Author: John Glaser

According to reports in the Israeli paper Haaretz, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is close to getting Israel and the Palestinians to agree on an interim deal. As reported by Barak Ravid, and translated into English from Hebrew by Ira Glunts, the five articles of the deal are as follows:

1. The Palestinians will agree to extend the negotiations for a year, until 2015, and will refrain during this period from taking any unilateral actions at the United Nations.
2. The United States will free the spy Jonathan Pollard before Passover.
3. Israel will initiate a fourth round of prisoner releases that will include 14 Israeli Arabs [Palestinian citizens of Israel]
4. Israel will release 400 Palestinian prisoners “who have no blood on their hands,” that only have a few months remaining on their sentences.  These prisoners to be released will be determined by Israel and will include women and minors.
5. Israel will freeze most of the construction, except in East Jerusalem, and use restraint [rein in] in publishing building tenders and marketing land to contractors.

Let’s take these one at a time, in mixed order. Article 2 is particularly interesting. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 after working as an Israeli spy, infiltrating the U.S. Navy, and secretly passing more than a million highly classified documents to Israel. Israel granted him citizenship in 1995, after eight years in jail, and has been lobbying for his release ever since.

I have to say I’m a little baffled as to why the issue of Pollard’s imprisonment is at all a part of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Pollard has nothing to do with the conflict over territory that has brought the parties to the negotiating table. All I can think is that this is some sort of concession the Israelis are demanding the United States pay for making them go through the trouble of negotiating, as opposed to perpetually and unquestioningly supporting Israel’s gradual annexation of what’s left of Palestine.

Articles 3 and 4 are interesting, too. Releasing 400 non-violent Palestinian prisoners who will be released in a few months anyway doesn’t seem like much of a concession to me. But Israel always characterizes its release of prisoners as a major, back-breaking concession. The inclusion of these articles in this interim deal serves the purpose of being something Israel can point to as a concession (since there are no others on this list).

Article 5, concerning settlement construction, is the most remarkable of all. Notice the incredibly vague and equivocal language. It sounds a lot like Israel will freeze most settlement construction, but taken as a whole it means nothing at all. There is precedent for this. Obama came into office in 2009 calling for a total freeze on settlement construction. Lacking leverage, Netanyahu agreed…and then kept building settlements anyways. Following the 10-month period in which the non-freeze freeze happened, Israel then rapidly increased the rate of settlement construction in what even the New York Times called “a settlement-building boom.”

Settlements, both existing settlements and new ones in construction, are illegal. They are a flagrant violation of international law. That Israel can continue to violate Palestinian sovereignty by building new, state-subsidized Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem while supposedly good faith negotiations move to the next phase is an affront to the senses. Can we image in a scenario in which the PLO is granted authority to continue illegal acts against Israel as an explicit part of an interim deal that is supposed to impose concessions on both sides?

Article 1 notes this interim deal will last for a year, during which negotiations will continue. Leaving aside, for now, all of the foreseeable problems that are bound to come with a final deal, it’s important to note that the Palestinians’ one point of leverage over Israel – full UN membership or even prosecution of Israeli war crimes at the ICC – is off the table in the interim.

Kerry has reportedly received Israel’s approval of this plan. He is waiting on the Palestinians.

Update: Here is the Palestinian response:

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — President Mahmoud Abbas says the Palestinians are “immediately” resuming their bid to win further U.N. recognition and has signed applications for 15 U.N. agencies and conventions.

Abbas’ surprise move late Tuesday could derail U.S.-brokered peace talks with Israel.

Apparently, segments of the GOP political apparatus are trying to put the kibosh on Sen. Rand Paul’s presidential run before it is even officially announced. Paul’s 2016 Republican contenders and their wealthy backers hate his foreign policy so much that they are willing to spend time and resources to destroy his electoral chances.

Reason‘s Matt Feeney has posted a round up of right-wing loathing for Rand Paul’s foreign policy (or, rather, what they think his foreign policy views are) and of recent reporting on GOP plans to shoot Paul’s embryonic presidential campaign dead in its tracks.

“According to several donors at the Republican Jewish Coalition conference held in Las Vegas last weekend,” Feeney writes, “the billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is prepared to fund a campaign against Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) if he picks up increased support during his widely anticipated presidential run in 2016.”

Among DC politicos, it is a near-consensus that Rand Paul’s alleged foreign policy views will handicap him in the GOP primaries. Republicans, they say, just aren’t going to go for anything less than demagogic diatribes disparaging peaceful diplomacy as weak and naive. Right-wing primary voters need the comforting reassurance that their GOP presidential candidates will issue hard-line sermons about the need to bomb Iran, to intervene in Syria, to meddle in Ukraine, and to maintain global primacy through the use of force, coercion, and an ever-expanding military budget that is beyond reproach.

That might be true, but then why does Adelson et al. feel the need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to cripple the Paul campaign? I wonder.

There are two issues at play here. The first is what Rand Paul’s foreign policy views actually are, and the extent to which perception and reality differ. The second issue is the fact that the mainstream foreign policy spectrum has become so belligerent and fringe that the basically establishment views of Rand Paul get vilified as ideologically extreme and unworkable.

Something similar happened during the fight over Chuck Hagel’s confirmation as Obama’s Secretary of Defense. You see, Hagel committed some cardinal sins for a Republican. He criticized Israel’s inhumane treatment of the Palestinians and called out the pro-Israel lobby in Washington, DC. He spoke out against the Iraq war, describing it as “a dangerous foreign policy blunder.” He suggested economic sanctions aren’t an effective foreign policy tool. Hagel even expressed an openness to cut defense budgets!

Appalling stuff, I know. For these thought crimes, Hagel was attacked as an extremist anti-Semite whose views are dangerously outside the mainstream. I actually had to write an Op-Ed at the conservative Daily Caller arguing that Hagel’s foreign policy views were not extreme or isolationist, but firmly within the traditional boundaries of the mainstream. It’s just that what passes for mainstream in the GOP these days is the kind of uninformed pugnacity that you’d think would thrive mainly on the fringes.

On whatever foreign policy issue is hot at the time, the right-wing invariably holds that America must do more, we must act and react forcefully. If we can’t act militarily, we must walk that line and convince the world that U.S. bombs and troops will be forthcoming if Washington faces anything other than absolute fealty on the international stage. Anything less than issuing threats or actually using force is condemned as weakness or appeasement.

On Ukraine, the Republican right insisted on an immediate show of force demonstrating military preparedness with NATO allies. It was also imperative to impose harsh sanctions on Russia and to combatively face down Putin.

But there were plenty of mainstream voices calling for calm and restraint. Henry Kissinger urged prudence. “Public discussion on Ukraine is all about confrontation,” he lamented, arguing that “the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” He advised that “the United States needs to avoid treating Russia as an aberrant to be patiently taught rules of conduct established by Washington.”

Continue reading “Unluckily for Rand Paul, The GOP Has No Room for Mainstream Foreign Policy”

Back in December, I argued in the Huffington Post that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is really not about “free trade,” but about serving the strategic interests of Washington.

Negotiations are still ongoing (mostly in secret, somewhat notably) and many of the details are not known (except for a leaked chapter published by WikiLeaks). While some smaller countries in the Asia Pacific are likely to get a boost economically, the economic gains for the U.S. are minimal: “only 0.13 percent, $27 billion, by 2025,” according to Samuel Rines at the National Interest. “But,” Rines notes, “realizing an immediate economic benefit is not the American goal.”

It’s more about engaging with emerging Asia and being present while the rules of trade are set. Exports and privileged access to the US market benefit emerging Asia, as the terms of trade will favor them over trading partners not at the table. The US and Japan could also act an economic counterbalance to China in the region—helping the smaller, less-developed countries compete for export growth.

While China has said it would like to be part of the discussions, it has yet to sit at the table. China would stand to lose about 1.2 percent in exports, but only about 0.3 percent GDP—translating to only $57 billion in export losses and $47 billion lower GDP. These losses are easily surmountable, and China does not lose enough to be convinced to participate in discussions surrounding state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and governmental participation in the economy.

If one wants free trade, one should encourage open and free commerce across borders without protective tariffs, subsidies, or strictures that crowd out competition for favored corporations. The TPP may lower some tariffs over time, but U.S. lobbyists are pushing for provisions that would keep tariffs, subsidies, and protectionism for big businesses in the U.S. while subjecting everybody else to the grind of competition (for details, see my HuffPost article).

China is being effectively excluded from involvement in the supposed “free trade” deal thanks to provisions that single out specific structures of the Chinese economy for reform. One example cited by Rines is the provisions on targeting state-owned companies, of which China has many.

“Some proposed definitions would go so far as to define an SOE as any business in which a government has a stake, limits the amount of competition, or acts on the company’s behalf,” Rines explains. This is too broad and would target lots of U.S. companies, so Washington is pushing for more specific language to single out Chinese companies, thus discouraging China’s involvement in the deal.

“When it comes to TPP clearly the focus is not the economics for the U.S.,” Rines asserts. “Hailed as part of the Asian pivot, the TPP is more political than anything for the U.S.”

So really the TPP isn’t about free trade. It’s about global power and corporate favors for U.S.-based companies. It’s about boosting Washington’s geopolitical leverage in the Asia-Pacific. It’s about staving off China’s inevitable rise for the sake of preserving America’s global hegemony.

Via Charles Davis, the Washington Post reports on comments made by President Obama today:

Speaking in Brussels, Obama dismissed suggestions by Russia and its supporters that the Iraq war undercuts the United States’ credibility in criticizing Russia’s incursion into Crimea in Ukraine.

“It is true that the Iraq War was a subject of vigorous debate – not just around the world, but in the United States as well,” Obama said. “I happened to oppose our military intervention there.”

Obama added: “But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system. We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory, nor did we grab its resources for our own gain. Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully sovereign Iraqi state could make decisions about its own future.”

This is perhaps the most asinine thing the president has said in the entirety of his presidency. The invasion of Iraq was an illegal, preventive war based on lies. It got hundreds of thousands of people killed and cost trillions of dollars. The U.S.-backed dictator of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, is ruling the nation with an iron fist, as the country slips back into civil war. Nothing but chaos, ruin, and rivers of blood resulted from the criminal invasion. For Obama to even dare to compare Crimea to Iraq is a sick joke.

Obama also rejected comparisons to Kosovo:

Obama then made a similar point about Kosovo, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has cited as another example of the West not walking the walk.

“…NATO only intervened after the people of Kosovo were systematically brutalized and killed for years,” Obama said. “And Kosovo only left Serbia after a referendum was organized – not outside the boundaries of international law – but in careful cooperation with the United Nations, and with Kosovo’s neighbors. None of that happened in Crimea.”

The people of Kosovo were indeed oppressed. But NATO’s bombing of Serbia had the immediate consequence of sharply increasing Serb atrocities of Albanians in Kosovo, not the other way around. The vast majority of the violence occurred after the bombing began, so Obama is inverting the chronology. But even with his fictional chronology, it doesn’t change the fact that the NATO action was a violation of international law, and thus, quite relevant.

Despite Justin’s attempts to place me in the the same camp as the neocons, Anthony Gregory of the Independent Institute has written a balanced and principled piece on this controversy. Here’s an excerpt:

So what should we think? We should probably take a middle ground between B and C. Putin isn’t just an aggressor; he’s one of the worst on the planet. He killed tens of thousands of Chechens. He oversees one of the most vast prison populations on earth. He is essentially a late-communist holdover of the party variety in everything but name, and his violations of civil liberties, free speech, and the dignity of homosexuals and others are not minor matters for any libertarian who cares about the rights of all people on earth. His invasion of Ukraine was unjustified. His annexation of Crimea cannot be defended and although some critics have exaggerated the evils of this territorial power grabs by comparing them to Stalin’s or Hitler’s expansionism, it is true that Putin’s defenders’ arguments based on ethnic nationalism could indeed be used to justify the most infamous European land grabs that occurred that same decade.

As for the United States, its foreign policy is a lot worse than Putin’s biggest detractors wish to acknowledge. While Putin has killed more people than Obama, he does not appear to have killed more people as Bush—and yes, it is a moral failure and deviation from libertarianism to downplay the Iraq war as anything less than one of the very worst international atrocities of our new century, and one that dramatically taints the moral character of U.S. diplomacy. What the last few U.S. administrations have done will haunt much of the world for decades. And the aggression has hardly ceased. Obama’s drone killings are one of the most infamous human rights violations on the planet, the drug war imposed on Mexico has taken tens of thousands of lives, and America’s own civil liberties record is far worse than some on Team America wish to confront. There are tens of millions of people much worse off throughout the world because of recent U.S. diplomacy and wars, and only a cold utilitarian would even attempt to justify this record.

I understand why some libertarians are inclined to emphasize one point or the other. Those Americans focusing on U.S. criminality are right that we have more influence, albeit marginally so, on the government that lords over us, that if we don’t stand up to the U.S. war machine and its covert ops, no one will, and that criticism of foreign aggression often fuels war propaganda at home. But others are frustrated that just because the U.S. government condemns Russian aggression, they’re supposed to keep quiet. “My country is the world,” as Tom Paine said, and libertarians around the world should condemn aggression anywhere it happens. Pretending the U.S. government is the world’s only major problem is naïve at best. The first group is often right that liberal states are more belligerent in foreign affairs, and the second group is often right that it’s easy for people here to forget about victims of foreign oppression. Such dynamics played themselves out in the Cold War, too, and both sides had a point. It would have been demoralizing to be berated for attacking either U.S. or Soviet aggression in those times.

It is hard to maintain the right level of nuance and principle. I think John Glaser and the Jesse Walker blog entry he links to are good models of principled libertarian commentary.

Read it in full here.

In opposing and challenging U.S. foreign policy, there is a tendency among some in the libertarian movement to excuse the crimes and misdeeds of foreign regimes that Washington sees as antagonistic. Fundamentally, I believe this represents a grave bias that has no place in the liberty movement.

Recent statements by Ron Paul have been interpreted by some as being too hesitant to call out Putin for his interventionism in Ukraine. Paul is correct, in my opinion, to place criticism of U.S. foreign policy as a priority over that of other governments (as Americans, that is our responsibility). And we always need to be skeptical of the rhetoric coming out of Washington directed towards America’s ostensible enemies.

But I don’t think it is very libertarian to carry water for Russian policies of military interventionism. This line of thinking was picked up by Alexander McCobin of Students for Liberty. He wrote a perfectly respectful piece disagreeing with Paul on the substance of whether Russia’s incursions and the Crimean referendum were legitimate. In response, Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace wrote a scathing polemic attacking McCobin and pretending like Russian foreign policy is benevolent.

Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com’s Editorial Director, also made this the subject of his column today. I fundamentally disagree with it on many counts.

There are two issues to be addressed here. One is the appropriateness of libertarians condemning governments other than their own. The other is whether or not Russia’s interventionism and Crimea’s referendum were legitimate.

On the latter issue, McAdams and Raimondo argue Russian troops were already in Crimea by mutual agreement. But to say the troops were already there by mutual agreement is to push Putin’s propaganda. Of course, there were thousands (nobody knows exactly how many because they disguised themselves) of extra Russian troops that moved into Crimea that went beyond the mutual agreement. And the mutual agreement was about basing rights in Sevastopol. I don’t believe it granted these Russian troops the right to seize police and military bases, as they did. Some Crimean minorities boycotted the vote, which is their right, but others wanted to vote and couldn’t because they were not sent the vouchers.

Crimeans do have a right to self-determination. And they very well may have voted to rejoin Russia even without Moscow’s meddling and military incursions. But it is just a fantasy to believe this is anything other than an interventionist power grab by Russia. Obviously, this doesn’t mean one ought to support U.S. intervention of any kind. But I think it does mean libertarians, when asked directly, should not defend Putin’s regime.

On the former issue, I believe it is incumbent upon us as Americans to criticize our own government, especially in the realm of foreign policy, before we go off criticizing foreign governments. And while much of the rhetoric coming out of Washington regarding Russia, Iran, China, and other bogeymen is structured to justify more U.S. interventionism, that doesn’t mean the criticisms of those governments are always and everywhere without merit. Just admitting that Russia’s actions are deplorable doesn’t make one an agent of the State Department or in bed with the neocons.

I’m an anti-war libertarian to the bone. But I’m also consistent. There is a lot to criticize about the approach of the U.S. government towards Ukraine. But if the U.S. government conducted the kind of foreign policy Russia has in Ukraine, I would stand in strong opposition to it, as any consistent libertarian should.

Reason’s Jesse Walker posted a rather prescient blog about this earlier this month. It is worth re-reading.

1. It is possible to believe that fascists and other creepy sorts played a notable role in the Maidan uprising and that the revolt was, on balance, a movement for greater freedom.

2. It is possible to believe that the Maidan revolt was a movement for greater freedomand that people elsewhere in Ukraine have legitimate reasons to be aggravated about the new government, and even about the fact that they’re ruled from Kiev in the first place.

3. It is possible to believe that there are Ukrainian citizens with legitimate complaints about Kievand that Russia should not be inserting its military, or indeed any of its influence, into the country.

4. It is possible to believe it’s bad that Russia’s sticking its snout into its neighbor’s affairs andthat it would be dumb for the U.S. to intervene to stop it.

Disagree with any of those combinations of views that you want. But don’t act as though they’re inconceivable. There have been a lot of logical leaps in the debates over the ongoing crisis, particularly—and most dangerously—from the folks who don’t seem able to understand #4.

Bonus: It is possible to believe that the U.S. should stay out of the conflict and that it’s a good idea to allow increased exports of natural gas, not because that will cut into Putin’s power—though that could be a happy effect—but because it’s something the government ought to be allowing anyway.