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FOREIGN POLICY

Biden Weakens America’s Global Clout Step one for renewed respect is a serious defense budget. Step two: Kill some crows.By Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-weakens-americas-global-clout-defense-budget-deterrence-failure-44d13d14?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

With Niger’s gross domestic product at a miserable $545 per person in 2022, the United Nations ranks the landlocked country as one of the five least-developed nations on the planet.

Over the weekend Niger’s government responded to American accusations that it was negotiating to sell uranium to Iran by ending military cooperation with the U.S. The decision is another win for Vladimir Putin’s effort to extend Russian power, a welcome boost to Iran, and a serious blow to America’s plans for combating the return of jihadist violence across a swath of Africa.

It is also one more sign that the Biden administration is losing its ability to shape international events.

In blowing off President Biden, Niger’s military junta is joining a global trend. Mr. Putin renews his threats of nuclear use, rejects talk of diplomacy and hints at even greater ambitions as he grinds out bloody conquests in Ukraine. Iran is helping one of its proxies close the Red Sea while another fires missiles and rockets into Israel. North Korea is beefing up its nuclear and conventional forces. China is massively boosting defense spending while pressing its advantages across the Indo-Pacific and into the Western hemisphere. From Haiti to Sudan, warlords and gang bosses thumb their noses at American diplomatic efforts to restore stability.

Kamala Harris explains it all out for you on Gaza Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/03/kamala_harris_explains_it_all_out_for_you_on_gaza.html

Foreign policy ace Kamala Harris is back in the saddle, explaining to all us rube voters what Gaza is all about.

Kamala Harris on the war in Gaza: “This subject is one that, sadly I say, has — there’s an appetite a lot of people have for it to be binary, as though it’s one thing or the other, when in fact many things are true at the same time.”

Which is one heck of a word salad.

Obviously, she’s feeling the heat from the Hamas-cheering leftists of academia who are seen as vital to Democrats in their re-election bid, and the other heat from the pro-Israel wing of the Democrat party, which is an increasingly smaller segment but just as important to winning independents. So, if I am deciphering the garble correctly, she would like us to know that many things can be true at the same time.

That ought to get them all onboard the Democrat train.

It’s wretched, though.

This is supposed to be America’s foreign policy leader speaking and she obviously doesn’t know a thing about what she’s talking about. She doesn’t know which side she’s on and she lacks the capacity to form even an opinion on it, not being “a good study” as critics on the inside have alleged in the past.

So, here she is, presenting us with another word salad — on a deadly serious issue — and sending a message to our enemies and Israel’s enemies, that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

You thought Joe’s senility was a problem creating a lot of foreign policy failures? Try the stupid person’s take on it, driven by electoral politics alone, and it only gets worse.

Munich Redux Why, exactly, would the Mullahs change their behavior? by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/munich-redux/

Lost in the spectacle of the high decibel State of the Union speech, and the quadrennial carnival of a presidential election, there was some dangerous news last week that was mostly ignored. Iran, for 46 years a sworn enemy of the U.S. whose citizens it has murdered and interests thwarted with impunity, now possesses all the components for quickly assembling several nuclear bombs.

This development could mark the return of the 1939 diplomatic disaster of England’s and France’s abandonment of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany, which lit the fuse of the most destructive war in history.

Often considered a mere foreign policy cliché for feckless diplomacy, Munich’s lessons are much more complex, widespread, and consequential than a parable about “a timorous, bumbling, and naïve old gentleman, waving an umbrella as a signal of cringing subservience to a bully,” as historian Telford Taylor described the caricature of England’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

Rather, Munich is the premier historical paradigm for illusory ideals about foreign policy and diplomatic engagement that rationalize ideological prejudices, partisan interests, and received institutional wisdom––in our times, all at the cost of the exorbitant risk of a global conflict with nuclear-armed autocratic enemies.

And that threat has just intensified with the news about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The Wall Street Journal last week reported “troubling news” from Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency: “The Agency has lost continuity of knowledge in relation to [Iran’s] production and inventory of centrifuges, rotors and bellows, heavy water and uranium ore concentrate.”

Moreover, the Journal continues, the “Institute for Science and International Security, which has followed Iran’s program for years, says Iran can enrich enough uranium for 13 nuclear weapons, seven in the first month of a breakout. ‘Iran is able to produce more weapon-grade uranium (WGU) and at a faster rate since the IAEA’s last report in November 2023,’ it finds.”

Biden’s Middle East Is a Fantasy World He imagines Palestinians are eager for peace and Israel’s government is at odds with its people. By Amit Segal

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-middle-east-is-a-fantasy-world-israelis-and-palestinians-arent-as-he-thinks-198003a8?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

When Joe Biden and officials in his administration talk about the Israelis and the Palestinians, they describe two peoples that don’t exist in reality. According to the White House, the Palestinians aspire to peace, reject Hamas and are ready to make painful concessions.

A week after Hamas attacked Israel, Mr. Biden said in an interview on “60 Minutes”: “Hamas and the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people.” National security adviser Jake Sullivan said: “The many, many Palestinians who have had nothing to do with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas—the vast majority of the population of Gaza—they deserve dignity. They deserve safety and security.”

In reality, according to a November survey by Arab World for Research and Development, affiliated with Ramallah-based Birzeit University, 59% of Palestinians “extremely support” the Oct. 7 massacre, and another 16% “somewhat support” it.

When Mr. Biden refers to the Palestinian Authority as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, he ignores that its president, Mahmoud Abbas, was last elected 19 years ago to a four-year term, and that the last time the Palestinians went to the polls, in 2006, they voted for Hamas.

The Israeli people as the White House envisions them are also different from the real thing. Vice President Kamala Harris this week uttered a statement about Israel of the kind typically reserved for dictatorships: “It’s important for us to distinguish or at least not conflate the Israeli government with the Israeli people.”

Whistling Past the Iranian Nuclear Program Biden brushes off an alarming IAEA report to appease the ayatollahs.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-nuclear-program-international-atomic-energy-agency-rafael-grossi-biden-administration-98b75965?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The Iranian nuclear program hasn’t gone away, even if the Biden Administration would rather pretend it has. Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, shared troubling news Monday: “The Agency has lost continuity of knowledge in relation to [Iran’s] production and inventory of centrifuges, rotors and bellows, heavy water and uranium ore concentrate.”

In plainer English, the world is in the dark, raising the risk that Iran accumulates a secret stock of advanced centrifuges to pursue a quiet nuclear breakout.

The IAEA’s new quarterly report finds that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium continues to increase, though Iran tried to offset the bad press with a slight decrease in its level of uranium enriched up to 60%. The Institute for Science and International Security, which has followed Iran’s program for years, says Iran can enrich enough uranium for 13 nuclear weapons, seven in the first month of a breakout. “Iran is able to produce more weapon-grade uranium (WGU) and at a faster rate since the IAEA’s last report in November 2023,” it finds.

Tehran won’t allow key monitoring equipment into the country, and it has excluded some of the IAEA’s most experienced inspectors. Under such conditions, the world can hardly rely on the IAEA to detect diversion of nuclear materials to new and undeclared facilities.

Why the US is Losing the War to the Houthis by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20463/losing-war-to-houthis

What is the Biden administration doing wrong? Apart from scale, it’s trying to target Houthi drones and missiles, and some air bases…. This is the same approach that failed in Iraq….

When rockets are targeted, the terrorists run away and regroup, but when the terrorists are targeted, they have to keep running, so they don’t have the time and space to regroup.

That is what the proposed hostage deal and the various calls for a ‘ceasefire’ are really about.

Biden is unwilling to target the Houthis and so they keep attacking.

Given a choice between alienating the country and his party’s terror supporters, he chose a middle ground of “show” strikes… that will avoid offending terror supporters but also will not end the Houthi attacks.

This strategy serves no one except Biden who has sacrificed the nation’s prestige, a major international waterway and the lives of two U.S. Navy SEALs to win an election.

After President Joe Biden came home from his Caribbean vacation, the Deputy Defense Secretary came back from hers and the Secretary of Defense was on the verge of being released from the hospital, airstrikes were finally authorized against the Houthi Jihadis attacking ships in the Red Sea.

Biden said that the air strikes sent “a clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most critical commercial routes.”

Biden’s settlement delusions Contrary to the administration’s claims, history proves that the settlements are neither illegal nor an impediment to peace. Eric Levine

https://www.jns.org/bidens-settlement-delusions/

Last week, the Biden administration reversed the “Pompeo Doctrine,” which recognized that Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria are not “per se inconsistent with international law.”

Biden’s record of being wrong on every single important foreign policy issue of the last 50 years remains unblemished. His decision is wrong as a matter of law and fact. It is also bad politics and undermines Israeli and American national security.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken summed up the administration’s position by saying, “It’s been longstanding U.S. policy under Republican and Democratic administrations alike that new settlements are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace. … They’re also inconsistent with international law. Our administration maintains a firm opposition to settlement expansion. And in our judgment, this only weakens—it doesn’t strengthen—Israel’s security.”

History disproves Blinken’s claim that “settlements are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace.” In fact, Israel has always been willing to remove settlements to achieve peace.

The 1978 Israel-Egypt peace treaty required that Israel dismantle its settlements in the Sinai. Prime Minister Menachem Begin did so, deploying the IDF to physically remove those settlers who refused to leave. Clearly, the settlements were not a barrier to peace.

In 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the evacuation of all Israelis from Gaza and turned it over to the Palestinians. Like Begin before him, Sharon sent the IDF to remove the settlers who would not leave. There were no Jews in Gaza for 18 years. Only after the Oct. 7 massacre did Israelis return to exercise their legitimate and legal right to self-defense.

Biden Administration Not Stopping Iran, Russia, China, the Houthis by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20440/biden-not-stopping-iran-houthis

What is essential to remember is that the Houthis and other proxies of Iran are in all likelihood deeply apprehensive about the prospect of their senior leadership being targeted. By refraining from targeting Houthi leaders, the United States has inadvertently emboldened the group and allowed them to act with impunity.

In recent months, the Red Sea has become a battleground for attacks by the Iran-backed Houthis of Yemen, with the Biden administration facing mounting criticism for its failure to quell the escalating violence. As the Houthi group continues to build its weapons stockpile in Yemen, supported by the Iranian regime, the urgency of the situation cannot be overstated. It is critical that the United States reevaluate its military strategy to effectively address this growing threat.

The current approach, adopted by the Biden administration, is characterized by a reluctance to directly target Houthi leadership. The administration has opted instead to focus solely on destroying weapons and equipment.

This approach, however, has proven ineffective in deterring the Houthis from launching further attacks. What is essential to remember is that the Houthis and other proxies of Iran are in all likelihood deeply apprehensive about the prospect of their senior leadership being targeted. By refraining from targeting Houthi leaders, the United States has inadvertently emboldened the group and allowed them to act with impunity.

A former US military official, who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity, pointed out that the current campaign against the Houthis is similar to previous failed endeavors:

“The US campaign against the Houthis appears to bear the hallmarks of many of these highly circumscribed, scrubbed campaigns of the past where we seek to avoid causing them actual pain.”

The Trump administration’s targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), for instance, resulted in cessation of Iranian harassment of the US as long Trump was in office. If one wants to induce meaningful change in the behavior of the Houthis, unfortunately decisive blows will be necessary.

Sadly, the reliance on cosmetic strikes to destroy Houthi drones and missiles is both financially unsustainable and strategically futile. Continuously expending resources on missiles, worth multi-millions dollars each, to counter far less expensive Houthi weaponry is not a dazzling long-term solution. The Biden administration would be better served targeting Houthi weapons depots and missile launchers to disrupt their military capabilities in a significant way.

Merely intensifying attacks on Houthi infrastructure, however, will not suffice. Without substantially degrading Houthi military capabilities, the recently redesignated terrorist group will continue to pose a significant threat. Therefore, it is imperative to adopt a multifaceted approach that also targets the source of the problem – Iran’s regime.

And The Winner Is — Hamas! by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20399/and-the-winner-is-hamas

What will happen if Hamas is allowed to win this war? If Hamas is permitted to accomplish what it intended by its mass murders, kidnappings and rapes? If the victims of these atrocities— the people of Israel and all countries fighting terrorism — lose? If the prospects for peace in the region and the Free World are seriously damaged? If the relationship between the US and Israel, and the loss of faith in the US as the guarantor of freedom, continues to be fractured?

Instead, the Biden administration may be rewarding Palestinian terrorists by unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian State, which will, of course, soon become militarized.

The anti-Israel left-wingers are not going to vote for Trump, who is more pro-Israel than Biden. Nor are they likely to stay home on Election Day and help Trump. Centrist voters, on the other hand, are likely to vote against Biden if they think he is beholden to the Squad or other anti-American woke extremists.

As important as are the domestic electoral implications of Biden’s weakening support for Israel, the international implications are far more consequential. The world will be a far less safe place if Israel is prevented from defeating and dismantling Hamas’s military capabilities.

Israel is doing everything reasonable to decrease civilian casualties, while Hamas tries to increase them on both sides. American policy should be to help Israel defeat Hamas and prevent the recurrence and spread of its terrorism against civilians, rather than to help Hamas secure a victory by tying Israel’s hands.

So, unless the Biden administration changes course and encourages Israel to achieve its legitimate military goal of defeating Hamas, terrorism will win and civilization will lose.

What will happen if Hamas is allowed to win this war? If Hamas is permitted to accomplish what it intended by its mass murders, kidnappings and rapes? If the victims of these atrocities — the people of Israel and all countries fighting terrorism — lose? If the prospects for peace in the region and the Free World are seriously damaged? If the relationship between the US and Israel, and the loss of faith in the US as the guarantor of freedom, continues to be fractured?

Want to Stop Iran’s Regime? Hit the IRGC Assets by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20397/stop-iran-hit-irgc

“No one ever said it better than Osama bin Laden: When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they are attracted to the strong horse.” — Thomas Friedman, newyorker.com, July 5, 2010.

Especially in the Middle East, leaders are looking for who will protect them.

The Biden administration’s passive response to Iranian aggression is imperiling the region, the United States and the Free World. Iran, along with Qatar, have brought all the mayhem to the Middle East. When Iran achieves nuclear weapons capability, as it appears on the verge of doing, just think of what mayhem it will be able to bring then. Stop Iran now.

The Biden administration’s approach to dealing with Iran has been marked by a series of delayed responses, ineffective actions, and cosmetic sanctions that have clearly failed to deter the Islamic Republic’s aggressive behavior. This passive stance not only bolsters the Iranian regime but also jeopardizes the safety and security of Americans and their allies. A thorough reassessment of strategy and a commitment to assertive diplomacy would seem necessary to say the least.

When Iranian assets have been targeted, or even when a serious intent to do so was conveyed, Iranian leaders have relented from launching attacks on other countries, including the US and its allies. The most recent example occurred last month when Iran launched a missile strike into Pakistan. Pakistan, maintaining diplomatic relations with Iran, responded swiftly by launching multiple strikes into Iran shortly after the attack — in contrast to the delayed responses often observed from the Biden administration. Pakistan’s retaliatory strikes resulted in casualties; Iran has appeared to reconsider its aggressive stance. Iran adopted a softer tone; its foreign ministry issued statements expressing a commitment to fostering good neighborly relations with Pakistan.