238 - Shaking the Foundations of World Order until they Fracture: Seismic Disasters
Putin, Netanyahu, Trump
Hell bent on self-aggrandizement, one to swell his imperial grandeur, the other to save himself from obloquy and even a common jail, Putin and Netanyahu are using every military resource at their command relentlessly to prosecute wars of conquest/revenge. Putin has no legitimate excuse; his is just the thrashing of a bully who saw opportunity when the West failed to counter his naked invasion of the Donbas in 2014. Contrastingly, Netanyahu has every excuse given Hamas' dastardly killing and raping on Oct. 7, 2023. But Netanyahu has rapidly squandered Israel's legitimacy by employing disproportionate force and refusing to reconsider a meaningful two-state solution. Killing civilians wantonly obscures Israel's main goals. President Biden has urged him to re-think his methods.
Adding to this duo of "over the top" sponsors of killing fields and complicating every American foreign policy initiative is Trump, a Putin co-conspirator and bomb-throwing anarcho-nihilist. Trump's outrageous promise to invite Putin to invade NATO nations who fail to ante up appropriately (his call) in their collective defense is both absurd and perilously dangerous at the same time. If he were not the presumptive Republican nominee, such blathering could be ignored along with many of the irresponsible rantings of marginal fascists like Britain's Nigel Farage or France's Marine Le Pen. But by bowling alone and threatening to knock down all of the tenpins that configure the NATO alliance, Trump has sent Europe, as well as America, deeply into fearful despair. He promised to "encourage" Putin and Russia to do "whatever the hell they want" against the U.S.' NATO allies. What kind of "greatness" is that?
As General Douglas Lute, President Obama's ambassador to NATO, explained: "Russia and China have nothing to compare with America's allies, and these allies depend on America's commitment." Moreover, "Casting doubt" on our commitment "sacrifices America's greatest advantage over Russia and China" and plays into the destructive ambitions of Putin and Xi Jinping. Such trash talking gives Putin "free rein" to continue bashing Ukraine and closing realistic openings to peace.
As we have said many times in this space, our commitment to our allies is neither altruism nor wasteful pandering. It serves vital national interests that go well beyond (but include) protecting Ukraine and Europe and ensuring the autonomy of Taiwan. Carl Bildt, the outspoken former prime minister of Sweden, commented ironically that "the only saving grace" of Trump's irresponsibility is that it proves that he is intrinsically unreliable and unpredictable. Even Putin's Kremlin "would be somewhat uncertain" despite knowing that Putin would be able to play him politically "in any crisis."
Trump's unhinged motor-mouthing will never cease. Thus, for the safety of the free world, to restore security to Europe, and to give some measure of stability to a world that stretches from Asia to Africa, it now behooves the Biden administration to work around Speaker Johnson, gain Congressional approval of the Senate's funding for Ukraine and to rush serious military assistance and equipment to that straitened redoubt.
Likewise, President Biden may need to lean heavily on Netanyahu to encourage better tactics in the worthy endeavor to extirpate Hamas completely in the Gaza Strip -- an unlikely and falsely utopian goal. But perhaps Biden, King Abdullah, and the political rulers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar can broker a meaningful ceasefire that retrieves all hostages in exchange for the safe passage of Hamas' leadership cadre from tunnels under Rafah to Qatar. At the same time, the Israeli Defense Force could fully surround Rafah and interrogate every above ground person to separate Hamas sympathizers from inhabitants stuck in a war zone. That would minimize wanton casualties and thereafter permit a pursuit of Hamas, underground.
Ukraine needs our continued backing, our funding, and our war materiel. Otherwise, the West will have enabled Putin to succeed in his unpardonable attempt to suborn Ukraine. The West would then have abandoned its commitment not only to Ukraine and NATO, but to the free world writ large. The United States has been the linchpin of Western cohesiveness and the guarantor of world freedom and world peace since 1945. Influenced perniciously by Trump -- the rampaging bull in embattled shop of world order -- the defenses against fascism and communism that were so laboriously developed by Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan, Carter, and the first Bush -- are now being imperiled mostly for cheap self-imposing shots against settled norms.
Netanyahu is little better. Ignoring Biden's calls for caution, he orders carnage of a dimension that has produced too few positive results. The time for extermination is over, but Netanyahu views continued pursuit of Hamas as benefiting his own personal needs even as the resulting collateral damage increasingly undermines Israeli legitimacy and reduces the likelihood of rapprochements with Saudi Arabia. Flattening Gaza originally could be said to have had a purpose; now it is wanton and lacking strategic goals.
Stretched well beyond its customary concern for world peace, the Biden administration now has the unenviable task of steering Israel and Palestine to safer shores while simultaneously providing the means of war to an intensely embattled Ukraine despite Republican obstinate politicking. Then (as we will see next week), there are the many dangerous incendiary vicissitudes in the rest of the world.
and consider joining those who are paying modestly