EFTA01756210.pdf

From: Office of Tene Rod-Larsen Sent: Saturday, October 19, 2013 9:07 PM Subject: October 18 update 18 October, 2013 Article 1. NYT If Not Now, When? Roger Cohen<http://topics.nytimes.comitopinews/international/columns/rogerc=henk Article 2. Foreign Policy Why the Middle East is less and less important for the United States Aaron David Miller Article 3. The Guardian In the Middle East, the prize of peace is now there for the taking Hans Christof von Sponeck<http://www.theguardian.com/profile/hans-christof-=on-sponeck>, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann<http://www.theguardian.com/profileAiguel-d-escoto-brockmann> and Denis., Hallidaychttp://www.theguardian.comi=rofile/denis-j-halliday> Article 4. Al-Monitor Saudi Arabia Shifts to More Activist Foreign Policy Doctrine Nawaf Obaid Article 5. The Diplomat An expanding Chinese presence in the Middle East could pose the greatest lo=g-term threat to Iran Zachary Keck Article 6. The National Interest Is Antisemitism Back in Europe? John Allen Gay<httplinationalinterest.org/profile/john-gay> Article 1. NYT If Not Now, When? Roger Cohenchttp://topics.nytimes.com/topinews/international/columns/rogerc=henk EFTA_R1_00057476 EFTA01756210 October 17, 2013 -- It is possible to imagine a scenario more favorable to =srael than the current one, but it is not easy. Syria is giving up its che=ical weapons. In the civil war there, Hezbollah and Iran are bleeding. The=Egyptian Army has ousted the Muslim Brotherhood, restored a trusted interl=cutor for Israel, and embarked on a squeeze of Hamas in Gaza. In Turkey, R=cep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, has overstretched; the glow is off=his aggressive stand for Palestine. Saudi Arabia is furious with President Obama over his policies toward Egypt= Syria and Iran. It has scant anger left for Israel. Sunni-Shiite enmity, =layed out in a Syrian conflict that could make the 30-year religious war i= Europe seem short, feels more venomous today than the old story of Arabs =nd Jews. The power and prosperity of Israel have seldom, if ever, looked m=re sustainable in its 65-year history. Of course things can change in the Middle East — of late very fast — bu= if Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is inclined to take ri=ks from strength, the present looks propitious. As he wrote in an open let=er to Israelis in July, "We have built a wonderful country and turned it=into one of the world's most prosperous, advanced and powerful countries=" This is true. Israel is a miracle of innovation and development. Tel Aviv, =t once sensual and vibrant, is a boom town. Go there and smile. For almost three months now Israelis and Palestinians have been negotiating=peace in U.S.-brokered talks. They have been doing so in such quiet that t=e previous sentence may seem startling. Nobody is leaking. Because expecta=ions are low, spoilers are quiescent. There is a feeling nobody opposed to=a resolution need lift a finger because the talks will fail all on their o=n. This is good. Absent discretion, diplomacy dies. Ample cause exists for skepticism. The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, i=sists that not one Israeli soldier will be allowed in Palestine; Netanyahu=wants Israeli troops in the Jordan Valley for decades. There are hundreds =f thousands of Israeli settlers in the West Bank with no plans to go anywh=re. Several members of the Israeli government scoff at the notion of Pales=ine; Netanyahu has become a liberal Likudnik, of all things. The Palestini=n national movement is split, incitement against Israel continues, and the=idea of a two-state outcome is losing favor. All this before Jerusalem and=the Palestinian right of return are even broached. Still, with scarcely a murmur, the talks continue. They are almost a third =f the way into the allotted nine months. Well before that time is up, the =wo sides' final positions will have become clear. There will be gaps. Th=t will be the moment for the United States to step forward with its take-i=-or-leave-it bridging proposal. That will be the time of the leaders — N=tanyahu, Abbas and Obama — and the test of their readiness for risk in t=e name of a peace that can only come with painful concessions. Israel is strong today for many reasons. A core one is the resilience and s=ability of its democratic institutions. There is, however, a risk to this:=No democracy can be immune to running an undemocratic system of oppression=in territory under its control. To have citizens on one side of an invisible line and disenfranchised subje=ts without rights on the other side does not work. It is corrosive. A demo=racy needs borders. It cannot slither into military rule for Palestinians =n occupied West Bank areas where state-subsidized settler Jews have the ri=ht to vote as if within Israel. If Israel is to remain a Jewish and democr=tic state — and it must — something has to give. Netanyahu knows this. Palestinians must also make painful choices. They are weak, Israel is stron= — and getting stronger. The world is never going back to 1948. In Jerusalem's Old City I was walking this year down from the Damascus Ga=e. Crowds of Palestinians were pouring out of a Friday service at the Al A=sa Mosque. A large group of Orthodox Jews was moving in the opposite direc=ion, toward the Western Wall. Into this Muslim-Jewish melee, out of the Vi= Dolorosa, a cluster of Christians emerged carrying a large wooden cross t=ey tried to navigate through the crowd. It was a scene of despair for anyo=e convinced faiths and peoples can be disentangled in the Holy Land. Looke= at another way it was a scene of hope, even mirth. Netanyahu has recently taken to quoting Hillel: "If I am not for myself, =ho will be for me?" Of course it was Hillel who said: 'That which is h=teful to yourself, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah, the =est is just commentary." And Netanyahu's chosen quote, in this time of strength, ends with four wo=ds he has omitted: "If not now, when?" Article 2. Foreign Policy Why the Middle East is less and less important for the United States Aaron David Miller 2 EFTA_R1_00057477 EFTA01756211 October 17, 2013 -- Does the Middle East really matter anymore? I'm just kidding. Of course the Middle East matters. Just look at the headl=nes: Not a day goes by without a new crisis in Syria, Iraq, or Egypt or a =tatement by an Israeli politician or Iranian mullah predicting that we're =eaded either to war or peace. This week, world leaders met in Geneva to di=cuss Iran's nuclear capability. Last month, President Barack Obama gave a =peech to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) devoted entirely to th= Middle East. Then there are the petroleum reserves, the iconic Suez Canal= and the all too narrow Straits of Hormuz. There's also the never-ending s=ga of the Arab-Israeli conflict and, of course, September 11. That terribl= event -- the second bloodiest day in U.S. history, exceeded only by a day=during the Battle of Antietam -- came from the angry, grievance-producing,=broken Middle East. But, with all that said, the Middle East is not nearly as important as it u=ed to be. The traditional reasons for U.S. involvement are changing. Once =pon a time, it was all about containing the Russians, our dangerous depend=nce on Arab oil, and a very vulnerable Israel. Then it was all about the t=reat of Islamic extremism and terrorism, and the desire to nation-build in=Afghanistan and Iraq. Much of that is now gone. Some of what remains has gotten more complex and =imited the role the United States can and should play in the Middle East. =n other matters, the fact that some situations have gotten simpler may act=ally be further limiting what America wants and needs to accomplish there. Could it be that, in coming years, we're going draw back even more from the=place? Perhaps. And here's why. (1) There's no new cold war or bogeyman. It was the famous trio of Russians, oil, and Israel against the backdrop of=a declining British empire that brought the United States to the Middle Ea=t in there first place, and some would like to believe there's still a col= war on. After all, Putin loves to stick it to America every chance he get=, and he's seen the United States remove Russian clients one by one (Sadda= Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi) and even threaten unilateral action against Bas=ar al-Assad, Moscow's last man standing in the Middle East. But Putin is not interested in an expanded proxy war with Washington in a r=gion he knows is rife with Islamic extremism and a messy trap for Russia t= boot. He would like to preserve the influence and assets he has, some of =hich involve billions in unpaid Syrian debt and contracts with Assad's nam= on them, as well as the naval base at Tartus. Putin also opposes a Pax Am=rica. However, as the recent U.S.-Russian framework agreement on Syrian ch=mical weapons reveals, Putin's aims can involve cooperation as much as com=etition. As part of the PS +1, I also suspect Putin would sign on to a dea= on the Iranian nuclear issue, rather than risk Israeli or U.S. military a=tion. In other words, the Russians and the Americans are hardly allies in the Mid=le East -- but they're not quite enemies either. So, if the Russians aren't the principal threat to draw the United States i=to the region anymore, who or what is? In the wake of the collapse of the =oviet Union, a lot of smart people had questions about what new organizing=paradigm for U.S. foreign policy would replace the Cold War. After a decad=, the answer came literally out of the blue on a beautiful but deadly fall=day in September 2001. The attacks on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers generated a frenzy of activ=ty, much of it focused on the Middle East. This would come to include two =f the longest and among the most profitless wars in U.S. history, a global=war on terrorism, an industrial-size homeland security complex, and a cont=nuing struggle to find the right balance between America's security and th= rights, privacy, and civil liberties of its citizenry. But, another decade later, the signs of retrenchment and withdrawal from th= hot wars that replaced the cold one are pretty clear. We're out of Iraq, =nd, by 2014, we'll be heading for the exits in Afghanistan, too. As for th= so-called war on terrorism, we are getting smarter and more economical. T=e United States has been quite effective in dismantling al Qaeda's central=operations and keeping the homeland safe from another sensational attack. =e've been lucky for sure, but effective, too. The danger now appears to be=more from extremist-inspired, lone wolf episodes like we saw at Fort Hood =nd in Boston. In any event, Americans dying in terrorist attacks remains a= unlikely situation: Last year, only 10 Americans died in terrorist attack=. You're more likely to die in a car accident. Meanwhile, drones are hardly an ideal counter-terrorism strategy from a leg=l, moral, or political point of view, but, along with the use of U.S. Spec=al Forces, they do reflect a much lower-profile approach to dealing with t=rrorists than invading nations and trying to rebuild them. Ideal or not, t=ese kinds of tactics reflect the sort of retail approach to terrorism that=the United States is likely to continue pursuing in the future. 3 EFTA_R1_00057478 EFTA01756212 To be sure, the threat from Islamic extremism has not gone away. But the no=ion that the Islamists and their Sunni or Shiite arcs are poised to take o=er the Middle East and require some new grand interventionist strategy is =nother example of threat inflation. Osama bin Laden is dead. The Egyptian =uslim Brotherhood is a shadow of its former self. Hamas is contained in it= tiny Gaza enclave. Nasrallah and Hezbollah have been weakened by Assad's =ravails. And the prospect that a small al Qaeda offshoot is going to take =ver and govern large parts of Syria is fanciful at best. Indeed, the problem for many of the lands visited by the Arab Spring isn't =hat some new ayatollah or mullah is going to create a modern day Caliphate= but that there will continue be weak and ineffective governance in the re=ion, with those in charge incapable of coming up with truly national visio=s for their countries or leading in a way that addresses the basic politic=l and economic needs of their people. (2) Nobody wants America to play Mr. Fix-It. One thing is clear: We've likely seen the last of the big transformative-in=erventionist schemes to change the Middle East from the outside in the nam= of U.S. security, a freedom agenda, or anything else. I say this knowing =hat there's little historical memory here, that the military gives a willf=l president all kinds of options, and that the world is an unpredictable p=ace. But watching the public, congressional, and even expert reaction to t=e prospects of a limited U.S. strike against Syria, there's clearly zero s=pport for intervening militarily in somebody else's civil war. The alliance of the liberal interventionists and neocons who bemoan the Oba=a administration's lack of will, vision, and leadership and its abject spi=elessness in the face of 100,000 dead (a full half of whom are combatants =elonging to one side or the other) is simply no match for a frustrated pub=ic promised a reasonable return on two wars who instead got more than 6,00= American dead, thousands more with devastating wounds, trillions of dolla=s expended, a loss of American prestige and credibility, and outcomes more=about leaving than winning. To believe anyone in the United States is ready to invest additional resour=es in tilting at windmills in the Middle East is utterly fantastical. Who =an blame them? Last week in Libya, the one successful example of U.S. inte=vention in the Arab Spring, militias kidnapped the prime minister. Car bom=s kill scores weekly in Iraq. And, in Afghanistan, one can only despair ab=ut the gap between the price we have paid there and what we can expect in =erms of security and good governance in the years ahead. (3) An energy revolution is coming. Energy independence isn't around the corner. But there's a revolution brewi=g in North America that will over time reduce U.S. dependence on Arab oil.=U.S. oil production is increasing sharply for the first time in almost a q=arter century. And natural gas output is rising, too. Some people even pre=ict that, within a decade, America will become the world's largest produce= of oil and gas. Indeed, Saudi Arabia currently produces 10 million barrel= a day, while the United States churns out six million. If you add another=two million in natural gas liquids, you can -- without straining the bound= of credulity -- see the potential. According to Council on Foreign Relati=ns oil guru Michael Levi, even the cautious U.S. Energy Information Admini=tration predicts that, by 2020, U.S. production could get close to 10 mill=on barrels a day. The point is not that the United States is becoming the new Saudi Arabia<ht=p://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/16/the_end_of_opec_america_ener=y_oil>. As Levi points out, we're not in a position to manipulate and play=politics with our oil production to affect supply and price. But we are go=ng to become less reliant on Middle East energy. In 2011, we imported 45 p=rcent of our energy needs, down from 60 percent six years earlier, and the=share of our imports from Western Hemisphere sources is increasing. Betwee= new oil in Brazil, oil sands production in Canada, and shale gas technolo=y at home, by 2020, we could cut our dependence on non-Western Hemisphere =il by half. Combine that with the rise in national oil production and grea=er focus on fuel efficiency and conservation, and the trend lines are at l=ast running in the right direction. As long as oil trades in a single market, we're still vulnerable to disrupt=ons, and the security of the Middle East's vast oil reserves will continue=to be a key U.S. interest. But our own independence and thus freedom of ac=ion as it relates to the Saudis and other Arab producers will only increas=. Given the fact that this month is the fortieth anniversary of the 1973 o=l embargo, that's a good thing to contemplate. (4) Arab Allies are estranged. Part of the reason the United States is losing interest and influence in th= Middle East is that we're sort of running out of friends -- or, perhaps m=re to the point and to quote Franklin Delano Roosevelt's reported descript=on of a Nicaraguan president, our own SOBs. America is watching a region i= profound transformation. The old authoritarians with whom we fought (Sadd=m, Qaddafi, Assad the elder) and those on whom we relied (Yasser Arafat, H=sni Mubarak, Ben Ali, Abdullah Saleh) are all gone. It's true the kings re=ain. But the most important ones -- the Saudis -- have serious 4 EFTA_R1_00057479 EFTA01756213 problems wi=h our policies. They can't abide the fact that, as a result of our doing, = Shiite prime minister rules in Baghdad; they loathe our policy on acquies=ing to Mubarak's ouster; they resent our interest in reform in Bahrain; an= they can't stand our refusal to get tough with Israel on the Palestinians= We've just suspended a chunk of military aid to Egypt, another of our other=Arab friends, and managed to alienate just about every part of the Egyptia= political spectrum, from the military to the Islamists to the liberals to=the business community. The Jordanians still want to be our friend largely=because King Abdullah's vulnerabilities require it. Likewise for Mahmoud A=bas, who has no chance of getting a Palestinian state without U.S. Secreta=y of State John Kerry's peace process lifeline. The fact is, for the first time in half a century, Washington lacks a truly=consequential Arab partner with whom to cooperate on matters relating to p=ace or war. Part of the reason is surely because our own street cred is mu=h diminished. But most of our predicament derives from regional deficits -= the weakness of the Arab leaders and states themselves, and the turbulent=changes loosed in the region in the past several years. You might even go so far as to suggest that, today, the three most conseque=tial powers in the region are the non- Arabs: Iran, Turkey, and Israel. All=are serious, stable countries, with strong economies and militaries. Too b=d we can't forge a partnership among that triad. The Middle East ibility of an U.S.-Iranian rapprochement on the horizon, China's expansion in the Middle East ultimately poses th= greatest threat to Iran over the long term. The U.S. will undoubtedly sha=e Iran's concern with Beijing's more assertive Middle East policy, and=this could be an additional impetus for them to put aside their bitter rivalry.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt">Regardless if that =ccurs or not, it is clear that as China seeks to deepen its presence in th= Middle East, it will increasingly have to contend with Iran.&nbsp;&nbsp;<=span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>cspan style="font-size:18.0pt">Zachary Keck is =ssociate Editor of The Diplomat. </span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a name="f"><span style="font-size:8.0pt">&nbsp;=/span></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="#ff"><span style="font-size:8.0pt">Arti=le 6.</span></a><span style="font- size:8.0pt"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt">The National Intere=t </span> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><u><span style="font-size:28.0pt">Is Antisemiti=m Back in Europe?</span></u></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://nationalinterest.org/profile/john-=ay" target="_blank"><span style="font- size:18.0pt">John Allen Gay</spa=></a><span style="font-size:18.Opt"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt">October 18, 2013 --=The status of Jews in Europe remains a delicate one. At least that is what=a new survey by the EU's Agency for Fundamental Rights suggests. The sur=ey, to be released in full in November, found that nearly one quarter of European Jews </span><a href="http://ww=.timesofisrael.com/fearful-of-anti-semitism-22-of-european-jews-hide- ident=ty/?utm_source=dIvr.it&amp;utm_medium=twitter" target="_blank"><span=style="font- size:18.0pt">avoid</span></a><span style="font-size:18.0pt=> doing things or wearing symbols that could allow others to identify them a= Jewish. And the numbers are worse in some places: Forty-nine percent of t=e Swedish utopia's Jews avoid recognizably Jewish clothing and symbols i= public. Eighty-eight percent of French Jews said antisemitism has become worse in the last five years. Thi=ty percent of Hungarian Jews have experienced an antisemitic incident in t=e past twelve months. And around Europe, two-thirds said reporting assault= and other antisemitic incidents to the police wasn't worth it, or wouldn't make a difference.</span></=> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font- size:18.0pt">Surveys like this c=st doubt on the belief that the history of the West has been one of steady=progress. Sure, the Europeans seem to have finally been civilized, with th=ir bloody, multicentury stream of wars and revolutions supplanted by social democracy and multinational union. Bu= in 2012, reports Tel Aviv University's Kantor Center, France </span><a href="http://kantorcenter.tau.ac.il/sites/default/files/doch-al=-final-2012.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:18.0pt">led th= world</span></a><span styleefont-size:18.0pt"> in violent antisemitic =ncidents.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt">Who is to blame? Th= media would have you believe it's the far right—Greece swarming with =olden Dawn blackshirts and cryptofascists flexing their muscles almost everywhere east of the Elbe. And the Kantor Center documents plenty of far-right violence. But participants in the EU =urvey, many drawn from Western Europe, saw it differently—just 19 percen= pinned it on the extreme right. Twenty-two percent faulted the extreme le=t. But Europe's Muslims are cited by 27 percent.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt">This brand of antis=mite has imported the hatred of Jews to 5 EFTA_R1_00057480 EFTA01756214 countries where it was historicall= less severe, such as Denmark. Tablet, a Jewish online magazine, relates t=e </span><a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/128077/=iding-judaism-in-copenhagen" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:18=0pt">tale</span></a><span style="font-size:18.0pt"> of Martin Krasnik, a=journalist and a liberal Jewish Dane who decided to take a long walk through the immigrant neighborhood of Norreb=o with a yarmulke perched atop his head. He's quickly harassed—flipped=off, told to "go to hell, Jew," told to his remove his cap, and so for=h. There were plenty of threats—men tell him that "we have a right to kick your ass," that his religion may tel= him to wear the yarmulke but that it doesn't tell him to get killed, th=t "my cousin killed a guy for wearing a 'Jewish hat.— Krasnik was=extremely uncomfortable, telling Tablet's Michael Moynihan that he thought, "If I keep doing this for an hour or two, some=hing will happen. And if I did this everyday, I would get my ass kicked ar=und."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt">The rise of Muslim =ntisemitism in Europe is well documented—and widely ignored. Krasnik tol= Moynihan that the press and other elites give the phenomenon little atten=ion and little energy—"The mayor of Copenhagen says 'we will not accept antisemitism, but that we shouldn't overdrama=ize the situation. We should breathe calmly, he said." Moynihan noted th=t some school principals in heavily immigrant areas have begun warning Jew=sh parents away. Europe's multiculturalists prefer to apologize for their more troublesome charges—and to bend nativ= society to accommodate foreigners' prejudices. Moynihan, again:</span><=p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt">At a recent governm=nt-sponsored "multicultural festival" in Norrebro, intended to promo=e cultural "diversity," a Jewish group was barred from displaying the =sraeli flag. TaskForce Inclusion, one of the Orwellian-named organizers of the event, claimed that the measure was take= as a "safety precaution" (a precaution that applied, it seems, only t= Jewish groups and a tacit admission that the mere sight of a Star of Davi= would drive certain other attendees into spasms of violence). One government official later said that, initial=y, the Jewish group was to be completely excluded for fear of offending Mu=lim participants.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt">Modern liberality v=ils Europe's history—and it's the same veil behind which some of Eur=pe's less pleasant impulses lurk. There is a fatal flaw, after all, in E=ropean claims of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism really can enrich societies. And there is no better testament to this than=the history of the Jews in Europe. They gave Europe Einstein and Kafka, Fr=ud and Arendt. They made Europe the world's intellectual center of gravi=y—until the Europeans killed them and drove them out. So why would Europe's self-proclaimed multiculturali=ts sweep their shining example under the rug, unless something more unsavo=y were at play? </span><span style="font-size:18.0pt"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size:18.0pt">John Allen Gay i= an assistant managing editor at The National Interest. His book&nbsp;(co-=uthored with Geoffrey Kemp)&nbsp;</span></i><a href="https://rowman.com/=SBN/9781442221994" target="_blank"><i><span style="font-size:18.0pt">W=r with Iran: Political, Military, and Economic Consequences</span></i></a>ci=<span style="font-size:18.Opt">&nbsp;was released by Rowman and littlefi=ld in early 2013.</span></i></p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </body> </html> 6 EFTA_R1_00057481 EFTA01756215