RUTHFULLY YOURS

China’s arrest of 12 Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, nabbed as they tried to flee the city by boat in the face of an intensifying crackdown on dissent, is fueling a new war of words between Washington and Beijing.

On Sunday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Twitter that the people detained weren’t seeking democratic freedoms but “elements attempting to separate Hong Kong from China.” Other Chinese officials this weekend accused the U.S. of meddling in China’s internal affairs.

U.S. State Department officials on Friday called on China to ensure that the activists receive due process of law. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the group had been denied access to lawyers and said China had yet to say what charges they face or to provide information about their welfare.

The detentions have rattled nerves in Hong Kong, where many were already on edge after China imposed a new national security law on June 30, leading to more than a dozen arrests, many opposition voices to fall silent and some to flee abroad.

China’s handling of the case has rekindled fears about the mainland’s opaque legal system—one of the main drivers of mass protests in Hong Kong last year that ultimately led to China’s crackdown.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16487/iran-nuclear-cooperation

This effort [lifting the arms embargo on Iran] has prompted Iran to launch a diplomatic offensive to have the arms embargo lifted, a move that would allow Tehran to increase its ability to supply arms to terror groups such as Hizbollah and Hamas, as well as the Houthi rebels in Yemen fighting US-backed coalition forces

“Iran is desperate to get the arms embargo lifted at the UN, and so has decided to cooperate with the IAEA to improve relations with the UN,” a senior Western diplomat who is familiar with the negotiations told me. “Tehran believes that if it cooperates with the UN, there is a greater possibility that the arms embargo will not be renewed.”

As a senior Gulf official… told me earlier this week, lifting the ban would simply allow Iran to continue arming terror groups in the Middle East. “If the ban is lifted, then we are going to see a lot more bloodshed in the region,” the official warned.

Iran’s belated offer to allow United Nations nuclear inspectors to visit two controversial nuclear sites should be seen as nothing more than a stunt to get the international ban on arms sales to Tehran lifted.

Washington is fighting attempts by the UN Security Council to lift the arms embargo on Iran, a document that dates back to 2007, and comes up for renewal next month.

This effort has prompted Iran to launch a diplomatic offensive to have the arms embargo lifted, a move that would allow Tehran to increase its ability to supply arms to terror groups such as Hizbollah and Hamas, as well as the Houthi rebels in Yemen fighting US-backed coalition forces.

As part of the Iranian campaign, Tehran has reached a deal with the UN-sponsored International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Vienna-based organization responsible for monitoring global nuclear issues, to allow inspectors to visit two controversial sites that are suspected of being part of Iran’s controversial nuclear programme.

The IAEA has been in a dispute with Iran over Tehran’s refusal to allow inspectors to visit the sites following suspicions that they have been involved in activity related to Iran’s nuclear programme that has not been declared to the UN body.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16504/hamas-destroy-lebanon

During Haniyeh’s tour of Ain al-Hilweh, he said that the Iran-backed Hamas in the Gaza Strip “possesses missiles to strike Tel Aviv and beyond Tel Aviv.”

Arab political analysts…. also believe that Iran is preparing to use its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, to target Arab countries that establish relations with Israel, such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

“Who is this Ismail Haniyeh, who comes to Lebanon and flexes his muscles in the [refugee] camps while surrounded by armed men…. No one in our government has asked what is he doing here and who let him into our country.” — Rita Mokbel, a Lebanese woman, Twitter, September 7, 2020.

“Lebanon is an independent state and not a theater for Iran and the Palestinians.” — Lebanese General Asraf Rifi, Twitter, September 7, 2020.

“Syria paid a heavy price for defending Hamas and the resistance movements, and they returned the favor by plotting against Syria and participating in its destruction. This is what the school of the Muslim Brotherhood and [Turkish President] Erdogan teaches.” — Wiam Wahhab, former Lebanese minister of environment, Twitter, September 7, 2020.

The visit of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh to Lebanon has sparked outrage in the country. Many Lebanese citizens and officials have expressed the fear that his presence in their country could trigger another war with Israel. Their fear does not seem unjustified. The Lebanese are aware of the disasters Hamas has brought on its people in the Gaza Strip by firing rockets into Israel. The Lebanese are telling Hamas: “If you want to launch terror attacks against Israel, please do not use our country. We are not prepared to pay the price.”

The Lebanese have also objected to the return to Lebanon of armed Palestinian groups. The Lebanese appear afraid that Hamas is operating on instructions from Iran to turn Lebanon into a launching pad for firing missiles at Israel. The Lebanese remember the days in the 70s and 80s when the PLO and other Palestinian armed factions controlled Lebanon and used its territories to launch terror attacks against Israel, its neighbor to the south.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trouble-brewing-in-central-america-11600028832?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

President Trump made a deal with Central American governments and Mexico to end the 2018-19 migration crisis by requiring asylum seekers from Central America to register in a transit country before seeking U.S. entry.

Since then, the administration has taken a “problem solved” attitude toward Central America. In fact there are still plenty of regional worries that Mr. Trump ought to take seriously.

Exhibit A is El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who has been widely praised as a good friend of the U.S. but may not be so hot after all.

The 39-year-old Mr. Bukele was raised, politically speaking, by the left-wing FMLN party, formed by Salvadoran guerrillas after the civil war. He was elected FMLN mayor of the city of Nuevo Cuscatlán in 2012 and FMLN mayor of the capital, San Salvador, in 2015. But he ran for president in 2019 on a third-party ticket, defeating both traditional parties: the FMLN and the center-right Arena party. Today he heads the New Ideas party.

Mr. Bukele claims he no longer holds the ideological beliefs of the FMLN of his youth. But he has retained the instincts that made him a young star in the party.

In his first year in office he has shown himself to be an ambitious populist with an authoritarian streak. In February he stunned the nation when he marched into the Salvadoran Congress with armed soldiers and sat in the speaker’s chair in an effort to intimidate lawmakers who were not rubber-stamping his proposals.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/the-chinese-communist-partys-dangerous-bid-for-the-u-n-human-rights-council/

T he Chinese party-state is engaged in a years-long campaign to wipe out ethnic minority identities within its borders, to do away with the vestiges of democratic governance in Hong Kong, and otherwise to silence dissenting voices. But that would barely register if you followed these developments through the proceedings of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which convenes on Monday to begin a new session.

The council’s 47 members are granted two-year terms in annual elections, the next of which will take place in October. China, which has served four of these terms since the body’s creation in 2006, isn’t currently a member but will be a candidate this time around. It doesn’t take a human-rights lawyer to see the problem with Chinese membership of the body.

Each time the country seeks a seat, there’s a futile — but honorable — attempt by human-rights defenders to point out Beijing’s egregious record on these issues. The latest of these attempts came this past week, in the form of a letter signed by over 300 non-governmental organizations: “China has targeted human rights defenders abroad, suppressed academic freedom in countries around the world, and engaged in internet censorship and digital surveillance,” they wrote.

International pressure has mounted as the human-rights situation in China deteriorates. The Hong Kong crackdown brought one wave of criticism, as did new evidence of a population-control campaign in Xinjiang. The situation has become so dire that in June, dozens of U.N. human-rights experts called for an unprecedented special meeting of the council to discuss the human-rights abuses of the Chinese Communist Party. This is an improvement over the silence that once reigned, but don’t count on that meeting to even take place.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16490/orphan-states-world-order

The Third Reich and the USSR could not behave as normal nation-states…. Their prime interest was “exporting” their ideological brand, by war if necessary.
Regardless of the obvious differences of belief systems and discourse, all ideology-driven movements from Lenin and Hitler to Khomeini and Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi aim at replacing the biological human with an ideological one, ostensibly to complete the work of nature or providence.
Lenin seized power in a Russian state that had become an orphan with the fall of the Tsarist state. Hitler inherited the orphan state left by the failed Weimar Republic. Khomeini came to power when the Shah simply left Iran as an orphan state.
At first glance, the same fate may look as if it is threatening Lebanon. A state manned by discredited elites seems on the verge of disintegration, with an armed group backed by Iran poised to seize control, just as the Taliban did in Afghanistan with Pakistani backing.

Remember 9/11, the catchphrase that was seen as a wake-up call for a world lulled into sweet slumber by “The End of History”? Nearly two decades ago today, the twin terror attacks on New York and Washington propelled a new threat to world order at the top of international concerns: the threat of non-state groups seizing territory for use as a base for advancing ideological aims through terror and war.

Though it contained some new features, the attack on the United States recalled a model used by other ideological movements on small and large scales. In a sense, both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had been built on a model that rejected the concept of nation-state as developed by the Westphalian treaties of the 17th century. The Third Reich and the USSR could not behave as normal nation-states concerned with the normal interests of nation-states such as security, trade, access to markets and resources, cultural exchanges and prestige. Their prime interest was “exporting” their ideological brand, by war if necessary.

https://quillette.com/2020/09/03/a-europe-divided-and-unfree/

Since the end of the Cold War, Europe has believed it is more resilient than it is, and less vulnerable. It has indulged the conceit that it will never again find itself at daggers drawn with its Russian neighbor. In the European imagination, post-communist Russia posed no threat, a convenient interpretation that remained intact even after the rise of the KGB’s mafia state and the projection of Moscow’s imperial designs on its “near abroad.” At the 2007 Munich Security Conference, Vladimir Putin spoke of a “unipolar world”—meaning one dominated by the United States—that would prove “pernicious not only for all those within this system but also for the sovereign itself.” America’s “hyper use of force,” declared the Russian president, was “plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.”

At the time, with an unpopular Republican president at the helm in Washington—unpopular, that is, in Europe, though also in America—Europeans extended a generous reception to Putin’s remarks. Many Europeans retained their traditional skepticism of American power and remained committed to the idea of a “different” European foreign policy, though few bothered to explain what that might entail. Sovereignty was the all-consuming interest in Europe in those days, and with US soldiers garrisoned en masse across the broader Middle East, European officials detected more danger in American unilateralism than unchecked jihadism, let alone Russian revanchism. More than a decade later—after Russian aggression dismembered Georgia and Ukraine, and a bloody foray into the Levant, and now the prospect of Russian aid for the Belarusian dictatorship—they might wish to reconsider.

Of course, Europe was then and is now highly skeptical of any use of force as well as the notion of permanent conflict. It is no longer the Europe of Napoleon and Bismarck, much less that of Plato and Thucydides. Instead, as Robert Kagan pointed out in his ingenious 2003 work Of Paradise and Power, it is the Europe of Immanuel Kant. Traumatized by the hideous experiences of the 20th century, Europeans have adopted a postmodern and posthistorical view that military force is unnecessary—immoral, even—in a world where problems ought to be resolved through the ambit of law. Thus Europe has tended to look on America’s abidingly muscular approach in world affairs with bitter incomprehension. Until very recently, Americans have hailed from Mars while Europeans—at least since launching the European Union—have resided on Venus.

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/leftist-is-alarmed-at-trump-hopes-for-mideast/91254/

“Angels are rare, if they exist at all, in the Middle East. Yet if Israel can find true peace, even with imperfect regimes, the region would be better off. One side benefit: some Arab leaders begin to realize that, beyond entrepreneurship and high-tech, emulating Israel’s liberal ethos could be useful for them as well.”

No sooner has the Arab-Israel Spring started to blossom than the Leftists are up in arms. Gulf capitals now formalizing relations with Jerusalem are, they complain, ruled by non-democratic bad guys. Exhibit a: Bahrain, where a Sunni minority, backed by Saudi Arabia, rules over restive Shiite population.

Bahrain has just announced that it will join the United Arab Emirates Tuesday at a White House ceremony, where President Trump and his top Mideast aide and son in law, Jared Kushner, are scheduled to host Prime Minister Netanyahu and the U.A.E.’s foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zaid. In the event, the first peace agreement between (now two) Arab countries and the Jewish state in a quarter century will be sealed with hand shakes.

Mr. Trump hints of more to come. Saudi Arabia, vying for leadership in the region, is the big prize. The U.A.E., and certainly Bahrain, wouldn’t have signed on without its blessing, but, even as it allows for Israeli flights over its skies, Riyadh has yet to join them.

Critics won’t be inaccurate in noting the failures of the Gulf’s emirates, sultanates ,and theocracies involved in this breakthrough. Yet haven’t those same critics for years insisted that “you make peace with enemies”? Don’t they push the line that there can be no true peace before Jerusalem comes to terms with the Palestinian Authority, which similarly fails the paragon-of-democracy, benevolent-ruler test?

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/is-trump-on-the-way-to-a-historic-mideast-peace

President Trump’s announcement today that Bahrain will be the latest Arab country to recognize Israel starts to make it look like we could be on the way to a Mideast Peace. It would be unwise to get ahead of events, but it would also be unwise not to recognize at least the possibility that is coming into view. Predicting this development Thursday, Mr. Trump declared, “You could have peace in the Middle East.”

The announcement by the White House today comes in advance of what was already shaping up as a remarkable event for Tuesday, when Mr. Trump is due to host at the White House the signing of the entente between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Prime Minister Netanyahu will be there, as will U.A.E.’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Now, the White House says, Bahrain will be there, as well.

We don’t mind saying that we were opposed to Mr. Trump’s pursuit of a Middle East peace. It was nothing personal. We’ve opposed nearly all American efforts to play the so-called “honest broker” in the Middle East. Our preference has been to back Israel and wait for the rest of the region to come around (or not). Pursuing peace by getting between the Jewish state and her enemies does more harm than good.

Yet Mr. Trump has impressed us with his sagacity. We first tipped our hat to it two weeks into his presidency, when we issued an editorial called “Trump’s Iran Strategy.” It had quickly become apparent that he was going to focus, as we put it, “less on the Palestinain predicament and more on winning the war against jihadist Islam.” He was going to side with the Sunni Arabs against Shiite Iran.

In that feud we don’t have a strong view. It did, though, put Israel’s Arab neighbors in the thrall of, in Mr. Trump, an exceptionally strong backer of Israel. Mr. Trump’s redemption of his campaign promise to move our Israel embassy to Jerusalem put the Arabs in a position that they would have to choose. It did so more emphatically than any recent démarche we can think of.