1054 The End of Israel - Gilad Atzmon

The End of Israel - Gilad Atzmon

Newsletter published on September 14, 2019

(1) The End of Israel - Gilad Atzmon
(2) Israel’s religious right is now in the driving seat - Jonathan Cook
(3) Israel spied on Trump
(4) Israel denies Spying Allegations
(5) Trump accepts Israeli denial
(6) John Bolton was Israel’s "Trojan horse" in the White House

(1) The End of Israel - Gilad Atzmon
http://www.unz.com/gatzmon/the-end-of-israel-2/

The End of Israel

GILAD ATZMON

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

The lesson to be drawn from the current Israeli political stalemate is
that Israel is imploding, breaking into the elements it has never
managed to integrate into one. The schism is no longer the more
quotidian dichotomy of Ashkenazi vs. Arab Jews (aka Sephardim); this
divide is ideological, religious, spiritual, political, ethnic and
cultural. Nor does it break down to Left and Right, Jewish Israelis are
politically with the right even when they pretend to be ‘Left.’ Although
some of the most astute critical voices of Israeli politics and Jewish
fundamentalism are Israelis (such as Gideon Levi, Shlomo Sand, Israel
Shamir and others), there is no political Israeli Left. Israeli politics
break down into a lot of extreme right voters and many ordinary hawks.
The Arab Joint List Party is practically the only Left party in the
Israeli Knesset. This should not be surprising any more. Jewish Left, as
I have been arguing for many years, is an oxymoron; Jewishness is a form
of tribal identification and Left is universal. The ‘tribal’ and the
‘universal’ are like oil and water, they do not mix very well.

What is peculiar about the Israeli political divide is that the Israelis
are more united than ever in their nationalist beliefs and in the
primacy of their Jewish symptoms. Why is it, if the Israelis are so
unified, that no one can form a government in their so-called ‘Jewish
State’?

Avigdor Lieberman, formerly an enthusiastic Netanyahu ally and himself a
radical Jewish nationalist, delved into the Israeli political deadlock
yesterday. He maintained that the elections had already been decided:
"The ultra-Orthodox and Messianic bloc reaches 62-61 seats." The leader
of the rabid nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu said, "If there is no voting
rate of at least 70% in Gush Dan and Sharon, the Halacha government will
be established."

Basically, Lieberman said that unless secular Israelis in Tel Aviv go to
the polls, they should expect to live in a Halacha State under an ultra
right wing Netanyahu government. Lieberman appears to hold the key to
Israel’s political stability. Although he and Netanyahu are ideological
twins regarding Israeli security and nationalist matters, the two are
bitter rivals who fight aggressively against each other. Netanyahu has
known for a few years that, absent a strong ultra right wing government,
he can expect to spend some time behind bars, an adventure that has
become common for Israel’s prime political figures. Netanyahu’s natural
partners are the ultra right parties and the orthodox parties.
Ideologically, Lieberman should also feel comfortable within such a
political coalition but Lieberman has made a crucial political decision,
essential for his political survival. A while back he grasped that his
political home base, Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union,
many of them barely Jewish and subjected to constant rabbinical terror,
regard the Jewish Orthodox parties as their ultimate foes. Many of these
Russian and Ukrainian Jews hold ultra right wing political positions but
also see the Rabbis as an imminent threat to their survival.

Theoretically, Lieberman could broker a huge unity coalition with
Netanyahu at the top, joined by Blue and White (Kachol Lavan) and its
three right wing field marshals, Lieberman’s own party and probably the
Labour party. Such a coalition would hold around 80 Knesset seats, more
than enough to sustain a strong government but this coalition would
refuse to guarantee Netanyahu’s immunity.

Netanyahu gambles instead on a weak ultra right wing religious
government, a government that may not hold for very long but would buy
more time for its PM to stay out of jail.

This conflict at the heart of Israeli politics is a window into the
Jewish state and its fears. Israel is rapidly becoming an Orthodox
Jewish state. Israel’s Orthodox Jews are the fastest growing group in
the country. They are also the country’s poorest population, 45 percent
live below the poverty line in segregated communities. Ordinarily, one
would expect the poor to support the left, but Israeli Torah Jews are
rabid nationalists and openly lend their support to Benjamin Netanyahu
and his party.

Prof. Dan Ben-David of Tel Aviv University warned recently that Israel
could cease to exist in a couple of generations. He pointed to the
astonishingly high birth rate among ultra Orthodox Jews and predicted
that, based on current trends, they will comprise 49% of Israel’s
population by 2065. The ultra Orthodox parties are destined to dominate
the Knesset within a generation or less. Ben David predicts that their
dependence on Israel’s welfare system will lead to a rapid decline is
Israel’s economy. This is economically damaging enough and is made worse
by the refusal of most rabbinical schools to incorporate standard
Western subjects such as mathematics, science and English into their
core curriculum. Consequently, Israel is educating a growing percentage
of its population in a fashion that fails to equip them to contribute to
the needs of a hi-tech society that is immersed in a conflict for survival.

The picture that comes across is peculiar. As Israel becomes
increasingly Jewish and fundamentalist in its nationalist and religious
ethos, it has also become more divided on everything else. The Russian
immigrants find it impossible to live alongside the ultra Orthodox and
vice versa. The secular enclave in Tel Aviv is committed to seeing their
metropolis as an extension of NY. The Israeli Left has morphed into an
LGBT hasbara unit. It has practically removed itself from the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Jewish settlers adhere to the concept of a
‘Two Jewish States Solution.’ They want to see the West Bank become a
Jewish land. Orthodox Jews are barely concerned with any of these
political issues. They well know that the future of the Jewish state
belongs to them. All they need to do is sustain a productive secular
Jewish minority to serve as their milk cow. On top of all of that we
face Bibi’s survival wars that threaten to escalate any minute into a
world conflict.

In light of all of this, the Palestinians are in relatively good shape..
They simply need to survive. Israel seems to be Israel’s fiercest enemy.

(2) Israel’s religious right is now in the driving seat - Jonathan Cook
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2019-09-02/israel-religious-right-driving-seat/

How Israel’s religious right is now in the driving seat

2 September 2019

Next month’s election is not a contest between the right and
centre-left. It’s a battle between different nationalist camps

Middle East Eye – 9 August 2019

The real fight in Israel’s re-run election next month is not between the
right wing and a so-called "centre-left" but between two rival camps
within the nationalist right, according to analysts.

The outcome may prove a moment of truth for the shrinking secular right
as it comes up once again against an ever-more powerful camp that fuses
religion with ultra-nationalism.

Will the secular right emerge with enough political weight to act as a
power-broker in the post-election negotiations, or can the religious
right form a government without any support from the secular parties?
That is what the election will determine.

An earlier election in April, which failed to produce a decisive result
between these two camps, nonetheless confirmed the right’s absolute
dominance. The Zionist centre-left parties, including the founding Labor
party, were routed, securing between them just 10 seats in the
120-member parliament.

Netanyahu, the interim prime minister, was forced to stage new
elections, on 17 September, after April’s ballot left him unable to rope
together secular and religious parties on the right.

To secure a majority in parliament, he needed to include the five seats
of the anti-religious Yisrael Beiteinu party, led by Avigdor Lieberman.

Lieberman eventually pulled out of coalition talks, saying he was not
prepared to sit in a government with two parties effectively run by the
ultra-Orthodox rabbinate. This time, he has indicated he won’t sit with
any of the religious parties.

Much of the rest of the secular right has deserted Netanyahu’s Likud
party. At the last election, they mostly found a political home in the
new Blue and White party, led by a former military chief of staff, Benny
Gantz.

Polls suggest Lieberman may also attract a larger share of these voters
after his recent stand-off with Netanyahu. He has demanded an
exclusively secular right-wing government, comprising Likud, Blue and
White, and his own Yisrael Beiteinu party.

Blue and White has presented itself chiefly as a vehicle for protest
against Netanyahu. They oppose a decade of governments in which he has
allowed the religious right to play an increasingly assertive role, and
the ever-deepening corruption scandals he has been embroiled in.
Netanyahu is expected to be charged with fraud and breach of trust in
the immediate wake of next month’s election.

Blue and White has been misleadingly labelled as centrist by some
observers. But it tied with Netanyahu’s Likud, at 35 seats each, in
April by appealing to a largely secular strain of right-wing nationalism
that three decades ago was the domain of the Likud party.

Now Netanyahu and the religious right hope to work in tandem to secure
between them a narrow majority of seats to form a government without
relying on the secular right-wing parties of either Lieberman or Gantz.

A more polarised Israel

Yossi Gurvitz, an Israeli journalist and researcher on religious
extremism, said the rise of the religious right was an indication of
wider shifts in Israeli society.

"Israel is getting more religious, and its religious parties are getting
more extreme, while much of what’s left of Israeli society is becoming
more militantly secular in response," he told Middle East Eye. "Israel
is polarising, and each is side is increasingly intolerant of the other."

The secular camp, however, has been playing a less significant role with
each passing government.

Menachem Klein, a political science professor at Bar Ilan University,
near Tel Aviv, said he doubted whether it was still possible for a
secular government to be established without including some of the
religious parties.

"It would be a nightmare," he told MEE. "Any move, whether allowing
transport on Shabbat, dismantling settlements or talking to the
Palestinian leadership would face an enormous social backlash if it was
made without the sanction of the religious factions."

‘Chosen people’ A poll of Israeli Jews last year by the liberal Haaretz
newspaper highlighted Israeli society’s growing religiosity, which
closely aligns with the rise of ultra-nationalism.

Some 54 percent of the Jewish public expressed a belief in God, with
that figure rising to 78 percent among those describing themselves as on
the right.

An overwhelming majority of right-wing Israelis – 79 percent – view Jews
as the chosen people, and a similar number, 74 percent, believe Israel
exists by divine promise.

Younger voters are markedly more religious than their grandparents – 64
percent compared to 22 percent. Exactly half of young Israelis reject
the scientific theory of evolution, and 58 percent believe in life after
death. Haaretz noted a clear correlation between Israeli youth’s growing
religiosity and their embrace of right-wing views.

"If you think Israel is religious, conservative and hawkish enough as it
is, wait for the fundamentalist theocracy that’s lurking around the
corner," the paper’s analyst Chemi Shalev concluded. ...

The religious right itself is characterised by three main blocs. All
believe that the occupied territories belong exclusively to the Jewish
people, and are united in their unabashed support for the settlements
and the entrenchment of the occupation.

Political differences relate chiefly to matters of how quickly and
brazenly the occupied territories should be annexed and how the
Palestinian population there should be dealt with. ...

Likud, Gurvitz noted, has moved more firmly into the religious camp
since 2005 when its then-leader, Ariel Sharon, pulled the last remaining
settlers out of Gaza. A backlash from the settlers effectively forced
Sharon and his supporters out of Likud to create a short-lived secular
faction called Kadima.

"What was left behind in Likud was the hard right," he said. "The party
has been moving ever further to the right under Netanyahu."

Since then, the settlers and their allies have come to dominate Likud’s
internal committees, meaning none of its parliamentary candidates wish
to risk alienating them, according to Gurvitz.

... The second bloc comprises two ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and
United Torah Judaism, which look to their respective chief rabbis for
political direction. Between them they won 16 seats in April.

The main difference between the two relates to ethnicity. United Torah
Judaism represents the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox community, whose recent
ancestry is traced to Europe. Shas, meanwhile, represents the Mizrahim,
Jews whose families hailed mostly from the Arab world.

Shas, observed Gurvitz, has blended its rigid belief in divine law with
nationalism more easily than UTJ because of its long-held anti-Arab
positions. A section of its followers serve in the army. Some also work,
unlike most Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox men, who devote themselves to
studying the Torah.

The UTJ, by contrast, has adapted more slowly. Historically, it was
anti-Zionist, rejecting the secular institutions of an Israeli state –
including the army and the courts – until the Messiah arrived to build
God’s kingdom.

But over the past two decades, its leaders too have gradually, though
more reluctantly, moved into the nationalist fold.

That change, according to Gurvitz, has happened because, given the
ultra-Orthodox public’s high birth rates, many have been forced to seek
cheap housing solutions in the settlements.

"As they move into the settlements, their politics shift further
rightwards," said Gurvitz. "Nowadays they give their leaders hell if
they don’t stick fast to ultra-nationalistic positions, or if they try
to cut deals with parties outside the right."

Gurvitz added: "This means the ultra-Orthodox parties are today
effectively in the bag for Netanyahu." ...

The third bloc comprises various small far-right parties representing
what are known in Israel as the national-religious camp – those who
subscribe to the ideology of the settler community.

Gurvitz estimates the camp numbers close to one million – or about one
in seven of Israel’s Jewish population. About half live in the
settlements of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The majority are
religious, but not all of them. ...

(3) Israel spied on Trump

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/israel-white-house-spying-devices-1491351

Israel accused of planting mysterious spy devices near the White House

The likely Israeli spying efforts were uncovered during the Trump
presidency, several former top U.S. officials said.

By DANIEL LIPPMAN 09/12/2019 05:14 AM EDT

The U.S. government concluded within the last two years that Israel was
most likely behind the placement of cell-phone surveillance devices that
were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around
Washington, D.C., according to three former senior U.S. officials with
knowledge of the matter.

But unlike most other occasions when flagrant incidents of foreign
spying have been discovered on American soil, the Trump administration
did not rebuke the Israeli government, and there were no consequences
for Israel’s behavior, one of the former officials said.

The miniature surveillance devices, colloquially known as "StingRays,"
mimic regular cell towers to fool cell phones into giving them their
locations and identity information. Formally called international mobile
subscriber identity-catchers or IMSI-catchers, they also can capture the
contents of calls and data use.

The devices were likely intended to spy on President Donald Trump, one
of the former officials said, as well as his top aides and closest
associates -- though it’s not clear whether the Israeli efforts were
successful.

President Trump is reputed to be lax in observing White House security
protocols. POLITICO reported in May 2018 that the president often used
an insufficiently secured cell phone to communicate with friends and
confidants. The New York Times subsequently reported in October 2018
that "Chinese spies are often listening" to Trump’s cell-phone calls,
prompting the president to slam the story as "so incorrect I do not have
time here to correct it." (A former official said Trump has had his cell
phone hardened against intrusion.)

By then, as part of tests by the federal government, officials at the
Department of Homeland Security had already discovered evidence of the
surveillance devices around the nation’s capital, but weren’t able to
attribute the devices to specific entities. The officials shared their
findings with relevant federal agencies, according to a letter a top DHS
official, Christopher Krebs, wrote in May 2018 to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

Based on a detailed forensic analysis, the FBI and other agencies
working on the case felt confident that Israeli agents had placed the
devices, according to the former officials, several of whom served in
top intelligence and national security posts.

That analysis, one of the former officials said, is typically led by the
FBI’s counterintelligence division and involves examining the devices so
that they "tell you a little about their history, where the parts and
pieces come from, how old are they, who had access to them, and that
will help get you to what the origins are." For these types of
investigations, the bureau often leans on the National Security Agency
and sometimes the Central Intelligence Agency (DHS and the Secret
Service played a supporting role in this specific investigation).

"It was pretty clear that the Israelis were responsible," said a former
senior intelligence official.

An Israeli Embassy spokesperson, Elad Strohmayer, denied that Israel
placed the devices and said: "These allegations are absolute nonsense.
Israel doesn’t conduct espionage operations in the United States, period."

A senior Trump administration official said the administration doesn’t
"comment on matters related to security or intelligence." The FBI
declined to comment, while DHS and the Secret Service didn’t respond to
requests for comment.

But former officials with deep experience dealing with intelligence
matters scoff at the Israeli claim — a pro forma denial Israeli
officials are also known to make in private to skeptical U.S. counterparts.

One former senior intelligence official noted that after the FBI and
other agencies concluded that the Israelis were most likely responsible
for the devices, the Trump administration took no action to punish or
even privately scold the Israeli government.

"The reaction ... was very different than it would have been in the last
administration," this person said. "With the current administration,
there are a different set of calculations in regard to addressing this."

The former senior intelligence official criticized how the
administration handled the matter, remarking on the striking difference
from past administrations, which likely would have at a very minimum
issued a démarche, or formal diplomatic reprimand, to the foreign
government condemning its actions.

"I’m not aware of any accountability at all," said the former official.

Beyond trying to intercept the private conversations of top officials —
prized information for any intelligence service — foreign countries
often will try to surveil their close associates as well. With the
president, the former senior Trump administration official noted, that
could include trying to listen in on the devices of the people he
regularly communicates with, such as Steve Wynn, Sean Hannity and Rudy
Giuliani.

"The people in that circle are heavily targeted," said the former Trump
official.

Another circle of surveillance targets includes people who regularly
talk to Trump’s friends and informal advisers. Information obtained from
any of these people "would be so valuable in a town that is like three
degrees of separation like Kevin Bacon," the former official added.

That’s true even for a close U.S. ally like Israel, which often seeks an
edge in its diplomatic maneuvering with the United States.

"The Israelis are pretty aggressive" in their intelligence gathering
operations, said a former senior intelligence official. "They’re all
about protecting the security of the Israeli state and they do whatever
they feel they have to to achieve that objective."

So even though Trump has formed a warm relationship with Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and made numerous policy moves favorable to
the Israeli government — such as moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem,
ripping up the Iran nuclear deal and heavily targeting Iran with
sanctions — Israel became a prime suspect in planting the devices.

While the Chinese, who have been regularly caught doing intelligence
operations in the U.S., were also seen as potential suspects, they were
determined as unlikely to have placed the devices based on a close
analysis of the devices.

"You can often, depending upon the tradecraft of the people who put them
in place, figure out who’s been accessing them to pull the data off the
devices," another former senior U.S. intelligence official explained.

Washington is awash in surveillance, and efforts of foreign entities to
try to spy on administration officials and other top political figures
are fairly common. But not many countries have the capability — or the
budget — to plant the devices found in this most recent incident, which
is another reason suspicion fell on Israel.

IMSI-catchers, which are often used by local police agencies to surveil
criminals, can also be made by sophisticated hobbyists or by the Harris
Corporation, the manufacturer of StingRays, which cost more than
$150,000 each, according to Vice News.

"The costs involved are really significant," according to a former
senior Trump administration official. "This is not an easy or ubiquitous
practice."

Among professionals, the Israeli intelligence services have an
especially fearsome reputation. But they do sometimes make mistakes and
are "not 10 feet tall like you see in the movies," a former senior
intelligence official noted.

In 2010, the secret covers of a Mossad hit team, some of whom had been
posing as tennis players, were blown after almost 30 minutes of
surveillance video was posted online of them going through a luxury
Dubai hotel where they killed a top Hamas terrorist in his room.

Still, U.S. officials sometimes have been taken aback by Israel’s brazen
spying. One former U.S. government official recalled his frequent
concern that Israel knew about internal U.S. policy deliberations that
were meant to be kept private.

"There were suspicions that they were listening in," the former official
said, based on his Israeli counterparts flaunting a level of detailed
knowledge "that was hard to explain otherwise."

"Sometimes it was sort of knowledge of our thinking. Occasionally there
were some turns of phrase like language that as far as we knew had only
appeared in drafts of speeches and never been actually used publicly,
and then some Israeli official would repeat it back to us and say, ‘This
would be really problematic if you were to say X,’" said the former
official.

Back when the Obama administration was trying to jump-start negotiations
with the Palestinians, for example, the Israelis were eager to get
advance knowledge of the language being debated that would describe the
terms of reference of the talks.

"They would have had interest in what language [President Barack] Obama
or [Secretary of State John] Kerry or someone else was going to use and
might indeed try to find a way to lobby for language they liked or
against language that they didn’t like and so having knowledge of that
could be advantageous for them," the former official said.

"The Israelis are aggressive intelligence collectors, but they have
sworn off spying on the U.S. at various points and it’s not surprising
that such efforts continue," said Daniel Benjamin, a former coordinator
of counterterrorism at the State Department and now director of the John
Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth.

He recalled once meeting with a head of Mossad, the premier Israeli
intelligence agency. The first thing the official told Benjamin was that
Israel didn’t spy on the U.S.

"I just told him our conversation was over if he had such a low estimate
of my intelligence," Benjamin said.

Israeli officials often note in conversations with their American
counterparts — correctly — that the U.S. regularly gathers intelligence
on Israeli leaders.

As for Israel’s recent surveillance of the White House, one of the
former senior U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged it raised
security concerns but joked, "On the other hand, guess what we do in Tel
Aviv?"

(4) Israel denies Spying Allegations

https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/US-officials-accuse-Israel-of-spying-on-Donald-Trump-report-601479

Israeli Officials Deny The Country Is Spying On Donald Trump - Report

According to Politico, a US government investigation concluded that
Jerusalem was behind several devices that were uncovered in Washington.

BY ROSSELLA TERCATIN, HERB KEINON  SEPTEMBER 12, 2019 15:46

Israeli officials are strongly denying allegations that Israel planted
surveillance devices in the proximity of the White House and in other
sensitive locations in Washington, as was reported by Politico on Thursday.

"A blatant lie," the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement. "There
is a longstanding commitment, and a directive from the Israeli
government, not to engage in any intelligence operations in the US. This
directive is strictly enforced without exception."

Foreign Minister Israel Katz, who is also intelligence minister, also
categorically denied the report.

"Israel does not conduct any spying operation in the US," he said in a
statement. "The US and Israel share a great deal of intelligence
information and act together to prevent threats and to strengthen the
security of both countries."

According to Politico, a US government investigation concluded that
Israel was behind several devices that were uncovered in the past two
years, most likely aimed at spying on US President Donald Trump, his
closest circle and other government officials.

The American paper added that the FBI and other agencies working on the
case believe that Israel is to be blamed because of the high level of
know-how and budget needed for the operation.

"You can often, depending upon the tradecraft of the people who put them
in place, figure out who's been accessing them to pull the data off the
devices," a former senior US intelligence official told Politico.

"It was pretty clear that the Israelis were responsible," another former
senior intelligence official said.

According to the paper, a number of so-called "StingRays" were found in
DC. StingRays are phone trackers designed to track phones even when they
are not being used to make a call.

The report added that the Trump administration chose not to hold the
Israeli government accountable.

"The reaction... was very different than it would have been in the last
administration," an official told Politico. "With the current
administration, there are a different set of calculations in regard to
addressing this."

(5) Trump accepts Israeli denial

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-i-dont-believe-israel-is-spying-on-u-s

Trump: ‘I don’t believe’ Israel is spying on US

By Ronn Blitzer | Fox News

Sept 13, 2019

Israel denies allegations it spied on President Trump

The Israeli government is denying a new report accusing them of planting
mysterious spy devices near the White House; Trey Yingst reports.

President Trump on Thursday cast doubt on a report that the Israeli
government may be spying on the United States, touting the enduring
strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

A Politico story based on interviews with former senior U.S. officials
claimed that the government believes Israel planted cellphone
surveillance devices in the nation’s capital over the past few years.
Devices were reportedly planted near the White House and other
locations. The report said the U.S., following a forensic analysis,
determined that agents from Israel most likely brought them here.

"I don’t believe that. No, I don’t believe that the Israelis are spying
on us," Trump said on Thursday evening from the South Lawn, before
heading to a GOP retreat in Baltimore. "I find that hard to believe."

Current and former Israeli officials pushed back hard against the
Politico report on Thursday. Amos Yadlin, the former head of the IDF
Military Intelligence Directorate, reportedly called it "fake news
spiced with anti-Semitism," stating that Israel bans spying on the U.S.

A reporter for Israeli newspaper Haaretz traveling with Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his office was calling the report a
"blatant lie." Like Yadlin, the office said the Israeli government has a
directive not to engage in intelligence operations on U.S. soil.

The president touted the strong relationship between his administration
and Israel, specifically citing the establishment of a U.S. embassy in
Jerusalem and harsh U.S. sanctions against Iran.

"I wouldn’t believe that story," Trump reiterated. "Anything’s possible,
but I don’t believe it."

Fox News’ Greg Norman contributed to this report.

(6) John Bolton was Israel’s "Trojan horse" in the White House

https://orientalreview.org/2019/09/13/boltons-exit-impacts-us-foreign-policy/

Bolton’s Exit Impacts US Foreign Policy

Written by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR on 13/09/2019

At a press briefing Tuesday afternoon in Washington, US Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo cautioned against any rushed estimation that the exit
of National Security Advisor John Bolton signalled a seismic shift in
the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

Pompeo said, "I don’t think that any leader around the world should make
any assumption that because some one of us departs that President
Trump’s foreign policy will change in a material way."

One can go further and say it is futile to attribute logic to President
Donald Trump’s actions. Most certainly, POTUS and his NSA were birds of
the same feather in their shared disdain for multilateralism, the United
Nations, international law, the European Union and even the western
alliance system.

Indeed, both Trump and Bolton are great believers in military force.

Where the two differ narrows down to the alchemy of their hawkishness.
If Bolton is the unvarnished tough guy, Trump is a reluctant tough guy.

Trump views America as a country that just wants to be left alone. He
has little interest in the Wilsonian project of spreading democracy and
liberty across the globe. He’s against nation building. He couldn’t care
less whether other countries are democratic. But when "animals" attack
the US, Trump rejects virtually any moral limits on America’s response.

Nuclear weapons? Well, Trump won’t rule it out. Bolton, in comparison,
consistently believed in the utility of military force as a tool to
proactively reorder the world in America’s interest. He was a fervent
advocate of the Iraq War, and today, a decade later, he still advocates
the same arguments on Iran. He advocated pre-emptively bombing North Korea.

Now, Trump is no peacenik, either. He has boosted the US defence budget,
torn up the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, is
militarising the outer space and is unabashedly spurring an arms race.
But where he differs from Bolton is that his "hawkishness" is of a
different kind.

In a 2016 essay titled Donald Trump’s Jacksonian Revolt, the noted
American strategic analyst Walter Russell Mead compared Trump’s foreign
policy outlook with that of the 19th-century US president Andrew Jackson
— in the sense that Trump believes strongly in the utility of force, but
only if the US national security comes under threat, while remaining
instinctively sceptical of the idea that the US needs to overthrow
regimes in faraway lands in order to protect US national security.

Fundamentally, Trump’s Jacksonian instincts and Bolton’s casual
willingness to deploy force to reshape the world grated against each
other. Situations such as North Korea, Iran and Venezuela found them
crossing each other’s path, with Trump deeply reluctant to be dragged
into war.

Equally, Trump genuinely fancies diplomatic trophies (and the photo-ops)
and prides himself as a master negotiator and deal maker. Despite his
hawkishness, Trump instinctively wades into diplomacy in search of a
masterstroke even without a compass to navigate him. Bolton irritated
him often by muddying the waters.

To be fair to Trump, he prioritises his foreign policy moves with an eye
on his re-election bid in 2020 but Bolton had no such political
compulsions. Bolton has nothing to lose in a new Middle Eastern war
whereas it would be a reckless thing to happen in Trump’s scheme of things.

Bolton was too hawkish for Trump’s calculus and the divergences over
Iran and the negotiations with the Taliban probably culminated in their
parting of ways.

Having said that, Bolton is also not entirely incapable of grasping
nuances in diplomacy. The influential Moscow daily Kommersant has
written that Bolton left mixed feelings in the Russian mind.

A senior Moscow pundit told the daily, "One thing that turned heads
(during Bolton’s visits to the Russian capital) was that Bolton did not
view Russia as the United States’ ‘natural’ adversary. He saw Russia as
Washington’s potential partner in countering common enemies, mentioning
Iran and China among them." Doesn’t that sound almost Kissingerian?

However, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who knew Bolton rather well
from his stint in New York as Russia’s permanent representative to the
UN, has been quoted as saying, "Speaking on Bolton’s political views, we
disagreed with him on most issues. He has a harsh style, and he relies
on using heavy-handed methods, including military ones. As you know, he
had put forward a number of initiatives on modern crises, such as in
Venezuela, Iran and somewhere else."

Lavrov stressed, "How will [Bolton’s dismissal] influence Russian-US
relations? You know, I won’t be guessing. It is President [Donald Trump]
who outlines US policy, and he has spoken many times in favour of
normalising trade and economic, humanitarian and political ties between
our countries and boosting cooperation on the international arena."

"Will the US stance on some foreign policy issues change? Yesterday I
heard Mike Pompeo saying at a news conference that the US foreign policy
would remain unchanged. So, let’s just be guided by what really happens.
And then we will understand whether there are changes or not." (TASS)

In comparison with the Russian ambivalence, the Chinese commentators
welcome Bolton’s ouster. A Global Times analyst noted, "Bolton has also
never been of any good use to China. And he is clearly one of the
players pushing China-US relations to a deep impasse."

The one country that will regret Trump’s decision for sure will be
Israel. Bolton was Israel’s "Trojan horse" in the White House. Israel
watches uneasily as Trump lurches toward engaging Iran in negotiations.

Typically, PM Netanyahu has been quick on his feet to stake claim for a
consultation prize from Trump by declaring just as Bolton’s departure
was announced in Washington, that he would annex Jordan River Valley,
which is about a third of the occupied West Bank.

The prospect of a meeting between Trump and Iranian president Hassan
Rouhani has distinctly improved with Bolton’s ouster. Tehran has
consistently differentiated the "B Team" of hardliners manipulating
Trump’s Iran policies — Bolton, Netanyahu and the crown princes of Saudi
Arabia and the UAE.

Bolton’s departure from the White House will enhance the flexibility of
the US foreign policy. As Senator Rand Paul put it, "the threat of war
worldwide goes down exponentially." We may expect the White House to put
more emphasis on diplomacy.