RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/opinions-it-s-not-just-us-western-democracies-are-fragmenting/ar-AAZCpNO?cvid=4689798c14724d5fab4b32a8a5fa9bf7

Three major elections on the same Sunday in June — in France, Colombia and Spain — tell the fundamental story of democracy in our era: the continuous disaffection with government, the collapse of traditionally dominant parties and figures, and the constant search for alternatives — which is quickly followed by yet more disaffection and the search for yet other alternatives. This is no longer a narrative of dysfunction distinctive to one country, if it ever was. The Conservative Party in Britain is now scrambling to find a new prime minister; the government in Italy is near collapse. The nature of political authority has fundamentally changed. Political power has become fragmented, as voters abandon traditional parties and turn to upstart, insurgent parties or independent, free agent politicians from across the political spectrum.

In multiparty democracies, such as the three that held elections last month, the fragmentation of political power makes it more difficult to form governments, causes those governments to be fragile and prone to collapse, and weakens their capacity to deliver effective policies. Politics in the United States, with our well-entrenched two-party system, are nonetheless being shaped by similar forces — although here fragmentation means the Democratic and Republican parties are torn by internal factional conflicts that party leaders struggle to surmount. Such battles made the House Republican caucus ungovernable when Reps. John Boehner and Paul Ryan took turns as House speaker, leading both to abandon that powerful position. They’re also why the Democratic Party damaged itself, perhaps irreparably for this year’s midterms, with a prolonged internal debate over whether to link major infrastructure legislation with the grander aspirations of the Build Back Better bill, as well as conflicts between the party’s moderate and progressive wings that have hamstrung immigration policy and kept critical bipartisan legislation to boost U.S. chip manufacturing in prolonged limbo. Even with unified control of government, the parties find it difficult to govern.

https://merionwest.com/2022/07/14/the-acute-danger-of-irans-belligerence/

“Our collective inability to push back against such a hateful worldview by holding Tehran accountable for the terror it is has funded and weaponized could soon prove to be a costly mistake.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran has seldom hid its desire to see Israel fall or, as its Leadership has put it, “annihilated.” But Tehran’s attitude toward its Jewish neighbor has grown significantly more heated as of late. It is a sign, no doubt, that due to its inability to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and see the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) rebranded as a legitimate apparatus, Iran may consider more radical actions.

Although Tehran has hidden behind its proxies for decades, and many have argued that it would never directly engage Israel militarily, we should not discount its newfound confidence as it believes to have Israel surrounded. Iran’s military strategy toward Israel was summarized in 2019 by Major General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the Research Division of Israeli Military Intelligence, as “the ring of fire.” The term refers to Iran’s efforts to expand its precision guided missile project throughout the Middle East to encircle Israel and overwhelm its defenses.

For decades now, the Islamic Republic has architected a narrative around anti-Zionism, advocating not only for the destruction of Israel but also for the expulsion of its people, the Jews, from the region altogether–painting its motive as an act of grand liberation. Our collective inability to push back against such a hateful worldview by holding Tehran accountable for the terror it is has funded and weaponized could soon prove to be a costly mistake.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18711/reviled-institutions

A Monmouth University poll released on July 5 reveals that 57% of Americans believe that U.S. federal government actions over the last six months have directly hurt their families. In that same poll, Monmouth compiles the 22 most important priorities of the American people. Neither Russia’s war in Ukraine nor Congress’s January 6 Committee hearings appear anywhere on the list; instead, the top four issues all deal with skyrocketing inflation and economic uncertainty.

A new Gallup poll documents a precipitous drop in Americans’ confidence across 16 major institutions, including historic lows for confidence in newspapers, the criminal justice system, big business, police, and all three branches of the federal government. The survey’s results represent the lowest overall institutional confidence ever recorded in its decades-long survey history, and not a single institution reflected an increase in confidence over last year’s measures. Only 7% of Americans have a “Great deal / Quite a lot” of confidence in Congress, while only 11% feel similarly about television news.

Only adding to Westerners’ perception of widespread institutional corruption, an investigation by the British Medical Journal recently documented pervasive conflicts of interest within Western drug and health regulatory agencies whose budgets are funded primarily by monetary gifts from major pharmaceutical companies, the very industry players whose products the government agencies are charged with regulating.

Westerners increasingly do not trust their governments or their major news media to report accurate and reliable information. They increasingly view government actors as perpetuating two standards of justice and economic security — one for those at the very top of society’s pyramid of wealth and power and one for everyone else.

Westerners increasingly do not trust their governments or their major news media to report accurate and reliable information. They increasingly view government actors as perpetuating two standards of justice and economic security — one for those at the very top of society’s pyramid of wealth and power, and one for everyone else.

Surely Western authorities cannot expect to maintain long-term legitimacy if their populations judge governing institutions as irredeemably marred by corruption and political leaders as indifferent, if not downright hostile, to ordinary citizens’ wants and needs.

It has become fashionable for Western politicians to divide up the global chessboard between virtuous “democracies” struggling for world peace and threatening “dictatorships” causing hardship and chaos. Whatever the West’s “democracies” are today, however, they are not bastions for representing honestly their peoples’ most dire concerns, nor are they above doling out to their citizenries hefty portions of hardship and chaos.

Institutions can be broadly categorized as those that are created and maintained through human cooperation and consent and those that require force and coercion to endure. In a “democratic” society, cooperation and consent are the principal building blocks, as well as tools, for fashioning strong institutions capable of surviving unknown threats and unexpected emergencies.

What happens when consent is replaced by government force and coercion? Laws lose legitimacy. News sources are reduced to pure propaganda. Political disagreement turns to bloodshed and murder. It is as if society’s cement has instead been replaced by strongmen trying to squeeze humanity’s discreet blocks together with sheer muscle…

Western authorities cannot expect to maintain long-term legitimacy if their populations judge governing institutions as irredeemably marred by corruption and political leaders as indifferent, if not downright hostile, to ordinary citizens’ wants and needs.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18713/russia-nato

The alliance’s new Strategic Concept, adopted at the NATO Summit in Madrid on June 28-30, focuses on addressing the return of great-power politics, specifically strategic competition with revisionist powers such as Russia and China.

The Strategic Concept affirms collective territorial defense as NATO’s fundamental mission, and effective deterrence as its main objective.

“The Russian Federation is the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area…. Its coercive military posture, rhetoric and proven willingness to use force to pursue its political goals undermine the rules-based international order…. In light of its hostile policies and actions, we cannot consider the Russian Federation to be our partner.” — NATO 2022 Strategic Concept.

The 2022 Concept also assesses, for the first time, the “challenges” — France and Germany objected to describing China as a “threat” because it was seen as harmful to European economic interests — posed by Communist Party of China.

Finally, the 2022 Concept commits NATO member states to honor previous pledges on defense spending, but there is no enforcement mechanism.

“The February invasion led to promises for even more spending, but many countries remain disappointments. Last month Germany approved a special €100 billion fund to rearm but still won’t commit to meeting the spending pledge every year. Italy said in March it will hit 2% by 2028, and Belgium managed to be even more hapless with a vow to reach the goal by 2035. Will Mr. Biden do anything to push these laggards in Madrid?” — Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2022.

“If NATO fails to translate words into action now, it could be fatal for the Alliance.” — Ed Arnold, Royal United Services Institute, July 1, 2022.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), responding to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, has announced the biggest overhaul of European defense since the end of the Cold War. By pledging more money, more troops and more unity to deter Russia, NATO leaders have reaffirmed NATO as the cornerstone of transatlantic defense.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18714/shinzo-abe

Perhaps Abe’s most enduring contribution to the Japanese people was successfully to mold their thinking into accepting a greater responsibility for Free World defense.

Abe’s calm demeanor, diplomatic comportment and clarity of thought on strategic security issues helped enable the rapid evolution of the “QUAD” alliance (US, Japan, Australia and India) into a formidable bulwark against Chinese Communist expansionism in the Indo-Pacific.

Abe’s most significant contribution to strengthening security in the Indo-Pacific Region may yet materialize: to amend Japan’s post World War II Constitution to allow Tokyo more aggressively to project military power in the South and East China Seas. Such as addition would be a great boost to Free Asia’s hope to keep the Indo-Pacific secure and free. It is to be hoped that all countries in the region will follow in Abe’s extraordinary footsteps.

Shinzo Abe, the most influential Japanese leader since World II, ushered in accomplishments that were transformative both in Japan’s role as a democratic power in the Indo-Pacific Region and as a dynamic player in international affairs. His aggressive initiatives on defense issues significantly strengthened the US-Japanese Alliance, just as China’s expansionist aspirations in the South and East China Seas were peaking; he continued to push for an increase in Japan’s defense budget right up to his assassination.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/mullah-mischief-latin-america-joseph-puder/

Iran and its primary terror agent, Hezbollah, are a threat not only to the security of Israel and the Arab Gulf states — their tentacles stretch across the globe. In Latin America, Iran is building a strategic response against the United States with a protected base in Venezuela under President Nicolas Maduro. Iran’s build-up of long-range ballistic missiles, and the Russian supply of the lethal S-400 missile system to Iran, pose a serious threat to the security of the United States. These Russian missiles will eventually end up in Venezuela. Russia is poised to retaliate against the U.S. supply of missiles to Ukraine, by arming both Iran and Venezuela with the S-400 missile system.

With the Biden administration’s desperate quest for a nuclear deal with Iran, it is crucial now more than ever for Washington to include Iran’s long-range ballistic missile development onto the nuclear talks agenda among other forums. The Ayatollahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran may eventually drop their demand for lifting the U.S. sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), since they already have cleverly deceived the western powers by deliberately buying time to be weeks away from having enough enriched uranium for several bombs. Robert Malley, the U.S. envoy to the Vienna nuclear negotiations with Iran, recently warned that Iran can “make a nuclear bomb within a matter of weeks.”

Last March, the Biden administration flirted with lifting oil sanctions on Venezuela in order to temper surging oil prices. White House and State Department officials traveled to Caracas, Venezuela to meet with the anti-American President Maduro, the Venezuelan dictator. It seemed as if the Biden administration was willing to fund a ruthless dictator, who is serving Iran’s strategic interests in facilitating an IRGC forward military base against the U.S. At the same time, however, the Biden administration is unwilling to encourage investments in domestic energy production.