure, but the fallout would kill a lot of South Koreans as well.” One could hear the sigh of relief across the Pacific after Bannon pointed out that the president has no clothes in the matter.

Korea is a sideshow, Bannon added in the American Prospect interview:

“We’re at economic war with China,” he added. “It’s in all their literature. They’re not shy about saying what they’re doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it’s gonna be them if we go down this path. On Korea, they’re just tapping us along. It’s just a sideshow.”

The economic war is not a matter of dumping steel or aluminum, or even pirating American technology: China is establishing a dominant position in high-tech manufacturing, including a new US$50 billion plan to build a domestic semiconductor industry. The nub of what I presented at our West Wing meetings in late July is now available in the just-published Fall 2017 issue of the Journal of American Affairs. I wrote:

China and, to a lesser extent, other Asian competitors employ the full resources of state finances to fund capital-intensive manufacturing investment in the way that the West subsidizes basic infrastructure. In addition, China will commit $1 trillion to building infrastructure overseas to support its foreign trade, including exports as well as raw material supplies. The problem is not merely the dumping of artificially cheap goods into American markets, but a state-supported capital investment program that erodes returns for American investors. As a result, investment in the United States seeks capital-light venues such as software and avoids capital-intensive sectors such as chip production. We are being shut out of the global market for high-tech exports.

America still produces about a quarter of the world’s integrated circuits, the industry that China now has in its sights. Other high tech products invented in America – light-emitting diodes, flat panel displays, solar panels, solid state sensors, and flash memory – no longer are produced in the US. That portends not only economic decline, but critical strategic vulnerabilities. In a world of high-tech war, losing our production capacity in these industries is like losing our steel production in the age of cannon.

DIANA WEST: HONORABLE DISSENT FROM MAJOR FRED C. GALVIN (RET.)

There is no finer United States Marine officer than Major Fred C. Galvin (ret.), a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — including hard-won battles against the failed senior command leadership at Bati Kot and Sangin. Thus, I can think of no better man to ask for a reaction to President Trump’s announcement last night to send more troops to Afghanistan.

So I did.

Here is what Maj. Galvin wrote.

Hello Diana,

Thank you for asking.

President Trump broke his promise to the American people and military personnel in the worst way.

Every buck Private knows when they hear mealy-mouth-words about “doing the honorable thing,” “change,” and “listening to generals,” that all three have led us nowhere for 16 years. Case in point: Nicholson, Votel, Dunford and Mattis. The first two kicked out the only force that ever went in to Afghanistan after 2006 with the sole purpose of killing the enemy. Votel was the Deputy Commander of RC-E (Regional Command-East) whom Nicholson reported/cried out in fear to at the time to expel us. Now Votel is the CENTCOM Commander. Dunford was the ISAF Commander and Mattis was the CENTCOM commander at the height of US forces in Afghanistan. They couldn’t get it done with nearly 150,000 coalition forces and they will never get it done with ~12,000 coalition forces. This was a complete political lie to American and our military.

If the President expected the American people to believe that we will win with a new strategy, he would have done what every successful business leader, coach or military leader would have done, and that is remove the failed leaders, bring in proven leaders and implement radical change. Today is the same day as it was yesterday in Afghanistan. Nicholson is in charge and he will leave soon with a horrible track record that cannot change the American military campaign there into winning. … [When] has Trump ever in the past kept a losing team and told them, “we have new rules and better support”? Has this ever worked for Trump or anyone else in the past? No.

In 2011, Mattis was at CENTCOM, Votel was at JSOC, Dunford was heading to ISAF and Nicholson was also back in Afghanistan. They had nearly 150,000 coalition troops and Obama was truly clueless as to what actually happened on the ground in Afghanistan. These failed leaders LOST and they need to be removed from leadership if we want to win.

It is admirable to want to win vs. pull out and allow the world to see that the most powerful military lost to sandal-wearing farmers, but it is helpless to believe we will win by allowing our losing generals to have more troops and money. There is no strategy change, no leadership change, just more of the same. Troops and money will be lost and Mattis, Votel, Nicholson, Dunford will all be the wealthier for convincing Trump to change his mind. Terrorism in Afghanistan? You bet it’s there, just like it was, is and has been. It’s everywhere…Africa, Philippines, Indonesia, all over the globe and don’t believe for a second that our lambs in charge will eradicate it. Votel, Nicholson, Mattis, Dunford all had a direct hand in kicking out warriors and/or punishing us/failing to right a wrong. There is no way they have a clue at how to solve a complex problem that they cannot completely control if they can’t fix the simple stuff which they totally control.

Trump believed the lie and has delegated his leadership as commander and chief to a proven group of failed generals. That is an American disgrace.

Trump’s Afghan Escalation By The Editors

President Trump doesn’t want to lose a war on his watch and that’s a good thing.

He had a choice. On one hand, he could follow his instinct to pull out of Afghanistan, act on his many bumptious calls to abandon the war, and please his most fervent supporters. On the other, he could acknowledge the disaster that would result in Afghanistan and potentially the region if he followed this course and instead work toward a more responsible policy. He, rightly, picked the latter option and spoke to the nation about his new strategy last night.

If President Obama had been as willing to examine his political promises and ideological predispositions in the light of reality, he wouldn’t have pulled out of Iraq, creating the conditions for the rise of ISIS and overwhelming Iranian influence in that country. Obama’s foolish choice, as Trump said last night, informed his more sober-minded decision on Afghanistan.

Trump’s strategy will involve the deployment of an unspecified number of additional troops, a rejection of arbitrary deadlines for a conditions-based evaluation of future drawdowns, looser rules of engagement for our troops, and pressure on our supposed ally Pakistan, which continues to play a dangerous double game, harboring our enemies. This is all to the good, and better than a precipitate total withdrawal. But cautions are in order.

First, if we have established anything in Afghanistan over the last 16 years, it is that victory will be extremely difficult to achieve given the limited social capital in that tragic, war-torn, highly tribal country. Anything like unambiguous success will be impossible without a commitment much larger than the American public is, understandably, willing to contemplate. So, for all of Trump’s stalwart talk about winning, the realistic choice is between a holding action and defeat.

It’s not clear that Trump will have the appetite for this difficult, twilight war over the longer term, and his natural predilections confused how he talked about the strategy. He said we aren’t going to engage in nation-building, but if the course of the war is dependent on the performance of the Afghan military and government — this, presumably, is what the conditions are about — we will need to try to foster the development of Afghan national institutions, i.e., engage in some nation-building.

As for Pakistan, Trump’s tough rhetoric was welcome. His warm words about India, in particular, probably concentrated minds in Islamabad. But Pakistan won’t easily be pressured out of a policy of maintaining strategic depth in Afghanistan via the Taliban that it has pursued for decades out of a sense of its national interest. Wrenching it into a different strategic orientation is a major diplomatic undertaking at a time when Rex Tillerson’s understaffed State Department appears to be held together with duct tape and baling wire.

All that said, Trump’s approach is better than the alternative. If the Taliban were going to (at least in its propaganda version) expel us from Afghanistan, it would vastly increase its prestige, and if it were to take over the country, it wouldn’t be long until fanatics began using its territory to plot against us. This was our experience in Iraq. Obama’s pull-out hastened that country’s downward slide and the day we had to send troops back in. Trump is right not to want to repeat the cycle in Afghanistan.

— Get insight from the best conservative writers delivered to your inbox; sign up for National Review Online’s newsletters today.

Recognizing the Real and Present Enemy: Radical Islam, Not Russia by Alexandre del Valle

In the military and strategic sense of the word, an “enemy” is an entity that truly threatens our short- and long-term survival and vital interests — not one that simply does not share our concept of democracy and human rights.

Another dangerous geopolitical mistake made by Western societies is viewing only Islamic terrorist groups as enemies and targeting them in a vacuum. Equally, if not more, important to combat are those Islamist movements that condemn terrorism but spread their ideology “peacefully” in our countries.

Before launching military campaigns on behalf of human rights, we in the West should first invest in strengthening our values at home, and encourage our Muslim minorities to adopt those values, rather than let them fall into the hands of radical Islamist organizations. The West must stop demonizing its own Judeo-Christian-European identity and rid itself of multiculturalist extremism.

Defining post-Soviet Russia as the main enemy of the West, while considering the Sunni Islamic monarchies of the Middle East and neo-Ottoman-Islamist Turkey as allies or friends, is a dangerous geopolitical mistake. The primary interest of the West and the main mission of NATO is not to demonize regimes it does not like, such as Putin’s authoritarian kleptocracy or other non-democratic states that do not pose a direct military threat. Rather, it is to safeguard our land, sea, airspace and populations.

In order to accomplish this, however, we have define the “enemy.” In the military and strategic sense of the word, an enemy is an entity that truly threatens our short- and long-term survival and vital interests — not one that simply does not share our concept of democracy and human rights.

Radical Islamism meets this definition, since its adherents aim to replace our way of life in the West through their antagonist theocratic system of Sharia (Islamic law). This is a clear challenge to our democratic-secular order and to Judeo-Christian civilization.

Islamic terrorists are tools — a human non-conventional weapon employed even by “friendly” organizations (for example, the Muslim Brotherhood, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Muslim World League, World Islamic Congress) and states (such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Kuwait and Qatar) to destroy the West. They do this by playing a double game: They are our economic allies, but simultaneously support those who openly aim to subjugate our nations to Sharia.

Russia may be an enemy of Ukraine; it is perceived as a threat to Poland, as well. However, it does not aim to destroy Judeo-Christian civilization. On the contrary, post-Soviet Russia espouses Orthodox-Christian values that are similar to those of many Western Christian conservatives. Nor does Moscow plan to attack the United States.

Another dangerous geopolitical mistake made by Western societies is viewing only Islamic terrorist groups as enemies and targeting them in a vacuum. Equally, if not more, important to combat are those Islamist movements that condemn terrorism but spread their ideology “peacefully” in our countries. Theirs is not merely a fundamentalist or revivalist doctrine, such as that espoused by certain Christian or Jewish groups, but rather a totalitarian political-religious ideology, capable of jeopardizing all of humanity. This is because its ultimate goal is to dominate the world, much like Nazism and communism.

Kissinger’s Analysis of Mideast is Full of Loopholes by Amir Taheri

Whatever one might think of Henry Kissinger’s view of the world, not to mention his contribution to international debate during the past six decades, one thing is certain: He has his own matrix for measuring right and wrong in policy terms.

That matrix is balance of power, a European concept developed during the medieval times that reached canon status with the so-called Westphalian treaties to organize relations among emerging nations in Europe. Call him a “one trick pony” if you like, but you will also have to admire Kissinger’s consistency in promoting foreign policy as a means of stabilizing the status quo regardless of moral — let alone ideological — considerations. In his version of Realpolitik, the aim should be to freeze rather than try to change the world, something fraught with dangerous risks.

Henry Kissinger in 2008. (Image source: World Economic Forum/Wikimedia Commons)

Kissinger’s neo-Westphalian view of international relations produced détente which, in turn, arguably prolonged the Soviet Union’s existence by a couple of decades. His shuttle-diplomacy froze the post-1967 status quo in the Israel-Palestine conflict, postponing a genuine settlement for God knows how many more decades. The same approach put the seal of approval on the annexation of South Vietnam by the Communist North, despite the latter’s defeat on the battleground.

The good doctor’s latest contribution concerns the campaign against ISIS. Kissinger warns that destroying ISIS could lead to an “Iranian radical empire”.

In other words, we must leave ISIS, which is a clear and active threat to large chunks of the Middle East and Europe, intact, for fear of seeing it replaced by an arguably bigger threat represented by a “radical Iranian empire.”

As usual, there are many problems with Kissinger’s attempt at using medieval European concepts to analyze situations in other parts of the world.

To start with, he seems to think that the Khomeinist regime in Tehran and the so-called ISIS “caliphate” in Raqqa belong to two different categories. The truth, however, is that they are two versions of the same ugly reality, peddling the same ideology, using the same methods, and helping bestow legitimacy on one another.

What is the difference between Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claiming “supreme leadership of all Muslims throughout the world” as “Imam” and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s similar claim as “Caliph”? And aren’t both regimes claiming to have the only true version of Islam with a mission to conquer the entire world in its name? One may even argue that without Khomeinism in Iran, there would not have been ISIS and ISIS-like groups, not to mention the Taliban, in our part of the world — at least at this time.