Personal Relations Do Matter, Mr Obama

Once upon a time a man was elected president. He was by nature cool, aloof, passionate in a detached, controlled fashion. This new president was an academic, a specialist in the American constitution. He focused on great themes, lofty ideals, the power of an informed and rational population. And, he eschewed the personal. The very notion of enduring, intimate contact leading to trust and confidence between individuals, including individual leaders, was outside his purview of understanding.

The man's name was Woodrow Wilson, not Barack Obama. However, Mr Obama has been giving the impression of having been channeling the spirit of Wilson in his conduct of foreign affairs--with one notable and troubling difference to be considered a bit later.

President Obama, like his predecessor of nearly a century ago, has focused rhetorically on very lofty, idealistic themes. Also, like the Princeton political science professor turned politician, Obama has sought to reach over the heads of government and state to strum the sentiments of the public at large.

Again like Wilson, Mr Obama has made the grave error of misinterpreting public applause and media approval as meaning that influence over the policies and actions of foreign governments had been achieved.

Wilson, for example, sincerely believed that the public huzzahs which greeted his arrival in Europe for the Versailles Peace Conference, the crowds lining the roads and railroad tracks, the flowers cast before his processions, the naming of streets, squares, and children after him, assured that his view of a perfect peace would be actualized regardless of the hostile positions taken by European leaders.

Wilson was as wrong. Desperately wrong. Ultimately disastrously wrong as proven by World War II.

Obama apparently drew a Wilsonian conclusion during his Great European Tour of 2008. This conclusion was evidently reinforced by public acclaim and media cheers not only with his Cairo Address but also during and subsequent to his other declamations in Europe, Turkey, and elsewhere.

Obama has been wrong. Desperately wrong. Fortunately, it is still early enough for him to see that he had been disastrously wrong. For this all one can write is, "Timing is everything."

Wilson's delusion and its failure came too late in his presidency, too late in his life to allow for corrective action, for a mid-course change. Obama has made his blunder early enough--and obviously enough--to not only allow but demand a change in direction.

Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and even the often maligned George W. Bush made very real, quite sincere, and often highly effective efforts to both understand and establish firm personal relations with their foreign counterparts. It was this aspect of foreign relations far more than the details of policy or the dynamic of day-to-day diplomacy which provided the basis of so much of the foreign policy successes of all three administrations.

Other presidents such as Jimmy Carter and even Bill Clinton (who had a fine capacity for projecting the political in personal terms on the campaign trail) did not establish the personal chemistry which typified the three Republican presidents. (To demonstrate that Republicans can make the same failure to personalize diplomacy at the highest levels, one need only consider the grave deficiencies in this area demonstrated by Richard Nixon.)

Lest one object that overly personalized, too friendly relations with a foreign leader would hinder an American president in conducting national policy it is only appropriate to recall that Dwight Eisenhower had a close relation with Anthony Eden which extended back to the early days of World War II. That in no way impaired Ike's capacity to personally tear a strip off Eden's backside when England joined co-conspirators France and Israel in the Suez War of 1956. Ike reportedly demonstrated his mastery of the profane, scatological, and obscene during his phone conversation with Eden over the ill-advised nature of the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion.

The shoe fits the other foot as well. The warm relations between Maggie Thatcher and George H.W. Bush did not prevent her making the famed, "Don't go all wobbly on me, George," comment during the run-up to the Gulf War in 1991. A strong argument can be made for the proposition that only the friendship which extended back to Bush's years as Reagan's veep allowed the comment to be both made and heeded.

Foreign relations are both made and executed by human beings. They are not the abstract product of soulless processes conducted by remote entities devoid of emotions, likes, and dislikes, and all the other myriad irrationalities which serve as the basis of human perceptions, beliefs, and actions. Nor are foreign relations conducted between mass abstracts such as "peoples."

Policy is made and executed by humans whether the worker bees low in an embassy's table of organization or as highly placed as the POTUS. Contact, understanding, even smelling the "emotional air" of the interlocutor are critical to gaining influence on the perceptions and actions of the other guy.

The abbreviated meeting between Hamid Karzai and the American president was not only important in its own right but also because it demonstrates that Obama may be coming to the slow realization that personal contact, face time, is critical to either the success or failure of US policy. So also may be his dinner tete a tete with Nicholas Sarkozy.

When Mr Obama was in Paris a few months ago he stiffed Sarkozy when invited to dine at the French president's residence. The reason given was Obama's need for a private night on the town with his wife.

Sarkozy did not appreciate being "Gordon Browned" by Obama and has wasted no opportunity over the subsequent months letting Washington know about his displeasure. Now Mr Obama is making amends--just as he did in Kabul when the "disinvitation" delivered to Karzai for a state visit to Washington was cancelled.

If President Obama is now in the amend making business he has a number of others to address. The list may be led by the name of the British prime minister. It was, after all, the shabby treatment afforded Mr Brown during his state visit shortly after the inauguration which gave first warning of the Obama indifference to personal relations.

The dissing of Brown looped with other, earlier indications to put Europe on notice of the major difference between Woodrow Wilson and Barack Obama. The latter in no way shared with the former a focus on Europe. Indeed Obama often seemed totally uninterested in Europe as if it had already been cast into the waste heap labeled "The Past."

The malign indifference with which Mr Obama treated Europe on the personal level was rapidly mirrored by diplomatic disdain as evidenced by the blundering way in which the administration handled the change from land based ABM to a sea based equivalent in an apparent effort at truckling to Russian demands. That this resulted in a general growth of a "what-is-this?-I-thought-we-were-friends-or-at-least-allies" syndrome in the chancelleries of Europe is both understandable and fully expectable.

While cozying up with hostile regimes whether in Moscow, Beijing, Caracas, or even Tehran has it place, that place does not necessitate shoving long standing allies into the deepest diplomatic shadows. Leaving aside the irony that Mr Obama and his fellow progressives appear bent on turning the US into a clone of Western European democratic socialism, the fact remains that the US needs the wholehearted understanding and cooperation of Europe if any of its foreign policy goals are to be achieved. We and they and a handful of other states constitute what a former head of French intelligence brilliantly termed, "The League of Civilized States." We cannot forget that ground truth save at our peril--and theirs.

Obama needs a friend, a friend of the Maggie Thatcher sort, to tell him just that. Perhaps, just perhaps, the notably blunt spoken Sarkozy will prove to be the friend Obama so needs. That would make the dinner affair something beyond a mere fashion show featuring the two most shining examples of First Lady going today.

The "Black Widows" Make It Personal For Vladimir

Vladimir Putin owes his rise to power to Chechnya. He became the Mr Big of the Kremlin by appearing to have suppressed the Islamist guerrillas and terrorists of that North Caucasus region both effectively and permanently.

The appearances have proven deceptive at the very least.

The Islamists of Chechnya--and the rest of the North Caucasus--have proven to have more lives than a brigade of cats. Despite boasts to the contrary ("Chechnya is now the safest place on Earth") the efforts of the Kremlin's (read "Putin's") handpicked local strongman, Ramzan Kadyrov, have failed to suppress or limit the will to fight on the part of the Islamists and, even more, their lady's auxiliary, the "Black Widows."

Not even the dispatch of yet one more retired KGB general last fall with orders "to clarify the situation and put it to order" has done other than bolster both the capacities and political will of the Islamist jihadi under the leadership of Doku Umarov. Umarov famously warned, "Blood will no longer be limited to our towns and cities. The war is coming to their cities."

And, so it has. Dramatically.

Even more, the war has been brought not simply to Moscow but straight to Vladimir (Just Think Of Me As The Good Czar) Putin.

Doku Umarov has personally slapped the glove of challenge in the face of Vlad The Bare Chested. While the "glove" was a pair of female suicide bombers reprising earlier attacks on the Metro subway and Russian domestic airliners, the fist inside the glove was Doku's.

The goal of the attack was not simply that of killing Moscow strap hangers. Nor was it limited to instilling terror in the city.

Doku is not the sort of Islamist who thinks that small. He is, after all, the self-styled "Emir" of the equally self-proclaimed Emirate of the Caucasus. Today's attack was intended to fry far larger fish.

Even if not followed by more spectaculars, this hit on the Metro puts the lie to the overly optimistic declaration a year ago by President Medvedev that Chechnya and environs were peaceful. Eager to agree, Ramzov proposed a fifteen billion dollar investment by the Kremlin with a view to turning Chechnya into a tourist magnet.

Well, that hallucination which should have been firmly put to rest by events later in 2009 most assuredly has been shredded by the shrapnel filled explosive belts detonated by the latest Black Widow team. Putin quite obviously both acknowledges this reality--and has accepted the personal nature of the challenge.

He cut short his trip to Siberia and, on his way to Moscow, promised to "destroy" the terrorists responsible. One should take Putin at his word. The record shows that Vladimir shares with past, successful Russian leaders a tilt to blunt speech--and blunt actions to match.

From Vladimir's perspective not only is his status on the line, so also is the Great Power status of Russia. The irony here is that only days after having levered the US successfully to achieve not only a new START but also the level of diplomatic and political attention and respect due a Great Power, the Black Widows prove that Russia is not master of its own house. That sort of thing does not further the credibility and good repute of a genuine Great Power.

If Vladimir Putin is to remain in power, under whatsoever job title, Doku Umarov and his scrofulous jihadist gang including the ladies auxiliary must be eliminated. If Russia is to continue to lay claim to the title Great Power, Doku Umarov and his crew must be eliminated. Or, to use that fine old Soviet origin term, "liquidated."

The repressive measures taken to date, most importantly those of the past few years following Putin's decision to localize the Chechen war and marginalize both its existence and its costs, have been sufficiently repressive enough to force the evolution of the insurgents from a local band focused on the local goal of autonomy to an internationally linked entity which accepts the unlimited vision of Islamism including but not limited to the creation of an independent Islamist republic in the North Caucasus.

During the same time period and for the same reasons the counterinsurgency efforts of the Putin team have not been such as to lever the insurgents of limited goals away from the more expansively oriented Islamists. The net result of the several military campaigns stretching back over a decade has been the creation of a lot of dead bodies. The dead bodies in turn have created an ever greater number of ever more dedicated and expansively oriented insurgents whose fury has been stoked by foreign Islamists.

The dead bodies of the two wars and numerous "anti-bandit" operations have created another reality, a reality which is not only the centerpiece of today's Metro attack but is far more typical of the Caucasus conflict than it is other Islamist insurgencies. That reality is the female suicide bombers long ago dubbed the "Black Widows" not only because they are widows or because they habitually dress in black, but because they are highly lethal in both intents and actions.

The "Black Widows" are a product of the culture of the Caucasus. They are not specifically Islamist nor even Islamic. Rather they are part and parcel of the long traditions of family and clan loyalty which includes the blood feud and revenge over generations. The "Black Widows" are avenging the deaths of their husbands, fathers, brothers, sons. They are a culturally approved expression of an underlying "payback is a medivac" worldview.

The Black Widows can be killed but otherwise they are an unstoppable force. Recognizing this, the Islamist jihadists of Umarov readily employ this priceless asset. This asset ably employed by a leadership which is also quite willing and capable of employing other mediagenic tactics such as seizing hospitals, theaters, and schools filled with the sick, the young or, at least, the civilian, knowing what the Russian response will, must, be.

The choice presented to Vladimir Putin and company is simple and stark. Create a desert and name it "Peace" and by so doing risk the opprobrium of the world, or at least the Great Powers (other than China.) Do less and run the real risk of both political collapse domestically and the loss of even the pretense of Great Power status globally.

Putin used the word "destroy" so it is apparent which way he is tilting. It is unfortunate that he cannot face Umarov mano a mano, since that possibility and that one alone would allow the "Good Czar" to win without losing even more in the process.

Taps For The US-UK "Special Relationship"

The splendid phrase maker Winston Churchill invented both the term "special relationship" and the concept which it expressed to describe what he hoped constituted the uniquely close relation between the US and the UK. It is fitting that the British announce the end of the "special relationship."

The question is not--Is the use of the term, which has never been fully accurate and is degrading to both countries, ending? but rather--Are the British parliamentarians and Foreign Office mandarins pronouncing that the foundational concept is dead?

The relations between the US and Great Britain over the centuries are a fascinating study in love and hate, need and rejection, dependency and equality. No country has equaled Great Britain as a repository of American vitriol. For decades, more than a century really, it was incumbent upon nearly any and every politician seeking high office to proclaim the UK to be the most evil of evil empires, the fount of all that is bad in life.

At the same time the very existence of the US to say nothing of its prosperity resided solely in the hands of Englishmen. Her Majesty's Government had the power to determine whether the US would live or die during the War Between the States. Later, the London capital markets had a similar power over the development or collapse of the American economy during the great age of industrialization.

Fortunately for us the British, governments and markets alike, were so given to the rational pursuit of individual and collective interest to cheerfully (OK, maybe not cheerfully) overlook the obstreperous Yankee bombast as well as the periodic diplomatic insult. The Victorians had a clear enough vision to see that British interests were American interests and vice versa. More, as shown dramatically in the British treatment of the Alabama Claims, they were farsighted enough to see that the coincidence of national interest between the "two countries separated by a common tongue" would increase over time.

Before Queen Victoria died a special relationship existed between the US and UK. It was not so much based on shared values, common cultural features, or the speaking of English. It was not even based on the percentage of the American population which had English ancestors. These were all real, to some extent relevant, but finally must take a secondary position to greater imperatives.

Both the US and Great Britain were industrial economies. Both were maritime powers dependent upon seaborne commerce and free trade. Both possessed large and rapidly growing financial services sectors in their economies. And, last but not least important, both were pluralistic democracies in the process of development.

These commonalities implied a strong set of coinciding national interests. Both nations needed free and open commerce with all countries. Both needed a stable, predictable global political environment. Neither country could thrive in a global political and economic order which gave rise to a dominant monolithic bloc. And, neither was comfortable with the emergence of clear threats to the inherently inefficient democratic, free enterprise system on which each was utterly dependent.

The already extant special relationship was both firmed and brought to centerstage by the American entrance into World War I. The new, improved, publicly acknowledged "special relationship" survived British exasperation with the hyperbolic idealism of Woodrow Wilson and its aftermath--American rejection of the League of Nations. It survived as well the nationalistic stresses of both the post-war boom and the Great Depression. Faded, certainly; tattered, perhaps; the "special relationship" rested on the diplomatic and political shelf, available if needed.

And, needed it was as the years after 1939 demonstrated. Winston Churchill, in one of his moments of rationality understood that it was inevitable that the US would far outstrip Great Britain in its contribution to the defeat of the Axis. In another moment, one of his periodic less rational ones, he rather fancied that the UK would play the role of Athens, older, worldly wise, wily and manipulative so as to control the new "Rome," which role was assigned to the US.

At first it did seem that the US was willing and ready to follow the "guidance" and advice of England, to dance even to the music London commanded. The British found this was not the case by the time the guns of WW II fell quiet. The US with such acts as the legislation regarding atomic energy and the Bomb showed we were quite independent, thank you. This unflattering impression was speedily reinforced by American violation of several wartime "understandings."

That the fractures did not widen to eradicate the "special relationship" is the sole province of shared national interests. These coinciding purely national interests were under palpable threat by the other giant created by World War II--the Soviet Union.

Victory--no, survival itself during the Cold War--required emphasizing the coinciding British and American national interests, demanded elevating the "special relationship" from a pragmatic recognition of coinciding national and strategic interests to the level of myth. During the early Cold War, the years of the Marshall Plan, the formation of NATO, fighting in Korea, layers of rhetorical mythmaking were plastered on the core of national interest with the result that even the extreme stresses of the Suez Crisis, the cancellation of Skybolt, divergence over the China question, even British opposition to our efforts in Vietnam did not threaten either the myth of the "special relationship" let alone the essential core of coinciding national interest which resided at the center.

The British public and many in the media and political elite of the UK believe that the US exploited the "special relationship" to drag England into the Great Adventure in Regime Change in Iraq. Whether George W. Bush was so cunning or Tony Blair so sycophantic as to allow this is highly debatable, to say the least.

Over the past year the Obama administration has sent many signals that it considers the "special relationship" to have ended. In its recent considerations, Parliament and the Foreign Office appear quite ready to take the Obama position at face value. It was noted by mandarins and parliamentarians alike that the US has been constructing new relationships without any consultation with Her Majesty's Government. It was also mentioned more than once that the words "special relationship" have taken on an importance which deprecates British pursuit of its national interest.

Both observations are bang on. Both are also less than compellingly relevant. Whether the old term continues in use or not is unimportant. Whether or not Mr Obama continues his frosty and distant attitude regarding Great Britain is also unimportant.

The underlying fact is as potent today as it was a century and a half ago. The US and the UK are joined shoulder and hip in their national interests by the very nature of their economies, political systems, and consequent worldviews. Unless and until one or both countries ceases to be a maritime power reliant upon open and free trade, the national interests must remain coinciding. Unless and until one or both countries conclude it is willing to accept a global political and economic order marked by instability or dominated by a single monolithic hostile bloc, the national interests of both remain coinciding.

The take away? No matter what the relation is called, the ground truth remains that both the US and the UK are hostages to each other's fortune.

So, Dudes, What's Your Alternative?

The superb collection of disinterested statesmen known as the Arab League is wrapping up their annual Moan, Groan, Bitch, Whine, and Threaten conference. This year the fractious bunch convened in Libya whose leader, the Greatest Islamic Thinker in Modern Times, Muammar Ghadaffi (or however his name is spelled in English today), presided.

As usual quite a few heads of state including the kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, as well as the aging, ill Egyptian president gave the gabfest a pass. Their absence was barely noticed as the assembled Deep Thinkers of Arabia considered two matters of grave importance. These were, quite unsurprisingly, the (posited) impending failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace "process," and what-are-we-going-to-do about Iran?

The Arab League capo, Amr Moussa, opined that the Arab states have to get their act together and consider the "alternative" when (not if) the current peace "process" comes a total cropper. He represented a consensus to the effect that the "process" is doomed by Israeli obstinacy which in turn had been facilitated by a previous Arab failure. That failure, he averred, resulted from the Arabs, more specifically, the Palestinians under Yassir Arafat, having given the Israelis an open ended process years ago at Oslo.

The diplomatic blunders of the past gave the Israelis time to bulldoze and build in the "Palestinian" portions of Jerusalem. The resultant creation of "facts on the ground" stiffened Israeli political will so that now only the complete halting of construction followed by a total Israeli withdrawal from the purportedly illegally seized "Palestinian" territories would allow the peace "process" to continue.

What made Moussa's views worthy of consideration is his nearly unprecedented willingness to admit that Arabs could or have made any errors in diplomatic judgement. Of course, a less subjective view of the Arabs and diplomacy looking back over the past seventy-five years of talks regarding Jews in the Mideast and their relationship with their Arab neighbors would conclude that the Arabs have an unsurpassed record of diplomatic failure mainly through self-inflicted wounds.

Now, Moussa apparently is convinced that the Obama administration is so eager for a peace settlement that it will do the heavy lifting required for the Arabs to achieve their minimum politically acceptable goal, rolling Israel back to the line of demarcation which existed with the armistice ending the active hostilities of 1948-49. This line of demarcation, which was drawn along the line of military force contact was not an international border, nor was it intended to be such by the UN negotiators. The line, famously drawn on a map in green ink, became known as the "Green Line."

When the Israelis rolled over the Green Line in the Six Day War of 1967, the resultant UN Security Council resolutions did not alter the established nature of the Line as a purely temporary, de facto feature identical to the armistice line drawn at the end of the shooting phase of the Korean War. Neither the Green Line nor the later line of contact in Korea was intended to be a de jure international border.

Thus it takes a highly selective reading of the historical record to conclude that the territory in and around the Old City of Jerusalem was unlawfully seized by the IDF from the sovereign state of Jordan. It takes an equally selective and biased reading to transform the relevant UNSC resolutions following the Six Day War into documents creating an international border where none existed before.

The government of Israel moved rapidly to incorporate the territory in and around the Old City of Jerusalem into the State of Israel. The US government understood and, at the very least, tacitly approved the action even though it refused to move its embassy from Tel Aviv. While it can be argued with accuracy that the Johnson administration approval was motivated by domestic political considerations, that is as irrelevant as stating that President Truman moved with haste almost unseemly in recognizing the new state of Israel for identical reasons.

The annexation of Jerusalem is both a fact on the ground and a fact in law. This twin consideration renders the no-settlement demand nugatory. It does the same with respect to the Saudi Arabian 2002 plan which is the preferred diplomatic fall back position of the Arab League. In fact and in law Jerusalem is a part of Israel. This means that the Israelis may choose to give some or all of it away to the Palestinians but they are not under any duty to do so. They may decide to give away some or all of those portions of Jerusalem which are on the "Jordanian side" of the old Green Line to buy their peace, but there is no objective requirement that they do so.

In the messy real world there is no possibility that the Israelis will evacuate their "settlements" on the east side of the Green Line. Least of all is there any probability that Israel will relinquish the Old City. History and its far more potent cousin, myth, militate against that with irresistible force.

Nor is there much likelihood that the government of Israel will accept the other key provision of the 2002 Saudi plan, the acceptance of a Palestinian "right of return" to property they or their ancestors owned and occupied prior to the 1948-49 wars. There is no right of return, nor is Israel under any affirmative duty to "compensate" either those who fled or their descendants for alleged losses. In this regard it must be remembered that most of those who fled did so at the urgings of the sundry Arab governments whose armed forces were attacking the infant state filled with the certainty of impending victory. (This does not relieve the Israelis of their moral culpability for the several atrocities committed against Palestinians by elements of their armed forces.)

The first take away is simple. All parties, Arab as well as American, best get a grip on the inconvenient fact that Jerusalem is part and parcel of Israel, and it is going to remain such unless and until the Israeli public allows a government to purchase peace with some or all of the Old City and environs.

The second take away is equally simple albeit more unpleasant. The only alternative to continuing the peace "process" as currently conceived and structured is war.

While the current process is slow, painful, and, for the Arabs in particular, unlikely to produce a result which is palatable, it is far less messy, infinitely less painful, and not quite as likely to produce a completely unacceptable result than is war. And, no mistake should be made here, the only alternative is war.

That subtext resided quite clearly in the words of Moussa and others at the Monster Rally in Sirte. The war may be open, conventional, or semi-covert, asymmetrical in nature. In either event the highest probability is that the Arab/Palestinian side will come up short. They will lose as their predecessors have lost so often in the past.

It is not improbable that the realization of this dismal possibility undergirds the call for "engagement" of Iran by the Arab League as a collective polity. True the call for collective engagement was couched in terms of concern over the Iranian nuclear program and apprehension regarding the growing influence of Iran in the region.

At the same time the call acknowledges implicitly that only Iran possesses the actual and potential means to defeat Israel in either open or proxy war. The realization that the Shia Persians have capacities lacking in the Arab League members individually or collectively must be bitter in Arab mouths. Nonetheless that is the reality today and into the foreseeable future.

If the only alternative to the current peace "process" recognizable to the Arab states is war then it follows that the only way in which the Arabs can hope to do other than lose is with the enlistment of Iran on their side. In this context the Arab League would do well to recall the hoary proverb about riding tigers: It is far easier to mount the beast than to get off without being eaten in the process.

Will (Re)START Be Stopped Or Just Delayed?

There hasn't been a whole lot of cheering over the more-or-less joint announcement by the Kremlin and the White House concerning the successful negotiation of the new START which will result in a one third reduction in each country's nuclear warheads and associated long range delivery vehicles. While there is much left unaddressed by the new agreement including short range, tactical systems and nuclear charges withdrawn from inventory but not dismantled, it is a major step towards a stable system predicated on the concept of "finite deterrence."

So, why the lack of good cheer in political circles and mainstream media alike?

There is not yet any reason to celebrate given the great gulf between mere agreement and signing on the one side and necessary Senate ratification on the other. Previous nuclear agreements between the US and, back then, the Soviet Union have fallen into the gap never to emerge to the sunlight of ratification. There is no basis to believe at the moment that ReSTART will not join the pile of corpses at the bottom of the gap.

There is no way that the Obama administration despite Secretary Clinton's brave words regarding the bipartisan nature of national security can avoid the reality that the Democratic Party's take-no-prisoners approach to health care overhaul and other legislation has poisoned the well of bipartisanship. Mr Obama and his henchmen will discover that bullies stand alone when they call upon their victims for assistance.

Making Republican foot dragging if not flat out rejectionism more rather than less likely is the fact that there are excellent pegs upon which recalcitrant elephants can hang their oppositional hats. One such peg is provided by the perceived need to modernize the American nuclear warhead stockpile. Another is provided by the questions revolving around any understandings reached with Putin, Medvedev, and company regarding ballistic missile defense systems and their deployment.

Legislation mandating the administration to put forth a plan for the modernization of warheads has already passed. To date the administration has been unresponsive to the requirement. The American warheads are elderly to say the least. They present very real problems of reliability and security which need to be solved. The technical work to properly fix the problems has been underway for years at Los Alamos and Lawrence-Livermore. But, the administration has been unwilling to use the work done as a foundation for providing an overall scheme for modernization.

It is a safe bet that more than a few Republican Senators will be quite willing to let the START languish until an acceptable modernization plan is presented by the administration. This trade off is completely justifiable and serves the national interest.

A smaller deterrent is credible if it is both reliable and secure. The Russians know this and have publicly pledged to bring their long-in-the-tooth nuclear charges into the 21st century. We have to do this as well or cut our own deterrent throat along with the numbers.

The expressed concerns over Russian objections to the planned limited missile defense system proposed by the Obama administration are also well taken. The Kremlin has been irrational regarding forward based limited ABM systems since the W. Bush administration first mooted the idea over two years ago.

The Russian military and government know perfectly well that the proposed system in no way threatens the credibility and utility of their missiles or at least those aimed at the US. In principle the US ABM system could marginally attenuate a Russian strike using short ranged missiles aimed at Western or Central Europe. Even this very limited "threat" could be easily overcome by either decoys or simple overloading. The Russians have nothing to worry about even given the one third reduction in charges and long range delivery vehicles.

The Russians have expressed a large degree of paranoia regarding American missile defense capacities either actual or under development. This is a critical area of national security considerations in which they are always far behind the curve in comparison with the US. As a result the Kremlin has harbored a deep need to control, to limit or, best of all, to extinguish US efforts in this area.

Taking advantage of President Obama's all-too-obvious desire (need?) to move the globe to a nuclear-free status the Russians could have made limitations on or removal of American ABM capabilities--even those directed against rogue states of limited offensive capacity--an understood prerequisite for signing ReSTART. It is in American national and strategic interest to be absolutely certain that there are no limits, explicit or tacit, now or in the future placed by the Kremlin on our discretionary deployment of ABM systems.

A principled Republican unwillingness to vote to ratify could be based on the need to fully and satisfactorily ascertain the absence of any Russian imposed limits on the US in the ABM area. Anything less would constitute dereliction of duty.

Politics being what politics has become in recent months and years, there are any number of unprincipled bases for opposition by Republicans. Trade-offs, log rolling, linkages between a vote for ratification and any number of flatly irrelevant issues is not only possible but likely. Not even the skills of Senator Lugar, a full-bore supporter of ReSTART can assure that obstructionist efforts of this sort will not occur. Nor can Senator Lugar and other "Reds" of like mind be sure of rounding up the necessary Republican votes.

President Obama cannot be sure that he can corral his own base in support of ratification. The progressives of his party are well known for their seemingly Utopian pursuit of unilateral American nuclear disarmament.

It is almost as certain as the law of gravity that progressives will contend that ReSTART is insufficiently bold. They can and will argue that the quantum improvements in the quality of conventional munitions have rendered nukes evermore useless. This is not a position without real merit. As the power and accuracy of conventional weapons have improved, the justification for the necessity of nuclear munitions and associated delivery systems has lessened. It is a linear progression as well as a tandem one.

The result of both Republican and progressive considerations is that an agreement to reduce the strategic nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia which should have been a slam dunk for ratification is not. The person ultimately responsible for this transmogrification is Mr Obama.

Far from being the first "post-partisan" president since the Era of Good Feelings nearly two centuries ago, the Nice Young Man From Chicago has proven himself to be a polarizing figure of such potency as to make George W. Bush and even Dick Cheney appear as models of bipartisan harmony in comparison. Quite simply the ratification of ReSTART provides the perfect opportunity for the vultures to return to the manure wagon.

Well, Mr O, you win one only in order to lose another. The tragedy is that the one you are shaping up to lose also is a loss for the world as a whole. Think about it as you celebrate the victory of bringing poverty medicine to the American public.

How Long Before Nigeria Implodes?

Nigeria is another monument to the capacity of colonial regimes, in this case Great Britain, to create the simulacra of states. From the beginnings of its independent existence fifty years ago, Nigeria has given every appearance of seeking reasons to energetically disassemble. Those of a certain age might remember the Republic of Biafra which enjoyed (if that is the right word) three years of war torn independence between 1967 and 1970.

At the time of independence it was evident that ethnic and religious faultlines ran across the Nigerian social and political landscapes. The most important of the several critical divides in Nigeria split the Muslims of the Hausa and Fulani tribes of the semi-desert north from the Christian and animist Yoruba and Igbo of the agrarian and oil producing south. The second division separated the Yoruba and Igbo.

The Igbo of the southeast demonstrated their displeasure with the state of play in Nigeria in January 1966 with a violent coup which saw the death of the president and prime minister both of whom were from the north. July 1966 brought the inevitable counter coup staged by northern Muslims. In the aftermath some 30,000 Igbo were killed.

Before the bodies of the massacred had rotted, the Igbo announced the creation of Biafra. The resulting war was one of confusing, rapidly shifting, and highly transient alliances of convenience and perceived advantage. When the shooting was over more than a million people were dead, primarily of starvation and disease, and the military was in power at first indirectly but finally as a blunt military dictatorship.

A new, civilian constitution was adopted in 1999. It provided for elections. Elections were duly held with the expectable amount of corruption, vote fraud, and voter intimidation. But, none of this really mattered.

The big noise in Nigeria was limited to the oil rich region of the Niger River delta. Every government, military, and civilian had made deals with Western multinationals to exploit the oil reserves. Whether playing wth Chevron or Royal Dutch Shell the governments and associated Nigerian elite made out like bandits. The residents of the delta did not do so well. In fact they did not do well at all. The foreigners got the oil; the elite got the gold; the locals got the pleasure of living on less than peanuts in a toxic rich environment.

The consequence was completely expectable: Insurgency. Several anti-government groups emerged over the past thirty or so years. The largest and most effectively intransigent of these was the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND.)

In actual numbers MEND is small. What makes it effective is the unique combination of being self-organizing and willing to hire assorted criminal gangs as a sort of guerrilla version of "temp" employee. MEND is also self-funding to a large extent gaining revenues from hijacking oil pipelines and trucks as well as practicing kidnapping for ransom.

The result is MEND has made its efforts both profitable and low risk--at least to those who constitute the command and coordination cadre. At the same time the combination of total governmental ineptitude and corporate pigheadedness has provided a fine gloss of patriotic humanitarianism to MEND which other insurgent groups have lacked.

The recent attempt by the former administration of ailing president Umaru Musa Yar'adua to bring the rebels out of the marshes and to the peace table by offering amnesty has been accepted by most of the lesser groups but violently and dramatically rejected by MEND. The big boys of MEND showed their negative attitude by bombing a pair of government buildings during the amnesty talks last week.

Complicating the government's difficulties is the de facto change of government. The former vice president, Goodluck Jonathan, has consolidated his power by sacking the former Muslim dominated cabinet and replacing them with personnel who are palpably loyal to him. The degree to which this indigenous form of "regime change" will prove acceptable to the Muslim north to say nothing of the Muslim officered national army is debatable at best.

The sixty-three year old Jonathan is from eastern (Yoruba dominated) Nigeria. He is a zoologist (PhD from the University of Harcourt) turned politician. He came to prominence when he replaced the former governor of Bayelsa State who was impeached for money laundering in the UK. It deserves mention that his wife was indicted in 2006 by the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for money laundering. (But, that sort of thing is not uncommon in Nigerian political circles.)

Jonathan's assumption of power is clouded by doubts as to its legality. That is also nothing new in Nigerian political affairs. There is no doubt but the man's money and contacts were critical in assuring both the Supreme Court and Senate ignored constitutional requirements in certifying Jonathan's taking the reins of power during the president's "incapacitation."

If Jonathan's hold on power is shaky the same may be said of Nigeria's current stability. Shaky is almost too mild a word to describe the bowl of semi-hardened jello which constitutes Nigeria's current political and social situation.

MEND is intransigent to an extent which would do Hamas proud. The chances of the other insurgent groups following through with their initial acceptance of the amnesty offer are slim to none.

Worse, far worse, is the continued religiously motivated violence in Plateau State centering on the city of Jos. This is the area where Muslim and non-Muslim rub against one another most frequently and most uncomfortably.

There have been more than a few eruptions of religiously predicated violence in and near Jos over the past twenty years. The most recent was an evidently orchestrated Muslim attack on Christians in several villages near Jos. Roughly five hundred Christians were hacked, sliced, and otherwise put to death.

Despite being in the area, the several Nigerian army units did not show up at the killing fields until after the bloodshed had ceased. Under significant international pressure, the state and central governments made a great public show out of arresting nearly one hundred fifty alleged killers. Whether there will be any follow through on the arrests is in the not-yet-knowable department but is doubtful at best.

The reasons for doubt are not simply political--the less than firm hold possessed by Jonathan. Nor are they to be found simply in the Muslim presence in the armed forces, although this is a very important consideration. At root the doubts are based on demographics.

Nigeria is the largest population state in sub-Saharan Africa with just shy of 150 million people. This means the density of population is very high--particularly considering the agricultural carrying capacity of the country's land. Only a third of the country's land is technically arable; of that only three percent is planted in permanent crops. Lessening the country's capacity to feed even most of its population are deforestation, soil degradation and recurrent droughts.

The demographics of the population are skewed to the left. The majority of the population is young--nineteen is the median age. On top of this their life expectancy is not good--forty-six for men, two year longer for women. And, the rate of increase is two percent per year. Further stress comes from the high HIV infection rate and equally staggering number of people with active AIDS--roughly three million. (This makes Nigeria the number two country in the world for AIDS patients surpassed only by South Africa.)

This combination of demographic factors which includes as well two Muslim related facts--the population is half Muslim and the Muslims have a population growth rate greater than other groups in the country--assures instability will increase rather than decrease in the months and years to come. Think about it: A very large, rapidly growing, young population with very limited employment potential coupled with a cultural context emphasizing ethnic/linguistic/religious division with attendant violence all based on deficient agricultural resources and stressed by disease.

Now a word or two about oil. Nigeria must exploit and export its oil. Not simply so the elite can continue to line their pockets but because Nigeria has to pay for the food it must have in order to assure even minimum survival levels of life.

The oil is in the (Christian and animist) South. It is not available directly to the rapidly expanding Muslim population. And, without the money the oil produces the Muslims will be the first to be left twisting in the winds of Plateau State and regions to the north of Plateau.

This mix of demographic and economic realities gives MEND its power. MEND and only MEND due to its unique combination of public image, self-organizing capacities, and rent-a-thug militants can directly threaten the flow of oil and bucks.

The Muslims are aware of their tenuous position. It is this awareness which gives the primary Muslim insurgent group, Boko Haram, its potency. Boko Haram is normally (mis) translated as "western education is sacrilegious" but its actual rendering should be "Western Civilization is Forbidden." Bako Haram is avowedly anti-West in all respects. It has the unlimited offensive insurgent goal of totally replacing the present political, social, and economic structure of Nigeria with one based on a very austere version of Seventh Century Islam. Think of it as Taliban or al-Shabaab on steroids.

Recruits are plentiful in the large swath of poorly governed territory extending from Jos to the border of Chad. While the leader of Boko Haram was killed last July 30th there has been no weakening of the group, no lessening in either its goals or methods. In large measure this is the result of Boko Haram being self-organizing with its members being united in ideology and goals but not dependent upon a centralized command and control structure.

The US is more than simply concerned about the state of play in Nigeria. The current plans afoot in the US foresee an increase in our oil imports from Nigeria until they reach twenty-five percent of total foreign oil brought to our shores. The implications for the US and its economy are already quite obvious as spot market prices rise dramatically after even rumors of an impending attack on the oil facilities of the Niger Delta.

The volatility can only increase as more violence engulfs not only the Delta but Nigeria as a whole. Given the status of Goodluck Jonathan's regime, it is a safe bet that both violence and its concomitant, market spikes, will trend up not down.

Considering the totality of the circumstances prevailing now and in the near-term, the prospects of Nigeria entering the lists of "failing states" are good to excellent. Muammar Gaddafi (or however you prefer to spell his name in English) was more right than wrong when he suggested that Nigeria split into two separate states--one Muslim and the other non-Muslim.

The only problem with this modest proposal from the noted humanitarian and world statesman is this solution would leave the Muslims in the impoverished and hungry dark, shut out of the oil powered lamp of the Christian and animist South. The Muslims of Boko Haram may hate the West, may desire the total reconstruction of Nigeria according to Shariah, but not even these True Believers wish to starve in pursuit of Koranic purity.

The natural direction of Nigeria may be to fission. It is too bad in a way that reality prevents the accomplishment of a tidy ending to the imitation state. But it does and that is the fact that confronts not only Goodluck (He will need it) Jonathan but also the policy makers of the Obama administration. Good luck to them as well.

"Friends" Tell "Friends" Tough Truths

Secretary of State Clinton was at her hectoring best the other day when she addressed the AIPAC conflab. During her exercise in telling the AIPAC heavyweights (and the government of Israel) just where it was at, she offered as justification the assertion that the best friend is one who tells the blunt, plain, unvarnished truth.

In the case of Israel the truth according to Ms Clinton is that Israel was in the deadest of dead wrong zones to continue the construction of Jewish housing developments in Jerusalem. While she did not mention it, there was a historical context to the continued construction.

Quite simply put, the US has tacitly approved of both construction in Jerusalem and its status as an undivided city within Israeli territory. When the government of Israel moved quickly in the wake of the Six Day War to declare Jerusalem to be both (a) undivided and (b) the capital of Israel, the US made no protest. While we did not move our embassy to Jerusalem, there was no other sign of even the mildest disapproval for the Israeli action.

Nor did the US utter the slightest dissent when each and every Israeli administration after 1967 moved to create "facts on the ground" in and around Jerusalem. The Israelis made no secret of their actions and we entered no demurrers.

Ms Clinton and her boss, Mr Obama, have reversed historical course. Regrettably, neither worthy has seen fit to acknowledge this reality let alone justify it. Both have proceeded to pressure Israel while giving the other side, the Palestinians, a free pass on any obligations to the "peace process." This self-evident "tilt" must be excusable in their minds because Israel is a "friend" and the Palestinians are not.

The Secretary of State's remarkable inability to either acknowledge the historical trajectory of US policy regarding Israeli construction in Jerusalem or explain the reasoning behind the sudden reversal is matched by her geographically based definition of the word, "friends." Consider her recent flying visit to Central America and her even more recent day trip to Mexico.

The subjects of both the Central American and Mexican jaunts were twofold: drug smuggling and illegal immigration. The first got most of the press play. The second, however, was by far the more important both to the US and our regional interlocutors. (It should also be mentioned that both drug running and illegal immigration are joined shoulder and hip, Siamese twins sprung from the same seed.)

Leaving aside the standard issue Hillary Clinton brand of schoolmarmish hectoring which dominated both sets of meetings, the major issues discussed were (a) the amount of money the US would be spending in Mexico and elsewhere and (b) to what end(s) would the money be expended. Some, even most of the greenbacks would be spent on traditional military and police needs, the importance of which were attested to by the presence and words of Secretary of Defense Gates and JCS Chairman Mullen. That was all rather typical yadda-yadda.

The surprise came with the second category of expenditure, the category which was particularly embraced and extolled by Ms Clinton. She termed this category to be "community development" which, from the description she provided, seems to be a lite form of nation-building. Apparently Ms Clinton and presumably her superior, Mr Obama, have convinced themselves that an approach which has proven to be an expensive failure in South Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan will work in a miniaturised form in Mexico and elsewhere in the region.

Of course, the "new" emphasis on "community development" underwritten by the gringos was applauded warmly by the Mexican government. Likewise other regional governments.

Reading the tales of largess soon to flow and the expressions of gratitude already pouring from those who are scheduled to be on the receiving end should have filled one with the warmth of friendship offered and accepted. But, this was not the case. For the offer and eager acceptance of money for denatured nation-building is not an act of genuine friendship.

Rather, the dangling of gigabucks was like the "friend" who gives the car keys to an obviously drunk associate.

The US as well as the countries of the region would have benefited far more from a gesture of friendship akin to that offered by Secretary Clinton to AIPAC and the government of Israel. We all would have been far better off if Ms Clinton had told a few blunt truths which need to be heard and heeded on both sides of the Big River.

Honesty and policy alike would have been properly served if the American secretary had told her listeners that the primary responsibility for both illegal immigration and the explosive growth of drug smuggling (and related violence) resided with the governing elites of Mexico and the other countries of the region. Illegal immigration and, to a lesser extent, drug smuggling are a necessary, expectable, and totally understandable response of a desperately impoverished people to their condition and the oppression which surrounds it.

The hoi oligoi of the region and Mexico in particular have assured poverty and repression are endemic. These ruling elites have pursued a set of social, economic, and political policies which have benefited those on top at the expense of those below.

Normally, the result of decades, generations of self-serving rule would have resulted in offensive insurgency, revolution if you prefer the less technical term. Offensive insurgencies have resulted in countries at a relative remove from the Rio Grande: in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala.

While lesser, more distant countries have fought and bled in wholesale amounts as a result of the combination of poverty and repression, Mexico, the "Mr Big" of the region, has been immune for nearly a century. This immunity has not come about as a result of benevolent or proper use of the vast natural resources available in Mexico. Nor has it been the consequence of the government, the elite, effectively employing the energy, talent, and skills of the large Mexican population.

Mexico has been immunized by geography. The US is conveniently next door. As the proprietors of the Land of the Big PX, the Yanquis provide the necessary safety valve for the most ambitious, most capable, most highly motivated segments of its population.

Emigrants, both legal and otherwise, not only remove themselves from the Mexican economy, they send literally billions of dollars in remittances every year. The combination goes a long way to assuring Mexicans do not demand a less unjust economic reality down south as well as lowering direct governmental expenses on domestic affairs.

Drug smugglers provide lucrative employment to many. The black economy in Mexico and elsewhere in the region is both vast and growing. The ripple effects of the black economy spread throughout the larger economy with results beneficial not only to the hoi polloi but the hoi oligoi as well.

The graft, corruption, and related rot are quantitatively greater but not qualitatively different from the pus filled cavities which have long riddled the police, judiciary, and government in Mexico and elsewhere in the region. It simply means more money flows through more channels again to the benefit of the hoi oligoi far more than the lesser sort of folk.

As a collateral benefit the great Mexican war on drugs provides a mechanism for further repression of any potentially uppity peasant. (Of course our government knows all about this given our significant experience at limiting civil and personal rights in order to wage the "war on drugs" more effectively.)

This entire herd of elephants was in the rooms where Secretary Clinton spoke. But, as we are not a "friend" of Mexico or the other nations of Central America, as we are a "friend" of Israel, she did not see fit to remind her listeners of their direct, material, even central responsibility for having created the problems of illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

She did not, for example, point out that the Mexican state has the resources necessary to propel the Mexican people to a high level of prosperity and, thus, social and political cohesiveness. She did not note that proper development of the offshore oil fields as well as necessary upgrading of the old fields would provide the necessary wherewithal to bootstrap the Mexican economy, state, and people into the developed world of the Twenty-first century.

Neither did she mention that Mexican agriculture and industry continued to languish in the main somewhere in the backwaters of previous ages. Nor did she urge her listeners to put aside the false god of nationalism in favor of promoting full development of the greatly underused human resources of either Mexico or the region generally.

In short, Ms Clinton was no "friend" of the Mexicans. She promised unneeded and counterproductive charity, "community development" funded by the US rather than the badly needed full usage of the internal resources both natural and human of the region, a process which could be facilitated by international investment.

A genuine "friend" would have demanded that the local elites live up to their responsibilities. A genuine "friend" would have required that the local elites quit looking to the US government, the US economy, the American people to carry the freight, to bear the responsibility for local, willful failures.

This would have been, in Al Gore's term, "an inconvenient truth." It would have been the truth even so. By falling in with the Mexican version of the politics of victimization she did nothing but assure the victimization of the Mexican and Central American people by their own governing elites would continue--as would the smuggling of drugs, the illegal immigration, and the violence which accompanies both.

At least Ms Clinton was consistent in one way. Her words to Israel were not those of a "friend." Neither were her highly selective words to the Central Americans. With "friends" like Ms Clinton, and, by necessary implication, President Obama, who needs enemies?

Google (And GoDaddy) Are Fighting Our Fight

GoDaddy, the world's largest domain name registration company has become the first new public enlistee in the stand-up-to-Beijing campaign launched by Google. It is to be sincerely hoped that more, many more, US and Western enterprises will join as well. Soon.

Up until now, until finally Google called, "Enough!" all too many businesses in the US and elsewhere have shamelessly kowtowed to the dictates of the Trolls of Beijing. Blinded by the prospects of profits to be made in the Land of A Billion Chinese, companies and the people who run them have been willing not only to ignore the multitude of unpleasant practices engaged in by the Trolls but, in essence, trade with and strengthen an enemy of the United States.

A decade and more ago when Congress was fired up to deny China most-favored-nation status due to its wholesale, recurrent abuses of human rights, the US Chamber of Commerce carried Beijing's water on the Hill, lobbying overtime to prevent the action. The Chamber and its members, all card carrying members of the League of Global Capitalism, made mighty moans about how stripping China of most-favored-nation position would cost American jobs beyond count, plunge the US into recession without end, and be generally icky-poo in the extreme.

Congress maintained its tradition of heeding those who pay and backed down. The Trolls kept on repressing and grinning all the way to the bank.

As had been the case since the days when a man of no brains named McKinley occupied the Oval, American businessmen have deluded themselves with the myth of the China market--the notion of selling widgets beyond counting to hundreds of millions of Chinese. When not chasing the hallucinatory sales of widgets, the capitalists of this and other countries have dreamed of loaning dollars in shipload quantities to China and building projects dwarfing the Great Wall in both size and expense.

American administrations of both parties have acted to facilitate these chimera chases and snipe hunts. From the Open Door policy which held China to be open to all exploiters equally right on to the "opening" of China during the days of Clinton, American leaders have assured themselves and We the People that the only consequences would be beneficial: good for China, great for the American worker and consumer, and, generally, wonderful for the world.

Throughout all, American administrations and businesses have acted as if they were the stereotyped "city slicker" and the Chinese the equally one dimensional rube, a hick ripe for fleecing. In so doing we have overlooked that in story and song alike the rube always outsmarted the slicky boy at the end.

Life has imitated art. China has won. The US and others in the West have lost. We have lost jobs. We have lost money. We have lost global status and influence. We have even lost our values, our principles, our views of what is right.

Insofar as we have lost, the Trolls of Beijing have won. They have won because they understood a basic which seemingly has eluded our political masters.

And, you ask, what might that be, Geek?

Well, bucko, the fundamental reality which has governed our economic relations with China and, all that flows from that relationship is simply this: A corporation has only one responsibility--maximize return on equity to investors. That's it. Nothing else matters unless it is specifically prohibited or required by law.

Ship American jobs offshore? Sure. It's legal. And, profitable. Gut the US manufacturing sector? Sure, why not? Heck, making things is horse and buggy thinking. What about human rights, human costs, even the long term consequences to the US, its security, its national interests? Hell, boy, that ain't in our job description! And, it isn't in the interests of our investors.

Well, what about assuring a hostile government has the ways and means to build a formidable military capacity? Hey, Geek, that isn't in our job description either. That's for the Washington crowd, not us to worry about.

The same can and is said, at least tacitly, implicitly, when the subjects of Chinese espionage or Chinese opposition to foreign policy demarches of the US are raised. Business leaders point out that this sort of matter exists in the bailiwick of government, not private enterprise.

Of course the hyper-focus of business on profits, return on equity, is both proper and justified. It is all that is required. It is what Lenin recognized when he famously said, "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." It is what the Trolls of Beijing have recognized as well.

The only difference between Lenin (and his successors) and the Trolls of the past twenty or so years is that the Trolls have done an infinitely better job of inveigling our capitalists (and administrations) into selling the rope with which we are being hung. Everything has gone in the best possible way from Beijing's perspective.

They cozened us, played the right sort of mood music as long as they needed more dollars, more investment, more "co-production," more access to our markets. As the need for dollars, for investment, for access decreased as it has over the past few years, so also has the playing of soft music and the saying of happy words. Now the Trolls demand, they yell, "Cold War thinking," when our government calls them out on a particularly egregious offense; they obstruct our foreign policy initiatives.

Until now, no one has stood up to the Trolls.

Google has good, very good--and more then simply sufficient--reason to tell the Trolls, "You have finally overplayed your hand." Google stands to lose a great deal of money by having taken a principled stand against the Trolls' censorship, hacking, and cyberespionage. Google has taken the very real risk that its competitors (including Microsoft which has the corporate ethics of the Mafia at best) will now have an open field in the very lucrative China market.

It is to be hoped (and, the Geek, being a historian, knows full well how faint this hope is) that Google's and, now, GoDaddy's decisions will shame other IT companies into following the new trail of defiance to the Trolls. It may even be hoped (an even fainter hope) that non-IT companies will be similarly embarrassed if they do not tell the Trolls that their conduct is unacceptable to a business possessing even the slightest hint of ethics. Embarrassment might just lead to action--the right sort of action.

While it is not at all in the realm of rationality to expect the Obama administration to back Google's play in the furtherance of our own national security and strategic interests, it is not quite so far over the edge to think that there is some possibility that Google's action will inspire some of us in We the People to do our small bit in slowing the Chinese juggernaut. It is not enough, not by a long way, for We the People to recognize that China is a real and growing threat to our global status as has been indicated in recent opinion polls.

The need is not for mere recognition. The need is for action. Or, to err on the side of accuracy, inaction. The inaction which is necessary is that of not buying any product of Chinese manufacture regardless of the brand and, far more importantly, price. China has seduced us, mulcted us and the businesses which service us, by the flood of cheap priced products.

That's right, bucko, it is time for us to tell Walmart and all the other purveyors of Chinese origin goods, "We aren't buying those any more." To put it bluntly, to use what the Trolls would brand as "Cold War rhetoric," it is time for us to stop trading with the enemy.

Having Moral Authority Requires Being Moral

Decades ago the noted Soviet political philosopher and humanitarian, J.V. Stalin, took a few moments off from the hard work of signing death warrants to meditate on a critical question. The Greatest Leader In Human History (to use one of his lesser encomiums) mused to a subordinate who had raised the issue of opposition from the Roman Catholic Church, "How many divisions does the pope have?"

Stalin knew the answer. None. At the same time even the bloody handed Soviet dictator well understood that the pope commanded a force far more powerful than an armored division or even an armored army. The pope exercised moral authority on the thinking of millions of people around the world--including more than a few who were not members of his congregation.

Moral authority was the pope's weapon then. It remained so as one pope followed another. That is until now.

Communities of faith such as the Catholic Church function best in the political, social, and economic lives of humans when standing apart from the instruments of government and state to act in the eternal prophetic tradition. The prophet has only one thing going for him. The one and only mechanism available to the prophet--be it an individual or a giant institution-is moral authority.

Moral authority provides the prophet, the church, with its only palpable form of legitimacy, its only claim upon the ears, eyes, and attention of an audience. The power of the prophet comes from both the fundamental accuracy of the message and the unassailable purity of the messenger. An accurate, critical message from a besmirched messenger will not be heard nor heeded.

While it is eminently suitable to take exception with aspects of the social, cultural, political, and economic messages of the Catholic Church, it is nonetheless necessary to acknowledge that the Church has put forth appeals and criticisms which rest comfortably within the prophetic tradition. The encyclical Charity in Truth is a good, recent example of this.

Charity in Truth is prophetic in tone as it is in substance. It delivered a message which deserved attention even if only that its predicates, argumentation, and conclusions could be rebutted. As was the case with many (but certainly not all) encyclicals, Charity in Truth invoked the highest human aspirations and chastised failure to live up to their challenge.

This appraisal is not undercut by the reality that the Catholic Church--or at least its Central Command, the Vatican, as well as the pope, Benedict XVI, who issued it stood as monuments to politically incorrect positions on such matters as reproductive rights, the status of homosexuals, or gender equality. While both unfashionable and arguably as wrong as a dog purring, the posture adopted by either the Church or the pope did not fatally erode the moral authority of the message or the messenger.

The same cannot be written of the Church's and the pope's response to the ever-widening revelations of priestly sexual abuse of children and adolescents. Starting in the US nearly ten years ago and spreading recently to Ireland, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, the tales of both sexual molestation and conspiracies of concealment have not only stained the hem of the pope's robes, they have splotched the entirety of the Church.

The repeated pattern of denial, willful concealment, covert payments, vows of silence have constituted a species of unilateral disarmament by the Church. The all too obvious inability or unwillingness of national hierarchies, the Vatican, and Benedict XVI to openly acknowledge the criminal conduct of priests and their superiors has resulted in the destruction of the institution's and the pope's moral authority.

The bunker mentality exhibited by the various actors in this sordid drama remind the observer of the Nixon administration at its worst. The conduct of Nixon and his minions in the wake of that famed "second rate burglary" cost the president both his perceived legitimacy and his office. While Benedict XVI cannot be impeached, he and the Church he heads can be tried and convicted in the court of public opinion.

The sentence which will be imposed and from which there is no easy appeal is the forfeiture of the right to be heard or heeded. Quite bluntly, without moral authority what claim does the prophet possess? No matter how accurate and perceptive the prophetic message might be, the blotched robe assures no one will pay attention.

Benedict XVI and the priestly politicians who surround him in Vatican City have engaged in a strikingly, shockingly short-sighted exercise in institutional protection at all costs. The irony is that the costs which these myopic defenders of the faith have imposed upon their Church both today and into endless tomorrows is and will continue to be far greater than those which would have been assessed had the kiddy-diddling priests been left to hang, twisting slowly in the wind when the first hint of scandal emerged.

Were Joe Stalin around to ask his question today, anyone and everyone could honestly answer, "None." And, that is both a pity and a tragedy considering how much the world needs honestly prophetic voices today.

Immigration Reform--Once More With Feeling

To err on the side of accuracy, it's immigration reform, once more with too much feeling, too much passion. The torrent of emotion is understandable in that no subject has been more contentious in American history over the past century than that of the relationship between our collective national identity and immigration.

We the People have experienced periodic waves of identity crisis ever since the early Nineteenth Century. With only a little effort that starting date can be pushed back to the time of the War of Independence or at least its immediate aftermath. The divisive subject then was that of national language: English or German. Both were spoken by a large percentage of the American public and it was believed that our American identity required reinforcement by the establishment of an official language.

While the issue finally faded, it left behind an unanswered question.

The question?

Simple, basic, and not yet fully answered. How can a new nation-state founded on an abstract set of ideas only ambiguously set forth in the Constitution--rather than a long shared history, culture, and geographic sense of place--fully develop a national sense of self?

The United States then and now is unique among the nation-states of the world by its having been founded in an instant of time on the flimsy basis of mere ideas rather than having evolved organically within a single people bound together by language, culture, shared space, and a common history. Exacerbating the uniqueness and its concomitant problems has been our status as a "nation of immigrants."

The predictable consequences of these features of uniqueness have been the bouts of national identity crisis and their companion, suspicion and hostility directed against the most recent arrivals. From the Order of the Star Spangled Banner nearly two hundred years ago to the assorted border vigilance groups today, our history has been marked by apprehension and loathing directed against those immigrant groups presumed to present a threat to a coherent, consensual understanding of national identity.

We the People have a fine historical record of assuming that Catholics, Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Jews, Asians, and Hispanics would never "assimilate," embrace shared values, adopt community norms, speak English, and generally be-like-the-rest-of-us. From this We the People concluded repeatedly that immigration, particularly unchecked immigration, would rip our collective identity to shreds. With equal regularity We the People and those who (purportedly) represent us acted upon the assumptions and conclusion in order to control immigration so that national identity would not be put in peril.

The mythology of the threat presented by immigration overpowered other considerations regarding the roles played by immigrants in our collective life. At the same time the astigmatic focus on the immigrant-as-threat prevented effective consideration of the nature of our national identity and the relation between it and those who were newly come to our borders and shores.

Rather than deal with the basics of who-are-we?, debates over immigration reform have always been based upon matters of employment, social costs, community cohesiveness, and, quite openly before World War II, race. Proponents of restrictive immigration laws have focused on the need to assure jobs for the native-born, or the social disruption caused by clumps of non-English speaking peoples with habits, cultural expressions, and political values of foreign provenance. Those favoring liberalization have celebrated cultural, linguistic, and social diversity and have lauded the contributions made by immigrants to the collective wealth of our country.

Both sides have invoked justice, mercy, compassion, religious values, and moral considerations in the passionate pursuit of their cause. For more than a century the same arguments--even the same insults--have been deployed with only minor changes in wording. During the same period both major political parties have sought electoral advantage by either supporting or opposing restriction (or liberalization, as the position of the parties has reversed as dictated by the partisan reading of the contemporary zeitgeist.)

During all the many major fights over immigration the issue has not only possessed a foreign policy dimension, foreign governments have involved themselves both directly and indirectly in the domestic political battle. Over the generations the governments of China, Japan, Italy, and, more recently, Mexico and assorted Central and South American countries have invested diplomatic capital in the issue.

Nothing is different today as Senators Schumer and Graham outlined their bipartisan proposal for immigration reform to the approval of President Obama and legions prepare to demonstrate in Washington to demand immediate action. The proponents of reform including a form of earned amnesty for the eleven million or so illegal immigrants currently resident in the US have hauled out all the usual arguments adding only the long out of style issue of "race." Opponents are already loading the big guns with old ammunition of jobs-for-Americans and fear of social disruption.

In the not-so-distant background loiter the high-minded idealists of unlimited migration as a basic human right and the not-so-high-minded governments and elites of Latin American countries seeking to assure that the US remains the always available safety valve for their unemployed populations. Also standing in the near shadows are those of We the People who harbor a deep fear of change for whom the immigrant is the fiend, the "other" who embodies all the many causes of their fears.

If, as it generally is, the past is but prologue, the upcoming fight over immigration will be nasty, filled with vituperative attacks, appeals to both high morality and base self-interest. It will end in a result which is guaranteed to be completely unsatisfactory to the hard core on each side.

Most importantly, the fight will prove inconclusive as have been all similar immigration reform contests in the past. The reason for this conclusion is simply that any discussion of immigration which does not focus on the nature of the American identity and its recurrent crises misses the centrality of the matter.

Defining national identity is every bit as important as defining and maintaining territorial borders. Perhaps more so. Borders mark our periphery. National identity constitutes our very center, our heart and soul as a nation.

We had all best get a grip on that.

Has Obama Declared "War" On Israel?

Caroline Glick, who writes for the Jerusalem Post, raised an interesting point today. While overblown in its title, "Obama's War On Israel," her argument is cogent, rational, and troublesome.

She adduces five reasons for President Obama's apparent hostility toward Israel. The Geek won't reiterate them as he cannot improve upon her presentation. But, it appears that she has overlooked a couple of alternatives either of which would serve as sufficient explanation for the current administration's pronounced "tilt" toward the Palestinians and their fellow Arabs.

The first, and less important, of these is the Nice Young Man From Chicago has employed once again the tactic espoused by his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. You will recall that this Not So Nice, Not So Young Man From Chicago advised, "Let no crisis go by unexploited." The structural lunacy of the local planning board in Jerusalem announcing the approval of over a thousand new housing units for Jews in Jerusalem just as Joe Biden was arriving presented a welcome opportunity to both manufacture a "crisis" and exploit it.

The second, more fundamental basis for the administration's offensive for the Palestinians--even if not necessarily against the Israelis--is shown in its record of mistreating long-standing allies. The President and his people have openly (and repeatedly) dissed the UK. As far as the rest of Western Europe is concerned, the sense among all the governments there is that while they have not been "Gordon Browned," the Obama administration is remarkably and unprecedentedly remote and uninterested in the region and its concerns or views.

The diplomatic blundering surrounding the replacement of the land-based ABM system proposed by the W. Bush administration with a sea-based one caused shudders of seismic strength to run through the capitals of the former Warsaw Pact states. The on and off attempts to "engage" or coerce North Korea have not gained any new credibility for the US in either South Korea or Japan, both of which would have been greatly reassured by a more consistent focus in US policy. (The resulting loss of trust in US guarantees has been reflected in recent days by the pointed acknowledgement in South Korea that both that country and Japan could build deliverable nuclear weapons is a very short time should either choose.)

At the same time as the administration has been turning a chilly if not downright frigid shoulder to old allies, it has been extending always warm hands of friendship to regimes which show by their behavior that they are frankly hostile to American national interests. Charming smiles, open hands, and warm words of "engagement" and "acceptance" have replaced any appearance of firm resolve in pursuit of our better national interests and higher values.

The nice gestures and happy words have brought no noticeable, positive result. China is frankly unhelpful. The Russians are equivocal at best regarding interests which should be mutual. The dictatorships of the Bolivarian Revolution are every bit as antithetical to the US today as they were when Bush/Cheney hung their hats on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The mullahs and their men are still firmly in power. Their centrifuges keep on spinning. Deadlines come and go, unheeded. Blandishments alternate with threats, both to no avail.

Overall the combination of ignoring friends and appeasing enemies has given the general impression that the US either has no foreign policy or that its policy now is predicated upon a total reversal of all past trajectories. More kindly the interpretation of the contradictory behaviors of the administration over the past year might be that the whole crew is both ideologically driven and naive concerning the realities of international politics.

President Obama and many in his administration have accepted the view of Israel which emerged in and among the American and Western European hoi oligoi during and following the first Intifada. They have rejected the old and to an extent specious narrative of Israel the embattled David facing the monolithic Goliath of the "Arab World." To a degree which cannot be ascertained with accuracy, the president and his people have embraced the new narrative which casts Israel as an intransigent, land-grabbing, Arab-hating state.

Both narratives contain a degree of accuracy. Neither is a sound basis for policy.

To a degree which has proven nearly disastrous, US administrations from Kennedy to W. Bush based policy on the old narrative. Both the American public and elite did so as well even if the latter shifted from the old to the new first and most rapidly during the first Intifada. It was not unfair to characterize US policy toward Israel as being one where the tail wagged the dog.

The Obama version of "hope and change" quite obviously took the new narrative at face value. This coupled with the ignore-friends-because-they-are-friends to assure the pro-Palestinian "tilt." The Ramat Shlomo incident provided the perfect excuse for an exploitable "crisis."

Adding additional impetus to the "tilt" is the Arab position of if-you're-not-tough-on-Israel-how-can-we-believe-you're-tough-on-Iran, the Obama administration has rushed to get ahead of the European Union in advancing the cause of the Palestinians at the expense of Israel. Given the inclinations of the senior members of the Obama administration--including the president--the race between the EU and the US to be the greatest champion of the downtrodden Palestinian masses is well-neigh inevitable. Think of it as a case of hoi oligoi of a feather flock together.

Of course this new fashion of kicking allies in order to kiss adversaries requires a particular skill at ignoring both historical and current realities in the Mideast. The assorted Palestinian entities including both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are committed to removing Israel from the map. The portfolio of Arab/Palestinian demands includes returning Israel to the Green Line of the ceasefire ending the 1948-49 wars and admitting Palestinians to Israel under a perversion of the "law of return."

These demands lead with the certainty of night following day to the extinction of Israel. The current administration must realize this. Yet on they push.

Who is going to stop them?

Diplomats Need Soldiers And Vice Versa

The former UN Special Envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, made a mighty moan to the BBC late yesterday. The Norwegian diplomat holds that the spate of arrests of senior Taliban figures in Pakistan derailed "secret" talks sponsored by the UN. In the process Eide averred that Pakistan had authorized the arrests in order to end the talks.

As Eide acknowledges in this first public confirmation of his covert conversations with the jihadists of Taliban there have been and continue to be many different channels of communication between elements of Taliban as well as associated insurgent groups and the Karzai government--and foreign supporters of the Kabul regime. Back channel talks are not only to be expected; they are required if an internal war is to be brought to an end.

It deserves mention that Mr Eide gives pride of place to diplomatic conversations and downplays the role of military operations in Afghanistan. This framing is not surprising. Diplomats have an unfortunate propensity to disconnect talking and shooting. The diplomatic mind has a very real block against accepting the truth of the hoary dictum that war is the continuation of politics by violent means.

Mr Eide's personal block is evident when he fails to admit that the only reason any member of Taliban's leadership cadre is willing to come to Dubai and meet the Man From the UN is that the trigger pullers of Taliban are under heavy military pressure. He is able to grant that the conversations could not have occurred without the knowledge and approval of Mullah Omar. He is not equally able to grant that Omar's motivation came from the simple fact that Taliban was further from a battlefield victory rather than closer.

Another politician turned diplomat who shares the same blinkered view of the relationship between military force and diplomatic processes is the current British Foreign Minister, David Miliband. At MIT earlier this month Mr Miliband outdid the Beatles in singing, "Give Peace A Chance" with his roadmap for negotiations on the neutral turf of the UN.

It is time for Mr Miliband and former special envoy Eide to get a grip.

Internal wars, insurgencies, end in two stages. In the first, hostilities termination, the shooting stops. In the second much longer and hazier one, conflict resolution, the former belligerents seek to form a stable political dynamic of shared power with the goal of a better state of peace.

Hostilities termination occurs either when one of the warring parties loses the political will or material capacity to wage war or when both combatants recognize that neither can shoot its way to unquestioned political authority. The historical record demonstrates that the first impetus is the more common one.

One side or the other, usually the side with the least at stake as in the case of England during the American War of Independence or the US in the Vietnam War, concludes the rewards of potential victory are not worth the actual costs. Or, as in the case of the American Civil War or the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, one side is militarily defeated in a quite decisive way.

The second form, the one in which each side comes to realize it cannot achieve unchallenged political authority on the battlefield may be less common but it is the paradigm governing events in Afghanistan. The human terrain upon which the war is being waged is of a nature that neither the government nor the insurgents can achieve unquestioned authority at an acceptable level of casualties and overall social disruption.

The only reason that Taliban is entertaining this view is the pressure it is now under with the increase in US and ISAF troop strength as well as the more effective and far more aggressive operational concepts of General McChrystal. Absent these new realities and the costs they have imposed upon Taliban the insurgents could confidently expect military success leading to unchallenged political authority in Afghanistan.

This does not mean the current and projected military operations will lead to anything approximating "victory" as such is commonly understood. They can't. And, they won't. They can, however, provide the impetus to hostilities termination on the part of Taliban. Not all Talib to be sure, not the hardest of the hard core, the Truest of the True Believers. They won't come to talk--only to die.

But for the others, the less than True Believers, the opportunists, those always ready to engage in the history hallowed Afghan tradition of changing sides, the pragmatists who want to both remain alive and gain some measure of power in the post-war political environment, the option of hostilities termination is attractive. These folks, who number among them Mullah Omar, will be willing to exchange endless palaver for sleeping in the rain, eating bad food, and getting shot at.

It is for this reason that the "golden bridge" of covert conversations leading to open negotiations must remain in place. It is for this reason also that the military pressure must continue, even increase. One of the overlook-at-your-own-peril lessons of the Korean War is that the willingness and ability to continue shooting and dying even after negotiations start is the sine qua non of ultimate success in achieving hostilities termination.

Conflict resolution is the sole province of the Afghans. Outsiders, including the all-too-often hailed UN, can play only a minor supporting role which perforce must diminish over time. It must be recognized by all outsiders whether the US or Pakistan or India or Iran that their utility as well as their influence over the details and final outcome of conflict resolution is marginal at best.

Indeed the best role for the US (or the UN or the EU) to play during the conflict resolution stage is to block the efforts of Pakistan, Iran, and India to pursue their vastly different agendas through interference in the necessarily indigenous process of conflict resolution. Outside meddling will both prolong and make even more messy the inevitably long and aesthetically displeasing process of resolving the conflicts between the Kabul government and the several insurgent groups.

Arguably it was the efforts of Pakistan in furtherance of its national and strategic interests twenty years ago which made the current war nearly inevitable. Since Pakistan, Iran, India are not selfless and disinterested parties, their machinations must be thwarted if authentic conflict resolution is to occur.

(The same warning applies with respect to hostilities termination. There is good reason to accept the proposition that Pakistan mounted its flurry of arrests in order to prevent movement toward stopping the shooting.)

The takeaway is twofold. First, hostilities termination requires that shooting and talking proceed in tandem. Second, conflict resolution is owned solely by the Afghans so it will be long, messy, and somewhat yucky to American and European observers in its final form.

Israel Is Sovereign First And A US Ally Second

There is one place and one place only where the rubber hits the road in the Mideast. That spot is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While that is not news, the implications for US influence in the region are great, growing, and all bad.

The general view in the Arab political and military circles is that the US is neither able nor willing to pressure Israel into making necessary concessions. Admittedly the concessions sought by assorted Arab states are maximal and seemingly unreasonable in the extreme. Still, one should note that the Arab negotiating posture has always started with the maximum not unlike the merchant who always goes to a stratospheric price first.

The Arabs have a long history of intransigence and obstinate refusal to adjust their demands and expectations to a level consonant with reality. The intransigence and obstinacy are made worse by the political pressure placed upon Arab regimes by the potent Islamist factions in their populations. This pressure will not abate; it can only increase.

That the negative view of American good office capacities is universal among both military and political leaders in the region was conveyed quite bluntly to a delegation from CENTCOM touring their area of responsibility last December. Time after time in meeting after meeting in one country after another the CENTCOM ears were filled with the same refrain.

The words went rather like this: The US cannot (or will not) stand up to Israel. We have lost faith in the American promises. The US is not believable on any matter because it is not believable regarding Israel. US standing here is in decline, rapid decline. The US must deliver on Israel or we will have to look elsewhere for our security.

In mid-January a senior level crew from CENTCOM briefed Admiral Mullen with a forty-five minute, thirty-three slide Powerpoint presentation which stunningly portrayed the collective CENTCOM synopsis of the situation within its primarily Arab and Muslim area of responsibility. Reputedly the JCS Chairman had never before received a briefing such as this, at least on the Mideast, one which focused not simply on military considerations but one which included the political context in which military matters existed.

Since military affairs never exist absent the political context, this reality is surprising in and of itself. When the fusion of religion and politics resident in Islam is taken into account, the lacking of earlier similarly inclusive briefings is downright shocking.

The substance of the briefing, the nature of Arab complaints and doubts is inherently plausible. There can be no doubt but the Arab states whether in the Gulf or further to the west desire, no, demand that the US do the heavy lifting. It is an imperative within the Arab states generally that the US be forced to compel Israel to accept a peace settlement with the Palestinians and other Arabs which closely approximates the maximum demand.

The assorted members of the Arab League which, after all, constitutes much of CENTCOM's remit are both unable and unwilling to compromise on their maximum demands beyond grudgingly acknowledging that Israel may have a "right" to exist. Politically, culturally, even temperamentally, Arab Muslims do not know the meaning of the word "compromise." Force, compulsion, coercion, whether direct or indirect, is the Arab Muslim approach to problem solving.

Having proven repeatedly that they are not up to the task of coercing Israel either through direct military action or the less blunt methods of terrorism and diplomatic isolation, the political and military leaders of the oil shaykdoms and other authoritarian states now seek to force the US to do the compelling. This is nothing new. The feudal oil states under the leadership of Saudi Arabia tried to do this using the "oil weapon" bestowed upon them by the grace of Allah.

There are among us those old enough to remember the oil embargoes of the Seventies, the long lines at the few open gas stations, the stand-by rationing systems, the cost explosions. The carping, whining, and complaining of those who were inconvenienced or worse by the "oil weapon's" effects lingered long and loud. Still when the lines lessened, prices stabilized, the net effect of the Saudi inspired "pressure" was zero, zilch. The "oil weapon" proved to be a fizzle yield device.

Now the ever churning minds of the obstinate churls of the desert are trying a new gambit. It is the all-too-evident hope of the Saudis et al to capitalize on the apprehension over Iran which runs throughout Washington. The reactionaries of the Arabian Peninsula are saying, in effect, "We think the US is weak, lacking both will and strength. So we will have to look elsewhere for new alliances to assure our security."

The words of Maxwell Smart come to mind. "The trick is old. The trick is stupid. The trick worked."

CENTCOM was obviously shaken by the Arab (implicit) threat. Ankle deep in Yemen, knee deep in Iraq, and neck deep in Afghanistan, the commanders of CENTCOM do not need to hear this sort of threat. They (over) reacted to it as is demonstrated by the proposal to include the Palestinian Authority in CENTCOM's mission portfolio.

How CJCS Admiral Mullen did or will react is not yet clear. How the JCS did or will react is also unknown. It is enough that CENTCOM reacted as it did. While no military commander, particularly one with a very full plate before him, likes to receive messages implying lack of both political will and material capacities, to receive them with a sense of panic and impending doom is inapposite to say the least.

The knee knocking at CENTCOM and not the flap surrounding the Biden trip to Israel is the real news coming from the Israeli-Arab front in recent weeks. It is necessary for the boys and girls down around Tampa way to stop hyperventilating and meditate a bit. The Arab "threat" is less real in its potential exercise than would be another employment of the "oil weapon."

Sunni Arab states are far more worried than is Europe (or the US) regarding the impending possession of nuclear weapons by the eschatologically inclined Shia regime of Iran. They are far more vulnerable to Iranian backed subversion and terror than is Europe, the US, or even Pakistan. Being militarily incompetent, the states of the Gulf, of the Arab Mideast generally, have no choice but to nail their assorted green flags to the American mast.

If they are really, really worried about either American political will or military capacity, it is due to their extreme reliance upon both to deter Iran or defend the region against Iranian attacks be they direct or indirect. Yes, the assorted Emirs, Kings, and Presidents of the Arab states would dearly love to see the US muscle Israel into some semblance of submission to their demands. A demonstration of American "toughness" directed against Israel--even if no Palestinian advantage were to be gained--would be seen as proof that the US could be relied upon to fulfill its role in protecting the Sunni Arab despotates.

That, bucko, is the real deal behind the Arab's purportedly negative views of the US. The subtext is this, "Get tough with Israel so we can believe you will be tough with Iran."

Of course getting "tough" with Israel might have the collateral benefit of helping the Palestinian cause. But, that is secondary.

You gotta say this about the Arabs: What they lack in subtlety they more than make up for in dedication to national interest.