Global Paradigms

The novelist and arm-chair strategist Mark Helprin who for some reason likes to brag about his service in the "Israeli air-force" (was he a pilot?) and looks like a British actor Edward Fox (the one above on the top) has a very silly op-ed the New York Times today: First there is the idiotic analogy of the Israeli-Egyptian peace process, something about "similar metaphysics." WHEN considering President Bush’s new plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, it would be wise to bear in mind that because political initiatives in the Middle East are cursed with such a high failure rate analysts sometimes use the odds as a substitute for craft. After Anwar Sadat’s spectacular trip to Jerusalem in November 1977, the press, mistaking cynicism for wisdom, was skeptical. After all, in the first 25 years of its existence, Israel had had to fight Egypt four times. But the past was no guide to the future, for in the last 30 years the peace of Menachem Begin and Anwar...

From yesterday's New York Times Bush Aides See Failure in Fight With Al Qaeda in Pakistan Surprised? Hey. guys. You only had to read some of my stuff which was published a while ago: Pakistan in America's War against Terrorism: Strategic Ally or Unreliable Client? Outsourcing the Hunt for Bin Laden Iraq, Iran, and North Korea Are the "Axis of Evil," Why Is Pakistan an Ally? Were We All Wrong About Pakistan, Too?

My article "Six Days -- and 40 Years: In 1967 Israel won Jerusalem, defeated its emenemies, and expanded its borders. It has not recovered since" in The American Conservative (July 16, 2007) is not available yet online. But if you click on the three pasted images, you'll be able to read it:

A few days ago I published The Return of the Jordanian Option in National Interest Online. Ceckout today's Growing Talk of Jordanian Role in Palestinian Affairs in the New York Times. AMMAN, Jordan, July 6 — Inside a drab cellphone shop, set deep inside the sprawling Baqaa refugee camp on the outskirts of this city, Muhammad Khalil and his friends were as gloomy as the fluorescent lights that flickered on the ceiling. “Everything has been ruined for us — we’ve been fighting for 60 years and nothing is left,” Mr. Khalil said, speaking of the Palestinian cause. Just weeks earlier, he might have been speaking enthusiastically to his friends here, in their usual hangout, about resistance, of fighting for his rights as a Palestinian and of one day returning to a Palestinian state. Last Wednesday, however, he spoke of what he saw as a less satisfying goal for the Palestinians here and one that raises concerns for many other Jordanians: Palestinian union with Jordan. “It would be bet...

In the Hobbled Hegemon the guys at The Economist concluded that while its "troubles in Iraq have much weakened it," America is "likely to remain the dominant superpower." It's a long piece, but I didn't but the main thesis. Here for example it poses the argument that American is on decline in the Middle East: Strategists wonder whether the Iraq war has damaged America so badly as to set it on a path to “imperial decline”. Is the post-Soviet “unipolar” world, established after America's first war against Saddam Hussein in 1991, coming prematurely to an end as a result of the second war to topple him? For Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, a leading think-tank, “the American era in the Middle East is over”—and because of the importance of the Middle East, American global power has also been weakened, for years if not for decades. And here: For about two years after the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration could still find ...

Peter Waldman has an interesting page 1 article in the Wall Street Journal, TEL AVIV BUBBLE: As Israel Prospers, Some Fear Its Defenses May Grow Soft. Among other things, Waldman points out that Israel has flourished beyond the wildest dreams of the ardent socialists who founded the Jewish state. Powered by high-tech exports, the Israeli economy grew 6.3% in the first quarter this year, with a 28% jump in personal consumption of durable goods, such as cars and refrigerators. Sales of Porsches doubled in 2006 from 2004, and last year Lexus opened shop in the Jewish state. Waldman's piece includes more info and statistics and he focuses in particular on Great Tel-Aviv as a symbol of this Israeli economic and technological progress. The problems starts when he tries to suggest that these dramatic socio-economic changes are responsible for the weakening of the Israeli resolve to deal with its security challenges. Yet prosperity has not brought security. As Israelis begin another summe...

Business Times - 27 Jun 2007 New financial system faces political backlash Most recent example is the efforts by US lawmakers to squeeze more tax money from Blackstone By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT ECONOMISTS have been celebrating the remarkable expansion in the financial system in recent years and the way it has been revolutionising the global economy. They are tying to figure out how the explosion in and globalisation of finance and the creation of new financial assets and emergence of new financial players have been transforming the global economic landscape. It has, for example, accelerated the liberalisation of the global financial sector, and in the way business is done by creating incentives for takeover and mergers. Many economists agree the forces of the new global capitalism - their most revolutionary players being the managers of equity and hedge funds - have made the process of wealth creation - the main task of the market economy - more efficient and productive. H...

Business Times - 22 Jun 2007 US just hurts itself when it plays hardball with China By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT WHILE US officials were welcoming their Chinese guests in Washington on Wednesday to start talking about ways to strengthen ties between China and the United States, American lawmakers were pressing the Bush administration to increase pressure on Beijing in a way that was bound to increase tensions between these two powers. US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and China's Executive Vice-Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo are chairing the Sino-American talks in Washington, as part of a dialogue between officials from both countries aimed at managing their differences over such issues as Iran's nuclear programme, the violence in the Darfur region in Sudan and the resolution of the North Korean nuclear crisis. For anyone interested in continuing engagement between the world's only remaining superpower and its rising economic and military power, the dialo...

Read my The Return of the Jordanian Option on National Interest Online.

On the mess there you can hear my words of wisdom on Newsweek on Air.

I've written a long article on the Six-Day-War and its aftermath which is going to be published in a magazine in two weeks. So I'm not going to preempt myself here (just wait patiently for my piece). But I highly recommend reading Tom Segev's 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East. I share his basic "narrative" about the war (Shouldn't have happened; too bad it happened; if only we could "rewind" history...). I also recommend three recent items on the subject: 1. Henry Luarnes, "1967: a war of miscalculation and misjudgment" in Le Monde Diplomatique. 2. David Remnick, "The Seventh Day" in the New Yorker . 3. Havrey Morris, "And on the Sixth Day the World Changed" in The Financial Times .

I feel a lot of pressure to write something about the Sopranos final scene. I actually liked it. Very creative: produce your own finale. But I really liked the way Chase developed the AJ character in the final episodes. He enters the looney bin. And then he becomes a New Age environmentalist. And finally he starts repeating all the neocon cliches about the war on terror but ends up a chicken hawk.

Please read my Time to Ignore the Middle East? Upadte : Interesting debate over my piece among Democrats here and here. (Thanks ScarletWoman!). Those who disagree should explain in what way the Middle East policy paradigm of each of the three candidates would be different than that of Bush. In fact, the rhetoric of Clinton and Edwards on Iraq is toughter than the administration's.

Business Times - 07 Jun 2007 Bush's legacy is America's albatross It will take years of effort and genuine skill to restore political credibility and legitimacy By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT IN my 15 years of covering Washington, I cannot recall a time when the elite and the public in the capital of this ageing global superpower have been more pessimistic about the future their country and so cynical about and distrustful of their political leaders. The sour mood of the country has been reflected in the most recent The Washington Post-ABC News poll which indicated that three-quarters of the American people believe that the country is 'pretty seriously on the wrong track'. And only a minority of Americans approve of the job that President Bush (35 per cent) and Congress (39 per cent) are doing. The poll also suggests that the gloomy outlook of most Americans have to do with the war in Iraq and US foreign policy in general. Fifty per cent of Americans do not thin...

Peter Berkowitz had a piece on The Conservative Mind in the Wall Street Journal editorial page in which he argued that "The American right is a cauldron of debate; the left isn't." According to the Hoover Institute's scholar, unlike those on the left, "those to the right of center are engaged in an intense intra-party struggle to balance competing principles and goods." There is all the standard blah..blah..blah.. about the differences between libertarians and social conservatives, Hayek vs. Kirk, etc. But then there is this: But on non-standard issues--involving dramatic changes in national security and foreign affairs , the power of medicine and technology to intervene at the early stages of life, and the social meaning of marriage and family, the partisans show a clear difference: the left is more and more of one mind while divisions on the right deepen. Consider Iraq. The split among conservatives has widened since Saddam was toppled in the spring of ...

Business Times - 25 May 2007 Sino-US relations finely poised Congress wants China to revalue their currency while Beijing says it is not to blame for the US' rising trade deficit By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT THE minor agreements that were reached during the two days of negotiations between American and Chinese officials in Washington are not likely to change the China bashing mood on Capitol Hill. Democratic and Republican lawmakers continue to consider legislation aimed at 'punishing' Beijing for rejecting US demands that it allow its currency to rise against the greenback. The second of the twice-annual 'Strategic Economic Dialogue' between high-ranking officials led by US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Chinese Vice-Premier Wu Yi concluded on Wednesday with both sides trying to offer a positive spin on the outcome of the talks. Vice-Premier Wu described the negotiations as a 'complete success' and stressed that 'through the dialogue we ...

Steven Clemons reports on his blog The Washington Note that: Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously. This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument. The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise m...

The reason Ron Paul should be elected as the Republican presidential candidate.

Please read my A Mediterranean Membership Club on National Interest Online. And in case you missed my The Wolfowitz Touch – or How to Lose US Credibility.

The new French President Nicolas Sarkozy's proposal to form a Mediterranean Union, which will include also the Arabs states in the region and Israel, has received no attention in the media here. As someone who has called for an increasing role for the European Union in the Middle East and Israeli accession into the EU, I'm very interested in Sarkozy's idea. According to the IHT: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also on Sarkozy's mind. In his speech Sunday, he described the Mediterranean as the region "where everything is being played out." He added: "We must surmount all the hatreds to make space for a great dream of peace and civilization." And: In Israel, where Sarkozy's Toulon speech was circulated in diplomatic circles, the reaction was also positive. When Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres called Sarkozy on Monday to congratulate him on his election victory, he said that the idea of a Mediterranean Union was "very important" ...