The United States of Hypocrisy: Revisiting the Monroe Doctrine

 

BY MELVIN GOODMAN

Victor Gillam’s 1896 political cartoon, Uncle Sam stands with rifle between the Europeans and Latin Americans – Public Domain

There is no doctrinal statement in American diplomatic history that is more fundamental than the Monroe Doctrine.  It was designed to draw a strategic line between the New World and the Old, and to alert the European powers that their political influence and presence was no longer welcome in the Western Hemisphere.  No doctrinal statement has been enforced as often as the Monroe Doctrine, which has been used to justify U.S. intervention throughout Central America and the Caribbean.  The Monroe Doctrine was cited in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, a perfect failure, as well as the Cuban missile crisis, a diplomatic triumph.

President Theodore Roosevelt expanded the Monroe Doctrine with the Roosevelt Corollary to justify the “exercise of an international police power” in any nation in the Western Hemisphere whose policies or actions could provoke foreign intervention. In other words, the United States would not need to wait for a foreign intervention, it could enforce a change in governments that adopted “unacceptable” policies. President Woodrow Wilson used the Roosevelt Corollary in 1913 to justify the intervention in Mexico to move its politics in a more favorable direction for U.S. interests.  The United States overtly and covertly attacked Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua.  Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger sponsored covert action in Chile in 1971 against a democratically elected government in order to reverse its political and economic policies.  There is a reason why the nations of Latin America refer to the United States as a “great hegemon.”

In refusing to acknowledge Russia’s concerns about U.S. and Western intervention on its borders, the Biden administration is engaging in hypocrisy.  The philosopher Hannah Arendt called hypocrisy the “vice of vices.”  Lying to others is part of the political game, but the United States is lying to itself in denying that it committed to limit NATO’s role in East Europe.  Putin is asking for written guarantees regarding NATO membership because we betrayed the verbal guarantees that President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker gave to their counterparts, Mikhail Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze, respectively.  We need to recognize our role in the Ukraine crisis; Russian President Vladimir is not the sole cause of a crisis that could have horrific consequences.

This is an important part of the current crisis over Ukraine, particularly in view of Putin’s demands regarding Russian national security, which are consistent with Russian and Soviet thinking over the past 300 years.  As recently as the 1980s, when the United States deployed Pershing II medium-range missiles and cruise missiles in Europe, the Kremlin reacted to address its strategic vulnerability.  These missile deployments contributed to a “war scare” in the early 1980s.  Fortunately, the diplomatic path ultimately led to important arms control agreements, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty.  Putin’s deployment of forces on Ukraine’s border is designed to counter not only an expanded membership for NATO, but also the threat of the current and future deployment of strategic weaponry near Russian borders.

Again and fortunately, there is a diplomatic path for addressing Russia’s legitimate concerns.  Thus far, however, the Biden administration doesn’t seem willing to deal with actual specifics regarding what could be done.  Friday’s press conference with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley placed the emphasis on NATO’s military unity and the policy of deterrence, which has already hardened public opinion in this country.   What is needed at this juncture is the appearance of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan to stress the importance of diplomacy, arms control, and confidence-building measures to assuage Russian concerns and to institutionalize a substantive dialogue on a new European security architecture.

Secret diplomacy solved the Cuban missile crisis after all, although it took 30 years for the U.S. public to learn the full details of the tradeoffs in the secret agreements.  The Cuban missile crisis was far more threatening than the crisis over Ukraine, but President John F. Kennedy relied on diplomatic input, and ignored the dangerous recommendations from the military leadership and his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara.  I hope that we have seen the last of press conferences involving Austin and Milley, who have little experience to bring to bear on the diplomatic and political aspects of the crisis.

Putin has resorted to the deployment of excessive force on Ukraine’s borders, which will make it hard for him to backdown, but there are off-ramps that could be introduced.   The Biden administration needs to concede that the United States has overplayed its hand, starting with the expansion of NATO; the deployment of missile defenses in Poland and Romania; the basing of aircraft in Romania; and the meddling in Ukraine’s politics since 2014.  We have U.S. forces in many East European countries that were once part of the Warsaw Pact.  This is exactly what President Bush and Secretary of State Baker said we would not do if the Soviets removed their forces from East Germany.  Putin, a retired intelligence officer, is well aware of the history of U.S. meddling in the Baltics and East Europe, particularly in Poland in the 1980s as well as in Ukraine and Georgia in more recent times.

Putin will need to know that NATO will end its military expansion, including membership as well as the deployment of military infrastructure.  In return, we should demand Russian troop withdrawal from eastern Ukraine and the Transnistria, formerly part of Moldova.  The regional borders should be demilitarized, and military exercises should be limited and discussed in advance.  The United States should not store nuclear weaponry in Europe, and the Russians need to withdraw nuclear weapons from Kaliningrad.  Russia will not reverse its takeover of Crimea, but should reduce its military presence there.

We need to acknowledge that the expansion of NATO has actually weakened the alliance because there are significant differences in the perception of the threat from the members in the east and the west.  The original membership of NATO shared for the most part the cultural and political values of the United States.  This is no longer true, particularly with the authoritarian policies that are being introduced in Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia.  The NATO countries are not nearly as unified as Austin and Milley claimed, and Putin is well aware of that fact.  For all of the talk in the mainstream media about Putin overreacting, he has managed to expose the weakness of NATO as well as the fact that there is insufficient support for Ukraine as a member.  A 15-25 year moratorium on NATO expansion should be declared.

A diplomatic emphasis on arms control and disarmament could bring additional dividends, particularly to the important Russian-American relationship. After all, the arms control architecture framed the Soviet-American detente in the 1970s and 1980s, and a similar architecture could bring Moscow and Washington to the negotiating table.  We need a return to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty that George W. Bush and Donald Trump, respectively, walked away from.  We need to revive the INF Treaty and the CFE Treaty, and consider demilitarized zones in East and Central Europe.  The INF treaty was unprecedented because it led to the destruction of an entire class of nuclear arms, both intermediate and shorter-range missile systems. The CFE treaty moved tanks and artillery pieces away from the borders.  We should not allow the issue of Ukraine to block the revival of such important initiatives.

We would do well to accept Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s efforts to get world leaders to “cool the talk of war.”  “Talk” of a diplomatic variety has never been more urgent.  There needs to be a revival of the NATO-Russian Founding Act from 1997 in order to create a European security framework for the 21st century on the basis of equal security.

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.      

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/31/the-united-states-of-hypocrisy-revisiting-the-monroe-doctrine/

Did Justin Trudeau Pick the Wrong Fight With Canadian Truckers?

Robert BRIDGE

American writer and journalist.

It’s not a good sign that Justin Trudeau has removed himself from the public spotlight at possibly the most pivotal point in his political career.

The Canadian Prime Minister, who recently described the trucker convoy as a “small fringe minority” who hold “unacceptable views” against Covid mantes, may have unwittingly unleashed the greatest challenge ever to his political career.

Like those in the medical profession, long-haul truckers dutifully perform their jobs largely behind the scenes, even during the peak of the Covid pandemic. And just like thousands of nurses and doctors – many of whom were exposed to the virus in the line of duty and probably protected by natural immunity – unvaccinated truckers have found themselves out on the street, or rather, out on the highway.

Dubbed the “Freedom Convoy” that began in Vancouver last week, the 18-wheeler movement is expected to reach Ottawa this weekend as thousands of truckers will clog the capitol in protest. The convoy reveals the level of frustration being felt across the country thanks to Justin Trudeau’s draconian vaccine mandates.

Since Jan. 15, unvaccinated truckers entering Canada are required to be tested and quarantined for 15 days; the U.S. mandated similar restrictions on Jan. 22. Naturally such regulations made their job impossible to perform. Thus, the mandates have removed some 20-25% of the estimated 175,000 cross-border American and Canadian truckers due to noncompliance in both countries. But these sidelined workers are not leaving their jobs without a fight, and it seems that many Canadians support the cause.

While mainstream media and social media has largely been able to control the flow of information that Canadians receive with regards to Covid and the vaccination mandates, the trucker convoy has given the public a chance to really express themselves. Judging by early indications it doesn’t look particularly good for the Trudeau administration.

Telegram, the censorship-free messenger application, is chockfull of videos and photographs of overpasses near Toronto loaded with placard-waving supporters as the convoy grinds its way towards Ottawa to the east. Other platforms showed the local residents of small towns handing out meals to the truckers despite the frigid temperatures.

Undoubtedly the most influential advocate of the truckers’ cause thus far has been Elon Musk, who tweeted a three-word message that certainly did not sit well with Justin Trudeau: “Canadian truckers rule.”

Speaking of Trudeau, the 50-year-old leader of the Labor Party announced just this week that he had been “exposed to Covid-19,” and would therefore be isolating at home for five days. That announcement sparked a small riot on social media, with many suggesting that the Canadian leader had used the excuse of Covid to hopefully avoid the truckers.

Keean Bexte, a journalist with Counter Signal, suggested in a tweet that a new variant of “Coward-19” was detected.

“This is, perhaps, the greatest act of cowardice from a sitting Canadian PM in this nation’s history,” Bexte wrote in an accompanying article. “When Canadians finally take a stand, finally take real action, Trudeau merely waves it away, practically flipping them the bird through a single Tweet, ending it with “please get vaccinated” to rub salt in wounds he’s opened.”

This is the problem when the media and government refuses to permit any sort of formal debate on a serious issue that affects millions of people on so many different levels. Trudeau has given his countrymen just one option, and that is to get the vaccination or essentially become second-class citizens in their own country. Unlike other effected industries, however, truckers have the option of putting their machines to use for a very effective form of protest, and one that promises to cause severe logistical problems as far as transport goes.

Although the Canadian Trucking Alliance and the Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) have both distanced themselves from the movement, saying 90 percent of long-haul truckers are vaccinated, the remaining 10 percent (that is, assuming the figure is accurate as some believe the number of unvaccinated may be as high as 25 percent) leaves anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 of rigs easily capable of affecting a large swath of the economy, both in the U.S. and Canada.

With tens of thousands of truckers now unemployed, the supply chain crisis, which was already noticeable before the mandates went into effect with over 100 cargo ships docked off the coast of California, unable to unload their shipments, store shelves could become conspicuously less stocked in the days and weeks to come. Already Canadians are displaying disturbing images from their local grocery stores on social media.

Mike Millian, the president of the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada, said his organization is against vaccine mandates for truckers, but is worried about some of the rhetoric he’s seen among the protesters.

“Truck drivers are isolated in their jobs, haven’t been associated to spread, and we can’t afford to damage our supply chain any more than it is,” Millian said in an interview with CBC News. “But this convoy seems to have morphed into a kind of protest against all vaccine and COVID-related shutdowns.”

“We’re seeing signs that are calling our government ‘communists’ and ‘nazis’ and comparing the [situation over vaccine mandates] to the holocaust.”

“Obviously, we can’t support that message,” he said.

Meanwhile, the media in Canada seems to be priming the protest, suggesting that far-right agitators are behind the movement, even warning that Ottawa could experience its “January 6th storming,” a reference to the day when pro-Trump supporters took over the U.S. Capitol in their belief that the 2020 presidential election had been rigged in favor of Joe Biden.

What Justin Trudeau seems unwilling to admit is that Canadians are weary of the debate over vaccine mandates and the divisiveness it has caused throughout society, not to mention the loss of freedoms. For many of these people, the ‘Freedom Convoy’ represents an opportunity for Canadians to latch onto a movement that promotes their own ideas, which includes a strong dislike for the government’s handling of the Covid crisis.

Whether or not this trucker movement will morph into something greater remains to be seen, but it’s not a good sign that Justin Trudeau has removed himself from the public spotlight at possibly the most pivotal point in his political career.\

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/01/30/did-justin-trudeau-pick-wrong-fight-with-canadian-truckers/ 

Reaching a Nuclear Agreement with Iran: the Problematics of Middle Eastern Diplomacy

 

BY RICHARD FALK

Photograph Source: Anthony Crider – CC BY 2.0

When a nuclear agreement with Iran was reached by U.S. led multilateral diplomacy in 2015, despite vigorous opposition from Israel, it was widely viewed as the greatest foreign policy achievement of the Obama presidency, and for good reason. It also showcased the potentialities of great power cooperation when national interests sufficiently converge in a manner that supports the pursuit of the regional and global public good. In those days before Washington’s strategists and foreign policy wonks rediscovered the joys of geopolitical confrontation, not only the major NATO powers (UK, France, and Germany), but more intriguingly, China and Russia, joined as signatories to what became known at the time as the 5 +1 Iran Nuclear Agreement or simply, JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

That Iran was willing to curtail its nuclear program without demanding compensating moves by Israel was a surprise. Israel had been permitted, indeed helped, to acquire secretly the means to establish and develop a nuclear weapons capability a generation earlier without any adverse international reaction, becoming in 1967 or so the first state in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons. It would have seemed reasonable for Iran to strike a posture of willingness to commit itself to a nuclear-free Middle East, which would have been a more dramatic move toward denuclearizing the Middle East than was JCPOA. Why did Iran refrain in 2015 and now again, even with a hardline leadership in control of its government? Perhaps, because the Iranian leadership understood there would be no sanctions relief if it depended on Israel’s willingness to give up its status as a nuclear weapons state. In this sense, the 2015 agreement can be seen either as an indicate of the diplomatic skill of the P-5 + 1 in limiting the negotiating agenda, and especially of the U.S., or as an indication that Iran was prepared to close its eyes to the unreasonableness of demanding limitations on its nuclear capabilities while ignoring the far greater breach of the nonproliferation ethos by Israel over a period of many years. Iran seemed willing to do this because of the high priority given to undoing the burdens of the continuing sanctions. It appears that the 2021-2022 Vienna talks among the five adherents to JCPOA (plus indirect talks with the U.S.) have similarly not been faced with demands to address Israel’s nuclearism, quite possibly for similar reasons.

Why did this exhibition of constructive diplomacy happen in a region of the world, entailing overlooking Israel’s arsenal of nuclear weapons coupled with its belligerent posture so as to reduce tensions with regard to Iran, which had long been a major site of struggle, strife, and periodic warfare ever since 1979? I presume the main motivation was war avoidance in the Middle East and the belief that JCPOA contributed to the overall goals of nonproliferation and thus avoiding a regional arms race by major Arab states to acquire nuclear weapons.

A secondary consideration prompted by the lingering failures of the Iraq ‘democracy promotion’ regime changing intervention of 2003 was to reduce the American military and political engagement in the Middle East. The 2015 initiative to downgrade Iran as a confrontational priority was seen as facilitating Obama’s ill-advised ‘pivot to Asia.’

Proclaiming this pivot amounted to geopolitical coded message for ‘taking on China in the South China Sea.’ How different might the mood and politics have been had Obama instead opted for a ‘pivot to America!’ And even now it may not be too late for a turn away from global militarism, although Biden, frustrated by Republicans on the home front, now seems hell-bent on pivoting toward Russia, Iran, and China, apparently yearning for the good old days of the crisis-fraught geopolitics of the Cold War with the most opportune zones of confrontation currently being the Ukraine, Iran, and Taiwan.

A side benefit of the 2015 agreement, not often noted, was to give moderates in Iran a major victory in the form of achieving sanctions relief, unfrozen bank accounts, and a path to normalcy in its external relations. The agreement was vigorously opposed at the time by Israel and its supporters, as well as hawkish elements in the U.S. political class. Their main contentions were that Iran would be free from enrichment and centrifuge limits by 2030 and that the agreement did not include an enforceable Iranian pledge to end support for anti-Israeli, anti-Saudi, and anti-American political actors in regional conflict situations as well as to place restraints on its missile program. Iran has adamantly insisted on separating diplomacy concerning its nuclear program from its political involvements in regional politics and its national security posture.

When Trump came along in 2017, the unraveling of JCPOA was a foregone conclusion, guided as much or more by his vindictive resolve to erase Obama’s legacy in ways designed to degrade his predecessor, and win praise from Israel and many members of the U.S. Congress. Trump denounced the agreement as one-sided in Iran’s favor, a betrayal of Israel’s security interests, and needing replacement by a more stringent arrangement, or according to his transactional mindset, ‘a better deal.’

In May of 2018 Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement, followed that June by the reimposition of sanctions, which were later further intensified inflicting great damage on the Iranian economy and civilian population. These escalating steps toward confrontation were hailed by Israel’s leaders. In contrast, the repudiation of JCPOA was not appreciated by the five other signatories, and deeply destabilizing for the region as well as striking a devastating blow to the reformist government in Tehran led by President Hassan Rouhani, having the effect of opening the gates for the hardline victory of Ebrahim Raisi in the 2021 elections.

In Tehran this return to the tense pre-2015 days was regarded as confirmation that the West, and especially the U.S., could not be trusted to keep its word and was regarded as evidence that Washington remained determined to bring the Iranian government to its knees in pursuit of its political agenda. Trump had also authorized the assassination of General Qasim Soleimani in early 2020, the most popular of Iranian leaders and seen as a future president of the country. In such an atmosphere Israel felt emboldened enough to assassinate Iran’s leading nuclear scientists and to engage in unlawful sabotage attacks on its nuclear facilities without adverse effects.

As might have been expected, Iran although it gave the remaining JCPOA signatories a year to overcome the U.S. withdrawal, eventually responded by gradually increasing the enrichment of uranium fuel that were somewhat closer to weapons grade levels, reportedly reaching 60% as well as installing higher quality centrifuges. Despite these steps, Iran reiterated its intention not to develop nuclear weapons, and Western intelligence services confirmed that there was no evidence that Iran was intent on becoming a nuclear weapons state.

When Trump was defeated and Biden elected in 2020, it was naively assumed to be just a matter of time until the 2015 Agreement was restored, and again made operational. After all, Biden had pledged to do so throughout his campaign to become president. It turned out to be far from simple in practice, partly because there was plenty of pushback from Israel and the Republicans. In the meantime, the political change of leadership in Iran, with a conservative cleric, Ebrahim Raisi easily elected to replace Rouhani. It is relevant to observe that Raisi was a pre-Trump advocate of skepticism about the wisdom of trying to reach a diplomatic accommodation with the West. Despite this background, after being elected Raisi has seemed open to restoring JCPOA, yet entertaining this option in a spirit of caution, suspicion, and firmness. Despite pressure from Washington, Iran has refused so far to engage in direct talks with the U.S. at Vienna. Iranian officials have been telling the media that Iran is awaiting reliable signs from the U.S. that it is prepared to remove all sanctions without conditions and is prepared to gives guaranties that it will not again withdraw from whatever arrangement is agreed upon. Once such a willingness is signaled, if it is, Iran will agree to direct talks. Until then, it will discuss the issues directly only with governments of the remaining five signatories, that is, 5+1 minus the U.S..

Beyond the obstacles associated with satisfying Israel’s alleged security concerns and a determination not to get mired in controversial foreign policy initiatives, Biden sought in the early months of his presidency to focus on domestic issues, especially the social and economic fallout from the pandemic. This meant an avoidance of even the semblance of a break with Israel, which helps explain why the White House made a series of unusual high-profile gestures to reassure Israel that the U.S. would not act unilaterally, but would coordinate with Israel its negotiating efforts to restore JCPOA. The only way for Biden to find such a level of approval by Israel for a restored nuclear agreement with Iran is if the new arrangements appeared to strengthen the constraints of the 2015 text by removing sunset clauses terminating vital features of the agreement, and through robust monitoring and verifying procedures to assess compliance with permanent restrictions on enrichment, testing, stockpiling, and centrifuges. The U.S. has also signaled that the pace of sanctions relief would be quickened if Iran additionally pledged to roll back its regional engagements hostile to the interests of the Gulf monarchies, Israel, and the U.S.. These engagements by Iran are supposedly currently causing trouble for Western interests in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Lebanon, and Gaza.

Matters of Context

Most important is the acknowledgement and relevance of the Trump withdrawal from the 2015 agreement because he (following Israel’s encouragement) thought it a bad deal. Because Iran reacted, at first cautiously, hoping for some compensatory actions from the European countries, it seems obvious that it wanted the agreement to survive the U.S. withdrawal. With the present effort to restore JCPOA the U.S. acts as if it owes not even an apology to Iran but seeks to conditions its renewal of participation on the acceptance by Iran of a new more restrictive agreement, policy goals partly dictated by domestic circumstances. Anything less will be openly attacked by Trumpists and by Israel, at least by the Netanyahu-led Likud opposition party.

It is important to appreciate the broader context of both the 2015 agreement and this attempt to renew compliance by both the U.S. and Iran with or without an alteration of its terms. To begin with, as mentioned, the 5 +1 group should recognize that Iran’s willingness to curtail its nuclear program without reference to Israel’s nuclear weapons, constituted a major concession without which negotiations would have been fruitless from their outset. It should also be appreciated that a genuine concern with nonproliferation, regional stability, and the equality of states would have made it reasonable for Iran to insist on prior Israeli denuclearization or parallel negotiations of a Middle East Nuclear Free Zone. What is more such an inclusive approach to regional denuclearization would have served the regional and global public good. At the same time, for Iran to condition negotiations on its own nuclear program by linkage to Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal would preclude any diplomatic attempt to end Iran’s suffering from sanctions. It seems virtually certain that Israel would refuse all efforts to call into question its national security posture, including its right to possess and develop nuclear weaponry, and almost as certain that the U.S. and Europe would not exert pressure on Israel to link its relationship to the weaponry with efforts to curtail the Iran nuclear program.

Related to this, is the failure of Iran in its public discourse to condition its willingness to accept international controls be tied to an acceptance by Israel and the U.S. of a commitment to refrain from destabilization efforts to undermine the authority of the Iranian government or to damage its nuclear facilities by covert operations. In other words, Iran has not conditioned its participation in the 2015 agreement or its renewal on respect for its sovereign rights as prescribed under international law. This again is a meaningful indication of the importance Iran attaches to sanctions relief and overall normalization. At the same time, Iran has made clear that there are red lines that if crossed would make the Vienna negotiations futile—placing any restrictions on Iran’s non-nuclear national security posture and its foreign policy engagements throughout the region.

During this period of uncertainty, Iran’s diplomacy has not been passive. The January drone attacks on Abu Dhabi by Houthi rebel forces in Yemen are assumed in the West to be undertaken with the approval of Tehran, and may be thought of as a setoff to Israel’s periodic attacks and threats directed at Iran, as well as a neutralizing response to the anti-Iranian moves of the Gulf monarchies. Whether the political allies of Iran in the region can be considered ‘Iran proxies,’ as contended in the Western media, is somewhat fanciful.

From the Western perspective, Iranian efforts to disregard the constraints of JCPOA seem to suggest an Iranian ambition to be at least a threshold nuclear weapons state, that is, capable of acquiring nuclear weapons in a matter of weeks. It remains ambiguous as to whether Iran is seeking leverage in the bargaining process currently underway or indeed had become disillusioned with accepting restraints in exchange for shaky promises of sanctions relief in light of Trump’s 2018 withdrawal, and the failure of the other parties to the agreement to step in to neutralize the imposition of harsh sanctions. In light of this history, it seems reasonable for Iran to demand a commitment against withdrawal or the reimposition of sanctions, although it may not be implementable within the constitutional frameworks of the 5 + 1 states. For example, if Trump is reelected in 2024, it seems likely he would repeat his moves of 2018 without meaningful internal legal obstruction, especially given the conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court. If the restored agreement took the form of an international treaty, its legal durability might be enhanced, but such an instrument would require submission to the ratification procedures of the participating countries. Such a requirement would undoubtedly doom the agreement as the Republicans in the U.S. Congress, probably with help from some Democrats, would block ratification.

Geopolitical Spillovers

If the agreement is restored within the JCPOA framework with minimal modifications, and is then implemented, including a show of tacit respect exhibited by Israel and the promised sanctions relief is forthcoming, the likelihood of a stabilizing impact on regional and global relations greatly increases. It will also strengthen the political position of Raisi in Iran, claiming that greater diplomatic firmness yielded better results.

If the Vienna talks fail, then the prospects for a heightening of regional tensions is likely, taking the form of anti-Iranian confrontational tactics, maintenance of sanctions, and a reactive Iranian pushback by way of asserting its leverage in regional hot spots. The likelihood of Iran’s alignment with Russia and China also becomes probable, already foreshadowed by long-term trade agreements, high-profile diplomatic visits, and recent joint naval training exercises. Again, the Raisi leadership will likely be strengthened by the claim that diplomacy failed, interpreted as showing the unwillingness of Raisi to fall into the kind of trap that occurred when the moderate leadership of Rouhani took the poisoned bait in 2015. The increase availability of reliable geopolitical alternatives that eased the economic hardships long experienced by the Iranian people would also work to Raisi’s advantage.

Concluding Observation

It is way past time for the West to get over its distress about the outcome of the Iranian revolution that brought the popular movement headed by Ayatollah Khomeini to power in early 1979. In 2015 the JCPOA seemed a step in that direction, soon to be spoiled by the disruptive Trump behavior. With a new president the U.S. Government should have seized the initiative in reinvigorating the JCPOA, and as well acted in ways that brought hopes of a new dawn to the prolonged misery of the Palestinian people. Unfortunately, assuming my analysis is correct, this desirable course of action is extremely unlikely. The Biden administration seems disinclined to accept any U.S. responsibility for the breakdown of the 2015 agreement, and unreasonably expects Iran to start from a premise of co-responsibility without taking account of the fact that JCPOA worked well until the U.S. withdrew. And as for the Palestinians, they can expect nothing more than a more moderate style of pro-Israeli partisanship, and few course corrections of the way Trump coddled Israeli expansionism.     

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

   https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/28/reaching-a-nuclear-agreement-with-iran-the-problematics-of-diplomacy/

Israel’s Founding Father Called for Villages to Be ‘Wiped Out,’ Confirming Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

 

by Bas Spliet | Jan 25, 2022

Archival institutions are not known to be pioneers of technological innovation. They are preoccupied with the past, after all. That is why censors still often black out classified information physically, with a marker, a piece of paper or whatnot.

The Israeli State Archives, on the other hand, have apparently been experimenting with virtual censorship tools. In the minutes of a cabinet meeting of Israel’s provisional government during its “War of Independence,” released following requests of the Akevot Institute, digital blackouts were included to cover the more problematic statements made by the Zionist leaders present. As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently found out, however, these comments could be unveiled with a simple click. Woops! (Perhaps due to a similar technical error, I was able to access the paywalled Haaretz article once. Fortunately, the details can be found at Middle East Eye, too.)

The technical malfunction put the war-time document, dated July 1948, suddenly in an entirely different perspective. The censored version had shown David Ben-Gurion, the prime minister of the brand-new State of Israel, as saying that “I am against the wholesale demolition of villages.” But then, once the blackout was removed, there followed a “but.” Indeed, he quickly elaborated: “But there are places that constituted a great danger and constitute a great danger, and we must wipe them out. But this must be done responsibly, with consideration before the act.”

These comments are testimony of the well-documented ethnic cleansing of Palestine during Israel’s foundational war.1 In fact, the ‘wiping out’ of Arab forces and the “expulsion” of the Palestinians was officially sanctioned policy during the conflict. The censorship, which the Israeli State Archives claims to have been unintentional, is only the latest attempt to obscure this historical crime against humanity.

The Roots of Ethnic Cleansing

David Ben-Gurion is widely celebrated in Israel as the country’s founding father who led the war effort during and after the declaration of independence of May 14, 1948. Travelers flying to Tel Aviv today are immediately reminded of this historic figure as they land in Ben Gurion Airport. But the airport in fact predates the founding of Israel. Established in 1934, Arab and European airlines used Lydda Airport, as it was called before World War II, for local and transcontinental travel. In July 1948, however, the same month as the above-mentioned cabinet meeting, the Israelis seized the airport and gave it a Hebrew name: Lod Airport. In 1973, after Ben-Gurion’s death, it was renamed again to its present name in honor of Israel’s first prime minister.

This is just one tiny example of how Palestinian land—and Palestinian history for that matter—was ‘wiped out’ as a result of the 1948 war. This process, as well as the massive expulsion of Palestinians that went along with it, was not a haphazard outcome of the war, however. Rather, as this article argues, ethnic cleansing was at the root of the Zionist project and was implemented as policy by Ben-Gurion in the late 1940s.

From the very beginning, political Zionism implied the “transfer” of the indigenous population to other countries. In their early efforts to gain support from Western nations, Zionist leaders proclaimed that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land.” In reality, they knew that the first part of that slogan was a lie. The Palestinian people were like “the rocks of Judea, obstacles to be cleared on a difficult path,” as Chaim Weizmann, a prominent Zionist figure and future first president of Israel, put it in 1918.2

This dismissive attitude towards the pre-existing civilization in Palestine perhaps explains the early Zionist optimism surrounding the “Arab question.” Theodore Herzl, the founding father of political Zionism, believed that the Palestinians could be uprooted with non-violent methods. In 1895, he wrote that “we shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country.” The property owners, on the other hand, could easily be tricked into giving up their lands according to Herzl. “Let the owners of immovable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us something far more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back.”3

The free market turned out not to be a very good ally, however. Only 5.8% of Palestinian land was under Jewish ownership by December 1947, more than half a century after Herzl’s remarks. Realizing that Jewish immigration, establishing kibbutzes and buying property was not enough, Zionist leaders soon turned to political and military means.

Political help was secured first. During the First World War, a great-power patron was found in Britain, which pledged to put its weight behind “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” in the so-called Balfour Declaration of 1917. When the British secured a League of Nations mandate over Palestine in 1922, words were followed by deeds. During the Mandate period, the British allowed for the creation of a Jewish Agency to function as a semi-governmental body while denying similar advantages to the Palestinians. As such, the Palestinians had to bear the brunt of two colonial movements simultaneously: a settler-colonialist movement in Palestine, aided and abetted by the world’s foremost colonial power in London.4

The more extreme branches of the Zionist movement, such as the “Revisionists” led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, were the first to resort to military means. As far back as 1925, Jabotinsky wrote that “Zionism is a colonizing venture and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed forces.”5 Since he was open about an “Iron wall of bayonets” that needed to separate Jews and Arabs, there was little confusion about the purpose of the paramilitary militias that Jabotinsky endorsed. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Irgun and the Stern Gang launched a terror campaign against Palestinian civilians (and British officials towards the end of the Mandate period) that left hundreds of casualties.

Lest these extreme forms of intimidation be seen as evidence that the need for ethnic cleansing was solely a right-wing policy aim, it was actually accomplished under the leadership of the dominant “Labor” branch of the Zionist movement. With the help of sympathetic British officers, the Jewish Agency was allowed to expand its military arm, the Haganah, during the Great Palestinian Revolt of 1936-1939. Meanwhile, the mainstream Zionist leadership, too, was gravitating towards a military solution to the “Arab Question.” Ben-Gurion, for instance, told his compatriots of the Jewish Agency in June 1938—ten years before the ‘wipe out’ comment—that “I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it.”6

The Execution of Ethnic Cleansing

But how was this “compulsory transfer” to be accomplished? How, indeed, did the Zionists gain control over the majority of Palestine by the beginning of 1949 if a little over one year earlier they owned barely 5% of the land, the majority of which was concentrated in the cities? Here, the political and military clout they had built up over the years converged.

This time, foreign political help came from the recently founded United Nations, which, bear in mind, before decolonization in Africa and Asia was in large part a club of the Western Great Powers. These nations felt obliged to compensate the Jews for the Nazi Holocaust. In February 1947, the British decided to turn the fate of Palestine over to the UN. On November 29 of that year, after nine months of deliberation, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, which envisioned the partition of Palestine into two separate states. 56% of the land was to go to a Jewish state, while the Palestinians were left with only 43%. (A small enclave around Jerusalem was to become internationally governed.)

The Palestinians were vehemently opposed to partition, however. They considered it unfair since they held almost all of Palestine and had lived on their lands for generations. Moreover, while only 10,000 Jews would end up under Palestinian governance, 438,000 Palestinians—as well as hundreds of villages and the most fertile land—would end up under Jewish rule overnight. Leaving these Palestinians in the hands of an ideology which had openly vowed to de-Arabize Palestine contributed to the fate that was to befall them.

Indeed, the Palestinian and Arab rejection of the UN plan allowed the Zionist leadership to claim the moral upper hand. Ben-Gurion was a good tactician; like many of his successors, he kept the most extreme Zionist elements at bay and made sure to demonstrate to the outside world that the Jewish side, contrary to the Arabs, did accept the UN plan. Behind closed doors, however, he knew that the borders of the Jewish state “will be determined by force and not by the partition resolution.”7

Still, the two-state solution created a huge problem that preoccupies Zionists until today: the so-called “demographic balance.” Jews would constitute only a tiny majority in the future Jewish state, and this did not stroke with the exclusionary Zionist ideology. As Ben-Gurion said in a speech a few days after the publication of the UN partition plan, “there are 40% non-Jews in the areas allocated to the Jewish state. This composition is not a solid basis for a Jewish state. […] Only a state with at least 80% Jews is a viable and stable state.”8

And thus, the plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine was born. By the end of the year, parallel to an escalation in terrorist attacks by Irgun and the Stern Gang (and later on also the Haganah), Ben-Gurion gave the green light for lethal assaults on Arab villages. The object was clear: “Every attack has to end with occupation, destruction and expulsion.”9 In early March, ethnic cleansing was adopted as official policy in Plan Dalet (or Plan D), which sanctioned operations aimed at “destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up, and by planting mines in their rubble). […] In case of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population expelled outside the borders of the state.”

It is difficult not to read “in case of resistance” here as a silly pretext. Indeed, in a letter to the commanders of Haganah brigades, Ben-Gurion stated unequivocally that “the cleansing of Palestine [is] the primary objective of Plan Dalet.”10 Moreover, although there was certainly Palestinian armed resistance (and at times acts of retaliation), the systematic ethnic cleansing of 531 villages and eleven urban neighborhoods and towns that followed happened regardless of the presence and activity of Arab armed forces. Hundreds of civilians were killed in dozens of cold-blooded massacres, which, as intended, drove more than 750.000 Palestinians to flee beyond the territory under control of the Israelis. These refugees would never be allowed back in.

The Memory-Holing of Ethnic Cleansing

Like all subsequent assaults on Palestine, Israeli propaganda has done its best to try to paint the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1947-1949 as a defensive war. Echoing later proclamations that the Jews were about to be “driven into the sea,” Ben-Gurion and company justified their military action as a desperate attempt to stave off a “second Holocaust.” In private, however, Ben-Gurion was well aware of the superior military power of the Zionist forces. In a letter from February 1948, for instance, he wrote that “we can face all the Arab forces. This is not a mystical belief, but a cold and rational calculation based on practical examination.”11

The Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian, and Jordanian forces that entered Palestine following Israel’s declaration of independence in May 1948 almost exclusively operated in the areas allocated to the Palestinians under the UN partition plan. For the Jordanians, not crossing the UN-proposed borders was even part of a secret deal with the Jewish Agency. But even at defending those borders the Arab forces did a bad job. Indeed, after the war was over the Israelis controlled 78% of historic Palestine, having conquered almost half of the land that was supposed to become part of a Palestinian state. What was left was the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, the first two of which were annexed by Jordan and the last by Egypt. In 1967, finally, Israel conquered and occupied these areas (as well as the Egyptian Sinai and Syrian Golan Heights), too.

In the procrastinated peace process that has dragged on ever since, the acceptance of the State of Israel within the 1949 armistice lines (the so-called “Green Line”) has formed a sine qua non for the Israelis. Everything that happened before 1967 is considered a fait accompli and is simply not on the negotiating table. Israel, with diplomatic help from its new great-power patron, the United States, to this day ignores UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which affirms the right of return for the millions of descendants of the 750,000 Palestinians it expelled between 1947 and 1949. Meanwhile, under Israel’s 1950 Law of Return, every Jew in the world has the right to “return” to Israel and acquire citizenship.

The fate of the Palestinians that the Israelis failed to expel beyond the borders of historic Palestine is perhaps even more tragic. Palestinians inside the State of Israel, which today make up around 21% of the population, live under a system of Apartheid. Palestinians living in the West Bank continue to live under occupation. And Palestinians in Gaza are confined to what is often called “the world’s largest open-air prison,” suffering at the hands of a devastating fifteen-year-old Israeli-Egyptian blockade and intermittent Israeli bombing campaigns.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/israels-founding-father-called-for-villages-to-be-wiped-out-confirming-ethnic-cleansing-of-palestine/