John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DANIEL LARISON IN CHECKPOINT ASIA

 

“Trump’s “Maximum Pressure” Blows Up in His Droopy Face

“If Iranians are ever going to talk to the US again they have to restore their leverage first”

 

Yes, who negotiates with a gun to his head? Only someone who is defenseless, but that certainly does not characterize Iran.

By what degradation of language are such proposals as America’s even called “negotiation”?

What we see is an effort to conduct international relations along the lines of the age-old Mafia protection racket: pay-up or something really bad is going to happen to you. That is world leadership in the twenty-first century?

It sets a terrible precedent, just as Trump’s tearing-up a valid, working treaty did. A treaty which involved the interests of a number of other states, none of whom agreed with Trump. The interests of five permanent members of the Security Council plus those of Germany and the EU are involved.

Yet Trump felt entitled just to ride roughshod over all of them?

Imagine a businessman suddenly ripping-up a written, multi-party contract, one already in force and operating smoothly for about four years? Here we see precisely that situation, except the international sphere lacks the courts and law enforcement which protect contracts in any advanced country.

Who can trust the United States? What is its word worth? Very little apparently, which of course only compounds the current situation with Iran, just as it does the one with North Korea. Ultimately, the question arises, who will want to do business with the United States? Given America’s relative economic decline in the world, that is just the opposite of what it should communicate to the world’s people to foster investment and trade.

The attitude which should prevail is the one, ironically, we see in Russia: open for business, reasonable, “right this way, partners.” I say “ironically” because not all that many years ago, Russia was a country understood as understanding none of those things.

Now, it very much is the United States of Donald Trump which understands none of those things.

The author’s points are valid, but there are yet more.

The mob running the White House wants Iran to “throw the kitchen sink” into a new deal. What was a clear nuclear-upgrading treaty should become a “and a number of other things” treaty.

At the very least, they want Iran’s missile technology degraded or removed.

A ridiculous expectation in today’s world of missile defense and satellite launching and ultimately all kinds of important projects in space. Much of future scientific work and even manufacturing will be done in space.

Iran has a lot of smart young educated people who want to pursue careers in science or technology and build companies. Why should they be arbitrarily excluded?

Of course, all the grotesque pressure comes ultimately from Israel, by way of American oligarchs who make massive campaign contributions when their terms are met, and through the dedicated efforts of government-service apparatchiks like Bolton and Pompeo.

Israel has worked tirelessly to hurt Iran as a rival for influence in the region. It has nothing to do with genuine security, as Israel pretends. Non-nuclear countries do not attack nuclear ones, and Iran has committed no aggression of any kind in its modern history.

The only kind of security involved is Israel’s sense of security in doing whatever it pleases to anyone anywhere in the region without effective objection, a miniature replica of America’s global behavior.

In a bitter irony, the invasion and destruction of Iraq, done largely at the behest of Israel (Ariel Sharon was a long and fervent advocate) in a terribly bloody war with at least a million deaths, actually increased Iran’s relative influence in the region. So much for the foresight of those who play with the lives of others as though they were game pieces.

What a way for America to run a country and try running the world – almost rabid efforts at destroying someone’s economy accompanied by grotesque threats and terrible displays of war machines, all reflecting no more worthy purpose than securing campaign contributions and political allies back home. And it comes at the same time America conducts a massive trade war with China and a huge campaign of vilifying Russia and hurting its interests. Then there are the smaller destructive works underway such as those in Venezuela. And all the vast and impetuous mass of sanctions and tariffs involved affect everyone else of consequence too.

The whole crisis further highlights America’s relative decline. The country’s leadership – and it’s not just Trump, although he is by far the loudest and most uncouth – has become openly arbitrary and demanding in efforts to counteract its decline, and no one responds well to that. Iran will certainly resist, assisted, hopefully, by such powerful associates as China and Russia and even India.

But Europe, too, is feeling the unwarranted pressure and the unfairness, the effort to skew the entire planet’s affairs in America’s favor. It is undoubtedly thinking hard about future relations with the United States.

If Trump’s efforts do not lead to war, they may very well lead to international economic collapse with all the tariffs and sanctions and reduced volumes of trade plus the threat to oil transport. But if, somehow, we avoid either of those outcomes, I think there can be no question this impossibly arrogant and ignorant President has effectively “greased the rails” for the emerging multi-polar world, one which effectively will end America’s privileged and much-abused authority.

Trump’s legacy will not have been to “make America great again,” whatever that slogan is supposed to mean, but to speed the very changes in the world to which the slogan was a response

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

Netanyahu is well known for despising the Oslo Accords from the beginning.

And now his long series of dark and hostile acts has pretty well succeeded in destroying them.

But that’s only a small part of what he has done. Mass killing in Gaza. Attempt to starve the people out with blockade (they actually counted the calories for minimum sustenance in the early stages). Piracy on the high seas. Horrible bombing in Lebanon. Assassinations. Threats and insults in every direction. Imprisoning without proper trial. Sending armed men more than once into holy places. Stealing homes in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

And Netanyahu has always made outrageous demands before even talking – for example, the demand that Israel (defined by what borders?) be first recognized as the land of the Jewish people (even though the overwhelming majority of the Jewish people do not live there – this is also a demand which directly threatens the lives of the million or so Palestinians who hold Israel citizenship through the accident of being trapped in horrors of 1948).

It couldn’t be clearer – although our press won’t say so – that Netanyahu is dedicated to creating Greater Israel, taking the land Israel illegally controls minus its unfortunate residents. It is slow-motion ethnic-cleansing, and nothing less.

What would you say and do if you were a Palestinian?

These people – five million or so in the occupied territories and East Jerusalem – live with no votes, no rights of any kind, almost no ability to travel, daily abuse, a good deal of danger and contempt, not even secure home ownership, and, to cap it all, the people responsible for all the oppression broadcast to the world a steady stream of public relations announcements about being a democratic country.

Netanyahu – whose acts and words literally scream a narcissistic if not psychopathic personality – is one of the most dangerous men on the planet, and an Israel under his leadership or under the leadership of anyone like him, such as the late Ariel Sharon, will never seriously consider peace and the fundamental compromises so clearly needed to secure it.

I am most afraid it will all end in tragedy.

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Response to a reader comment:

First, the Ashkenazim of today’s Israel have no relationship to the ancient Hebrews beyond sharing their religion. They are people largely of European origin, a fact which is established by their history, language (Yiddish-Taitsh), and even DNA testing.

But even if one somehow imagines the Ashkenazim as the descendants of the ancient Hebrews, how do they have a claim over land they would have left 2,000 years ago and others long have inhabited?

They don’t of course. It is an absurd proposition.

If you believe that is somehow proper way of doing things, then the Greeks should control Turkey (the Trojan War), Italians should control France (Gaul), Mongolia should control much of Europe (Genghis Khan), and indeed most of the planet should be completely re-ordered.

In many cases, there would be multiple claims to particular places, and, indeed, this is very much the case for Israel/Palestine. The Egyptians and the Phoenicians (Lebanon) ruled there for a long time before the Hebrews. Greece, Italy, and others would also have claims.

The notion of a Biblical foundation for modern Israel is so preposterous that it makes one’s head spin. But more than that, it was so clearly a violent and dangerous idea from the start. If someone with weapons and threats chased you from your home, claiming ownership in the name of vague and uncertain ancestors, and murdered many of your neighbors, is there any way to look at that as promoting peace or security or a bright future? It promotes feuds and hatred on all sides.

Apologists for Israel just remain blind to these basic principles.

Now, I am someone who regards the foundation of modern Israel as a geopolitical mistake because it was certain to create strife and bloodshed for countless years, but I am also one who believes that now that the mistake has been made, we have to try making it work. That can only happen if Israel ends its occupation, returns to its 1967 borders, and starts cooperating with, instead of attacking and oppressing, its neighbors. It must also give up imperial ambitions of growth at the expense of neighbors and working to dominate all of West Asia, and that is absolutely an accurate description of what motivates a tyrant mind like Netanyahu’s, and it is guaranteed to create endless strife and horrors.

The Palestinians were not responsible for the Holocaust, an event which happened in another land on another continent in another time. Why must they pay so terrible a price? And the cowardly American and European politicians who refused to help migrating Jews three-quarters of a century ago eased their guilt by supporting the creation of Israel, making innocent people pay the price for their own misdeeds.

No settlement or resolution which does not recognize these glaring realities and injustices can possibly succeed in the long term.

I do think Israel – at least the Israel of terrifying leaders like Netanyahu – is its own worst enemy. Refusing to deal with burning injustices means Israel ultimately is likely to go the way of the Soviet Union. After all, Israel today much resembles the old Soviet state with its huge military-intelligence-security establishment, its poorly functioning general economy only sustained by subsidies, and its ruthless hold over millions of captives who do not want to be held.