Thank you to whomever it was who posted this link to the New York Times story. It is terrifying and all quite plausible. Keep in mind that these terrible descriptions concern the effects of fission bombs, not fusion bombs which are a thousand times more powerful.
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A Commentary on the Passing Scene by Robert Paul Wolff rwolff@afroam.umass.edu
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The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
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- Robert Paul Wolff
- As I observed in one of my books, in politics I am an anarchist, in religion I am an atheist, and in economics I am a Marxist. I am also, rather more importantly, a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a violist.
78 comments:
The article unfortunately confirms that the excess of caution that existed in the Obama administration continues in the Biden administration and it all but guarantees an eventual nuclear exchange with Russia or China if it continues.
It's unfortunate that the article leaves out (beyond a mere notation on the map) the nuclear calculus that may be part of current Israel/Gaza policy.
Allowing extortion to determine what weapons Ukraine gets and under what conditions they may be used merely encourages more threats from Putin and empowers what is becoming a fifth column in the U.S. and other NATO nations.
I've always found this interesting:
https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/90000/90008/earth_vir_2016_lrg.jpg
While no one is likely to "win" a nuclear exchange, perhaps it should be noted that as civilizations/nations go, the alliances of one side go from Perth west to Sydney while Russia is essentially two small points of light. I'm sure that has been considered on at least one side.
I wish you'd be a little bit less elliptical and profuse in your comments, aaall. More agile minds than mine perhaps get all your insinuations, but I imagine I'm not alone in being left wondering,'what did he/she/they mean?' E.g., for one, could you develop the first paragraph re excessive caution?
For another, your third paragraph seems to imply that those giving weapons to Ukraine should pay no heed to possible consequences for themselves. Which responsible government could possibly do that? (For what it's worth, in my opinion, no government giving Israel free rein wrt the use of weapons gifted them can be deemed responsible.)
Right after seeing the professor's post this morning, I was just now re-reading George Oppen's book The Materials (1962), so from roughly the same time as the CND with Bertrand Russell, E. P. Thompson et alia, and Bob Dylan's 'Let Me Die In my Footsteps'--over 60 years ago. I came across this:
THE CROWDED COUNTRIES OF THE BOMB:
What man could do,
And could not
And chance which has spared us
Choice, which has shielded us
As if a god. What is the name of that place
We have entered:
Despair? Ourselves?
That we can destroy ourselves
Now
Walking in the shelter,
The young and the old,
Of each other's backs and shoulders
Entering the country that is
Impenetrably ours.
Professor: Did Philosophy Departments receive Defense Dept funding for work in symbolic logic in 40s and 50s?
I doubt that departments did but it is possible that some individuals did, perhaps at MIT, but probably not in philosophy. At a point near the end of my doctoral studies when I was having doubts about whether to become a professor of philosophy, I actually had an interview with the CIA. It is a funny story and I have told it in my autobiography. Nothing came of it because my eyes were not good enough for me to get a reserve commission in the army, so instead I got my PhD, did six months as a buck private in the Army, and went on to my philosophical career.
Thank you, sir. I have read two of your autobiographies (are there more?) and some of your many books. Been trying to find how symbolic/mathematical logic contributed to computer programming. Have found no connection with philosophy, only mathematics. It seems obvious that philosophical symbolic logic contributed to the intellectual cloud of the time. (C.I Lewis must have been a really good man!!!) Give yourself a hug for me: bspinozanow
https://thebulletin.org/premium/2024-01/introduction-what-you-can-do-to-turn-back-the-hands-of-the-clock/#post-heading
note the 'person' in the graphic
I’m puzzled by the assertion in the latest NYT piece on nuclear war—
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/07/opinion/nuclear-weapons-president.html
—that only one person, the President, can set the American nuclear weapons in motion. Daniel Ellsberg, I think, makes the point in his book “The Doomsday Machine” that the decision to launch was distributed down to military theater commanders and even lower in order to guard against a first strike. Other countires with nuclear weapons have seemingly followed the same path.
The NYT article also frames it as the US responding to a perceived nuclear attack. But again as i think Ellsberg presents it, the USA still adheres to a first use approach—i.e., it could use nuclear weapons first even if it was not itself facing a nuclear attack.
Ellsberg’s discussion of all this stems from material he had available from his time as a nuclear strategist but didn’t make public until that book.
Does anyone KNOW as distinct from merely having an opinion, whether Ellsberg was right—or whether I’m misunderstanding him?
Anonymous @12:46 p.m.
The U.S. has not adopted a "no first use" policy, but the current policy documents make clear that nuclear weapons are to be used only in "extreme circumstances."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use#United_States
P.s. According to what I just linked, the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review says the U.S. will not use nuclear weapons first against non-nuclear states that are NPT members and are in compliance w their NPT obligations, irrespective of what else such states may do.
Thanks, LFC. I read somewhere that the policy was altered under Trump. In the same place, an Arms Control book/journal?, it was noted that "extreme circumstances" was open to loose interpretation, so I guess I don't feel all that safer.
Re: previous posts and hundreds of comments: Brian Leiter posted a link to a recent piece by the political scientist and theorist Alex Gourevitch, 'Seven Realities of Israel/Palestine'. I found the piece immensely intelligent, philosophically penetrating (in the discussion of moralizing politics) and politically clear-sighted, and am recommending it to everyone, including anyone reading here who hasn't already seen it: https://damagemag.com/2024/03/05/seven-realities-of-israel-palestine/
I see JR just posted a link to the piece so I'll just second the recommendation.
Also, hope we get a nod soon.
Scary funny:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1767184636810088806
Wrt Gourevitch’s Reality 1 “There is no political side worth choosing,” I took particular note of this paragraph:
“The absence of a popular, organized power with a credible claim to emancipate anyone is not special to Palestine/Israel. It is a generalized phenomenon of our politically incapacitated moment. The current violence in Israel puts the wider impasse on vivid display.”
That is something that resonates with me since for the first time in my life, given my citizenship status, I am now being presented with the opportunity to make a small political choice in the UK. But while there are individuals I deem worthy of electoral support (none that I know of in any constituency I might be able to vote in), they’re all too likely, should they make it to the Westminster or the Holyrood parliaments, to just buttress parties “not worth choosing.”
I’m aware parallel contentious discussions have appeared on this blog wrt how to behave politically in the USA.
I guess my deeper point, if there is one, is whether one should accept Gourevitch’s Reality 1?
And to the topic of this blog, is it always obvious which regime will bring on nuclear armageddon and which will not?
Anonymous,
As to your last question, I can say that I am confident which one won't bring Armageddon between now and next January 20. After that, we'll have to see.
David Palmeter,
Trump shouldn't be trusted with a BB gun, much less with nuclear weapons, but I don't trust Biden either. He's a hawk, he's gotten the U.S. involved in Ukraine and he's sending arms to Israel. He's bombing Yemen. Not only is he a hawk, who backed the invasion of Iraq, but also he's not as mentally sharp as he used to be. So in a tough situation, Biden, given his mental deterioration, could let his macho hawkish gut feelings rule him.
Although I never was a 100% Obama supporter, I trusted Obama with nuclear weapons because in his guts Obama was a not jingoist nor a hawk like Biden is.
s. wallerstein,
I don't agree with your assessment of Biden. First, I think we should have helped Ukraine and should continue to do so. Russia has violated the UN Charter in attacking another UN member, and all UN members have an obligation to come to Ukraine's assistance. The fact that many are not doing so reflects on them, not the UN members who are assisting Ukraine.
As for arms for Israel, the US has been supporting Israel since 1948. Should we not have done so? True, Netanyahu is something else again, and I think what's going on right now in Gaza is deplorable--but that's a matter of degree. Hamas was elected to office by the Gazans, and Hamas started this thing on Oct 7--and still has civilian hostages, if they're still alive. Israel had every right to respond proportionately to that attack--but Israel's response by now is way out of proportion.
s.w.,
Biden opposed, in internal Obama administration debates, the 2009 "surge" of some 30,000 U.S. soldiers into Afghanistan that Obama ordered. Biden also withdrew the U.S. military from Afghanistan in 2021, albeit in a way that could have been planned better.
The idea that only a "hawk" would have aided Ukraine vs. the Russian invasion is just wrong. As David P. says, the Russian 2022 invasion of Ukraine was as clear a violation of Art. 2(4) of the UN Charter as has been seen in many years.
You're of course entitled to dislike Biden and think that he would have been among those you despised if you had gone to high school with him, but you're letting this personal, visceral dislike of him (derived from wherever) affect your political perceptions unduly, in my view.
p.s. On the Mideast, I do not think Biden has put sufficient pressure on Israel, but the context is a long-running de facto alliance between the U.S. and Israel (irrespective of particular prime ministers and governments), and Biden's own personal feeling of connection to Israel which, whatever its original source, goes back a long way.
LFC,
We're not talking about a political perception. We're talking about whom we trust with nuclear arms.
Just as all of you (and me too) make judgments based on what we, as amateur psychologists,
perceive to be Trump's personality, I believe I have the right to make judgements about
Obama's and Biden's personalities.
Given those judgements, I trust Obama with nuclear weapons a lot more than I do Joe Biden.
First of all, Obama is an extremely rational and calculating human being, with a higher IQ than Biden. Second, Obama has developed the feminine side of his personality more than the average (or normal) Amerikan macho. Given his high degree of rationality and his feminine side (of which he is conscious), Obama is unlikely to over-react in a crisis and use nuclear weapons.
Biden, on the other hand, is the Marlboro man, the Amerikan macho (don't mess with me)
with less development of the feminine side of his personality or perhaps with a repressed feminine side, the repression of which occupies much psychic energy. In addition,
there is a certain obvious cognition deterioration in Biden, which in a crisis, might well lead him to react as the angry macho (don't mess with me) leading to nuclear destruction.
Once again, compared to Trump, Biden is a sage.
s.w.,
I think there is actually not much "obvious cognitive deterioration" in Biden. He occasionally forgets things or mixes up one foreign leader w another, but that is not evidence of much deterioration, in my (amateur) view. And he has a longstanding issue w his speech and diction, causing him sometimes to rush over sentences and fail to pronounce words clearly in a speech. Whether this has worsened over time I'm not sure (it was noticeable in his State of the Union speech, something I pointed out, to much negative reaction, on another blog), but it's not in itself evidence of cognitive deterioration.
"He's a hawk..."
s.w., as with "Wall Street," etc. these terms are stale and rather useless for much of anything serious. Besides, Biden and his national security team are, if anything, too cautious (Ukraine should have had Patriots, F-16/FA-18s, etc. long ago). Do you believe Russia, China, etc. get to invade where and when they will?
The Czech president has cobbled together the funds to acquire ~800,000 155mm rounds from non-US/EU/UK sources. The world is awash in munitions so we may have less ability to influence/intimidate Israel then is commonly believed. And, of course, the Israeli government. which is currently composed of corrupt thugs and religious nuts, has the capacity to, on its own, permanently solve Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Also, Biden has to not only deal with Bibi but also the AIPAC fifth column in the US.
I don't get the Yemen reference as you have previously agreed that firing on shipping engaged in innocent transit is unacceptable. If "pretty please" doesn't work there is only one other option.
Just what is your basis for judging Biden's mental capacity as "declining."
LFC, Pompeo and Trump basically surrendered in Afghanistan and sandbagged Biden after the election by drawing down U.S. forces to 2,500 troops. The Senate rules allowed the Republicans to keep important positions in State and Defense empty. I believe the U.S. was supposed to be out by April under the terms of the P/T surrender. Biden had a choice: Surge troops and restart the war or do the best with what he had. Anything can be improved at the margins but a bad hand is a bad hand. Bush fumbled and Obama got played - as you point out Biden was right then and, considering the sabotage, did OK.
s.w., I believe Thatcher, for one, put paid to those curious notions and Obama loved him some drones.
I just love the "etc." in the query "Do you believe Russia, China, etc. get to invade where and when they will?"
"etc." most evidently is shorthand for the USA in recent history; France, Israel, and GB are close contenders
Biden's cognitive deterioration
I'm 77, almost 78 and I'm too old to be president. My memory often slips. I need to rest more frequently. If I were to take the SAT's again, I'm certain I would get a lower score than I did at age 18.
Biden is several years older than I am and he shows his age. He confused Macron with Mitterand. I don't do that yet, but maybe I will at age 81.
That doesn't mean that someone at age 81 has to retire to their rocking chair on the front porch. At age 81 and even older one has lots of accumulated wisdom and knowledge to convey to others as Professor Wolff shows.
But the president of a super power needs to be someone who is mentally sharp after only getting 2 hours or less sleep during a crisis, who can play nuclear chess (that's a metaphor) with Putin or Xi. Biden isn't in mental shape to do that. Neither am I.
I've bookmarked the Alex Gourevitch piece (linked by Leiter and by J. Rapko here) for possible later reading, but I did glance through it quickly just now. I noted this passage:
"It is notable that the only serious political demand to emerge out of the current violence is a ceasefire. People can say one-state or two-state, “Palestinian freedom” and self-determination, but it means nothing. It can’t until there are organized movements, among Palestinians and within Israel, that want to live in and extend to each other equal freedom. These will not emerge in the absence of wider movements, outside the region, of the same sort. Nor will they take shape without internal divisions emerging within both Israeli and Palestinian society."
This is a bit overstated. First, there are already some internal divisions w/in the two societies. Second, there are some groups within both societies interested in a genuine settlement based on compromise, but they are still small and rather marginal, I think. However, they do exist, and one hopes they will gain strength in the future.
At another pt Gourevitch makes a point about trust as the basis for a real settlement. This is an obvious point but important. Without some degree of mutual trust, negotiations will fail as they have in the past. The question is how to inculcate and encourage it. I suspect the current war has set back that process, to whatever small extent it existed before.
The situation is depressing, but there are small (to use a cliché) rays of hope. A change of top leadership on both sides is one prerequisite for any progress toward a settlement, istm.
sw,
I don’t understand what your point is in running through Biden’s many age-related shortcomings. Believe me, I agree with you on your describing the short-comings of aging. I know them well. I’m 86, nine years older than you, and I can assure that the next nine years will be tougher than the previous nine.
But—so what? Biden’s age is what it is and so is Trump’s. That’s the choice. What’s the point today in listing otherwise valid points of concern when faced with this simple binary choice?
Age is certainly a valid concern, but it is one of many. That’s why I waived it aside during the 2020 nominating campaign and supported Bernie Sanders who’s a year older than Biden.
David Palmeter,
I don't believe that any readers of this blog and still less those who comment regularly here need to be convinced that Biden is a superior choice to Trump.
You began this conversation by insisting that there is no danger of a nuclear holocaust if Biden is in charge.
I differed from that and I will not repeat what I said above.
I will make one more point about Biden and his age. The fact that in spite of his age Biden insists on running for president, instead of stepping aside in name of a younger Democratic alternative to Trump, indicates either an exccess of personal ambition or a complete lack of self-awareness, neither of which is a virtue.
Better than Trump, obviously. Still, it's sad that Biden and Trump are the only realistic options in 2024.
sw
A different Democratic nominee might well have been better, but the way to that was effectively blocked by Kamala Harris. Fairly or not, she is seen as not presidential material. But if she were not the nominee, it would have hurt the Democrats badly with the Black vote. I think if Biden had decided not to run again, the Democrats would have been in big trouble. That's just my two cents worth; we can never know.
Biden in fact had an extremely successful first two years with small majorities in the House and in the Senate. His domestic policy accomplishments are on a par with those of FDR and LBJ. He has turned out to be a much better president than I thought he would be, and I'm not alone in that assessment.
I fear this election even more than I feared the prior two. To me nothing else on the political scene should interfere with defeating Trump. And it isn't just the votes Trump will get form bigoted and ignorant voters that I worry about, but the integrity of the vote counting itself. What mechanisms have be quietly adopted by legislators or officials in key states dealing with vote counting? They did their best after the count last time, to overcome the results. They've had four years to prepare for it this time.
sw
You write as if Biden just graduated from Top Gun. I remember at the start of the War that Biden kept on telling the PRESS that he would not send in official U.S. combat groups to Ukraine because that would end up starting a WW3 with Russia.
And as far as Obama is concerned, that was pretty daring, & maybe even a little hawkish in taking out Osama Bin Laden right in the middle of Pakistan.
While I wouldn’t want to completely discount the personal attributes of “decision makers” as playing some part in deciding to initiate nuclear war, it seems to me to focus on such attributes alone is mistaken. Surely these “decision makers” all operate within a highly structured context that inhibits them from making certain kinds of “choices” and encourages, perhaps even requires them to make others. So the real issue probably is, what is the nature of that structure in the US (and elsewhere) which makes nuclear war more or less likely?
(I’d note a point I think was made above respecting the way the US is somewhat locked in to some arrangements with Israel that limit and shape what American politicians might do in the present Gaza crisis.)
@ Anonymous
I agree w/ you that decision-makers operate within structures that limit their choices. Specifically with respect to a nuclear war, however, I think the most likely way one might happen is through accident or miscalculation rather than deliberate instigation. There were a few points during the Cold War where an accidental nuclear exchange came quite close to occurring, such as the Able Archer incident (as it's called).
I don’t mean to be too disputatious, LFC, but don’t we also have to press the notions of “accident” and “miscalculation” a bit further? We’re back in a way to arguments about the cause of WW One when arrangements were in place which allowed an almost random event to set the ineluctable in motion. (I take something like that, by the way, to be among Ellsberg’s concerns.)
@ Anonymous
I think I (at least partly) agree. As I recall, Able Archer was an exercise or "war game" that almost turned into something catastrophic and might well have if not for the actions of one person.
Once there are countries with nuclear arsenals and once they are conducting, as was the case during the Cold War, mock exercises that have even a small potential to be misread as real, things are not optimal.
I would tentatively put it this way (you might not put it this way, and that's fine). Accidents and miscalculations are real phenomena, and they're constant possibilities. What changes is the surrounding context. A miscalculation in the pre-nuclear era might result in bad consequences, but a miscalculation in the nuclear age could be completely calamitous.
One can put safeguards in place, but the best thing is to avoid situations where they have to come into play at all. Btw Putin's recent nuclear saber rattling is, in this context, irresponsible (if explicable from the standpoint of his own twisted objectives). A full-scale cross-border invasion of the sort Russia launched in 2022 was a breach of tacit understandings about how countries, at least in certain parts of the world, behave in the contemporary period. So the fact that Putin has nuclear weapons and is reminding everyone that he does, even if he has no particular intent to use them, is troubling.
P.s. All of the world's major nuclear-armed states are basically in breach of their obligation under the NPT to work toward a world without nuclear weapons (or so it could be argued).
p.p.s. Before someone jumps in to remind me, I'll note the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was a breach of international law. The Russian invasion of Ukraine (also, of course, a breach of international law), is more of a throwback to an earlier period, I'd suggest, because it is centrally about control of territory (which was not the focus of the '03 Iraq invasion).
In 2001, in his The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, Mearsheimer wrote that the conquest of land "is the supreme political objective in a world of territorial states." That was true at least to some extent in earlier periods, but not, I think, when Mearsheimer wrote it. Most governments these days (not all, but most) are not particularly interested in conquering land, and the U.S. runs its "empire" by means other than conquest.
for s.w. in particular
https://logosjournal.com/article/review-essay-chile-after-allende/
Thank you.
By the way, not only do the rich live in skyscrapers these days as the author claims, but also the poor.
There are whole neighborhoods of what are called "vertical ghettos", high-rise low rent apartment buildings where so many people are crowded into tiny apartments that there are long lines for the elevators at "rush hour". As a matter of fact, the rich are much more likely to live in big houses with spacious grounds than in apartment buildings.
"Most governments these days (not all, but most) are not particularly interested in conquering land, and the U.S. runs its "empire" by means other than conquest."
Of course "most" excludes Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and Venezuela for starts. And the first five have nukes. anyway, cui bono with the recent NYT scare articles?
Folks who believe all Biden had to do was cut Israel off and all would be well should ponder the reaction to Schumer's rather mild suggestions:
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4532827-republicans-seethe-over-schumer-call-for-israeli-elections/
I keep seeing comments on V.P. Harris (Leiter, here). I would just just point out that she managed to win local, county and two state-wide races in California while being female (and a not white one, at that!), so who knows?
s.w., you might want to mark your sources to market re: Biden's mental chops. For example how the MSM handled the recent Hur summary vs.the actual report:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/03/13/how-alleged-geezer-joe-biden-caught-rob-hur-and-mark-krickbaum-trying-to-sandbag-him/
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/03/we-will-get-fooled-again-2
Sadly all too typical of the U.S. media. I assume the same holds for Chile. BTW, I just heard a talking head in her 30's/40's say "Israel" when she meant "Ukraine." Conflations like that are common at any age and indicate nothing except perhaps fatigue and TMI. While lying about Biden, do your sources also continually point out Trump's obvious (and quite serious) mental deterioration over the past few years?
aaall wrote:
"Of course 'most' excludes Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and Venezuela for starts."
In my view, neither India nor Pakistan is particularly interested in conquering land. They have a longstanding dispute over Kashmir and probably a few relatively minor disputes on boundaries, some in fairly remote areas, and that's about it. (The India-China boundary disputes are probably more serious and resulted in a war between the two in 1962.)
So I would remove India and Pakistan from your list. I'm not sure what facts your reference to Venezuela is meant to point to -- you may be right, but I don't know offhand.
That leaves Russia, which is an expansionist power at the moment at any rate; China, which may be eventually w/r/t Taiwan, though its specifically territorial ambitions seem secondary to its other kinds of ambitions; and Israel, which I would call an occupying rather than expansionist power, though members of the current govt would no doubt be happy with formally annexing the West Bank (which of course hasn't happened to date).
So instead of five countries interested in or actively pursuing conquest of land, we have, in my opinion: one, Russia, that is in that category (at least w/r/t Ukraine); one, China, that may well be and that wants eventual "reincorporation" of Taiwan; and one, Venezuela, whose territorial ambitions I don't know about. No doubt there are a few others. But when you consider there are about 195 member states in the UN, the total list is pretty short.
Venezuela has a border dispute with Guyana. It claims some oil rich territory now in Guyana is "really theirs".
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/09/americas/venezuela-guyana-border-troops-intl-latam/index.html
thanks s.w.
I meant to add that China of course also has disputed claims to some islands in S. China Sea.
LFC,
You're welcome.
Maduro isn't going to invade Guyana. It's just saber-rattling because he has to face a
rigged election this year and he'd like to drum up some popular support.
Guyana is a member of the British Commonwealth and Sunak said something about protecting it from any possible aggression.
I want to say something to aaall about Schumer's speech; I just read the NYT piece on it. Basically for those not following every twist and turn here, Schumer argued for new elections in Israel, saying Netanyahu was an obstacle to peace (along w Hamas, Abbas, and right-wing extremists in Israel). He's right, imo. Republicans didn't like the speech of course.
Here's aaall's take: "Folks who believe all Biden had to do was cut Israel off and all would be well should ponder the reaction to Schumer's rather mild suggestions."
This does not follow, in my opinion. Biden cd have done some things to put more pressure on Netanyahu, like exploring whether he (Biden) cd legally put conditions on mil. aid by executive order. Any such move would elicit howls of outrage from Republicans, just as they howled over Schumer's speech. But so what? Why shd a Democratic President be constrained by what Republicans will say?
It's absurd, as Sanders has pointed out, for the Biden admin to simultaneously publicly hand-wring over Israel's conduct of the war and not to take any steps at all to limit or condition the billions in aid that are funding Israel's military operations. Surely there's something Biden cd do by executive action that wouldn't require congressional approval. But Biden, as has been noted here before, seems unable to distance himself from his personal history w.r.t. Israel. Now that Schumer has given this speech, the Biden admin shd start exercising the leverage that Schumer said might have to be exercised in the future. The future shd be right now.
"Biden cd have done some things..."
I assume he has and Bibi blew him off but things like that are usually the subject of tell-all memoirs not press releases.
As I have pointed out before, we are long past the time when U.S policy towards Israel should have been marked to market. The Israeli economy is doing OK and their debt is such that U.S. aid is nice but hardly critical - hence blowing off Biden is do-able.
As I have also previously pointed out, Biden's foreign policy is too often marked by an over-cautious approach when the other side has nukes, e.g. Ukraine should have had Patriots, HIMARS (and the latest long range at that), Abrams, and F-16/FA-18s long ago as well as locked up funding.
In the present situation we have a small nation with nukes run by far-right corrupt thugs and religious nut cases. It is responding (i.e. suckered into) to an obvious provocation by a gang of far-right, fundamentalist thugs (also corrupt). To the north we have a fundamentalist actual-army with a serious collection of real missiles. Then there is an Iran (fundamentalist nut-cases with bucks and centrifuges) dedicated to ending that small nation.
I imagine the first concerns for the Biden Administration were discouraging Hezbollah (hence the carrier group,etc) and keeping Israel from acting rashly. Succeeded at the first and failed at the second (the Marine three star was sent packing). Cutting off Israel goes where? Don't know, probably don't want to find out (Patriots are defensive, there are alternatives to bunker-busters, and 155s down are easily available if one has the price). Did I mention Israel has nukes as well as air and sea capable delivery systems ("go ahead and cut us off Mr. president, after all we do have alternatives").
I guess we should also note that beginning with Trump and the failson-in-law but continuing under Biden, the rest of Arab world was willing to blow off the Palestinians for some of that commercial advantage.
Saw a story about a teen boy holding his family together after his parents were recently killed. His tween sister was caring for the younger siblings. He related that her mother was martyred - not killed in the war or murdered by the Israelis but "martyred."
On a lighter note, I went into town yesterday and it seems Chilean grapes have arrived at Costco.
Interesting nugget for a few LEAPS?
https://braddelong.substack.com/p/draft-notes-what-is-the-techno-optimist?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=47874&post_id=142623792&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2m9qt&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
aaall,
Enjoy your grapes!!!
I recommend the Chilean apples.
aaall
Sen. Van Hollen and 7 other Senators sent a letter to Biden saying that the Netanyahu govt is running afoul of sec. 6201 of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act by taking U S. weapons and then (unreasonably) restricting the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. U.S. law therefore requires that the Biden admin take executive action to stop the flow of U.S. and U.S.-funded offensive weapons to Israel. By not doing this, Biden is flouting U.S. law. The suggestion or argument that Biden tried and failed to influence Netanyahu, so now Biden should simply shrug his shoulders and continue to give Netanyahu billions in offensive arms (in violation of a U.S. statute) seems to me, frankly, ludicrous. (P.s. I don't really know what your phrase "marked to market" means.)
If one reads the referenced law the president isn't in violation of that law unless he agrees that he is in violation of that law. He has to explain himself to the relevant congressional authorities but that's it.
We also have the problem that if aid to Israel is in violation then so is aid to most if not all of the nations in the Middle East. This whole mess is a convenient (for Russia, the PRC, and the Conservative International) distraction from way more important matters.
I agree that the Biden Administration is way too cautious when the counter-party
has nuclear capabilities. With Ukraine the delay between need and fulfillment was (is) way too long. I still have a beef over the Liberty so I have no problem leaning on Israel way more over their evil conduct in Gaza but we should be clear-eyed about the consequences.
Once we break with Israel over this (and it would be a serious break), where does it go from there? What if it acts as a signal to Hezbollah? My understanding is that areas of Northern Israel have already been cleared of civilians. Can the IDF deal with a war on two fronts and certain weapon systems being cut off? How would we police which weapons are used where? If the IDF couldn't hold in the north, Israel would be justified in using nukes - good times. What if Israel decides to pull an Osirak on Iran? Then we could cut them off - wait, we already did that.
"Guyana is a member of the British Commonwealth and Sunak said something about protecting it from any possible aggression."
Golly, who would benefit from the UK being distracted from certain European concerns?
https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-russia-lavrov-maduro-caracas-visit-negotiations-ac89e24a5ac652759dec00b6e98bc7c2
"Mark to market" is a rule that assets should be evaluated under current conditions from time to time. Price discounts everything - more or less - and that includes relationships. Stocks and options are evaluated in every transaction not what was happening when Truman was president.
In the instant case, we are long past the Holocaust, socialist kibbutzim, bond sales, and existential wars. As I've previously pointed out, Israel (as well as the United States) did a political heel turn in the 1990s. As Corey Robin has pointed out, a viable two state solution will likely involve Jews killing Jews.
The demonstrations last year over Bibi's attempts to change the Israeli courts may be a sign that better things are possible but as long as right-wing governments keep getting elected...
We also shouldn't that a politically significant cohort of American Christians see conflict in the Holy Land as a sign of the Last Times (i.e. a good thing in their view).
Anonymous,
The last time a Latin American dictatorship invaded territory protected by the British, the Argentine junta invading the Falkland Islands (or Malvinas according to the Argentinians), they were defeated so badly that the dictatorship collapsed.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220330-argentina-s-dictatorship-dug-its-own-grave-in-falklands-war
Venezuela, with or without Russian backing, is failed state and I doubt that its army would last long against the British. That would mean the end of Maduro's rule and I doubt that Maduro is so stupid that he'd cause his own overthrow, whatever Putin may want.
@ Anonymous,
You sound rather like aaall. Perhaps you're a different person, or perhaps it was just a slip in checking the right box.
Anyway, I'm going to let you (or aaall) have the last word for now. Except -- for the record, since you mentioned Corey Robin, I have respect for him but happen to disagree on certain things. While a two-state settlement would be difficult to achieve, imo a viable (to use your word) one-state settlement would be even more difficult to achieve and would be less likely to get the necessary level of public support at least on the Israeli side. So I favor the two-state approach, though without any illusions that it will be easy after so many failed past attempts, even in a changed context.
From WaPo today:
"The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that the raid [on al-Shifa Hospital] had 'eliminated' Faiq Mabhouh, a senior official within Hamas’s Internal Security division who was responsible for coordinating the group’s militant activities across the Gaza Strip. The Hamas-run al-Aqsa network said that Mabhouh was a director of police operations who coordinated and protected aid deliveries. The Washington Post could not independently confirm his role."
...
"In going after Mabhouh, Israel appeared to continue a pattern of attacks on members of Gaza’s police force. Civil servants under Hamas’s prewar government, police officers played a key role guarding international aid convoys until last month, when Israel began targeting them.
"The subsequent withdrawal of police from the aid delivery process, according to humanitarian groups and U.S. officials, left convoys open to looting by desperate civilians and criminal gangs, and made it nearly impossible to get assistance to starving families in the north."
Even if this character was as evil as the Israelis claim he was, that's no excuse for attacking a hospital.
Sooner or later, this guy was going to have to leave the hospital and then kill him if he's so fucking evil.
The Israelis have one of the most advanced high tech industries in the world: it's going to be hard to convince me that they don't have a way of tracking someone's phone, even if the person in question uses whatsapp, which is supposedly coded. Even if the evil guy changes phones 7 times a day....
s.w.
My main aim in posting this excerpt was to point out that the IDF targeting policy, assuming this guy was involved as a police official in protecting aid deliveries, is negatively affecting humanitarian aid delivery in the ways the article points out.
This guy could have been playing several different roles. So the IDF in this instance seems to have faced this sit., acc to the article: target the guy and "eliminate" a Hamas operative and also diminish, by at least one, the number of people protecting aid deliveries.
I don't particularly disagree with what you're saying, s.w., but the main point I was trying to make is that in the course of carrying out arguably legit targeting, the IDF is also apparently making it much more difficult for aid to get to people on the brink of starvation. Targeting hospitals is also v. problematic in itself, as you observe, but what I take to be the most pressing issue in the north of Gaza right now, where there are apparently still about 300,000 people, is that there's very little food and famine has basically already arrived.
Paywall-free link:
https://wapo.st/4ciHDzH
Later on the piece says the role of Mabhouh "was shrouded in conflicting claims."
LFC,
I wasn't disgreeing with what you said above, I was merely emphasizing another facet of the situation.
Remember way back in the beginning of this horror tale someone bombed a hospital in Gaza and we all argued whether the Israelis did it intentionally or whether Hamas fucked up and did it by mistake. I can't even remember what position I took, but a lot of the argument revolved around the IDF being "the most moral army in the world", white men, Europeans, gentlemen, civilized folks, who don't go around attacking hospitals intentionally.
Ha, ha, ha. We've grown up, haven't we? We've emerged from the cave and unfortunately what we see isn't all that scenic.
In glancing through the latter part of the WaPo article I linked, I see that Jake Sullivan, Biden's natl security advisor, said that in this instance Hamas was firing from the hospital. At a certain point, however, I don't have the energy to try to parse every situation. What seems to be beyond dispute is that the humanitarian situation in northern Gaza especially is disastrous (it's not much better in the south) and that the IDF has apparently not been willing to adjust its war aims and methods to this situation. I put the blame mainly on Netanyahu and his war cabinet, not the ordinary IDF soldiers, who are in a difficult position and basically have to do what they're ordered to do.
aaall,
I don't know what you mean about windows in Venezuela.
Eight million Venezuelans have emigrated during the Chavez and Maduro years. They are not all anti-communist bankers and landowners. My apartment building is entirely staffed by Venezuelan immigrants, all of them obviously educated and middle class now sweeping floors and receiving packages. In my previous building one of the concierges was a lawyer in Venezuela. Middle class people don't leave their lifestyle behind to do menial labor in a new country unless the economic situation is disastrous.
s.w., you mentioned good reasons for Maduro to not distract the UK. Since windows have been useful in Russian domestic policy, it occurred to me that they might also be useful incentives with foreign policy.
Venezuela should be a prosperous and democratic nation. Given the rise of MAGA here, I guess nowhere is safe from the thugs taking over.
I do wish people would leave "parse" to the grammarians.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/03/the-real-reason-israel-stormed-al-shifa-hospital-yet-again/
aaall,
Hassan Akram is a Brit, now living in Chile, who appears daily to comment politics on a very leftwing podcast. He has a Phd from Cambridge in Economics and is very bright and well read.
Before coming to Chile, Akram went to Venezuela to advise the Chavez government, but he gave up. As I said, Akram is very leftwing (farther to the left than me), but realizes that the law of supply and demand is a reality and that if you print money, you get inflation.
The Chavez people pay no attention to his advice and the economy has gone down the drain.
Besides that, according to Akram, there is lots of corruption in government and a general attitude of sloth.
jw @1:35 p.m.
In terms of its substance as opposed to its speculation, that Mondoweiss article does not differ greatly from the WaPo article I linked above. It conveys the same basic info w a more sensationalist spin.
It seems reasonable to infer from the WaPo article that Mabhoub was involved in assuring the orderly delivery of humanitarian aid after the "flour massacre" (perhaps among other things) and that his "elimination" is going to make the safe, orderly delivery of aid more difficult.
The Mondoweiss article gives this a particular spin and adds a lot of stuff about clans and how Israel might view them, but in terms of hard info, it yields pretty similar inferences as the WaPo account, or so it seems to me. It's just that WaPo doesn't use words like "genocidal" and accordingly has a somewhat different tone. But in terms of the hard kernel of what the facts seem to imply (to someone not on the ground and not privy to every second's twist and turn), the two accounts do not seem all that far apart.
Awaiting the professor's next post, a little bit more on Gaza: Recalling Peter Cook's famous crack about “those wonderful Berlin cabarets which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War”, I ceased watching the late-night comedians mockery of the Trump clan around mid-2021. But this bit from the once and possibly future crafter of the U.S.'s peace plan for the Middle East needs no comic commentary. I know they'll say anything, but the description of Gaza as a place where there's 'a little bit of an unfortunate situation', is, as they say, straight out of The Onion: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/19/jared-kushner-gaza-waterfront-property-israel-negev
More out of Mein Kampf. Jared channels Andy Jackson:
“But in addition to that, I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there,” he said. “I think that’s a better option, so you can go in and finish the job.”
Would just like to thank those who left comments giving their life advice! Has been a hectic couple of weeks, but be certain I read and thought about what was said.
Dear aaall
So you'd say Tsahal or Israeli Defence Forces is a misnomer. But it is not.
Arafat is responsible for Arik and Netanyahu.
The Labor Party, who lived to save the Jewish People, but too for peace, got mugged, not just by reality. but too by waves of suicide bombers, waves upon waves.
It is a fact that even you would vote for Trump if your neighborhood, your safe and comfy neighborhood was subject to waves upon waves of suicide bombers.
The Palestinians learned the fine art of genocide from the Nazis, who courted their Sherif.
Jews for the last 2000 years have simply wanted to live in Peace.
Our God is a war God only if provoked.
Hamas and the Palestinians are blood thirtsy, and perhaps they are getting what they want and maybe deserve. Maybe they deserve Netanyahu, but I don't. I voted for Rabin and for peace, but certain antisemites such as yourself, won't give us peace, so you will get Netanyahu
It’s hardly worth responding, is it, aaall? Mention anything critical of Israel’s brutal treatment of the Palestinians in the near term or in the longer term and some kneejerk will trundle out the supposedly deadly accusation that one is anti-semitic, accompanied by some atrocious perversion of history: the victims are routinely accused of being the victimisers. And often enough, as in the attack on you, that accusation will be accompanied by verbiage about the Palestinians that is itself so evidently xenophobic.
Have these people no shame? (That’s a merely rhetorical question.)
For the record, as a Jew, I have not found anything said here by aaall to be antisemitic.
I've said this before, but there is absolutely no reason to consider the state of Israel to represent the Jews any more than Noam Chomsky represents the Jews or Norman Finkelstein represents the Jews or Woody Allen does or the late Philip Roth does.
Jews in 2024 in this postmodern society are incredibly diverse and no one or no entity represents them.
Dear JW
It is very brave of you to drolly deny antisemitism. That may be effective rhetorically.
The debate forum on this blog has devolved into a witch hunt. I have empathy for your antisemitism. I understand you and I understand the Jews of Israel and I understand the Palestinians.
You just think you are an umpire, when you're not even in the ballpark.
You partake in what can be called the "pointing argumnent"
You just point at the Israelis and grunt "Jews are bad"
If instead of acting superior which you are decideddly not, you discussed the facts of the case and the POV and arguments of the parties involved, we could have a mature conversation.
Your calling of balls and strikes (and it is baseball season, so I am being fair) is one big strikeout.
Please give some semblance of an argumnent and not just cop an attitude that is probably antisemitic and we can talk.
I'm sure you get your slant from Kristoff or Al Jazeera.
But try to come up with some kind of original blood libel against us and not just rehashed junk food gripes.
As Shylock said, who was in my opinion innocent, "if you're a prick to us, we'll make you bleed."
Computer? Russian? Russian Computer?
In other news, Truth social goes public in a few day. With a six month lockout, it will be fun to watch Trump's freakout as the initial five billion evaporates.
Dear Anonymous @ 10:37 AM, You do talk a lot of nonsense. And worse. I'll say no more.
As to whether aaall is anti-semitic, take a close look at what he (or she, but I assume he's a he) wrote on March 19 at 12:49 AM.
He uses Hebrew and almost no one except people who have received a Jewish education know Hebrew.
So I'd suppose that he (or she) is Jewish or you could imagine all kinds of domestic situations (Jewish father and non-Jewish mother) and that because of family problems, he never completed his Jewish education, so he doesn't see himself as Jewish, etc.
As for linking Jared Kushner with Mein Kampf, well, that's because, I suppose, he's Trump son-in-law. Lots of folks here, including Marc Susselman, who writes me insulting me insisting on aaall being anti-semitic have compared Trump with Hitler and/or Mussolini.
A little sense of perspective goes a long way. For me, anti-semitism is hatred of or prejudice against the Jews, not criticism of someone who happens to be Jewish or even of a country, in this case, Israel, inhabited by Jews.
If I say that Haiti is a mess, the result of corruption and misgovernment, I'm not being racist, even though almost everyone in Haiti is black. I can imagine that some people would call me racist for that, but I don't see it that way.
Young Jared recently suggested that the best solution might be to move the Palestinian population of Gaza out to a prepared location in the Negev until Gaza could be fixed up. He also allowed that Bibi might not let them back in after the clean up. It's well known that the NSDAP and its leader admired the American way of dealing with disfavored minorities - Jim Crow/reservations. MS needs to mark his priors to market.
Besides being an environmental and humanitarian disaster, forcibly moving a couple of million folks to a "camp" out in the desert does raise obvious comparisons (s.w., living in Chile I assume you understand how fragile and awesome deserts can be as well as useful for fascists to disappear the inconvenient). True, Jared's a dummy but still (it also appears that he passed on classified material to his best bud, Mohammad Bone Saw - guess he earned that $2B).
Also, I see Israel just bogarted some more of the West Bank.
Re: Mondoweiss. We should be clear that this isn't about "liberating" anyone or anything. Both Hamas and Israel are willing to use regular Palestinians as cannon fodder. This is about which group of corrupt thugs and religious nuts gets to screw them over. Of course it doesn't help that they have too often bought into the kayfabe. Note that the Hamas cop in the article "executed" a clan leader but when the Israelis took him out he was "martyred."
Back in the day (1930s) a friend's father was stationed in Haiti during the U.S. occupation when we ran the nation's customs. The revolution freaked white folks out and France forced Haiti to pay reparations for the lost capital (slaves). Of course Papa Doc was yet another thug.
In other news, Trumps new venture lost 13% Friday and DWAC's option IVs are running from the 120s to 800+. Total scam.
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Dr. Wolff - Not what I expect from a man who was one of my favorite professors at CCNY many (many) years ago. Your original posts about this subject admitted that you know little- except, apparently , what you read in the newspapers - courtesy of the Hamas controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza. You post not a word of sympathy for the Israeli people (and those who were butchered and kidnapped on October 7th). Perhaps you might ask yourself why the Palestinian people have been so ill-served by their leaders. You might ask why the agency which perpetuates the conflict, UNWRA- is the only UN refugee agency which gives refugee status to descendants of the original displaced Palestinians, instead of re-settling them in other countries (as is the case with with all other 30 million refugees around the world). Maybe you can take some time out from your studies on Marx and read some books on the Israeli-Arab conflict which don't just take the Palestinian point of view. Try Einat Wilf's book, The War of Return, for an explanation of a former center-left Israeli politician as to why there is no two-state solution. As for the starving Palestinians in Gaza, remember the photos of Biafra? That's starvation. Hunger, yes.Starvation, no. And a need for humanitarian assistance, of course. The best way to end this war and the suffering of Palestinian in Gaza is for Hamas to surrender and return the hostages. I remain an admirer of what I learned so many years ago (from you and KD Irani), but your views on this conflict need a re-think. I would leave my name but I really don't like hate mail.
Thanks for the consistent quality and relevance of your content.
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