Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse April 28, 2018

by Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) April 28th, 2018

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AMMAN — Israeli public opinion is, to quote The Economist, “a remarkably forgetful and fickle force.” The same can be said for Israeli politics in general. So it is hardly a stretch to say that measuring Israeli public opinion’s effects on Israeli policy is a significant challenge. And one of the most controversial of all of Israel’s policies over the years has been that of creating and expanding Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory over several decades. Especially given what a lightning-rod issue the settlements are and, in typical Israeli fashion, how complicated everything about them has become, this is a question worth asking.

Challenging Data for a Challenging Question

Almost as soon as I began this project, I knew there were many challenges that would make it impossible for any kind of definitive, clear, unqualified conclusions to emerge from this exploration, in the sense that public opinion cannot simply be said to be Variable A affecting settlement policy, Variable B, in such-and-such a way.

Such simplicity is as elusive as the “Two-State Solution” itself.

For one thing, Israel is a small country, and though it is powerful for its size, it is subject to a remarkable amount of factors from within and without, and its sensitive reactions to these factors are often intense, with Israel’s increasingly volatile neighborhood (and often volatile involvement in that neighborhood) only compounding these effects. Therefore, rather than look at public opinion and settlement policy as some sort of isolated factors, it is essential to account, at the very least, for some of the other major forces that can account for shifts in policy and opinion. Thus, when I was assembling my data points, I knew it would be essential to frame shifts in both Israeli public opinion and Israeli settlement policy against the backdrop of the more salient events affecting Israel, generally, those that could generally affect the feelings of Israelis and, specifically, those that could affect settlement policy. This approach should be more than obvious in the dataset I have uploaded here (this will be an ongoing project, so check back frequently for changes).

As time went on and I looked more and more at the different surveys, I also realized that measuring public opinion in Israel carries a unique set of challenges in contrast to studying similar subjects in the United States. 

The U.S. is a huge country, with hundreds of millions of people spread across a continent; Israel has far less than even ten million people squeezed into a tiny sliver of the Mediterranean coast. During major U.S. elections, political polls are ubiquitous, and even not during election cycles, major issues are polled often. Whatever the polls, there are usually long histories of polling by that firm and other major polling firms, asking relatively similar questions and often the same questions.

Israeli political polling is another beast entirely: there are far, far fewer pollsters, and there is little consistency in how questions are phrased between pollsters and, sometimes, even with the same polling outfit. Also, because there are far fewer data points the polling data must be taken with much more of a grain of salt than American polling.

We simply don’t have ten or even twelve years of data that says “Do you approve or disapprove of Israeli settlements?” What this means is that there is a broad array of approaches to categorizing the data and presenting it. The only agenda I pursued in my presentation was one of simplicity, and I take responsibility for the costs such an approach carries. For example, instead of a question asking “Are you for or against evacuating settlements?” a question might ask “Are you a.) for removing all settlements b.) for removing most settlements except major ones near the Green Line [i.e., 1967 borders] c.) for removing settlements from the Green Line and illegal outposts d.) for removing illegal outposts e.) against any removals?” In this case, I would (and basically did) combine a.), b.), and c.) to refer to serious support for full or partial settlement removal, ignored d.) as not really being conclusive of sentiment supporting settlement removal in general, and took e.) for being against removal. Other may have found it more beneficial to include all these nuances or created different categories and groupings. I opted for the ones I chose, again, for the sake of simplicity, but I welcome comments and suggestions.

Even with the limitations and subjective approach I took, I still feel there is value in looking at this data thus arrayed, and I can say with confidence that no one else has undertaken a similar effort as comprehensive as mine, at least not in English but also not likely in Hebrew, either. As imperfect as the data may be, it can still help to give a relative sense of the forces at work. See the dataset here (data does not include East Jerusalem)

The Inconsistent Effects of Public Opinion on Israeli Settlement Policy

Looking at my (provisional) compilation of the data, in the years just before the Palestinians’ First Intifada (uprising) at the end of 1987, over half of Israelis (as high as 57%) were inclined to annex Palestinian land in part or in full, therefore making many or all the settlements permanent Israeli communities, and support for “land for peace” initiatives was below 50% (as low as 39%). In reaction to the (relatively moderate-to-low-scale) violence of the Intifada, public opinion reversed: sentiment supporting “land for peace” began to steadily increase, and support for annexation dipped below 50% and continued to decline as the Intifada continued. By 1991, the positions has essentially reversed, with one poll showing 58% for “land for peace” style ideas and only 40% for annexation.

Yet with the exception of a small dip in 1989, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s hardline government continued with steady settlement population increases and construction expansion, with the highest settler population increases in 1987 and 1991, which also had dramatically higher percentage increases in settlement construction (over 144% and over 314%, respectively). Though the latter coincided with the peak years of the Soviet-Jewish Aliya (immigration) to Israel, U.S. president George H. W. Bush still felt that Shamir’s government was going far too far on settlements, and exerted heavy pressure on him and Israel to curtail settlement growth and construction. Along with changing public sentiment, this helped precipitate the rise of Yitzhak Rabin’s pro-peace Labor government in 1992, which would severely curtail settlement construction, though not so much settlement population growth. 

Here would be one of the times that Israeli public opinion on settlements seemed to lead and push Israel, its politicians, and its government on settlement policy. 

The year before and year of Rabin’s assassination were two of the deadliest years in all of the 1990s for Israelis in terms of Palestinian violence, and, according to one survey, sympathy for settlers among the Israeli public rose in the year after Rabin’s assassination, even as settlement activity was being curtailed. This same year was when Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud, pro-settlement forces pushed Labor out of power, and it is ironic that under Netanyahu’s three years in power, sentiment (with some vacillation) seemed to increase and remain high for “land for peace” (60s and high 50s) initiatives and for evacuating settlements (high 60s/low 70s), while support for annexation was far lower than before (mid-20s). Yet Netanyahu—who had himself hold the housing ministry responsible for settlement construction along with the office of prime minister for the entirety of his prime ministership—pushed ahead robustly with settlement expansion.

This may in part help to explain the rise of Labor and peace candidate Ehud Barak’s government in 1999, under whose watch public opinion in several surveys increased sharply against settlements and rise sharply for “land for peace.”

But this would be short-lived. Under the intense diplomatic efforts of U.S. President Bill Clinton, Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat engaged in intense U.S.-mediated negotiations in 2000, and settlement expansion activity by the Israeli government accordingly fell sharply. But these talks fell apart, with some encouragement by Barak’s rival, Likudnik Ariel Sharon, who could have been fairly said to have helped instigate the Second Intifada late in 2000. Amidst a dramatic rise in violence—far worse than anything during the First Intifada and the rest of the 1990s—Sharon, the famously harsh warrior, toppled Barak’s government amid plummeting support for “land for peace” and settlement evacuation, a pessimism that was only reinforced by the 9/11 attacks in America.

Previously, Labor had ridden waves of anti-settlement and pro-“land for peace” sentiment with Rabin and Barak, and Likud had tried (but failed) to lead public opinion with Netanyahu. Sharon, it seems, would succeed where Netanyahu had failed. But Sharon would have a unique and surprising agenda: even while crushing the Palestinian uprising with overwhelming force, Sharon would shepherd his people towards a historic disengagement, a sort of a “land for peace” led by an archconservative, much like strong anti-Communist Nixon would credibly able to normalize relations with Mao’s China.

Under Sharon, Arafat died and the settler population steadily if moderately expanded, even as Sharon withdrew all 8,500 Jewish settlers from Gaza in 2005 (even allowing for that, both the settler population and settlement construction saw a net increase that year), though Sharon’s government definitely curtailed construction of new units.

The pullout from Gaza caused a rift in the pro-settler Likud party, so much so that Sharon broke off and formed a new, centrist Kadima party, which led a new government that would significantly curtail support for settlement expansion. 

But the next year, Sharon would fall into a coma, while Hamas would win elections in the evacuated Gaza Strip and Israel would become embroiled in an embarrassing and controversial war in Lebanon. Amidst these developments, Israeli anti-settler and “land for peace” sentiment fell sharply, even as Sharon’s Kadima successor, Ehud Olmert, would risk major peace talks with Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas in 2008. When these fell apart, more conflict in Gaza ensued and set the stage for Netanyahu’s comeback as prime minister. Since then, opinion has been conflicted, with volatile opinions on whether settlements should be evacuated and a tightening of pro/con land-for-peace sentiment and an increase in pro-annexation sentiment up until the major conflict with Gaza in 2014. Sentiment on settlements under Netanyahu remained divided up through 2014, so it seems ironically fitting that in his right-wing, pro-settler government, a moderate has been giving the housing ministry. The major declines in government support for the settlers during this period coincided with Obama’s first-term pressure on Israel to freeze settlement activity and his second-term peace effort, led by John Kerry.

Conclusion: It’s Complicated

In summary, there is no overall consistent effect of public opinion on settlement policy. In the 90s, Labor seemed to chase public sentiment as it turned against settlements and for “land-for-peace,” but violence and an assassination meant this did not lead to any long-term peace deal or long-term change in settlement policy. Likud tried twice—first, failing, second, succeeding—to shape public opinion and succeeded, but that led to a strong-willed Sharon forming a new party, and his coma mirrored Rabin’s assassination attempt in seeing efforts fail before new leadership acted to halt new trends in government policy, in both cases, Netanyahu. Thus, it would seem public opinion is at best only as strong a factor as individual leadership, violence from Palestinians, American pressure, and other x-factor events, and that opinion is highly susceptible to all of these factors. It is public opinion that is more variable then, when compared with relatively consistent settlement policy, perhaps best exemplified in the net increases in settlement construction and population growth the same year Sharon took about 8,500 settlers out of Gaza. 

Thus, whether public opinion shapes settlement policy depends on a number of factors, and is hardly the most dominant of factors affecting that policy.

© 2018 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area currently based in Amman, Jordan. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

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Nevada Key: State-by-State Predictions for Election 2016: Barely or BIGLY, Trump Likely to Lose

It could be close, but it may not be: Democrat Hillary Clinton should still win at least 274 Electoral College votes even if she loses big states like Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida, thereby defeating Republican Donald Trump on Election Day, and Nevada is the likely key; below, a state-by-state analysis of every competitive state.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse November 7/8, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) November 7th/8th, 2016

270towin

AMMAN — I wrote after the third debate that the election was over and that Clinton would win unless there was some kind of major Surprise. Then, FBI Director Comey spoketh… And it’s closer than many thought possible.

As we pass through the homestretch and near Election Day, the discussion inevitably turns to maps and geography more so than any other time in the general election, and Americans get to reacquaint themselves with states other than their own, the existence of which they tend to forget when there is not a presidential election at hand. “Who are these mysterious denizens in distant lands who look at the same sky we do, can agree we both seem the same color, and then agree on nothing else whatsoever?” many ask.

Well, here is your guide to the map, states, and math of the Electoral College that will determine who will be the next president of the United States of America.

In order for Trump to defeat the favored Hillary Clinton, he would have to win almost all the battleground states. Now, this is why Clinton is favored in every major statistical model, and the gold-standard in polling analysis, Five Thirty Eight, has two models—one taking into account only polls and another taking into account polls and a few other factors like demographics and economics; the thing is, it’s not as daunting a task to win for Trump as one might think, hence Five Thirty Eight’s models wisely have Trump at about a 1-in-3 shot to become president.

And keep in mind folks: our magic number here is 270.

The Locks:

First, we have the states that are locks, barring a polling disaster or a political miracle (for all states, the number in parentheses is that state’s—and DC’s—number of Electoral College votes):

Hillary’s got these locked down: Vermont (3), Massachusetts (11), Rhode Island (4), Connecticut (7), New York (29), New Jersey (14), Delaware (3), Maryland (10), Washington, DC (3), Illinois (20), Washington (state) (12), Oregon (7), California (55), and Hawaii (4), for a total of 182 certain electoral votes for Clinton.

Donald’s got these states locked down: West Virginia (5), South Carolina (9), Kentucky (8), Tennessee (11), Alabama (9), Indiana (11), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Arkansas (6), Louisiana (8), North Dakota (3), South Dakota (3), Nebraska (5, but only 4 are certain because the state splits its votes), Kansas (6), Oklahoma (7), Montana (3), Wyoming (3), and Idaho (4), for a total of 116 certain electoral votes for Trump.

Locked electoral votes: 182 Clinton, 116 Trump

The Near-Locks:

For Clinton:

Then, we have states which look like they could be competitive in theory, but will not be unless something crazy happens: Virginia, Georgia, Minnesota, Texas, New Mexico, Alaska, plus Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District; let’s go through each by which candidate is an overwhelming favorite and why.

Virginia (13): Before Obama won Virginia in 2008, the last time Virginia voted for a Democrat was in 1964, but since 2008 it’s been solidly blue, only sending Democratic U.S. Senators to DC since and reelecting Obama in 2012. Its main population growth has been in the DC suburbs, an area with a young, diverse increase in population mainly working for or contracting with the much-reviled status-quo “Establishment” government; they are the system and won’t vote for someone who advocates tearing it down. So while Clinton’s pretty steady lead is modest, don’t expect it to succumb to a Trump assault. Virginia will almost certainly stay in Clinton’s camp.

New Mexico (5): While Trump appears within striking distance in New Mexico, don’t let that fool you: only once since 1992, in 2004, has New Mexico voted for a Republican for president, and both of its senators and 2 out of 3 House seats are Democratic. Also, Clinton’s polling lead there has generally fluctuated between modest and good, but her lead has been steady. And, of course, Trump’s ridiculous comments about Mexican immigrants has riled up the normally relatively apathetic Latino bloc: Latinos—and Mexican-Americans especially—are coming out to vote for Clinton in record numbers, and New Mexico is fertile ground for this trend to keep it solidly in her column on Election Day. It should very much end up in with Clinton’s in the end.

Minnesota (10): Minnesota is the most liberal state not on a coast in the country: it hasn’t gone for a Republican presidential candidate since Nixon in 1972 and did so only two other times—each time for Eisenhower in the 1950s—since 1932. In addition, 6 of its 8 House (and both Senate) seats are in Democratic hands—the only state in between the coasts with such an imbalance in favor of Democrats other than New Mexico—and Minnesota polls have shown a consistent and generally sizable lead for Clinton there. Keep dreaming, Trump.

This gives us an addition 28 electoral votes that are almost certainly going to Clinton

28 near-lock + 182 lock = 210 in Clinton’s column total

For Trump:

Georgia (16): The polling has been mighty close in Georgia, but, for the most part, it’s been a consistent lead for Trump, if only a small one; but Democrats shouldn’t kid themselves: while Georgia is changing demographically and is becoming a more diverse state, the state-level political machine is very much dominated by Republicans, who have ensured that only about 28.5% of its House delegation is Democratic and both of its senators are Republicans even though nearly 45.5% of its voters voted for Obama in the 2012 election; the state system is clearly stacked against Democrats. There is a reason the Voting Rights Act (VRA) preclearance provisions were so focused on the South: white conservative southerners had used the state and local governments for generations there to disenfranchise southern blacks; with the conservative Roberts Supreme Court striking down the preclearance provision of the VRA, in 2013, overall in the South it is quite clear that Republican state authorities are engaging in systematic attempts to make it harder for people to vote in heavily Democratic and heavily African-American areas, with at least 655 polling locations closed since the Supreme Court decision in the six southern states where data is available. Georgia is not included in the available data-set, but Georgia can almost certainly be sure to be part of this trend and, especially with African-American turnout seemingly down compared to when Obama was running, it would take a miracle for Clinton to win Georgia.

Texas (38): Yes, a large number of polls show that Clinton is within striking distance in Texas (and, personally as a Democrat, I can’t wait for that state to go purple and then blue), but it’s not going to happen in 2016, barring some crazy miracle. And yes, while unlike African-Americans, Latinos will be turning out in historic numbers for Clinton, with Republicans firmly in control of the state (the state hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1976, only about 30.5% of its House delegation are Democrats and both its senators are Republicans both even though almost 41.4% voted for Obama in 2012) and trying to suppress voter turnout (at least 403 polling places have been closed in the state since the 2013 VRA decision), it would take something pretty crazy for her to top Trump in Texas.

Alaska (3): Though polls have shown a highly unusually close race in Alaska, and Five Thirty Eight’s models show Clinton with roughly the same chance of winning Alaska as Donald Trump has of winning either Wisconsin or Michigan, calm down, people, Trump is still up and it’s Alaska: this state only voted for a Democrat once, in 1964. Alaska is a diverse state, with Alaskan Natives/Native Americans a large portion of Alaska’s population—nearly 15%—and though they vote heavily Democratic, they have some of the lowest voter turnout rates of any group in the United States and hopes of Clinton taking the state would ride largely on the difficult task of turning them out. Don’t stay up late expecting Alaska to surprise anyone; it’s almost certainly going to be Trump territory.

Then there’s Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District (1), which famously voted for Obama in 2008, but not in 2012; whispers of Clinton having a shot have been heard, but in the scant polling we do have, nothing showed Clinton to be competitive, and there is no other evidence that this will be the case. Yes, there’s so little data that anything is possible, but take it to the bank that this is going stay Trump territory.

This adds another 58 electoral votes that are pretty definite for Trump

So 116 lock + 58 near-lock = 174 total for Trump total

So, certain/virtually certain Electoral Votes: 210 Clinton, 174 Trump

Now, below is where it gets more interesting…

The Upsets-Are-Very-Possible-States

Departing from the above states, we have a number of states where one candidate is moderately favored but where an upset is quite possible: Maine, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Utah, and Arizona. Let’s break them down by which candidates are favored.

Advantage Clinton:

Maine (4 at stake in total, 3 at stake for the 1st Congressional District and overall winner): Overall, Maine is surprisingly close, and while a few polls have it very close, most have given Clinton a healthy lead; still, Maine is a very white state, and the whitest states have been her weakest during the primaries against Sanders and are also her weakest during this general election at the same time, but unlike most very white states, Maine’s population is relatively well-educated, a trait that hurts Trump’s chances. It is not very populous state, so any swing can make a big difference; Clinton is still an overwhelming favorite, and the state hasn’t voted GOP in a presidential race since 1988, but don’t count Trump out. Trump is far more likely to get 1 of Maine’s 4 electoral votes, from the state’s 2nd Congressional District (see further below), than he is to win the state outright.

Pennsylvania (20): While Pennsylvania has tightened in recent days, Clinton’s lead here has been averaging a very consistent moderate one, though one that has shrunken a bit in recent days. It’s not big enough to close the window on Trump but isn’t so small that it doesn’t make her a clear and substantial favorite. Yet possibly lower African-American turnout could mean Clinton doesn’t get quite the boost she is hoping for from Philadelphia.

Ballotpedia

And another point, and this is where we get into the whole early-voting situation and FBI Director Comey’s letters: Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states where there is no early voting and where only a specific set of reasons allow a person to absentee vote. Before Comey’s latest public statement, released yesterday, which exonerates (for a second time) Clinton of any prosecutable wrongdoing in her e-mails/server situation, I would have said that his previous incredible statement of October 28th—that new e-mails were found in the process of a possible sex-crime investigation on Anthony Weiner’s laptop, which he apparently shared with top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, which may be relevant to the Clinton investigation but which neither Comey nor the FBI has begun examining, meaning there was no evidence to report yet (a statement that altered the race, hurt Clinton, and helped Trump)—could have led to a dip in Clinton’s support in general and especially in states that do not allow early voting, since very few people there would have been allowed to vote before that damaging statement from Comey came out, and since people voting on Election Day would have had this e-mail thing as likely the last revelation of the 2016 campaign and the piece of information most fresh in their minds in the voting booth. 

In other words, in a close race, that October 28th Comey revelation could have made it closer or even changed the outcome. With the new revelation exonerating Clinton from wrongdoing coming only 48 hours before Election Day, on one level, this probably reduces some of the damage from the earlier statement; but the fact is that that previous statement gave America a week of non-stop negative coverage of Clinton and this new one came so late it might not make much of a difference at all: people might even miss the information depending on how busy and engaged they were/are with just two days left (a further question that will be very difficult to answer is: how many people would have voted differently during early voting if they had known now that they know from Comey’s latest revelation and/or if they had never heard the previous Comey statement; that is a mighty difficult question to answer, yet it is still very troubling that we even need to be asking this question, much to the discredit of Comey and the FBI). Another thing to consider is that even though this is “good” news for Clinton, it is still news that keeps the spotlight on this e-mail/server issue, one of Clinton’s worst, and not the issues, not her positives, not Trump’s negatives. Especially in a close race that does not allow early voting, the whole FBI e-mail stuff is still what has colored the last stretch of the campaign, so even with the latest exoneration this stuff probably hurts, more than helps, Clinton.

Still, Pennsylvania looks good for Clinton, and the state hasn’t picked a Republican for president since 1988, but it doesn’t look that good for her, and Trump has a decent chance of winning, or failing that, quite a good chance of making Pennsylvania a very tight race and much closer than expected. Bet on Clinton, but don’t bet the house.

Michigan (16): Michigan is quite an interesting state; on paper, it’s generally shown a steady and moderate Clinton lead in the polls, but with a few exceptions. However, Michigan became one of the greatest polling disasters in polling history—and the greatest in primary history—during the Michigan Democratic Primary, when Bernie Sanders ever so narrowly upset Hillary Clinton; it was the surprise Brexit (so far) of the 2016 election season. There are plenty of reasons—lower black enthusiasm, higher white enthusiasm, anger at trade deals, etc., that Trump won big in the primary and Clinton lost to Sanders—to look at a Trump upset as a serious possibility in this state. Plus, the state-level government is totally controlled by Republicans. And oh, Michigan is another state without early voting and which is strict with absentee voting, raising the possibility of Clinton’s e-mails weighing disproportionately heavily on voters’ minds here. She is definitely favored, and Michigan hasn’t gone Republican for president since 1988, but the people at the Clinton campaign sure aren’t taking Michigan for granted; nor should they. 

Wisconsin (10): With a generally steady and moderate lead for Clinton, Wisconsin isn’t quirky like Michigan, and it isn’t as close in polling as Pennsylvania, but that doesn’t mean it is out of Trump’s reach: the state government is totally controlled by Republicans, with controversial Gov. (and former 2016 presidential candidate) Scott Walker at the helm. Conversely, if Michigan is possibly weaker for Clinton because she narrowly lost to Sanders there, it must be mentioned that former 2016 Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz trounced Trump in the Wisconsin Republican Primary; additionally, Wisconsin hasn’t voted for a Republican president since 1984. Both Michigan and Pennsylvania are better bets for Trump, though he still has a decent, if smaller, shot at Wisconsin.

This adds 49 more electoral votes to Clinton’s column, probable but far from certain or even close to certain

49 likely + 210 lock/near lock = 259 looking good for Clinton overall

Advantage Trump:

Iowa (6): For a while it seemed like Iowa would be pretty competitive, but as the campaign draws to a close, the polling trends have moved decidedly in Trump’s favor; Clinton still has a shot, but that shot has become smaller just when she would have hoped the opposite would be true. Expect Trump to prevail in Iowa.

Utah (6): Utah undoubtedly has to win the novelty prize of “most interesting race:” For a while, the state was host a tight three-way race between Trump, Clinton, and independent conservative and one of the last true standard-bearers of the conservative #NeverTrump movement, Mormon Utahn Evan McMullin. Unlike the vast majority of conservative Christians—who have proven themselves little more than rank hypocrites in supporting Trump after harping so long on “family values” as an issue, Mormons have admirable actually demonstrated a fidelity to their principles and have never warmed up to Trump; in fact, they really don’t like him. But polls in the last few weeks have shown Trump with a moderate and steady lead, and Utah seems to be his to lose. Still, with many Mormons being so principled and passionate in their feelings against Trump, it’s quite possible that anti-Trump Mormons may turn out in higher numbers than expected and vote for their fellow Mormon. McMullin has been surprisingly impressive, and still has the ability to shock and be the surprise of the election, but it is still an uphill battle for him, and even more so for Clinton in a conservative state, no matter how close they are; expect Trump to win but allow room for a surprise.

IF McMullin does pull off an upset—hardly inconceivable—his victory could throw a monkey wrench into the whole Electoral College math in some interesting scenarios where neither Trump nor Clinton hit 270 Electoral College votes, sending the election… to Congress? See more at the end of my article (coming soon)…

Arizona (11): Arizona has only gone once for a Democrat in a presidential election since 1952: Bill Clinton, in 1996. This time around, there has been a mostly steady and moderate lead for Trump, though a few more relatively recent polls have it very close and a few even have Clinton up a sliver. It should still go Trump, except… as mentioned, there is a dramatic increase in Hispanic voter turnout this election, and this could put Arizona in play. But there is also an increase in white turnout, as well, which may even outpace the big bump in Latino participation. And Republicans control the entire state government, having at least 212 polling places been closed in the state since the 2013 Supreme Court VRA decision. Even with a Latino surge, with the polls the way they are, a competing white surge, the state dominated by the GOP, and a longer-term national Republican strategy of voter suppression already in place, Arizona is likely to remain with Trump.

This gives another 23 likely, but hardly certain, electoral votes to Trump

23 likely + 174 lock/near lock votes = 197 for Trump

So far, that’s 259 for Clinton and 179 for Trump

The Battlegrounds

Finally, true battleground states where things are most in doubt are Florida, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Ohio, Colorado, and Nevada, as well as Maine’s 2nd Congressional District; we’ll divide these into leans and true tossups.

Leans Clinton

Colorado (9): Clinton had a good-sized lead in Colorado for most of October, but after the Comey announcement of October 28th, polling showed the race here tightening considerably. Still, even though the race is closer, she is shown to have a clear if slight lead, and the fact of the matter is that the demographics of Colorado are very much against Donald Trump, not just because the state is diverse, but because much of the white population is young and Millennial-heavy, profusely college-educated, and liberal. It may be a very close race, but this ground is not favorable to Trump, not enough to give him a victory without a lot of luck and a big surprise. Colorado is a state that has changed a lot and now seems firmly on a path that will keep it a blue state in terms of presidential politics for the foreseeable future.

Nevada (6) TIPPING POINT: The polling in Nevada—perhaps the most difficult state of all to poll for a mix of reasons—has been balanced out to being pretty much tied (not so much with actual ties but with a number of polls canceling each other out), and it would be easy to include it in the tossup category… Except that a lot of early voting data suggests that the race is basically over, that Latino and Democratic turnout has so exceeded expectations in favor of Clinton and without an increase in whites large enough to offset this, that the race can already be called for Clinton in the eyes of the most reputable authority on Nevada politics, Jon Ralston, especially considering that the vast majority (70%) of Nevada voters voted early in 2012.

So Clinton might have already won Nevada before Election Day, with the Nevada State Democratic Party and Harry Reid’s political machine delivering her a victory through an exceptional early-voting-drive effort; it would be fitting particularly for Reid, since it was arguably his machine that delivered Nevada to Clinton in the contest with Sanders, and, as I have pointed out, that was the point where Clinton effectively defeated Sanders for the nomination, even if many others did not realize this at the time. Yes, this would be quite a curtain call for Reid, set to retire after suffering a terrible head injury while exercising back on New Years’ Day in 2015.

Given what we know from early voting, it’s very hard to see Trump winning Nevada.

This means that looking at how uncertain other parts of the race are, considering how in-doubt Nevada was until early voting data came in and how Colorado was thought to be much less competitive than Nevada, if we look at the map and do the math, if we consider Colorado a state more secure for Clinton than Nevada, then we can basically say that Nevada is the tipping point, because it is with Nevada secure—the least secure of all the contests for her in which she is favored—that she has enough Electoral College votes to win the election regardless of who wins New Hampshire, North Carolina, or Florida, the outcomes of which are far more in doubt; Nevada in this case is the kingmaker, then, or, rather, we should say queenmaker.

So 15 electoral votes (with Nevada being the final 6) + the 259 we already gave to Clinton = 274.

Game over.

*****

But, let us finish our analysis:

Leans Trump

Maine’s 2nd Congressional District (1): Polls previously had this very rural, extremely white part of Maine solidly in Trump’s camp, but over the last month is has tightened and now the polls indicate it will be a toss-up. But aside from very being white, it is also not as well-educated as the rest of Maine, making it fertile ground for Trump; thus, even with the numbers indicating a tie, in the end, the demographics suggest that Trump is more likely to prevail than Clinton.

Ohio (18): Ohio always seems to be a crucial state in elections: since 1804—its first election—the state has only failed to vote for the winning presidential candidate 9 times, and only twice in the 20th century, in 1944 (weirdly enough) and 1960.  But there’s a pretty good chance that Ohio will pick the loser in 2016, for the first time in 56 years. Clinton has a decent shot, but not a great one: for most of the last month, Trump has had a steady and moderate lead, but very recently a number of very close polls came out; if not for these polls, I would have had Ohio in the previous category. On one level, Ohio is mad about Bill Clinton’s NAFTA trade deal, plus African-Americans, as mentioned, have been coming out to vote in lower numbers than in 2008 and 2012, Ohio included; on another level, Clinton still managed to beat Sanders soundly here in the primary, while Trump was embarrassed by then-rival and sitting governor of the state John Kasich, who refused to vote for Trump and wrote in John McCain’s name in early voting. Still, the Republicans control the entire state government and Trump is definitely favored here: Clinton has about as good a chance of winning Ohio as Trump does of winning the whole election: according to Five Thirty Eight models, about one-in-three. It could be really close, but Trump should win here.

This means we have 19 electoral votes that lean trump

19 leans + 197 likelies, locks/near locks = 216 electoral votes for Trump

That’s 274 electoral votes for Clinton, 216 for Trump even before the most in-doubt races are factored into the mix, but let’s go into them anyway, since the above numbers are likely, but hardly guaranteed.

True tossups:

New Hampshire (4): Clinton had a relatively steady lead here, but polls tightened over the last week or so, and even though she still seems to have an overall edge in polling, there are many contradictory polls; given New Hampshire’s famous propensity for bucking trends and defying prediction, being independent-minded, and having a strong libertarian streak, it’s just too hard to predict this one. Clinton got crushed here by Bernie Sanders, and Trump dominated his opponents here on the other side of that primary, but the state also voted for Obama twice and voted for Kerry in 2004. The state is also overwhelmingly white, but also very educated. On top of it all, New Hampshire is one of those few states that does not have early voting and has strict absentee voting, begging the question of how the whole FBI/Comey stuff will play out. New Hampshire, you’re tough, and I honestly don’t have a prediction to make.

North Carolina (15): Going into the final few weeks, a number of conflicting polls emerged, with a majority showing Clinton with a slight-to-moderate lead, but a strong minority giving Trump a lead, and most of those a slight one; the final poll showed a tie. If this wasn’t confusing enough, North Carolina is a relatively educated state, with a strong number of college-degree holding whites and a large African-American population; conversely, white turnout is up in North Carolina and African-American turnout is down in the state after the GOP closed a number of polling sites, and the state government is totally controlled by Republicans, who have been exposed there as systematically trying to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision” with voter suppression in a federal appeals court rulingfrom late July that struck down some of the North Carolina Republicans’ attempts to restrict voting, a ruling which a 4-4 deadlocked Supreme Court was unable to overturn at the end of August (had Scalia survived, he certainly would have made that a 5-4 decision overturning the federal appeals court ruling). The state voted for Obama in 2008 (the first time a Democrat won the presidential race there since Jimmy Carter won the state in 1976), but then went for Romney in 2012, and with plenty of reasons for both campaigns to be optimistic and both campaigns to worry, it is unclear how the state will go once all the votes are counted in 2016.

Florida (29): Oh, Florida, it’s always crazy in Florida on Election Day. Polls in Florida have been a bit all over the place, about half showing Clinton with a small lead and half showing Trump with a small lead (plus one) tie. And there are reasons for both sides to be optimistic: Clinton is happy that Florida is a diverse state and that in its vibrant Latino community turnout is dramatically up in early voting, but the white vote is also way up, the Democrats’ lead in early voting is less than it was in 2008, and Republicans control the entire state government, a position from which they may be engaging in voter suppression, as Republicans have been apt to do this election cycle: after Hurricane Matthew hit, Republican Governor and enthusiastic Trump supporter Rick Scott did not even want to extend voter registration, but he was sued by the Florida Democratic Party and a federal judge forced him to extend the deadline. Thus, Florida, as usual, is also too close to call, give the polling and what I laid out.

I really think these last three states are just too close to call, so that’s 48 electoral votes that are anybody’s guess. But this still gives us a range:

Likely closest result: 274 Clinton, 264 Trump

Likely biggest gap: 322 Clinton, 216 Trump 

The Crazy Scenarios if Nobody Gets to 270

Then, there are the crazy scenarios with a realistic chance of actually happening, where neither Clinton nor Trump hit 270.

For starters, let’s say that the states go as I have predicted and say that New Hampshire goes for Clinton with North Carolina and Florida going to Trump, with the exceptions that Trump pulls off upsets in Nevada and Colorado: ladies and gentleman, we would be tied 269-269, and the election would go to the incoming Congress (more on that in a bit, and wow, Maine’s 2nd Congressional District would look mighty important in such scenario).

But then we have other crazy scenario: if Evan McMullin wins Utah (hardly an extremely remote possibility given what I laid out) there are a number of very close scenarios where candidates could be just a few electoral votes shy of getting 270, sometimes just a single vote (Maine’s 2nd Congressional District could be a kingmaker here if it went Clinton) . And, again, we go to Congress.

There are other scenarios where neither Clinton nor Trump reaches 270, but these are easily the most likely, the other being dramatically more remote but hardly impossible (scenarios involving less competitive states above the battleground tier, as outlined above).

I’ll avoid going into those since they are far more remote, but feel free to play with your own maps.

But, under the Constitution, when the election goes to Congress, the president is chosen by the state congressional delegations from the incoming House of Representatives class (extremely likely to be majority-Republican), with each delegation getting one vote: all of Texas’ congressmen are equal to Montana’s one congressman. They would be allowed to choose from the top three electoral vote receivers, and if McMullin’s Utah delegation could pull in other Republican states’ representatives who are hostile to Trump into a bloc, they could prevent enough delegations from picking Trump, who would need 26 out of the 50 delegations to win. Meanwhile, the Senate would select the VP from the top-two electoral-vote receivers for the vice presidency, with senators voting as individuals; if the House could not pick a winner with at least 26 delegations by the inauguration, the VP chosen from the Senate would become president; if Senate was deadlocked, the president would be the incoming Speaker of the House (likely Paul Ryan but not certainly so).

On top of all of this? A Bernie Sanders support who is 1 out of 12 electors in the Electoral College for Washington State, which a lock for Clinton, has explicitly said he will not vote for Clinton in the Electoral College regardless of how his state votes; if he stays true to his statement, then Clinton will lose 1 electoral vote. If some of the aforementioned wackier scenarios play out, this one obnoxious man may decide the fate of the nation, and perhaps Western democracy and the world…

About That Popular Vote…

With lots of close races, it’s going to come down to turnout. Can Obama’s personally hitting the campaign trail help to make up some of the gap between black turnout in 2012 and 2008 compared to reports of lower turnout thus far in 2016? Can Trump turnout whites in record-enough numbers to upset Clinton? Will Latinos, like the Ents in The Lord of the Rings, wake up to their potential power and be kingmakers in key states like Florida, Arizona, and Nevada?

As for the numbers of popular vote, the best pollster in politics, Ann Selzer, just released a national poll which had Clinton at 44%, Trump at 41%, 4% for Gary Johnson, and 2% for Jill Stein; 1% did not know, 3% voted/intended to vote but not for president (think of this as the disgusted vote), and a whopping 4% did not want to tell their choice; as I wrote in my early October prediction of how voters might shift before Election Day (I seemed to have underestimated the collapse of Johnson and Stein, but my best guess from then was about Clinton 45%, Trump 43%, Johnson 6% and 2-3% for Stein, with about 4.5% undecided that I wouldn’t dare guess), I noted how I thought the vast majority of those who said they did not want to share their intentions were probably Trump voters; if I am right here, the popular vote margin could be very close; Clinton could even lose the popular vote while winning the electoral college, something that, given what I just mentioned, seems a more likely scenario that any would have thought previously (I didn’t say likely, just more possible). If I am wrong about those people who didn’t want to share their choice with pollsters, Clinton should win the popular vote by a small but clear margin, but perhaps the Latino surge will outperform these surveys and give Clinton more than a small margin in the popular vote; probably the main reason she will win by a larger margin if so, and, possibly the main reason she will win in general.

It’s also quite reasonably possible that the polls are off by “a normal polling error” across the board, kind of like with Brexit; if this is the case, we could see a decent-sized Trump win, but that could mean a Clinton blowout.

We’ll know very soon. Nothing to worry about here, only the fate of American and Western democracy…

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Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

  Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse September 26, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) September 26th, 2016 (Edited/updated slightly September 27th)

Getty Images/Reuters/NY Post

AMMAN — This is too close for comfort, people. And it’s important to understand why. Here are ten reasons why what some call the “Trumpocalypse” is a real serious possibility, one with about the same odds of happening as Hillary saving America, Western civilization, and the world from a President Trump. Any exaggeration in the preceding sentence is slight, if it exists at all, I’m sorry to say.

1.)   This Isn’t like 2012. Or any other year, for that matter; the past cannot provide comfort

Numerous times I’ve experienced liberals who are confident saying “This is just like when it was close with Mitt Romney and Obama. We’re going to win.” Or pointing to this trend or that swing from another election year. This boggles my mind because I thought one of the most obvious—even omnipresent—themes from this year’s election is so much being so unpredictable and so unprecedented. Republicans had 17 candidates running for president, nearly all of whom were better qualified than Trump. And Trump won. A declared “democratic socialist” won about 4 in 10 votes in the Democratic contest. So, please, don’t tell me not to worry because X happened in X past election. This year, the rulebook seems to have been thrown onto a bonfire of the vanities. Obviously, this is because of Trump (and the people backing him) more than anything else, and he seems to pay no long-term prices for his many gaffes and scandals and outrages.

2.)   Republican voters really are a mob and “principled” Republicans actually willing to stand against Trump on principle are a nearly extinct species

I will be giving myself credit, and then say what I got wrong. In August 2015, I was one of the only non-pro-Trump people to recognize Trump’s potential to win the nomination and that important factors favored his chances of doing so. But at the time I predicted he would be a disaster as a general election candidate; that is still possible, but seems very unlikely now; what seems more likely is that it will be very close either way.

How did I get this wrong? I put too much emphasis on “The Republican Establishment” and assumed it actually represented more people in the party than it actually did. One of the reasons both Mitt Romney and John McCain lost is that, unlike George W. Bush, both were relatively unliked by Republican voters for being too moderate. But in both 2008 and 2012, a number of Christian conservatives split the base votes in favor of one main moderate “Establishment” candidate. The “Establishment” elites in backed McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2004, both of whom during important early stretches only won a plurality and not a majority of GOP voters. In 2008, John McCain only won 3 of 7 contests in January, failing to even reach 40% of the vote in any contest, and on that year’s Super Tuesday on February 5th, out of 20 contests McCain only won over 50% of the votes in 3 even though he won 9 contests overall. Then in 2012, Mitt Romney won 2 of 4 contests in January, but did not win a majority of votes in either and won less than 40% in one; for all of February, he won less than half the vote in every contest save one in Nevada, where he won 50.1% of the vote, even though he won 4 out of 6 contests. In both situations, other candidates divided votes that went towards less moderate, less “Establishment”-backed candidates so that solid chances to derail both McCain and Romney and allow a single other candidate to gain clear momentum early in the campaign were lost. Conversely, there were so many candidates in 2016 that were “Establishment”-oriented and moderate that the dynamic worked somewhat in reverse, so that even after the first Super Tuesday in March, such candidates has only won a single state (Rubio in Minnesota), and the rest went to Trump and Cruz, two solidly anti-“Establishment” candidates, with Kasich being the only other candidate to win one of the fifty states, his home state of Ohio.

What I and I think many others thought is that “Well, that crazy base Republican was beaten in 2008 and 2012, and while they weren’t enthusiastic about their candidates, the more typical and moderate Republicans who voted in the general election but not the primaries were more solidly behind McCain and Romney.” What 2016 has taught us is that there are very few “typical moderate” Republicans in any meaningful sense, because such people would not be supporting Trump; I had not realized how far gone the vast majority of Republican voters are down the rabbit hole; the Kasich-Kristol-National Review-wing of the Republican Party is only a tiny fraction of the Party overall and has little sway with Republican voters in general. Sure, when the “Establishment” candidates won in 2008 and 2012, most rank-and-file Republicans had no problem supporting them over Obama but did not do so enthusiastically; yet the assumption that many Republican being rational and principled and unable to support Trump was always a myth, as Trump’s numbers now mean that he has pretty much all Republicans in his camp. The public intellectuals, commentators, and national security professionals who are Republicans and speaking out against Trump are merely a detached intelligentsia who influence the small group of elites like them and, clearly, virtually no other Republicans. I have lost track of the specific items of behavior that should have cost Trump a significant number of Republican voters—from disparaging both John McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War and a reporter for being disabled to talking about his penis at a presidential debate to seeming to instigate both violence (repeatedly) and Russian hacking against Clinton—but as we approach Election Day, that support has only increased and is at comparable levels to Clinton’s support among Democrats. In fact, Trump’s behavior has in no way disqualified him from receiving support within his party comparable to levels of what other recent Republican nominees have enjoyed.

In other words, I foolishly believed that enough Republicans would be better people than to be able to support Trump. But if anything, enthusiasm is higher for Trump than Clinton. Granted, I didn’t expect this number of Republicans to be large (and knew it didn’t need to be that large to still make a big dent in Trump’s support level), but it’s pretty much nonexistent relative to other candidates, and thus, the race is basically a dead heat.

3.)   Millennials

Much has been written of Millennials’s lack of support for Clinton. It’s not a fading thing: it dogged Clinton all through the primaries and it’s still a major problem six weeks before Election Day. Echoes of Brexit—when an outcome that a vast majority of Millennials in the UK did not desire and that has drastically negative long-term consequence occurred because Millennials pathetically couldn’t motivate themselves to get out and vote—can be heard now in America, with not only worries about whether or not Millennials will turn out and votebut worries about who they will vote for even if they do turn out. Clinton’s relatively and notably strong weakness with Millennials compared to Obama is evident across all ethnic, racial, and gender groups, including with African-Americans and women. It’s not that they support Trump more, it’s that they often tend to support other third-party candidates or seem less likely to vote for Clinton or vote at all: polls tend to show Clinton’s support among Millennials from being close to significantly behind the combined Johnson-Stein vote, and the trendline for Clintons’ Millennial support is (mostly) moving down. 

In a close election, Millennials are a key part of the Obama coalition that Clinton cannot afford to do without. But perhaps even most frustratingly, such behavior on the part of Millennials is something the country and especially they themselves cannot afford. In the words of New York Times columnist Charles Blow, “As Bernie Sanders himself said last week: “This is not the time for a protest vote.” Protest voting or not voting at all isn’t principled. It’s dumb, and childish, and self-immolating. I know you’re young, but grow up!” James Kirchick, writing for The Daily Beast, echoes a similar sentiment: “…[M]illennial opposition to Clinton and the attendant blitheness toward the prospect of a Trump presidency…[can] best [be] described as a mix of moral relativism, historical ignorance, and narcissism.” However, some good news below…

4.)   Sanders Supporters

There is a lot of overlap here with the Millennials section above, but here, we must ask why so many Millennials think of Clinton as a soulless hack, the epitome both of corruption and a selfish “Establishment,” and a “warmonger.” Where, you ask, did they get such an impression? Easily more than any other source, the answer is Bernie Sanders. I have laid all this outin detail in the past, but what is important to note here is that before Sanders began his presidential campaign, this narrative of Clinton was basically nonexistent. Then he repeated it over, and over, and over, and over, and over again at every rally over many months, skillfully blaming Clinton for an entire system implicitly at first with a guilt-by-association campaign, then progressing to letting surrogates do his dirty work and not reigning them in, then becoming more direct, even to the degree of whipping up crowds into a frenzy and pausing to let them boo Clinton and the Democratic Party, thus creating an atmosphere of hatred of Clinton (as evidenced by many signs and just listening to Sanders supporters talk about her at rallies) that culminated in a mini-riot at the Nevada Democratic State Convention in May that I dubbed a mainly non-violent form of political terrorism. Now, is it any wonder, after claiming before that the contest was “rigged” against him and implying that Clinton was a monster, that many of his backers didn’t still don’t support her, despite his endorsement? 

Of course, many of the earlier discussed Millennials are Sanders supporters, as he was wildly popular with the younger crowd. 

As for that good news: just yesterday, an Economist/YouGov poll was released that showed a dramatic increase in a key stat: 70% of Sanders supporters were now saying they would support Clinton, up from 57% a week ago, which was up from 52% in a poll released on the 15th. The new poll also saw Trump’s support from Sanders supporters increase to 13% from 12%, which was 15% before that, while Stein’s support shrank dramatically to 6% from 11%, which had been 13% before that; as for Johnson, his support dropped dramatically as well, to 4% of Sanders supporters, down from 9% in the previous two surveys. This is welcome news, but is just one pollster’s group of polls and its findings do not seem to fit in the larger patterns that now have the race virtually tied. And despite the increases in these examples, they still show 3 out of 10 Sanders supporters are not backing Clinton, and when factoring in the fact that 13% of them are saying they will support Trump, Clinton is left with a net level of support of only 57% of Sanders supporters over Trump. These specific Economist/YouGov polls notwithstanding, Sanders supporters and Millennials, two groups with huge overlap, are groups Clinton needs to really focus on in the final weeks of her campaign in order to ensure a victory in November.

5.)   Dr. Stein and Gov. Johnson

In most polls, when third-party candidates are factored in, Clinton does worse than when the same poll shows just Clinton and Trump, the clear conclusion is that the two third-party candidates are taking more votes from Clinton than from Trump. When this trend first became clear, it was shocking: obviously the far leftist Stein would be taking virtually all her support from the left, but Johnson has between two and three times as much support as Stein, and he, as a L/libertarian, would be expected to be drawing more support from the right, and yet, the net advantage has been to Trump, meaning Johnson has a considerable portion of his support—roughly half—coming from the left. Since Johnson is “cool,” very independent-minded, very anti-foreign intervention, and very pro-weed, this means he is taking vital votes away from young Millennials all over the country and in key battleground states where marijuana is very popular, especially Colorado but also Michigan, Nevada, surprisingly-close Maine, and New Hampshire; New Hampshire and Nevada are also two of the states with the most libertarian support, and Colorado is also in the top third; in all five states, Johnson’s polling average is 8% or higher, and in New Hampshire, Colorado, and Maine, it’s above 10%; this is all in five states where the polling average gap between Trump and Clinton is 0.2% to 5.4% (and we did not even get into Stein). In other words, there is a very real chance that Johnson and Stein being on the ballot will end up covering the difference if Clinton loses any of these states even when just factoring in their liberal support (according to FiveThirtyEight, she’s currently favored in Michigan, New Hampshire, Maine—which is one of two states that does not award all the electoral votes to the statewide winner but splits some of its electoral votes based on Congressional district, with Trump up in one district and likely to get 1 of Maine’s 4 Electoral College votes because of that—and is favored slightly in Colorado, but is slightly behind in Nevada; Trump has recently closed the gap in the other four, as well). If she loses any of the states where she is favored and Trump holds onto every state in which he is favored, Clinton loses…

The situation of a third-party candidate acting as a spoiler is not merely hypothetical: in 2000, liberal Ralph Nader voters could easily have put Gore in the White House instead of Bush; Bush won Florida by 537 votes, and Nader got almost 100,000 there; in New Hampshire, Bush won by 7,211 votes, where Nader got over 22,000 votes; exit polls told us that if Nader had stayed out of the race, 47% of his votes would have gone to Gore and only 21 percent to Bush. Objectively, then, Nader and his voters cost Gore the presidency, and a similar situation could be giving us a President Trump in a few weeks.

Before Nader, the last time a third-party was a spolier was when Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Party run cost Republicans the presidency in the election of 1912.

6.)   Clinton isn’t Obama

Obama was an exceptionally charismatic candidate and came into the public eye with barely a hint of scandal (in part because he was so new). Hillary Clinton simply doesn’t have the same personality and charisma as Obama. Two points here: first, I would hope liberals/Millennials can energize themselves to vote on critical issues concerning our future without needing to have someone with an exceptionally charismatic personality as a candidate. I’ve had it with liberals not supporting the likes of Al Gore and John Kerry who may not have been “cool” but who would have been great presidents and would have spared us the human disaster that was George W. Bush (although if we have a President Trump I will imagine that I will recall the Bush years fondly) had younger voters then been able to put aside “cool” and focus on substance. But especially with liberal Millennials now, I am not sure we can trust them to do their fair share in this election or over time without the dangling of shiny new objects in front of their faces; Clinton is like the perfectly functioning and incredibly useful iPhone that just happens to have the misfortune of being two or even three versions old; there is very little difference between it and newer models, but it’s not the cool-thingy-of-the-moment, and therefore earns something between indifference and scorn from the typical Millennial liberal. It’s more about an individual and their personality that supporting a political party over time. In fact, when it comes to their politics, Millennials are pretty political party averse: about half identify as independents (hence they came out to vote for Obama twice, but voted in significantly lower proportions in both the 2010 and 2014 midterms, helping to give rise to the Tea Party and contributing to the inability of Obama and Democrats to enact key parts of a liberal agenda. The above factors are big parts of the reason why Trump is now competitive and basically even with Clinton.

Second point, related to the iPhone analogy: I would hope liberal Millennials can realize that the iPhone Hillary is much like the iPhone Barack, for even without the cooler design of the iPhone Barack, they are almost the same in many substantive ways; in other words, that Clinton is essentially running for a third Obama term but has a big gap between the level of support he enjoyed and that she is enjoying now is mainly due to a combination of one of three things: 1.) she’s not (as?) cool, 2.) she’s a woman (black men voted before women in America, and we had a black man as president before a woman), so “HELLO, sexism!”, and 3.) negative recent branding of Clinton by her former rival, Bernie Sanders, and by her current and decades-long-enemies, the Republicans. In the end, there IS SO MUCH MORE IN COMMON between Clinton and Obama than any differences that exist between them that it is hard explain the gap otherwise. In fact, it is very telling that Obama is still loved by Millennials liberals, but Clinton gets castigated and deemed evil incarnate for Libya and TPP, among other policies, that were actually Obama’s calls to make and more his than her policies because he was president, not her; listening to elements of the angry left’s denunciations of Clinton, you sure wouldn’t know this.

7.)   Ann Selzer, polls, and momentum.

Who, you ask? Only “the best pollster in politics.”  Her outfit just released a poll, conducted September 21st-24th, which has Trump up 2 points (43% to Clinton’s 41%), Stein with 4% of the vote, Johnson with 8%, and 2% of voters saying “don’t want to tell,” which sounds an awful lot like embarrassed Trump voters to me; the last poll her group conducted had Clinton up 4% (44% to Trump’s 40%), with the same 4% for Stein and Johnson at 9%, meaning their latest poll had Trump up 3 points and Clinton down 3 points from the last one. Oh, and the averages of all the other polling shows a tightening of the race both nationally and in key battleground states. At a time when it would be great for this to not be happening. Trump is gaining support, and Clinton losing support, with only weeks to go and just as the debates are starting.

No pressure Hillary.

8.)   Trump has spent very little money relative to Clinton

Since mid-June, Clinton has outspent Trump more than 5-to-1 ($109.4 million to $18.7 million) on television ads through September 13th and has spent far less than any major-party candidate since at least 2008. The fact that they are basically tied in light of this info is, frankly, terrifying and terrifyingly efficient.

If that isn’t bad enough, Trump’s campaign just announced it will spend $100 million in TV and $40 million in digital ads between now and the election. Imagine the potential difference that could make… and imagine if the billionaire decides to throw a lot more of his own money in as a surprise right before the end…

9.)   The major media outlets have generally done a terrible job covering this election

A whole article can (and will be) written about this, but we should briefly look at the dynamics behind how bad the coverage has been and how important the media is in shaping this race. It basically boils down to this: Trump has so much baggage and spews so many lies and misstatements that the media barely scratches the surface of them before it decides to move onto something else without properly revisiting what it had started exploring, but spends an inordinately disproportionate amount of time going over every little detail of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails/server (since that is basically all that can compete with the scandals on Trump’s side) and yet cannot even provide proper understanding and context for that (which I provided in my last article); there were even times that it seemed the news cycle contained nothing else about Clinton other than her news scandal, not her policies, not her ideas, not anything else, except maybe her falling favorability/trustworthiness numbers. The same can be said for the lazy, facile coverage of the Clinton Foundation arising from content in certain e-mails of Clinton and her staff, content that was anything but scandalous, yet you wouldn’t know this from the coverage. This has created a dangerous false equivalence in the coverage of Clinton and Trump, with the New York Times’ Paul Krugman noting a similar dynamic helped to destroy Al Gore’s candidacy in 2000. As for Trump, I myself wrote an in-depth article on his and his associates’ ties to Russia, making several connections before any major media outlet made them; there is no way that I should have been the one to do this, and not a major paper (but I’ll take it as a freelancer!); this is just one example of the general lack of proper coverage of Trump.

The end result has been that Trump is now more trusted than Clinton, as many Americans are getting a distorted view of Clinton and one that makes her seem in many ways to be on the same level as Trump, where people just seem to shrug off his scandals in part because there has been too little of a focus on really digging deeper, following up on unanswered questions, and getting the full, complete picture. In many ways, the damage is done and attempts at self-correction (some just starting) may very well be too late.

10.)  Americans are stupid

Rationality dictates that Clinton would have a sizeable lead. But we are not a rational country. It’s so glaringly obvious to the rest of the world, which is also increasingly irrational. I seriously have no idea how people will react, decide, or change their mind between now and the election because any rational person would choose Clinton and I do not know if we have more rational than irrational people. I hope we do, but for now, about 6 in 10 voters are saying they will vote for Trump, Johnson, or Stein. I’m not going to cite anything to show how stupid we are a nation; rather, I’ll let you, dear readers, engage in the mental exercise of looking up how bad our public education system is, how ignorant people are about basic history and geography, how crazy are some of the beliefs Americans have (like evolution and climate change), how many people believe in debunked conspiracy theories, and any other number of other topics.

Democracy may be failing in places like the EU, Turkey, Israel, India, & Russia as right-wing, racist, and/or xenophobic demagogues, from Modi to Netanyahu, from Le Pen to Erdoğan gain power, but far be it for the U.S. to be a spectator: it’s trying as hard as it can to follow suit, embrace hatred and irrationality and tribalism as well as groups in Syria, Iraq, Israel and Palestine, just in less violent ways. But such tribalism almost invariably leads to violence, and we are seeing racial unrest and disturbances not seen in a generation in America. If Trump wins, these fault lines can be expected to be the location of earthquakes.

*****

On top of all this, there’s always the room for late-game surprises: terrorist attacks could increase a climate of fear to favor a candidate presenting himself as a strong-man—like Trump is—and push the country to the right as has happened in Europe, Turkey, and Israel; even non-terrorist mass shootings may do more to contribute to fears about security more than add to any support for gun control; there’s also room for one or two bad jobs reports between now and the election, something which would cause the voters to blame Democratic Party of Obama, the sitting president, and of Clinton. Then there’s the promised “October surprise” coming from Julian Assange of Wikileaks, one which will release more Clinton-related hacked files and be sure to keep that topic in the limelight in the final days of the election contest…

And let’s not forget the possibility of Russia hacking our election to put try to put Trump in the White House…

And even amid the litany of well-documented lies and distortions coming from Trump of just the past week, the voters are moving slightly towards him and slightly away from Clinton. Some of these people are liberals who are ignoring political reality and suffer from any of a series of personality syndromes and have no business voting for anyone but Clinton when she is running against Trump. Well, one thing which hasn’t changed this cycle compared with others in the key final months: the left is still great at shooting itself in the foot while the right is making sure to be unified. Do I think Trump will win? I can’t say yes, but I can’t say no either. I feel ever so slightly more confident that Clinton will win instead of Trump, but now that is only by the faintest of margins and accompanied with a sense of dread. Whatever the outcome, shame on America and American voters that it was ever as close as it is now, that someone like Trump can get this far in our political system. 

Even if Clinton wins, we are a country with serious problems and will be an extremely divided nation. I wouldn’t even be surprised if she won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote with perhaps millions of liberals voting with Johnson and Stein, outnumbering conservatives who vote Johnson, even as they are not enough to swing the Electoral College to Trump. It would be a kind of revenge for 2000, but one that at this point in time could really damage the credibility of the system in eyes of voters and greatly harm the ability of Clinton to govern or the government in general to function. I would be shocked if Republicans didn’t try to impeach Clinton on the “scandals” of Benghazi and her e-mails; like the last time a Clinton was impeached, the case will be ridiculous and the motives will be almost entirely political. No matter who wins, it will be difficult, but no question will America still be far better off with Clinton than with Trump. 

But on those hypotheticals another time…

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse September 15, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) September 15th, 2016

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

AMMAN — I’ve written repeatedly about 9/11 before: what it meant for me, what it should mean for Americans, how we have failed to properly honor the memory of the victims, how our nation has become worse, not better, since that fateful day, about all the missed opportunities. I think today it’s pretty clear that we as a nation still have not honored the memory of the victims through proper action, but what I could write about that now would be nothing new that I and others have not written before.

I’m not sure if it would make me feel better or worse to be able to write an article saying “9/11 helped to ruin us by starting a new style of politics that is ruining us.” In any case, I can’t, for while in many ways 9/11 must still clearly be regarded as a watershed, cataclysmic event in world history, let alone American politics and history, that sad truth is that the disgusting political gamesmanship of sucking in foreign policy and national security issues into the partisan maelstrom in the same manner as any other issue is not something that began (or ended) with 9/11, with the politics of 9/11 marking more continuity than change, just a larger example of growing partisanship amidst a rising tide of partisanship in post-Cold War America.

The big move towards consistent politicization in any significant way started almost exclusively with the Republican Party just a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR, beginning with its withering partisan criticism of Bill Clinton’s efforts in Somalia in 1993, criticism that was wildly inconsistent and undermined U.S. policy.  When Republicans began using 9/11 as a partisan wedge issue in the run-up to the Iraq invasion of 2003 and in the 2004 presidential election, this was merely a continuation of the post-Cold War modus operandi of the Republican Party, which is only more extreme today. It is worth going through some of this history to better understand this dynamic besetting America today.

Bipartisanship During the Cold War, But Not For Bill Clinton

Somalia

In 1991, Somalia’s longstanding dictator, short of international support when he was no longer “needed” after the Cold War had drawn to a close, was overthrown, and the country fell into anarchy and warlordism. The political and security situation combined with a famine into one of the first great humanitarian disasters of the post-Cold War era. With the UN Security Council supporting a relief mission, and the Democratic-led U.S. Congress, including Republicans, urging support for such a mission, Republican President George H. W. Bush, though he had just lost re-election nearly two months earlier, announced on Dec. 4th, 1992, that he would send 28,000 U.S. troops as part of a peacekeeping force intended to ensure the distribution of food to hundreds of thousands of Somalis on the verge of starvation, a move supported by President-Elect Clinton. 

Not long after Clinton became president, though, Republicans especially began voicing strong criticism of Clinton’s efforts to sustain the mission, contradicting their earlier support for the mission under George H. W. Bush; while criticism was by no means coming from Republicans alone, they were generally particularly vocal and harsh in their criticism, exaggerating and distorting what was going on and using hyperbolic language to criticize a mission they were perfectly happy to support when commanded by a Republican president only a few months earlier. The mixed support of WWII veteran (and soon-to-be-Republican presidential nominee in 1996) Bob Dole was more the exception, rather than the rule, as Republicans were generally unified in opposing Clinton and succeeded in undermining public support and confidence in the mission, calling for an end to the mission and constantly threatening to cut off funding for the mission even while U.S. troops in the field were carrying it out, a mission that was far from a disaster and hardly a failure. Even when President Clinton announced a withdrawal date after the unfortunate October 1993 “black hawk down” incident, in which U.S. forces tangled with warlord forces and incurred relatively substantial casualties, many Republicans, rather than accept the withdrawal announcement as a sufficient political victory, pushed for a faster withdrawal than the one Clinton had called for; whatever Clinton did, these Republicans were sure to meet it with scorn and criticism. 

In the end, hundreds of thousands of Somali lives were saved by the mission, for all its faults. But Republicans seemed to be in lock-step with Osama bin Laden as viewing the mission as an American failure (even before the “black hawk down” incident), and sure helped to move public opinion in that direction despite the significant achievements of the mission. Perhaps even more hauntingly, the experience was a major influence on Clinton’s decision not to intervene during the Rwandan genocide that occurred only months later, in the spring of 1994.

Bosnia

Clinton was already clashing with Congress over the war in the disintegrating Yugoslavia in 1993, as well, as more and more reports of Serbs committing atrocities against Bosnian Muslims dominated the headlines. It was an odd mixture of Republicans and Democrats who said the Clinton Administration was doing too little, and Republicans and Democrats who argued the Administration was doing too much. Such wide-ranging bi-partisan criticism reflected how complex and difficult the situation was in the Balkans as Europe’s first real test of the post-Cold War era unfolded; against a backdrop of confused and divided U.S. lawmakers, European governments were nervous that any aggressive U.S. action would endanger their peacekeeping forces, already on the ground in the Balkans. In other words, there were no easy solutions and no single plan had widespread, bipartisan support or even strong agreement within one party. As president, Bill Clinton was in an unwelcome and lonely position in trying to craft a position on the conflict. This situation more or less continued through 1994, though after the November midterm elections, at least the leadership of the victorious Republicans signaled a desire for more forceful action.

But somewhat conflictingly, even as Republicans seemed to want to end the arms embargo to help arm the Bosnians (unwise for multiple reasons, e.g., that escalation could have prompted Russia to arm their Serbian friends, could have weakened the NATO alliance and prompted the UK and France to withdraw their forces from the region and force America’s hand in filling the void, measures that nonetheless also had some significant support from some Democrats; still, Clinton correctly noted that “…unilaterally lifting the arms embargo will have the opposite effects of what its supporters intend. It would intensify the fighting, jeopardize diplomacy and make the outcome of the war in Bosnia an American responsibility” and increased air strikes against the Serbs. But Republicans mostly balked when Clinton publicly weighed the idea of U.S. ground forces either assisting beleaguered UN peacekeepers or helping to enforce an eventual peace; thus, Republicans slammed him for not doing enough even while slamming him for raising the possibility of what would likely help the most. They also later balked at Clinton’s efforts to help support a new UN plan to create a rapid-reaction force of European troops to help the thinly-spread peacekeeping forces already on the ground.

When a cease-fire was finally negotiated in October 1995, and the U.S. held talks in November, a more partisan nature to opposing the president came into being, just when it was most crucial to achieve peace in the Balkans for Congress to support a long-term peace plan. Nearly every Republicans in the Senate but only one Democrat sent a letter to Clinton asking him to ask Congress for approval before committing any U.S. troops to a peacekeeping force; this was done just days before formal peace talks were to begin in the U.S., undercutting the president’s team’s negotiating authority at a crucial moment. Next, nearly the entire House Republican caucus voted on a successfully-passed (non-binding) resolution that spurned and disavowed Clinton’s promise to provide 20,000 troops as part of an eventual peacekeeping force, undermining the prospects of an agreement and an end to the war, but a majority of Democrats opposed this resolution even as a substantial minority voted with the Republicans. 

With negotiations between the warring parties underway on U.S. soil, House Republicans voted to prevent the deployment of U.S. troops without Congress specifically authorizing money to do so in what was largely a partisan vote, and even after the peace treaty was signed, House Republicans only narrowly failed in a bid to cut off funding for the mission (210-218) and Senate Republicans barely failed to pass a vote condemning the mission but “supporting” the troops (47-52). Another partisan vote passed just before the peace treaty was signed condemned Clinton’s decision to deploy troops, and another vote that would have offered language supporting the troops but not criticizing Clinton’s plan failed to pass pretty much along party lines the very day the treaty was signed. And in 1996, many Republicans rather myopically criticized both Clinton’s decision to provide substantial reconstruction aid for Bosnia and an extension of the peacekeeping mission. Despite Republican opposition, U.S. forces in Bosnia undoubtedly played a key and decisive role in forging and maintaining peace and stability in Bosnia and, in a larger sense, the Balkans and southeastern Europe.

Kosovo

Just a few years later, Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic was again threatening massive numbers of civilians, this time the mainly Muslim Kosovar Albanians in Serbia’s province of Kosovo. In response to a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing, NATO launched airstrikes against Serb forces threatening Kosovar Albanians. House Republicans, in particular, engaged in behavior that could reasonably (certainly) be said to have undermined the Clinton Administration’s efforts during the crisis. Not long before NATO began its airstrikes, a substantially large majority of Republicans in the Republican-dominated House voted to bar the use of American ground troops: “American soldiers have been trained to be warriors, not baby sitters,” was how House Majority Whip and Republican Tom DeLay put it. The measure was defeated by nearly every Democrat and a minority of Republicans teaming up to vote down the amendment. Even after the airstrikes began, a tie vote in the House failed to give public backing to the airstrikes. While Republican leaders tended to prevent direct challenges to the president in these cases, especially in the Senate, it was clear that many rank-and-file congressional Republicans, including a clear majority in the House, felt differently. Thus, when George W. Bush ran for president in 2000 and campaigned on pulling out of the peacekeeping efforts in the Balkans—making it clear how much value he placed on the missions in Bosnia and Kosovo—that position was not terribly surprising.

Of course, after 9/11, the Balkans receded greatly in importance in America…

9/11: More Continuity Than Change

Most people would have missed the fact that The 9/11 Commission Report, while produced ostensibly at a time when the nation was trying to heal and explicitly avoiding leveling particular blame with one administration or political party, nevertheless does make it clear how lax, unmotivated, and ill-prepared George W. Bush and his Administration were to deal with the crisis, and a careful reading (one which the general public did not even attempt or would even have been capable of attempting) showed that, while the Clinton Administration had not done everything it possibly could have done to go after bin Laden (after years of partisan Republican criticism whenever it had tried to act forcefully elsewhere!), it had increasingly focused on bin Laden as a threat over time and stridently recommended to Bush’s team during the 2000-2001 presidential transition to make bin Laden a top priority, advice which Bush’s people just as stridently refused to accept. Here is just one glaring example that exemplified both the Commission’s unwillingness to point fingers but willingness to still lay the clear picture there for those intelligent enough to follow the evidence:

“In May, President Bush announced that Vice President Cheney would himself lead an effort looking at preparations for managing a possible attack by weapons of mass destruction and at more general problems of national preparedness. The next few months were mainly spent organizing the effort and bringing an admiral from the Sixth Fleet back to Washington to manage it. The Vice President’s task force was just getting under way when the 9/11 attack occurred.” (6.5 The New Administration’s Approach)

Specifically, President Bush’s announcement that Cheney’s task force would be coming came May 8th, but presumably some thought and groundwork had occurred prior to this date. Then from May 8th until September 11th—more than four full months after Bush’s announcement—Cheney’s group had, famously, not met once; “The Vice President’s task force was just getting under way when the 9/11 attack occurred” is about as polite and diplomatic a way as possible to say that next-to-nothing had been done in those four months. One finds such an understated approach throughout the report, and an ability to look past it makes it clear a partisan gap, not in favor of senior Republican officials, in regards to the attention paid to bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Much like after the terrorist attacks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983, that killed 258 Americans (among others), after 9/11 Democrats supported the Republican president—tending to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, including then-Sen. Hillary Clinton—and conspicuously avoided playing a partisan political blame-game in the wake of a major attack against Americans even though the way both Presidents Reagan and his administration and Bush and his administration handled the events leading up to and surrounding the respective attacks in 1983 and 2001 were objectively ripe for criticism.

Of course, none of this mattered to Republicans in general, who were quick to blame 9/11 on Bill Clinton, continued to do so for years and still do so today, and who were also quick to politically weaponize foreign policy and national security as a partisan club with which to beat down Democrats into submission and defeat.  Especially as debate on potential and then actual war in Iraq intensified, those who raised questions, doubts, or criticism about the decision to go to war or even how the war was being prosecuted were loudly shouted down as “unpatriotic” and/or “not supporting the troops” (I had a reputation as one of the few liberals on my small conservative college campus back in the day, and late one night at a party in 2003 one drunken Republican angrily asked me “Why do you hate the troops?”). This happened in spite of the fact that the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and the prosecution of the Iraq war were far more deficient and problematic than the H. W. Bush/Clinton Somalia intervention and Clinton’s two Balkan interventions. Democrats also did not really intensify their opposition until it was quite clear that Iraq was going from bad to worse and the promised WMDs that were the main ostensible pretext for the invasion never materialized.

The rancor of the debate in 2002 and 2003 was just a warmup for the 2004 general election campaign between Democratic Senator John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam war veteran who was wounded twice in action, and incumbent President George W. Bush, whose stateside service in the Texas Air National Guard was largely understood as a way to keep him out of having to serve in Vietnam. A group calling itself “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” attacked Kerry on his very Vietnam record, disputing his heroism, his accounts of what happened during his service, and his worthiness of receiving any of the medals he did receive with a bevy of shamefully false and misleading accusations, most notably displayed on prominent television ads and myopic media coverage that damaged Kerry’s candidacy greatly with various segments of the public and maybe was the greatest single factor contributing to his defeat at the hands of Bush that November. Lies, not truth, prevailed in 2004. Some of the impetus behind those attacks on Kerry had to do with the fact that Kerry, then as a recently decorated combat veteran, famously and prominently came out against the Vietnam War just after he had served in it and while that war was still very much ongoing. Even years after the election, Kerry found that he was still having to defend his reputation against those 2004 lies about his service in Vietnam. The attacks were so damaging that the term “swift boat” came to be a phrase commonly used to describe extreme and false political attacks.

This was just another chapter in the right’s attempts to both “own” national security as an issue to the exclusion of Democrats and serving up caricatures of liberals as haters-of-the-military and extremist hippies, caricatures that served as straw-man phantoms and that bore little resemblance to reality. Other recent chapters had been 1992’s and 1996’s attempts by the Republicans to portray Bill Clinton as a raging antiwar pot-smoking draft-dodging hippie unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.

Recently, It’s Just Getting Worse

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

While the rise of Obama occurring hand-in-hand with an increasing, newly dominant anti-war feeling in America meant such fault-lines, concerns, and lines of attack would recede as they became increasingly ineffective (especially after the Obama Administration successfully took out Osama bin Laden; Mitt Romney barely mentioned, or challenged Obama on, foreign policy during the campaign homestretch in 2012), when the Arab Spring really turned for the dramatically worse and ISIS burst into view, Republicans, once again, found effective returns from investing in familiar tactics.

Yes, back were the days of Republicans using national security and foreign policy in hyperpartisan politicized attacks during Obama’s second term. The baseless, repeatedly-proven-to-be-false accusations trying to pin the blame on Hillary Clinton for the Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya—including our then-Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens—is perhaps the best example of this shameful disgrace of abuse of the concepts of oversight and political discourse (especially when contrasted with how Democrats responded to the 1983 Beirut and 2001 9/11 attacks, as discussed above). Other great recent examples of Republican weaponization of foreign policy and national security politics include trying to blame Obama for both the rise and success of ISIS, both accusations being quite factually incorrect, as well as pretty much the entire Republican/Trumpian critique on immigration and the despicable demonization of Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s refugee policies (and refugees, for that matter; the previous five links are to my own detailed rebuttals of each criticism). The irony is lost on Republicans, too, as they criticize Obama both for being feckless on Syria but for doing too much on Libya, when criticism of one of those policies begs the very response of the one they are criticizing in the other, take your pick; the same can be said when they try to blame Obama for Ukraine’s crisis, even though Russia’s Putin also invaded and annexed parts of Georgia under W. Bush’s watch. The irony in their criticism is also lost on Republicans because they themselves either have terrible alternative “policies,” if they have any at all, a reality simply augmented terribly by their terrible candidate for the presidency but a reality that is very much the status quo in today’s Republican Party even without Trump.

Conclusion

Linda Davidson/The Washington Post

One thing that is certain is that the trend of Republicans hyperpartisanizing and politicizing national security issues as a party began under Clinton in the 1990s with Somalia, not with 9/11. To a very large extent, national security and foreign policy were bipartisan issues during the Cold War, but that did practice not survive after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Ancient republican (small “R!”) Roman historian Sallust hits the nail right on the head with the hammer describing this dynamic some 2,000 years ago in his Roman Republic:

“…the pattern of routine partisanship and factionalism, and, as a result, of all other vicious practices had arisen in Rome… It was the result of peace and an abundance of those things that mortals consider most important. I say this, because, before the destruction of Carthage, mutual consideration and restraint between the people and the Roman Senate characterized the government. Among the citizens, there was no struggle for glory or domination. Fear of a foreign enemy preserved good political practices. But when that fear was no longer on their minds, self-indulgence and arrogance, attitudes that prosperity loves, took over. As a result the tranquility they had longed for in difficult times proved, when they got it, to be more cruel and bitter than adversity…In this way all political life was torn apart between two parties, and the Republic, which had been our common ground, was mutilated.” ( The Jurgurthine War 41.1-5)

With the U.S., we can simply replace Rome with ourselves and Carthage with the Soviet Union, and that’s pretty much where we are today. While we faced the more-or-less existential threat of the Soviet Union, bipartisanship governed much (though hardly all) of our politics when it came to foreign policy and national security, and American victory in the Cold War was largely the result of decades of bipartisan policy and internal Soviet dynamics, hardly just because of the efforts of one man named Reagan, as many conservatives would have you believe.   Since then, largely because of the Republican Party (at least until the rise of the Bernie Sanders crowd), good practices are very much on the decline, not least of all in terms of how politics and issues of both foreign policy and national security have become toxically mixed, and we can’t blame this on 9/11, for it was a disease already growing in our body politic years before.

Today, there is hardly anybody left in a Republican leadership position who is someone like Bob Dole, who, though often opposing Clinton, put American interests and productive outcomes in foreign affairs ahead of partisanship and political gain, often acting to reign in his unruly Party members. There does not seem to be any new blood among Republicans who are capable of leading and cooperating like Dole, which means this untenable status quo of today is something with which we will be stuck for some time to come.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse October 26, 2015 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) October 26th, 2015

AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi

AMMAN — As the sadly predictable violence suffered by both Israeli and Palestinian civilians seems to spiral out of control into something approaching an uprising or sorts (maybe a Third Intifada, maybe not, only time will tell) it is important to know who to blame so there can be accountability and way forward.

Blame must necessarily be placed more heavily where there resides more power. Keeping this in mind, first and foremost, we must blame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his conservative coalition governments, in power for over six-and-a-half years, since March 2009.

Netanyahu has for years never been enthusiastic about the peace process; he even bragged about actively undermining the Oslo Accords while Prime Minister from 1996-1999, helping to set the stage for the Second Intifada; he was against the 2005 Gaza “disengagement” plan of then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, quitting his cabinet post in Sharon’s government in protest; and all through Obama’s presidency, he has resisted serious peace talks, participating only reluctantly and has been unwilling to discuss major final-status issues, in particular the final borders with a Palestinian state. All the while, he has been a champion of illegal Israeli settlement expansion on what is legally Palestinian territory, the final status of which is supposed to be determined in negotiations, and he has refused intense requests from the Obama administration to fully halt settlement expansion during peace talks, undermining whatever good faith could have existed. He even allowed his government to repeatedly announce plans for settlement expansion at the most inopportune moments, leading one of his senior ministers in his own government to accuse his government of deliberately undermining negotiations. Netanyahu used the horrific murder and kidnapping of three Israeli teens in the summer of 2014 as an excuse to pursue an agenda of political repression against Hamas, even though Hamas as an organization was not responsible for the lone-wolf atrocity.

At this time, Hamas had also been observing a cease-fire since November 2012 for a year-and-a-half, and all throughout that period Netanyahu did nothing to alleviate the harsh blockade of Gaza in the long-term despite Hamas’ dutiful observation of the cease-fire. The crackdown against Hamas was the largest security operation in the West Bank since the Second Intifada ended ten years earlier and was seen by Hamas as a provocation after it had been on its best behavior in years, refraining from engaging in terrorism and violence against Israelis. Netanyahu continued the crackdown, and Hamas responded with rocket fire.

The main point to make here is this: Israel has almost all the power in this situation. It has the real sovereignty over the whole West Bank and de facto sovereignty in Gaza, where Israel totally controls the airspace, coastal waters, land crossings, population movement, controls most of its taxation, and still occupies almost 17% of Gaza’s land. Netanyahu makes bold demands of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, his governing party of Fatah, and Hamas, but deliberately disempowers them to the degree that they are not generally capable of meeting his demands. Palestinian officials, whether of Hamas or of Fatah, have little control over anything and that control is totally at Israel’s discretion. Fatah renounced violence and basically kept to this for years now. Hamas has not. If Netanyahu had a productive strategy, it would be rewarding areas controlled by Abbas’s Fatah for nonviolence by ending the occupation—in place since 1967—in some of these areas. This would in turn pressure Hamas to become less violent as the Palestinians living under Fatah control would see the benefits of non-violence and cooperation while those living under Hamas control would become jealous.

What does Bibi do instead? He makes no major concessions or serious reductions of the occupation at all to Fatah and continues with massive settlement expansion in areas under Fatah control despite years of security cooperation that has been praised for years by Israeli security officials; when Hamas is non-violent for over a year and half, Netanyahu also does nothing to reward this behavior. As the major power broker, Netanyahu at the helm of the Israeli government sets the stage, and has the ability to reward and encourage non-violence; when he does not do this, he is essentially encouraging violence and is empowering Hamas and undermining Fatah and Abbas. Hamas can point to Fatah and the leadership of Abbas, and say “See what cooperation with the Israelis gets you? More occupation, more settlements!”

This was Netanyahu’s approach from the moment he took office through today, including the many anguishing months of fruitless talks led by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and in the run-up to last summer’s Gaza conflict and in his lack of initiative in the year since leading up to this current round of violence. In his actions Netanyahu has shown that he not only does not care to seek real peace in the form of a two-state solution with the Palestinians, he has also shown no inclination to reduce or end the oppressive occupation. He is also no stranger to divisive rhetoric, most recently on display in his trying to shamefully and falsely claim a Palestinian inspired Hitler to carry out the Holocaust, inspiring condemnation from many Israelis and historians.

But on another level, we can—and should—blame everyone.

The Israeli people had chances and came close to removing Netanyahu from office twice in recent years; they did not. They have continually empowered him, no doubt out of an understandable sense of fear, but in doing so they are helping to perpetuate this conflict. And how is there room in the Israeli public space for incitement and right-wing mobs that attack Arabs (sometimes Jews are mistaken for Arabs and attacked by other Jews) and even Jewish leftist dissenters, and for significant numbers of settlers (supported by the IDF!) to attack Palestinians and their property?

The Palestinians understandably are now turning away from Abbas, who has been unable (through little fault of his own) to produce any results to show for his cooperation with Netanyahu. This may be understandable, but it, too, is unwise. To turn towards violence and Hamas and intifada is not a recipe for success, it is a recipe for more bloodshed, and, as always, the vast majority of those dying will be the Palestinians themselves. We are seeing young children forming groups to throw rocks at Israeli security personnel, groups of young women too; where are their parents? How are they allowed to participate in riots and violence on such a regular basis? When will the incitement of violence and glorification of Palestinians who attack Israeli civilians stop?

Bibi has had the power to help nudge both societies away from such behavior, but has done just the opposite. He is the director for a staged play awash in violence and conflict, but most of the actors in Israeli and Palestinian society are all too willing to play their part. Israelis and Palestinians who advocate peace and coexistence are increasingly marginalized by their respective societies and are devoid of meaningful political power. This latest time the curtain has risen for a show of predictably increasing violence, there is plenty of blame to go around, indeed.

If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse August 3, 2015 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) August 3rd, 2015

Reuters

This piece has also been published by the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC).

Those who argue that the Obama Administration’s overall Middle East strategy is a total failure have no sense of strategy themselves and dangerously substitute tactical-here-and-nows and pointless posturing for real strategy (especially Republicans). That’s not to say some of the Obama Administration’s Middle East policies aren’t lacking, but overall the Administration has more progress and sound approaches to point to than failures and mismanagement. Below, all of the Obama Administration’s major Middle East policies are broken down and given a letter grade. Here, then, is a look at all the major efforts of the Obama Administration in the Middle East, and as it covers a lot of territory this has been broken up into three parts, this being Part II and covering the Syrian Civil War.

Other articles in this series:

Grading Obama’s Middle East Strategy (Sensibly): Part I

4.) Dealing with Syria’s Civil War

AMMAN — Amidst a sea of Middle Eastern conflicts, the civil war raging in Syria is currently the largest and deadliest. Here, as in other situations, we have a crisis in which we must be careful not to blame Obama too much but must also note the missed opportunities where his substantive leadership could have made a huge difference, though not without some risk involved. So, right from the start, it must be acknowledged both that America could have done a lot more in regards to Syria, potentially helping to dramatically lessen the violence and perhaps even ending the war on the one hand, but, on the other, that America bears little responsibility for causing or contributing to the overall Syrian tragedy.

First, let’s examine the history of this war and the Obama Administration’s response to it, starting from the very beginning.

Of Arms and Assad I Sing

REUTERS/Mahmoud Hassano

Once upon a time in 2011, there was an uprising in Syria of many of the country’s own people who wanted Syria’s President (dictator) Bashar al-Assad to step down so they could change the system and have more freedom. They were inspired by their Arab brethren in the happier days of the Arab Spring in 2011. This was, generally, a struggle for freedom, representation, human rights, and democracy in a country ruled by an authoritarian, repressive, undemocratic Syrian regime with an Alawite (a word describing a subsect of Shia Islam that is only roughly 12% of Syria’s population) ruling family and many other Alawites at the top, ruling over mostly Sunni Muslims, though the regime and its supporters are by no means exclusively Alawite. While in 2011, people power brought down long-ruling autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, and American-led NATO intervention rescued a revolution in Libya from massacre and disaster and helped overthrow Libya’s dictator, Muammar el-Qaddafi, Syria had no such luck with its people power or Western intervention. Qaddafi, alone and isolated and ruling over a far smaller population, was a relatively easy target. Compared to Qaddafi’s regime, Assad’s military was much stronger and, unlike Qaddafi’s, had strong patrons in Russia and Iran who would complicate and increase the costs of any Western intervention and made the prospects of any success for the Syrian people on their own quite dim.

Some powers talked of intervening in Syria, but with the U.S. signaling no appetite for direct military involvement, no other Western governments put their militaries in action against the Assad regime, nor did any regional governments. Still, Obama did call for Assad to step down in August 2011, and moved to increase sanctions and economic pressure on the regime at the same time. There was also a robust debate within the Obama administration about arming the Syrian rebels. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, then-CIA chief and later Gates’ successor Leon Panetta, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (also former president Bill Clinton) all agreed on arming significant numbers of moderate Syrian rebels, but they were unable to persuade President Obama in the end. If moderate rebels had been robustly supported early in the conflict, when an increasing stream of Syrian Army officers(including generals) and soldiers were defecting to the rebel cause, perhaps the regime could have been brought to its knees and would have been willing to enter serious negotiations; perhaps Assad would have been willing to leave if given immunity. The U.S. and West could have made a huge difference in the conflict with direct intervention by degrading the Assad regime’s military capabilities and limiting the shipments of weapons into Syria with a combination of naval blockades, no-fly-zones, and the U.S. specifically partnering with its allies Iraq and (NATO member) Turkey to use drones, reconnaissance flights, and other high-tech monitoring equipment to lock down Syria’s land borders with both nations. NATO could have played a significant role in such an operation, too, not terribly dissimilar to its role in the operation in Libya.

Karam Al-Masri/AFP/Getty Images

But no serious action was taken along these lines and in this absence of action, into the fray came Islamist extremist jihadists—including ISIS—even more murderous than Assad’s thugs. Suddenly, the moderate homegrown Syrian revolutionary rebels, who were having a difficult enough time holding their own with little international support against Assad’s well-and-Russian-armed forces, found themselves having to compete with and also fight well-armed, well-funded foreign jihadist extremists. Many of the moderate rebels lost heart and quit; still others defected to the more successful and more robustly-backed Islamists. At the same time, other Shiites were coming to the aid of Assad’s Shiite Alawite-led regime: the Iranian government was sending some of its elite military units and leaders, while Lebanese Hezbollah’s well-trained militia forces were also coming and making a big difference in favor of Assad at this time, each supporting and fighting for Assad on Syrian soil.

Instead of being supported by the international community and slowly and surely gaining territory, credibility, and influence, the Syrian moderates were themselves losing territory, credibility, and influence to the better-supported Islamists and their more extreme tactics. Almost all the factions became more radicalized, more violent. A major attack in July 2012 in Damascus that killed top regime insiders, including the defense minister and Assad’s brother-in-law—still the most spectacular attack to date carried out against the regime—was claimed by both moderate and extremist rebels, with some noting evidence that pointed to Islamists, and still others saying it was an inside job of the regime itself.

Narciso Contreras, Associated Press

Whoever carried it out, after this bombing, the conflict became even more deadly and brutal in Syria, with both 2012 and 2013 each seeing extreme escalations in violence and lethality. Foreign Shiite militias joined the Iranian government’s and Lebanese Hezbollah’s well-trained militia forces (both Shiite as well) already aiding and fighting for Assad in Syria. As the situation kept deteriorating, at some points in 2012 the CIA began helping U.S. allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar vet and identify rebels moderate enough to recommend them for military support and Obama secretly authorized both covert non-lethal support from the U.S. for some Syrian rebels and a program to militarily train some of them, too, though these efforts were to be very limited in nature; even when they were “sharply increased” early and later in 2013, respectively, the programs had been so small to begin with that they still remained very limited.  Obama also politically recognized Syria’s main opposition group (the Syrian Opposition/National Coalition) at the end of 2012, though without recognizing it as the legitimate government of Syria. But when the rebels suffered serious losses, in the middle of 2013 the Obama Administration and select Congressional Committees finally decided to have America itself arm Syrian rebels with “lethal military aid,” allowing the CIA to arm vetted Syrian rebels directly (though not with any advanced or heavy weaponry), and those weapons finally began to be delivered at the very end of the summer of 2013.

As the conflict continued to worsen and concerns about Assad’s chemical weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program—one of the largest in the world—were raised, Obama even repeatedly and publicly warned Assad that if his regime was found to be readying or using “a whole bunch” of chemical weapons that this would constitute a “red line” that would mean a severe response from the U.S., even possibly including military action. Throughout this period, rumors and reports of the use of chemical weapons use began to trickle out of Syria, culminating in the summer of 2013 with reports of a massive chemical WMD sarin gas attack—the largest chemical attack in the world in a quarter-century since Saddam Hussein gassed Iraqi Kurds in 1988—near Damascus. Unlike previous reports, these highlighted an attack that was both of an unprecedented scale for this conflict—it killed about 1,400 people—and confirmed publicly by several major Western governments (including that of the United States), Human Rights Watch, and later by the United Nations. As to who was the culprit, as I pointed out at the time, the signs clearly pointed to elements of the Assad regime carrying out the attack.

To Strike or Not to Strike, That Was the Question

Horrified by the attack and seeing this “red line” crossed with impunity, first Kerry and then Obama made an impassioned case to the American people that a military response against Assad’s regime was both necessary and proper and began to move the machinery of the American government and its allies towards this end. Yet the American people, weary of war after the disasters of the (W.) Bush Administration, began to see Obama’s moves to engage in limited strikes in Syria as all too similar to Bush’s moves to invade Iraq; they failed to see, as I myself made clear, that Syria 2013 was not Iraq 2003, and that Obama is not Bush, for despite the support of both the top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, Speaker of the House John Boehner, and the top Democrat in the same body, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, few others of either party in Congress emerged to support Obama’s plan to strike Assad’s regime and far more came out against it. Even as opposition began growing at home, the House of Commons of the British Parliament shockingly rejected Prime Minister David Cameron’s motion to support pending American strikes and then Cameron himself stated he would respect the vote and not join the U.S.were it to initiate strikes against Assad’s regime. Soon after this setback, opposition to the Obama Administration’s plans for military strikes gained traction very quickly both at home and abroad.

With Obama himself never too eager to intervene militarily and with both his own party and America’s most stalwart foreign ally for military interventions uncharacteristically declining to join the fray, Obama publicly announced he would seek Congressional approval. In some ways, this could be considered a welcome move, coming after the Bush Administration often showed little more than contempt for opposition sentiment in Congress after the early months of near unquestioning-support from much of Congress just after the September 11th attacks faded to the more acrimonious, partisan atmosphere that characterized the end of Bush’s first term and all of his second (this poisonous political atmosphere only got worse after Obama was elected). Furthermore, if Obama was able to muster Congressional support, it would empower him that much more in the public and political senses. And yet, Obama’s putting so much power and influence in the hands of Congress on so crucial an action showed that he had learned almost nothing at all from his previous interactions with Congress, whether with insecure Democrats nervous about retaining their seats or with an implacable Tea Party-driven Republican majority in the House that was determined to avoid cooperation with the president at nearly all costs. To allow Congress to vote against his plan was to invite it to be weakened and to drive any international support to significantly lower levels, if not destroying it entirely. That President Obama did not realize that this outcome was far more likely from the beginning reveals a remarkable naïveté for a president in his second term dealing with factions that had more than established who they were and how they would behave. Never mind that Obama was perfectly within his Constitutional and legal rights to do so, and that there are ample precedents in American history dating back to the Administrations of Presidents Adams (for military action short of war) and Jefferson (for military action overseas without Congressional authorization), our second and third presidents, respectively, because being undermined in such a serious way politically would itself carry grave real-world consequences.

Obama’s s attempt to rally support failed miserably, as in the days that followed public opposition in the U.S. became widespread, vocal, and bipartisan. Obama’s idealistic attempt to engage the elected representatives of the people weakened his position considerably, for, despite some support from the most relevant Committees in Congress, the overall trends in both the House and the Senate showed that the Obama Administration had little to no chance of either the full House of the full Senate passing a resolution either approving or authorizing military action in Syria against Assad. Basically, instead of leading decisively, Obama decided to say “wait, let’s have a discussion” at this critical juncture after there had already been weeks of mulling over what to do, preferring to pass at least some of the responsibility and maybe even some of the authority from the Executive Branch to the Legislative Branch. Even the rebels and the government in Syria both strangely united in questioning this move of Obama’s. Again, such an action is one that works better in the abstract than in practice, and it was at such a juncture, with the very presidency stalling and losing altitude on such a critical military issue, that Russia and Vladimir Putin waded into the fray, seizing on a single comment by Secretary of State John Kerry—that Assad could avoid strikes if he gave up his chemical WMD—to propose a plan facilitate just that. This was, to use my own label, after Russia’s long stint as the obstructionist Tea Party of international politics and also after Putin’s farcical, blithely hypocritical New York Times op-ed calling for a diplomatic, non-violent solution even though, less than a year later, he sent Russian troops pouring into Ukraine, when violence as a means suited his ends there, and did the same five years earlier in Georgia. Still, while virtually anything that would significantly reduce Assad’s WMD stockpile has to be objectively seen as a positive, on one level the ensuing deal left Obama and the U.S presidency significantly emasculated. On another level, it was clear that the threat of U.S. strikes was the only thing that prodded Russia into doing anything that was either significant or productive in relation to this conflict. And yet, as I wrote at the time, on another, grander level, Putin’s move was entirely in his self-interest, as the deal itself was something of an insurance policy he took out on Assad’s regime, a significant ally of Russia’s that was both a major buyer of Russian arms and the host of Russia’s only military base outside of the former Soviet Union.

In any event, after Obama declined to strike the Assad regime and Russia’s proposal—which had become the UN’s—was accepted by Syria, seeing Syria’s 1,300 tons of declared chemical weapons painstakingly removed from Syria (there is now, disturbingly, new evidence that Assad may have kept some undeclared top-grade chemical WMD hidden from inspectors to be used in more desperate times), what I predicted—that this would do nothing to stem the drivers of the conflict and that the war in Syria would only continue and continue to get worse like some sort of vortex—came to pass, with 2014 being the deadliest year of the conflict thus far and no end in sight. Now, Syria truly is a vortex, becoming inflated and conflated with so many other conflicts that it has metastasized into one big megaconflict. Syria’s neighbors, as I predicted in the fall of 2013, are also suffering from an increasingly destabilizing burden as a result of the conflict—none more so than Iraq as ISIS broke off from al-Qaeda and proceeded to shock the world with its march from Syria into Iraq in 2014—and the more than four million registered refugees it has produced.

UNHCR

Still, as mentioned, even before the chemical weapons attacks, the Obama Administration had signaled and had taken steps—albeit very miniscule ones—to support rebels fighting to overthrow Assad’s regime. Yet, in addition to Obama’s natural caution and the lack of political and public support for robust involvement in Syria, a classified 2012-2013 CIA study found very little success with past CIA covert armings of rebel groups in various conflicts over nearly seventy years unless Americans were on the ground working with rebels where they were fighting (something the Obama Administration was clear it wanted to avoid at the time); this means that even up through the publishing of this article at the beginning of August 2015, the Administration’s anti-Assad efforts when it comes to supporting rebels actively fighting against Assad have been half-hearted, tepid, and ineffective at best. As the CIA training program for vetted moderate rebels encountered difficulties, stalled, produced limited results, and is now having a significant part of its funding cut, the Obama Administration began to shift responsibility to the U.S. Military by giving it a new program to train Syrian rebels; but whereas the CIA program was concocted to produce forces to fight Assad’s regime, the U.S. Military’s program will focus on producing fighters to go after ISIS. Obama asked Congress to approve $500 million in funding for the new program in the summer of 2014, and by the end of the year, Congress had approved an over $720 million package for the program, demonstrating both the shift in the U.S. view from Assad to ISIS as the major threat and the seriousness with which ISIS was being viewed (Assad may even be playing into this shift by deliberately aiding ISIS in an effort to empower the terrorist group as a way to further deflect Western attention away from itself to ISIS and stoke further fears of what would happen should the Assad regime fall, making leaders more reluctant to push for his ouster). The military training program began this spring, but as of early July had only managed to train less than sixty rebels, a paltry figure by any standards. To make matters worse, even before the end of July, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria and ISIS rival, Jabhat al-Nusra/the Nusra Front, had embarrassingly captured one of the U.S-trained-rebels’ senior commanders and his deputy and then later attacked the U.S.-trained rebel group.  Another embarrassing development is that the Assad regime has been resorting to the regular use of makeshift chemical weapons—the regime’s infamous barrel bombs with chlorine gas added to their payload—against civilians. While these more improvised chlorine chemical weapons do not reach the level of lethality of the WMD attack from the summer of 2013 (an attack that multiple investigations confirmed involved highly-deadly sarin gas), the blatant and repeated violation of the international norm against the use of chemical weapons without any serious consequences is a development that begs their future use by both Assad’s regime and others who share its lack of concern for international norms and human life.

Additionally, just over the past week, after Turkey’s long opposition to Assad by way of supporting Islamist extremists—including, at least tacitly (and sometimes more directly), ISIS and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front—backfired recently with the worst terrorist attack in Turkey against civilians in years and carried out by a Turkish citizen with reported tied to ISIS, there is, apparently, a new level of cooperation between Turkey and the United States, including plans to establish a “safe zone” corridor in Syria along the country’s border with Turkey using American air power and both Turkish and rebel ground forces. The plan reportedly calls for ISIS to be cleared from a zone inside Syria extending sixty miles from Turkey’s border and which would also serve as a safe haven for civilians, though U.S. officials later denied such a plan has been agreed upon. I called for at least a similar robust corridor back in the fall of 2013 as a starting point from which moderate rebels, supported by the West, could further expand control and as one of the only realistic ways for an intervention to have an impact on driving down the drivers of conflict and moving in any way towards an end to the Syrian Civil war and the mass killing associated with it (as neither Assad’s chemical weapons nor ISIS are the reasons behind the Syrian Civil War and its perpetuation). However, it remains to be seen if this talk will turn into action and enough of such action to make a real difference. Especially with Obama close to leaving office and an election season well underway, there are reasons to doubt this safe corridor will actually come into being anytime soon if at all, at least in a significant way. Then again, Obama has shown a boldness and a willingness to take the risks required for big payoffs in recent months, most especially with Cuba and Iran, so such talk should also not be immediately written off. Furthermore, there is at least a chance that the recent agreement with Iran will spur further cooperation between Iran and the United States, with Syria perhaps being the most pressing and obvious case for such cooperation apart from the problem of ISIS. Only time will tell, especially given the conflicting messages coming out of media and official sources. But if some sort of a safe-zone is established by two (or more) NATO countries like the U.S. and Turkey, it could be a game changer for Assad, and not to his benefit. If such action expands, the successful NATO air-war in Kosovo could be seen as something of a loose blueprint. A Syria free of Assad and with ISIS tamed could be a starting point for peace and a new future for the Syrian people. What is happening now is a starting point for nothing but death and destruction.

While the U.S. may be significantly and substantively stepping up the fight against ISIS in Syria, having now been directly striking ISIS targets inside Syria with a respectable-sized coalition of air power for some time (and reportedly maybe indirectly communicating with Assad’s regime about those strikes), and while talk of creating a humanitarian corridor is certainly welcome, even allowing for those developments, there is very little of substance the U.S. has done to stem the long-term drivers of the Syrian Civil War and thus, very little it has done little to bring about an end to this conflict and a stop to the mass killing involved with it. As peace talks pushed by the U.S. between the regime and the opposition, each with goals wholly incompatible to the other, have accomplished nothing and seem all but certain to go nowhere for the foreseeable future, the focus on ISIS and on chemical weapons has obscured the fact that the Assad regime and the war in general slaughters civilians on a mass scale and that little has been done to stop this by anyone.

Bold “What Ifs” vs. “Do No Harm”

Having traced the Syrian Civil War from its inception through now and the U.S. role (or lack thereof) in it during this same period, how the U.S. could even be judged or graded on its involvement must also be discussed.

Since the United States: 1.) was not, an occupying power in Syria—like France was was from the end of WWI through 1946—and bears no serious responsibility for the initial homegrown protests in Syria that prompted a brutal, murderous government response that, in turn, provoked an uprising which led to the Syrian Civil War, 2.) was not even not the among first Western nations formally recognizing the opposition, 3.) has been very lightly involved compared with other major international meddlers in this conflict (e.g. Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, the Gulf states…), and 4.) since the overall post-2003 Iraq mess, for which the U.S. does bear a majority of overall responsibility, was actually at its best levels of security all throughout the first two years of the protests/fighting in Syria, we cannot even begin to argue that the U.S. destabilizing Iraq is one of the major reasons why the Syrian Civil War got so out of control. If anything, the situation in Syria eventually did much more to destabilize Iraq than the other way around. That is no to say that our actions in Libya (which will be discussed in Part III) did not possibly serve to foster a hope within dissident Syrians that the U.S./NATO/the West would intervene on their behalf, but using that possibility to assign major blame to the U.S. for Syria’s conflict falls far short of a logical conclusion.

Reuters/Muzaffar Salman

However, as demonstrated, the U.S. had major opportunities to help make major differences and assist the Syrian people and their homegrown revolutionaries in overthrowing Assad. This the U.S. (and the world) declined to do, except in only very minor ways and quite belatedly, making the war in Syria a heavyweight fight between Ba’athist authoritarianism and jihadist theocracy, with the local Syrian moderates being left to waste away in the face of multiple competing factions and multiple threats. As in otherrelatively recent situations of mass killing (e.g., Rwanda, Bosnia, the Congo, the ongoing genocide in Darfur), it is disappointing that, absent U.S. leadership, no other nation stepped up to lead and significantly help the people (in this case local, moderate rebels), and that so many people have, are, and will continue to die as a result, so the blame for inaction on Syria is hardly on the U.S. alone. But especially after Obama’s waffling and inaction on his chemical weapons “red line” (a true low point of Obama’s presidency, which even his then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta acknowledges was a huge mistake) and after Russia’s Syrian WMD deal, Assad has felt secure and undaunted when it comes to the West, while the extremist jihadists are ascendant at the expense of the moderate rebels as much as at the expense of the regime, if not more so. And it seems, sadly, that, without U.S. leadership, there is no end to this brutal war in sight.

But with less than eighteen months left in Obama’s presidency, and with ISIS now being the priority target before Assad (though Obama reiterated earlier in July that it still his and the U.S. Government’s official position that Assad needs to step down), it is very unlikely that Assad will be gone before Obama leaves office in January 2017 or anytime soon after that, given the lack of real action the U.S. and other world powers have taken to bring this about. Obama’s current Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, bluntly admitted this recently during a Senate hearing. Still, the new U.S. training program for moderate rebels and new talk of a “safe zone” should not be prematurely dismissed, although nor, conversely, should any chicks be counted before the eggs are hatched.

But one final point must also be made: given America’s recent decade-and-then-some of misadventures, Obama does deserve some credit for notinserting America in a huge, destructive, or counterproductive way into the morass of the Syrian Civil War.

Grade: Overall C, more recently C+

Baraa Al-Halabi

For these reasons, the Obama Administration cannot be given lower than a C on Syria because, as discussed, the U.S. has not been a major player in Syria historically or recently and therefore cannot be said to be one those parties most at fault for the creation or perpetuation of the Syrian Civil War or its frightening metastasization and mass casualties totaling nearly a quarter of a million killed. Furthermore, contrary to recent years, the U.S. now has avoided inserting itself blunderingly and destructively into a major quicksand-like ground role in the war. It also avoided its Cold War modus operandi of blindly aiding extremist groups killing many civilians and committing many atrocities.  So, to its credit, the Administration avoiding a repeat of Iraq in 2003 as well as many of America’s misadventures from the Cold War. Yet so much more could have been done to mitigate or possibly end the war over the last four years, so many tens of thousands (or more) of lives could have been saved, and though the U.S. is far from alone in being blamed for inaction, it still could have done so much more than the very, very little it ended up doing, its embarrassing “red line” moment perhaps the most obvious example of this, when the correct and better arguments for intervention quickly fell to the side without the wind of political will to keep them aloft. To be fair to the Obama Administration, these winds of political will were absent from all significant concerned parties, with the U.S. hardly being the party with either the most responsibility to act or the most interests at stake. While recent reports suggest a very belated better-far-too-late-than-never increase in efforts to help moderate rebels, the results and the seriousness of these efforts remain to be seen, and as moderate rebels generally stand now, they have been all but pushed aside and are languishing in near-irrelevance as the conflict has devolved mainly into a conflict between Assad’s autocratic, oppressive regime and Islamist extremists intent on building a caliphate. So, even as the Administration cannot be given lower than a C, it also cannot be given higher than a C. Thus, an “average” grade of C it is, with + being added for the more recent months on the hope that recent moves, deliberations, and talk prove more fruitful and productive than the meager and disappointing efforts of the Obama Administration thus far.

Narciso Contreras/Associated Press

That’s it for Part II, coming up next the (overall) Arab Spring, ISIS, reducing America’s dependency on Mideast oil, and Iran (saving the more positive for last). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse July 22, 2015 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) July 22nd, 2015

Published by Stupidparty Math v. Myth thanks to Patrick Andendall

Reuters

Updated July 26th to include a link in concluding paragraph to analyst and Slate.com writer Fred Kaplan’s excellent piece highlighting the irrationality of Senate Republicans on the Iran deal and to a New York Times article highlighting the fact that Republicans were against the deal even before it was finalized or the details of it were released and available for review.

AMMAN — Treason is not a word that should ever be used lightly.  Expressing a dissenting opinion during wartime, for example, should not be thought of as treasonous, even though some still seem to think that using that word is appropriate.  Challenging your government, its officers, and your fellow citizens when you believe they are incorrect is also something that a sane definition of treason should not include.  In the words of the great journalist Edward R. Murrow, “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.”

And yet, how you express these opinions, and who you are and in what capacity you are speaking, can matter in certain circumstances.

With the Obama Administration’s twenty months of negotiations with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s negotiators on a nuclear deal (full text here) to prevent or slow Iran’s ability to acquire nuclear weapons production and deployment capabilities ending in (despite some delays) a momentous, historic success, we reached those certain circumstances during the negotiations with a letter signed by forty-seven out of fifty-four Republican senators, nearly half of the one-hundred-strong United States Senate, our senior legislative body.  This extraordinary action can also be viewed as one-sixth the power and authority of our government, being roughly one-half of one-third of one of our three co-equal branches of national government (the other two being the presidency’s Executive Branch and the federal courts of the Judicial Branch).  The short letter of the senators, authored by Sen. Tom Cotton and titled “An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” basically claimed that the president and his officials alone could not conclude a meaningful agreement without their approval and could only reach “a mere executive agreement,” that most of them would likely still be senators when Obama leaves office in January 2017, and then concluded that the “next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and the future Congress could modify the terms of the agreement at any time” (with “any time” not actually being true because any president could veto any changes and that veto would be insurmountable without a two-thirds vote against the president in both the House and Senate).  The letter was directly addressed to Iran’s leaders and was clearly designed to sabotage and undermine the Obama Administration’s efforts towards reaching an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program (meaning that both Republican hardliners and Iran’s Islamic hardliners found common cause in opposing the agreement; Republicans, in fact, often find themselves empowering America’s enemies through their actions).  The letter was produced and released on official United States Senate stationary with the official Senate letterhead and was signed by forty-seven sitting senators.  They were not merely conveying their opinions as individuals, but were conveying them as senators and in their official capacity.

The relevant historians find this to be unprecedented, including the official Senate Historian himself who said that “We haven’t found a precedent…That doesn’t mean there isn’t a precedent. After 200 years, it’s hard to find anything that unprecedented.”  In the end, he says, “We really didn’t find anything.”  Secretary of State John Kerry, the Obama Administration’s point man on negotiations with Iran complained of the letter’s unprecedented nature.  The complaints did not stop there…

Now, there are some basic lessons from American history and some principles behind our Constitution that these forty-seven Republican senators, and those who support them, seem to miss.  Actually, we can say this about a whole lot of things when it comes to Republicans and conservatives, who often seem to prefer the disaster that was the Articles of Confederation (see the thoughts on its “Deficiencies” of Founding Father, author of the Constitution, and [fourth] President James Madison) over our Constitution and constantly read the latter as if it was the former (they should read Federalist No. 63, in which Madison discusses the need for both government power and the people’s liberty to be checked).  That could be a whole other article, but the point about the Republican senators’ letter goes back to issues from the very period of the Articles of Confederation that led to its being scrapped in favor of the Constitution (see The Federalist Papers Nos. 15-22).  The period of 1781–1789, during which the Articles of Confederation governed the United States, saw tremendous chaos in the realm of the new nation’s foreign affairs.  Though in theory foreign policy was supposed to more-or-less be conducted by the national Congress of the Confederation, in practice the weak and ineffectual national government proved unable to prevent individual states and individual people from meddling in foreign policy, confusing other parties as to who really speaking for the United States and with real authority.  To say this led to misunderstandings and crises would be an understatement.  After the Constitution went into effect in 1789, over time “Americans began to see alternative negotiating as treason.”

Still, with a new government in place and officials navigating in unchartered waters, it would take some time for clear limits to be established and understood.  While the primacy of the Executive Branch in foreign affairs was clear in the Constitution as originally worded, what crossed the line and how this line would be enforced was not as clear.  This gray area was left for Congress, Executive practice, and the Federal Judiciary to decide.  And that is what began happening.  When hostilities on the open seas emerged with Revolutionary France during the undeclared “Quasi-War” (1798-1800), a private citizen named George Logan took it upon himself, without approval from the government, to travel to France in 1798 to negotiate on behalf of the United States.  In response, Congress passed a law known as the Logan Act in 1799 that basically criminalized unauthorized diplomacy.  This law still remains on the books today and has been modified slightly in the modern era, yet there has never been a full prosecution of anyone over this law; over the entire history of the Act, only one Kentucky farmer was charged with violating it in 1803, but his case was never even brought to trial.

In terms of the Senate Republicans’ Iran letter, there seems to be a consensus among serious non-partisans and policy analysts that the letter itself is almost farcically silly and “embarrassing”; it presumes to lecture on U.S. Constitutional mechanisms, then proceeds to mischaracterize one of the key mechanisms in question, claiming that Congress “ratifies” treaties when actually it simply give its advice and /or necessary (but not sufficient) consent to the president, who makes the ultimate decision on ratification if and after the Senate votes to consent (in Iran’s snarky responses to the letter, the fact that the Senators mischaracterized their own Constitution was, embarrassingly, not lost on the Iranians).

However, there is some debate among scholars and analysts as to whether or not the letter is a clear violation of the Logan Act.  Some say it is a clear violation, others feel it is more gray, some say it is pointless to even determine this because prosecution under the Act is both impractical and unlikely.  If you’re thinking that Logan was outside the government and that that means senators can’t be in violation of the Act, before we go any further, it is time to open up the U.S. Constitution that both restricts and empowers the Federal Government.  For forty-seven Republican senators, and anyone who agree with their action of sending a certain letter to Iran’s Supreme leader at this moment in time on the subjects it covered, they may need to blow the dust off of their copy.

Article I is the section of the Constitution that lays out the powers and responsibilities of the U.S. Congress, and it very clearly does not authorize Senators or any other member of Congress to engage in foreign relations or negotiations of their own accord.  However, in Article II, which deals with the powers of the President, the U.S. Senate is given “Advice and Consent” roles in Section 2 in relation to the President’s and the executive branch’s express powers to be the executors of foreign policy: “[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.”

Congress legislates, but the president executes the actions of government.  The Constitution was clearly designed to have one principal agent, the president (and any people to whom he chose to delegate authority), act in the arena of foreign relations with the Senate’s “Advice and Consent.”  Having multiple centers of gravity in the same type of power with respect to foreign relations would have been to invite chaos and disaster and inconsistency (as during the Articles of Confederation era), and this the Constitution clearly avoids having.  The president’s Constitutional powers empower the presidency to make “presidential or sole executive agreements” without a Congressional role, agreements that fall short of the stature of “Treaties” that can be subjected to future change or rejection but are hardly insignificant.  That is not to say the Senate has no role, as clearly the President is supposed to act with senators’ “Advice and Consent,” and best practice and the best results come from when the president and the Senate work together in the process of treaty-making, with the president often delegating senators to negotiate or involving them in negotiations.  However, with the treaty Power falling under Article II, and the president having “Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate,” and not the other way around, it is clear that the president leads and that senators cannot act independently of the Executive Branch in this realm, save to offer their “Advice” or to withhold their “Consent.”  Advising and Consenting in no way even implies unilateral insertion into an official process or unilaterally officially communicating to active parties in an official negotiation; there is no Constitutional room for senators undermining the Executive Branch’s negotiating positions and negotiations through official non-legislative action directed specifically at negotiations or the parties involved in them; such actions would be clear violations of both the language and spirit of Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution.  And even though they are sitting government officials, the senators were clearly not authorized to conduct this sort of (un)diplomatic action, so it was thus likely a violation of the Logan Act.

Yet even if there was not a violation of the Logan Act, or any law with a specific penalty, there is perhaps, then, an even stronger case to be made that the senators violated the Constitution and encroached on the prerogatives of the Executive Branch and the presidency.  In American jurisprudence, there is a concept known as the “sole organ” doctrine that is confusing and misunderstood and often taken out of context.  But, as constitutional scholar Louis Fisher shows in his lengthy and comprehensive discussion of the Executive Branch’s prerogatives regarding foreign policy, where there is little confusion among the framers of the Constitution and the Judicial Branch’s interpretation is in the consensus that the Executive Branch is the sole executor of foreign policy, and that this includes all communications to and through foreign powers.

And yet, what we have happening here today is exactly what the Constitution was designed to prevent: members of the Senate inserting themselves publicly and without presidential authorization into ongoing negotiations between the Executive Branch of government, acting within its Constitutional authority in its capacity for action, and the government of Iran.  To insert themselves directly into the negotiations with messages that expressly contradict both the intent and the spirit of the elected president’s administration is a clear violation of both the separation and the division of powers as laid out in the constitution.  And the fact that it was done to deliberately undermine the goals of a presidential administration engaged in active negotiations with a foreign power makes it treasonous any way you slice it or dice it.  That it does not fit the prosecutable Constitutional definition of treason as laid out in Article III Section 3 does not mean it does not fit the dictionary definition and spirit of the general concept of treason (it clearly does).  Senators may no more publicly use their office to undermine the president’s authority to engage in negotiations as an executive head of state than the president may issue an executive order that empowers himself or those acting on his authority to violate laws that Congress passes.  The Senate does not consist of one-hundred individual ambassadors-at-large-to-the-world able to act on their own impulses any more than the presidency consists of one legislator-at-large able to legislate at will.  To use Alexander Hamilton’s words in Federalist No. 75, “the Executive…[is] the most fit agent” for “the management of foreign negotiations,” a sentiment echoed by John Jay in Federalist No. 64.  That is partly why executive power and legislative power, unlike in Britain and other parliamentary systems, are divided and separated by our Constitution.  For a president to legislate or a senator to execute, is, if you’ll pardon the expression, un-American.

Thus, the Republican senators’ letter is clearly a violation of the Constitution, even if it may be less clear as to whether their letter is a prosecutable offense under the Logan Act.  Yet even worse than the their specific treasonous-in-spirit-act is the fact that their position is so wrong and dangerous for everyone involved: Americans, Iranians, all the peoples of the Middle East (including Israelis), and even the whole world.  

I have discussed the deal’s details before.  But even as Iran’s ability to produce a weapon would increase towards the end of the fifteen-year-agreement, the length of time required to make a weapon in the event of a breakdown in the agreement—termed “breakout time”—even at that juncture would still take longer than it would currently take Iran, before the implementation of this new agreement.  Now, Iran’s breakout time is two-to-three months; once the agreement is in place, it would take Iran a year to produce a bomb.  That’s a big difference in my book.

As I have written, and as President Obama himself has noted, those opposing this deal do not have logic on their side at all.  When negotiating a deal, both sides must make concessions; neither side will be totally happy with the results, and the fact that this deal is not a perfect deal from the perspective of the interests of America is simply the reality of negotiating a deal, and does not mean that the deal is a bad one, is not good, or should be rejected.  The idea that Iran would have likely given up more ground—whether, as Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump claims, Iran would have cowed before the supposedly-awesome might of Trump’s negotiating skills, or whether, as reporter Major Garret obscenely suggested, that Obama should have jeopardized an entire nuclear deal affecting millions by tying it to the fate a few American citizens being detained by Iranian authorities (and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are released in the near future, much like Kennedy quietly and subsequently removed Jupiter nuclear missiles from Turkey as part of a secret caveat helping to end the Cuban Missile Crisis)—is just not grounded in reality, considering especially that Iran already gave a lot of ground.  So don’t let anyone tell you that a significantly better deal for the U.S. at this time could have been reached.  If sanctions were ratcheted up and a significant amount of time went by before resuming negotiations, perhaps Iran would be feeling more pressure, but it would also be much closer to a bomb or might already have one by the time negotiations resumed.  So, that would have been a bad risk to take.  No deal now, and no deal in the future, would have allowed Iran’s already strong nuclear program to continue unhindered, then, and nuclear weapons capability would have been certain in the near future.  No deal, with a nuclear Iran and Middle East with a deteriorating and expanding Sunni-Shiite regional conflict, is not in anyone’s interests, except ISIS and other terrorist groups.  And as Obama himself correctly made clear, “Put simply, no deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East.”  The only other realistic alternative to this risky status quo and this agreement, then, is a risky military path, from a single strike up to and including all-out war.  These military options seem to be the ones favored by Saudi Arabia’s new king and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu (one of the largest critics of the deal), who would love to have America fight a war against Iran on their behalf.  Yet even just a limited strike could risk a radicalization of the Iranian regime and to galvanize the people behind Iran’s ayatollahs, who aren’t exactly currently loved by many Iranians for leading their country to diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions.  A lot of people would die in those strikes and their responses, likely including many Israelis.  And an all-out war, with Iran’s mountainous terrain and large population, would make the Iraq war, by comparison, look like child’s play.  And I frankly don’t think Americans are willing to wage a war that could take much longer than our recent war in Iraq and result in far more casualties for Americans, especially when this deal presents a viable alternative to war.  Even with a war, it is very difficult to know that we would be able to eradicate Iran’s nuclear capability, and if Iran was in possession of any nuclear weapons during a war it was fighting on its own territory, if its situation were desperate, that would only increase the chances, not lessen, of the use of nuclear weapons in combat for the first time since Nagasaki in 1945.  If America stopped its efforts short of a full regime change and the eradication of Iran’s nuclear program—very tall tasks, indeed—then the result would be a humiliating disaster for America that would leave every party in a worse-off situation than before fighting began.  So, no, when this deal is stacked up against realistic alternatives—not Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice fantasy negotiations, but negotiations that would have taken place in the real world—there really is not a better alternative or one with less risk.  And this is the only one of the realistic options that does not involve massive bloodshed that severely limits Iran’s nuclear program and keeps it from developing a bomb for at least a decade and then some.

Perhaps most importantly, we have a chance to begin anew our relationship with Iran.  Recognizing this potential, over 100 former American ambassadors praised the deal.  The United Nations Security Council has already unanimously endorsed the deal, and has also voted to lift sanctions on Iran (the latter provoking complains from the U.S. Congress). This deal enjoys broad global support for good reasons.  I’m not going to mince words at all here: this is, clearly, Obama’s greatest achievement in foreign policy (including the killing of bin-Laden, whose relevance had decreased significantly in the years before his death) and possibly even of his entire presidency.  TARP and the stimulus packages were either a joint-effort with the departing Bush Administration and/or with Congress; this, on the other hand, was all Obama and his team.  This may very well be the biggest foreign policy development in over forty years, since Nixon went to China in 1972 and began a path that led to engagement between the two countries that has benefitted both nations in many ways and helped to prevent war between us.  No singe act of a U.S. presidential administration has happened from that 1972 trip until this Iran deal that has so much potential to be a game changer and to change the course of world history so greatly.  This is truly a monumental achievement of great substance that makes many millions of people safer than any of the realistic alternatives; Obama, Kerry, Rouhani, and their negotiating teams should be hailed as heroes.

But all the Republicans do is bash this deal, with incredibly myopic points that do not address any of the points I raised about realistic alternatives being far worse.  In fact, their behavior in general on the Iran issue has been highly irrational and deeply unproductive, in additional to being seriously harmful.  They don’t seem to want any deal, let alone one negotiated by the Obama Administration, regardless of its specifics, as they made crystal clear their opposition before the deal was even finalized and before they had even had time to be able to read through it once it was finalized.  The Republican clown-car of potential candidates vying to be their party’s choice to be the leader of the world would, if their words are to be taken seriously, dramatically escalate the likelihood of all-out war and would see current levels of bloodshed all over the Middle East very likely rise should any of them occupy the White House.  From supporting treasonous and un-Constitutional acts to endangering Americans, Israelis, Iranians, Arabs, and the world with awful policies and deeds that illogically undermine the very sound policies of the Obama Administration, the Republican Party is not to be trusted, respected, or voted into power because they are just so wrong.

See related article by same author: There Is No Logical Argument Against the Iran Nuclear Deal

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If you can’t understand that Obama’s overall Middle East strategy is starting to work, you don’t know what you’re talking about

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse May 21, 2015   

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) May 21st, 2015

This piece was The Russian International Affairs Council’s (RIAC) “Post of the Month” for June/July, and was also published by Stupidparty Math v. Myththanks to Patrick Andendall and by Tuck Magazine.

The cocks who crow “failure” every time the sun rises about the Obama Administration’s overall Middle East strategy—and we will be hearing their mindless crowing at its highest decibels since the competition within the Republican Party for the Party’s presidential nomination is now officially underway—have no sense of strategy themselves and dangerously substitute tactical-here-and-nows and pointless posturing for real strategy. That’s not to say some of the Obama Administration’s Middle East policies aren’t lacking, but overall the Administration has more progress and sound approaches to point to than failures and mismanagement. Below, all of the Obama Administration’s major Middle East policies are broken down and given a letter grade. Here, then, is a look at all the major efforts of the Obama Administration in the Middle East, and as it covers a lot of territory this has been broken up into three parts, this being Part I and covering the U.S.-Muslim world reset, Iraq, and Israel/Palestine.

Other articles in this series:

Grading Obama’s Middle East Strategy (Sensibly): Part II: Syria

A tense triumvirate in September, 2009- Doug Mills/The New York Times

AMMAN — Well, here we are again. Far too many “experts,” from the far leftto (especially) those who lean right and even many non-Americans, are ready to claim that Obama is practically starting the apocalypse with his foreign policy. While hysterical, laughable claims about possible nuclear warover Ukraine and many other issues fall into this category, the Middle East situation in particular inspires a remarkable number of myopic and dim-witted exclamations not only from the Republican White House hopefuls, but also many in the commentariat and the Twitteratti. Never mind the track record of this commentary-class who are naysaying Obama’s moves (and to a degree lack thereof, but more on that later), and never mind that the generally ill-informed Twitteratti emerge practically every day with some new hysterics that that there is barely time to call them out on their hysterics of old. These Chicken Littles of all levels proclaim that the sky is falling so often, that one must marvel that there is any sky left for us to enjoy at this point if even a fraction of their panic-mongering can be taken seriously. What is particularly amusing is that many of the people who are blaming Obama for the imminent collapse of the world order and Pax Americana are the same people who blame him for U.S. economic woes, as if things were great in January 2009 and America was not in the midst of the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression. Still even more amusing and amazing are that many of these people are both the people who led America into the Great Recession and into invading Iraq.

Having said this, I will am quite happy to repeat that I find the Obama Administration’s foreign policy to be far from perfect, and have made some of my own disagreements with it quite vocally and publicly on matters from Syria to Israel/Palestine, among others. So I write this neither as an apologist nor as a hater, but as someone who has studied the Middle East for much of the past fifteen years (including some studying abroad in the region and, most recently, actually living in the Middle East). Rather from a position of ideology, I simply try to look at each situation, country, organization, etc. in light of whatever current issue is at hand, and try to see who is trying to make things better, who is disrupting for less-than-altruistic reasons, and how successful these various parties are in their efforts and whether or not such efforts actually help people or hurt people in both the short and long-terms.

A few basic points, though, need to be reiterated before we launch into a discussion here:

• Obama took office in January, 2009, and had to deal with a Middle Eastthat had become an overall festering disaster from the actions of the Bush Administration but also from the terrible policies of local rulers, from Hosni Mubarak in Egypt to Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to (the recently departed) King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and also from the actions of a number of other foreign patrons, like Russia. While some of the American disasters had been partly mitigated by some competent self-correction (see Secretary of Defense Gates, General Petraeus, and the 2007 “Surge”), it is still undeniable that Obama inherited a situation in the Middle East that was probably worse than any previous American president ever had to deal with before. And those who say the situation got worse for a while under his watch may be right, but that is a statement of fact that in no way includes presiding over with responsibility, as this would be like blaming Lincoln for the Civil War or FDR for WWII. Rather, events were in motion and grievances raw and waiting to explode long before January 2009, it just took some time until after that for it all to boil over.
• The crises of the “Arab Spring” and its offshoot situations in Libya, Yemen, and most of all Syria had little to do with anything Obama did, and those trying to place primary blame for any of these local revolutions and wars are way off the mark. Locals were just as surprised as Americans at the Arab Spring, as well.
• As far as Israel/Palestine, Obama inherited a Bibi Netanyahu who had little-to-no desire to take the steps necessary for peace and an emasculated Palestinian Authority led by an emasculated Mahmoud Abbas, with the emasculation largely by Israeli design not just over the past few years but over decades.

Now that we have reminded people that the Middle East was not Vancouver or Switzerland before Obama took office, we have to think about what Obama’s major goals have been for U.S. policy in the region, why he has these goals, and how successful he has been in moving towards or fulfilling these goals. We can then give a letter “grade” on each of these for Obama and his Administration’s efforts so far.

In no particular order, let’s go through these major goals:

1.) Resetting U.S. relations with the Muslim world

I think we all remember Obama’s lofty Cairo address at Al-Azhar University, merely months into his presidency. At that point, Muslims were still in the “he’s not George W. Bush, he’s black, and his father was raised in a Muslim family” mode. However, escalation of U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan (a.k.a. Obama’s “surge”), Obama’s (wise) overall policy of not shying away from the use of drones in principle to go after terrorists training, plotting, and operating in ungoverned spaces, the taking out of Osama bin Laden by violating Pakistani sovereignty, still failing to fulfill his promise to close the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay over six years into his presidency, and lack of progress for the Palestinians achieving statehood combined with continued(and increasing) U.S. support of Israel have all led (unfairly, but quite understandably) to a feeling among Muslims that there was little to distinguish between George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The fact is that the lofty rhetoric and high idealism of the (now somewhat infamous) Cairo speech was not matched with much of the action that Muslim publics wanted to see from a U.S. President: an end to drone strikes and military operations, the closing of Guantánamo, and real, substantive pressure on Israel and a lessening of U.S. support for Israel on behalf of Palestinians. While it was not realistic to expect any U.S. president to take away most of or all military options for dealing with terrorists in many of the weak states of the Muslim world, based on his own rhetoric Obama would have to be guilty of raising expectations on both Guantánamo and on Israel and the Palestinians far beyond what he has delivered and far below the amount of effort that should have come after such a speech.

Grade: D+ overall; more recently: C-

We don’t give Mr. Obama an F here because we are talking about the Muslim “world,” which, although mostly the people, also includes leaders and governments. This is because, despite his unpopularity on the street-level, the coalition he has put together to confront ISIS includes several Middle Eastern Muslim nations not just financing operations, as has been standard operating procedure in the past, but actually taking part in hostilities in a significant way. So one can say that recently, Obama has shown to have increased his ability to work with Muslims leader, if not endear himself to their people. In this way, then, Obama resembles George W. Bush’s father, George H. W. Bush, who was able to include a wide array of regional Muslim nations in the 1990-91 Gulf War, more George W. was able to include in his 2003 misadventure. So even if Obama remains deeply unpopular among Muslims publics in many parts of the world, he deserves credit from getting more out of Muslim leaders recently than his predecessor.

2.) Ending U.S. combat involvement in Iraq while maintaining the U.S. role of a key ally and supporter of Iraq

Here is a goal that no one should be surprised about: Illinois state senator Obama, U.S. Senator Obama, Democratic presidential primary candidate Obama, and Democratic presidential nominee Obama all made it clear his goal was to end the Iraq War, specifically to end the U.S. combat role there. The fact that he opposed it more vocally than, and before, Hillary Clinton, who had voted for the authorization to use force in Iraq, was arguably the issue which most distinguished Obama from Clinton, and which propelled him to a Democratic primary victory over her. I will state here that I was, in much of the period before he was elected President, concerned about this position of his. While it was clear to me that Iraq had been a disaster and that the decision to invade was wrong, I felt that we owed the Iraqi people a lot for invading them erroneously and destroying their society through a combination of carelessness, incompetence, stupidity, and hubris. Yet before Obama was running for president, we had been able to improve the security situation greatly through some major changes in leadership and the accompanying “Surge,” as I have noted a few times before, but there was still a lot to be done and while I was more and more doubting the ability of the U.S. to achieve its goals in Iraq, I had not yet come to the position where I was comfortable with a withdrawal of U.S. forces from a combat role. In other words, I didn’t even want to go into the store, but having broken the merchandise once we were in the store, I felt we had to fix things and couldn’t just leave (see Colin Powell’s so-called “Pottery Barn” doctrine). In some ways, Obama struck me as a bit naïve and idealistic in his articulated foreign policy, and that was one of many reasons why I was a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. I was particularly nervous that he was going to pick a vice presidential candidate who was very light on national-level and foreign policy experience, someone like Virginia Governor Tim Kaine or others who were rumored top picks at the time. John McCain’s long experience as a moderate “maverick” Republican who was willing to stand up to his party and to do so often, allowed me to consider voting for him at this juncture, in the summer of 2008. But when Obama nominated Joe Biden as his vice president, my fears of a radical, naïve foreign policy were assuaged and I felt the pick sent a clear signal that Obama would not do anything too quickly and too drastically in Iraq that would cause a catastrophic, sudden power vacuum. Conversely, McCain’s picking of the almost cartoonishly buffoonishneophyte Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential nominee made it clear to me that the aging maverick was unfit for the presidency.

As events in Iraq continued to show no serious political progress despite our security gains, the Bush Administration and the Iraqi government, in the midst of the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign to determine Bush’s successor, completed negotiations and agreed on a withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. And let’s just repeat that tidbit from the last sentence, for all the world and especially American conservatives to see: the administration of George W. Bush committed the U.S. to withdrawing its combat troops from Iraq by the end of 2011, which is exactly the same time frame in which Obama would eventually do just that. Years later, Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State in 2008 and a major player in the negotiations, maintained that the Administration’s intention was for that deadline to be renegotiated and/or for a “residual force for our training with the Iraqis,” but the Bush Administration—again, this is key—found itself unable to come to agreement with the exact same issue the Obama Administration found was its primary obstacle to negotiating for this same residual force: immunity of U.S. troops from prosecution by the Iraqi government, standard in any such agreement, known as status of forces agreements (SOFAs). And what is not to be missed here is that the Bush Administration, in agreeing to the 2011 withdrawal timeline mere months before it would be out of office, punted the responsibility to changing that agreement to what it actually intended it to be to the next president’s administration. So basically, regardless of any intent to change or add onto the Bush Administration’s 2008 agreement later—and betting on a future round of negotiations is always a risky bet since you cannot ever guarantee the same leaders or conditions—the Bush Administration still set the stage and the timetable for a withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops by 2008 through its own choice, through its own actions, by failing to obtain any agreement on a residual U.S. force because the Iraqi government would not agree to grant U.S. troops immunity from prosecution (which is exactly why the Obama Administration was unable to come to agreement on the very same issue!). By putting the onus on a future administration to either undo or change the agreement they had negotiated just before leaving office, those senior Bush Administration officials involved in the 2008 agreement who are criticizing Obama’s not coming to SOFA agreement on a residual force in Iraq are criticizing Obama’s team for what they themselves were unable to do. It is impossible to take any such criticism coming from them seriously, which can only be considered absurd or hypocritical at best.

Around the same time the 2008 Bush Administration agreement to withdraw from Iraq was finalized, I was starting to become comfortable with the idea of a gradual, eventual withdrawal from Iraq, and with Biden’s selection as VP, Obama’s subsequent elaboration on his ideas on Iraq, and the selection of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State once Obama had been elected, I became more confident that Obama’s team would not conduct a withdrawal hastily or irresponsibly. Still, I was torn on the issue of a withdrawal itself, but as Obama’s early years in the White House unfolded and the security situation in Iraq improved without any major political agreements being forged by Iraq’s Shiite political leadership—led by Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri Kemal al-Maliki—with the Sunni or Kurdish minorities, agreements that would be key in creating any lasting stability in Iraq, I became convinced that there was little more that U.S. forces could accomplish in Iraq. Having helped establish a dramatic improvement in security in 2007 with the surge compared to the previous year, and seeing each year U.S. forces remained in Iraq have a significant reduction in violence and Iraqi civilian casualties, the U.S. had succeeded in giving Iraq and its leaders the security space necessary to negotiate politically without concurrent violence dictating terms to those threatened by such violence. Even once U.S. forces had totally withdrawn in December 2011—and the withdrawal had been going on since 2010—the year 2012 saw virtually the same level of dramatically improved security as 2011 and 2010, with all three years being the safest in Iraq since before the 2003 U.S. invasion. Yet Maliki, Prime Minister since before the 2007 “Surge,” and his supporters squandered very real, very workable opportunities from during and after the surge over the course of over five years—which is more time in office than some U.S. presidents—and set the stage for rebellion in 2013 instead of reconciliation, as I have previously written. If Maliki was not going to use the massive gains in security in from 2007-2011, while American troops were still in Iraq, to make the necessary compromises in order to calm down angry Sunnis and Kurds and to put Iraq on the path away from sectarian division and civil war and towards stability and reconciliation, what was the point of having U.S. troops there anymore, shoring up a government that was unwilling to govern in the interests of all Iraqis? If anything, having U.S. forces there to support and protect his government when he was unwilling to compromise gave Maliki more cover to avoid reaching out to Sunnis and Kurds.

So by the time the Obama Administration completed the withdrawal of U.S. troops in December 2011, I had come to agree that, having spent blood and treasure to give Iraqi politicians breathing room to make politics work—the explicit stated objective of the “Surge”—while having seen no serious effort at politics on the part of Iraq’s government, having seen that our leverage and influence (being eclipsed by Iran) was clearly no longer high enough in Iraq produce meaningful results, and having seen Iraq clearly align itself with Iran over America, it made sense to get out. The “Surge” and subsequent maintaining and improving of its security gains may not have 100% fulfilled our moral and ethical responsibility for all the damage we caused and contributed to in Iraq from 2003-2006, but in 2011 especially it was clear there was no point in staying at all, especially if Maliki would not give U.S. troops immunity. So the right decision had been made, but the Bush Administration deserved some credit as well for agreeing to the initial timetable to which Obama stuck. And, as will be discussed below, he handled the ISIS in Iraq debacle in a way that very much aided Iraq’s long-term interests.

Grade: A+

Obama withdrew from Iraq and was ahead of the curve compared to many in realizing American troops could not bring about the politics necessary to stabilize Iraq, but he did so in a responsible, gradual way that no sane person could say caused a drastic power vacuum or directly caused Iraq’s more recent woes. Just like Bush (and like any U.S. president would have), he chose not to agree to allow a U.S. residual non-combat force to stay and train/support Iraqi forces when Maliki would not grant them immunity. Nothing to complain about here, and I agree that a residual force would have been better but that is 100% on Maliki not granting immunity and having already committed to his Iranian allies that he would see our troops out in 2011. We will come to ISIS (and Obama’s mild military reengagement in Iraq) and Syria as separate issues.

3.) Israeli/Palestinian Peace

Here, one may be tempted to make more of the efforts of the Obama Administration than they actually represent, but at the same time we should not minimize them.

To be sure, Obama has publicly and in speeches, beginning especially with his big Cairo speech (see above) months into his presidency, highlighted the plight of Palestinians and the need for Israeli settlements to stop expanding into what is supposed to the core of a Palestinian state. Obama tried (perhaps too hard), and failed, to get Israel to agree to a full stop, or freeze, in settlement construction early in his presidency as a way to build up badly needed faith on the Palestinian side that Israelis were serious about negotiations, instead meekly settling for a “partial” Israeli freeze from late 2009 through much of 2010 after applying no substantive pressure to Israel beyond speeches and meetings. Even while the Obama Administration was trying shore up support for the talks, Israel announced the construction of 1,600 settlement housing units to be built on illegally occupied, disputed land in East Jerusalem (which was occupied in 1967 along with the West Bank and Gaza and which Israel has held in defiance of multiple binding resolutions of the United Nations Security Council over the decades since, beginning with the unanimously-agreed-upon Resolution 242 that included a “yes” vote of the U.S.). Moreover, this announcement came as Biden was visiting Israel to lead the charge for making the peace talks happen. This is equivalent of two people negotiating over splitting a pizza, and one side eating slices the other is claiming during negotiations, and eating this pizza right in front of the sponsor of the negotiations. Even after the partial freeze was agreed to, Israel continued building in in East Jerusalem and allowed thousands of announced “exceptions” and some unannounced exceptions that were in violation of even the limited freeze to which it had agreed. In addition, Israel also allowed a much higher than usual number of settlements to be approved before it agreed to the partial freeze so that, even while new construction was not authorized for some time, the pace of building hardly changed at all, and the pace only increased greatly after the nominal freeze.

Despite such disingenuous behavior on Israel’s part, at no time did the Obama Administration publicly even raise the prospect of reducing Israeli’s billions in military aid. In fact, throughout Obama’s entire presidency, U.S. aid has increased every year Obama has been in office, with the exception of a minor reduction in 2013 due to mandatory across-the-bard budget cuts imposed by the sequestration process, the outcome of Congressional inability to agree on a budget. And yet, when the recent hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for Israeli and joint U.S.-Israeli missile defense systems, including the highly effective Iron Dome system used to great effect against Hamas and others’ rockets in the Gaza conflict in the summer of 2014, is considered part of U.S. foreign aid to Israel (it is formally part of the U.S. defense budget and not classified as foreign aid), 2013, like every other year, saw an increase in aid. In addition, the Obama Administration has made many moves to block actions against Israel in the United Nations Security Council before they even came to light, and was the only “no” vote(which also served as a veto, given the U.S. position as a permanent veto-wielding member of the Security Council) against a resolution condemning Israeli settlements at a crucial juncture in February 2011 after talks between Israeli and Palestinians had broken down. Rather than pressure Israel substantively to stop settlement expansion and begin substantive talks, with its veto the U.S. instead encouraged Israel’s course of intransigence, occupation, and settlement expansion, even as it publicly condemned such action but only with mere words. The veto was not only hypocritical, it undermined the stated policy of every U.S. president since 1967 beginning with Lyndon Johnson and needlessly undermined the Obama Administration’s own concurrent efforts. Even with well over three more years of Israeli defiance on the settlements issue, the most substantive action the Obama Administration has taken to date was to merely delay for a short period of time some arms shipments last summer at the height of Israel’s grossly disproportionate assault on Gaza.

In other words, Obama sent Benjamin Netanyahu, then (and still) the Prime Minister of Israel, a clear message: “Go back on your agreements, play words game and with technicalities, completely undermine the spirit of an agreement, provoke the Palestinians by building on land you are supposed to be negotiating over, and we will complain publicly but still happily, freely, and increasingly give you lots of money and assistance, as well as diplomatic cover. I am too timid politically to actually threaten anything substantive against you even if you disrespect my Administration and even my Vice President personally, so, though you are the junior partner in the relationship, feel free to do anything you want, to ignore what me and my team say, and to not worry about your billions in U.S. aid. In fact, get ready for that aid to increase…”

Now, this is not what the Obama Administration intended to convey. It certainly did not say this, and there has been a valiant effort first by Obama then especially by Secretary of State John Kerry to try to help Israel see that its settlement policy not only harms Palestinians but also harms Israel’s interests by keeping millions of West Bank Palestinians under Israeli control and forcing the Israeli Jewish-majority democratic state of Israel to either become an Arab-majority country that outvotes Israel’s Jewish minority or to become a non-democratic, apartheid-like state which denies equal rights to the Arabs under its control in order to preserve Jewish control of the government. Other options that would forcibly remove millions of Palestinians from the West Bank or Israel would cause Israel majorproblems with the international community and seem not highly possible in implementation or probable.

Thus, to America’s credit, it has tried being a friend to Israeli in emphatically pressuring it with public speeches and in private meetings, including some unpleasant and animated meetings between Kerry and Netanyahu during the last round of failed talks which precipitated the violent confrontation in Gaza last summer. Senior U.S. officials—including Kerry and, apparently privately, Obama—and many others—Including Tzipi Livni, one of Israel’s own chief negotiators—have made it clear, as I have pointed out, that Netanyahu and the Israeli government bear the majority of responsibility for the lack of progress in peace talks with the Palestinians. So, let’s be clear: that is not Obama’s fault, nor that of his Administration.

What Obama can be blamed for is for not using any of his real leverage with Netanyahu and Israeli hardliners: the what is now well over $3 billion in annual aid to Israel and the U.S. veto power of what would be binding United Nations Security Council resolutions against Israeli actions regarding settlements and its occupation and control of Palestinian territory. All carrot and no stick over a long period of time is not a recipe for success. By leaving this leverage untouched and essentially rewarding Israel for its stubbornness and settlement expansion, the Obama Administration, despite any words or speeches, has encouraged Israel’s (self-)destructive policies, empowered Israeli’s right-wingers, and weakened Israel’s left, a left which is more serious about peace. In a very similar way, U.S. actions have also undermined Palestinians moderates like Mahmoud Abbas and Salaam Fayyad and empowered extremists like Hamas, as I have previously pointed out.

While, again, Netanyahu and the Israeli government are the most responsible for driving the dynamics, U.S. policy has not helped, and, overall, has only made things worse. And even as senior Israeli officials outlandishly disrespected Kerry when he was in the midst of leading talks in 2014, even as Netanyahu just delivered a major speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress—wholly unprecedented because both a foreign head of state was invited by the American domestic opposition (Republicans) without the involvement or approval of the White House or the State Department in a blatant violation of protocol (a violation publicly criticized by over 180 former Israeli security officials for damaging Israel’s relationship with the U.S.) and because this foreign head of state delivered an insulting-to-Obama, not to mention misleading speech before a formal session of Congress to rally support against the Obama Administration’s own policy on Iran (Netanyahu foolishly wants more sanctions on Iran and illogically opposes Obama’s sound framework for, and attempt at reaching, a deal with Iran on its nuclear program, while Obama wants to hold off while negotiations are taking place and close the deal outline by the framework—one must wonder how much abuse and disrespect the Obama Administration is willing to suffer at the hands of Netanyahu’s Israeli government before there are any real consequences or penalty. Because in addition to undermining the whole Israeli-Palestinian peace process by holding back so timidly and encouraging unending chutzpah on the part of Netanyahu, such non-action on Obama’s part undermines the office of the presidency and American standing in the world, as well as humiliates Obama personally, when all can see how America’s supposedly closest “ally” mistreats it when there are serious disagreements on policy and that there are no substantive consequences for such mistreatment.

Grade: D+

Obama deserves some credit for robust public diplomacy consistently condemning Israeli settlement expansion and even condemning the tactics used in Gaza last summer, and as well as the verbal efforts during many private meetings between senior Israeli and American officials including Netanyahu, Obama, and Kerry. That is why an “F” grade is not given here. But, at a crucial time during this conflict when every year without an agreement makes getting to an agreement dramatically harder, not using America’s veto power or billions of dollars in annual aid to Israel as leverage while relying just on words to pressure Israel into saving itself and treating Palestinians humanely has clearly been ineffective throughout the more than six years of Obama’s presidency. To keep doing the same thing over and over again with the same approach is to invite the same result, a result that has not helped defuse a very unstable situation and serves only to increase tension and bloodshed. Basically, Obama has literally failed to put U.S. money where his mouth is, and the interests of America, Israel, and Palestinians have all suffered as a result. In addition, humiliating treatment by Netanyahu & Co. with no serious response from Team Obama has diminished the prestige of and respect for the office of the presidency, not to mention Obama himself.

*****

Continue to Part II

That’s it for Part I, in the next two parts: first the Obama Administration’s policies on the Syrian Civil War, then (overall) Arab Spring, ISIS, reducing America’s dependency on Mideast oil, and Iran (saving the more positive for last). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse April 4, 2015  

by Brian E. Frydenborg, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at @bfry1981). April 4, 2015 (updated April 5th)

This was also published by by the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) here and was “Post of the Month” for May/June.  It was also published by Stupidparty Math v. Myth here.

Related article: Republicans: Wrong on Iran Deal & Constitution, Wrong for USA & Israel

TEL AVIV — Outside of Israel and America’s Republican Party, very few people are against this emerging Iran nuclear deal, which represents the will of the governments of the UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China, as well as America (sorry, Congress and the opposition party generally don’t make foreign policy in America’s constitutional system) and Iran. And whether the hysterics of Texas Republican Senator (and delusional 2016 presidential wannabe) Ted Cruz or of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the counterarguments are hollow and myopic, and bear no weight when weighed against the alternatives. In fact, an agreement with Iran is the only realistic option that is even remotely positive; a lack of an agreement means only less transparency and either a stalemate in which Iran and the West will often continue to use the Middle East as a board in a deadly game of chess or some sort of conflict ranging from military strikes and terrorism to all-out war. An agreement does not guarantee that these far more dire scenarios will be avoided, but it is the only realistic way to avoid them. And while both opponents and supporters of an agreement have maintained that no agreement is better than a “bad” agreement, it is hard to look at this just-agreed-upon framework as a “bad” agreement, even if it not perfect. Don’t let the pursuit of the perfect be the enemy of the good, as the saying goes, since this framework is overall pretty good.

Still, none of this stops Republicans, Israel’s right-wing parties and politicians, and others from making specious, short-sighted, and misleading arguments against this agreement, arguments that, if heeded, will only perpetuate and increase conflict, violence, and death. First, let’s look at the detailed framework that was agreed upon Thursday (we won’t be going into the science of nuclear physics and uranium enrichment in this article, but you can read a great short guide to all that here). Below are some highlights:

• Iran will reduce the number of uranium-enriching centrifuges by two-thirds, and the remaining third will be older, first-generation technology
• Iran will reduce its existing supply of enriched uranium from 10,000 kilograms to just 300, a 97% reduction
• Iran’s biggest and main (also underground) nuclear research center will shift much of it attention away and facilities from activities that could result in a weapon and to advanced peaceful research, often medical
• Iran will submit to more nuclear inspections that any other country in the world today or in the history of nuclear technology. These inspections will be “robust and intrusive,” to quote President Obama, and he noted too that “If Iran cheats, the world will know it” and that “this deal is not based on trust. It’s based on unprecedented verification.”
• Economic sanctions on Iran will be lifted

The agreement will last fifteen years and seriously reduce Iran’s nuclear capabilities, though some restriction will be in place for only ten years. But as far as the U.S., only Congress has the ability to end American sanctions and President Obama has warned Republicans not to destroy the deal.

Now, let’s look at some of the common arguments against this framework.

“Iran can’t be trusted”

Really? Because America, Israel, Iraq, and Syria have all invaded countries here in a big way since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. But Iran has not initiated one single invasion since this regime took power. Yes, it has used terrorism and non-state militia actors to further its interests, but so has pretty much every Middle Eastern country (including American allies like Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia) as well as the United States in recent decades. Iran has also cooperated with the U.S. against the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and, most recently, against ISIS. And Iran’s foreign policy record has been less the unpredictable, dangerous type and more like the Soviet Union’s, with Iran acting fairly predictably, rationally, and in its own interests. And this deal is most certainly in its own interests. Maybe Iran will break the deal, but the U.S. deals with countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, so why not give Iran a chance?

“Iran sponsors terrorism with Hezbollah! Enough said!”

So do lots of other countries, but we still cooperate with them and get meaningful results. Yes, Iran sponsors Hezbollah, but today’s Hezbollah is not your father’s Hezbollah. Rather than a resistance terrorist movement against the Israeli invasions and occupation of Lebanon, invasions and occupation starting in 1981 and ending in 2000, Hezbollah is now one of the major coalition partners of the Lebanese government and concerns itself with more governing Lebanon for most of these recent years. Minor scuffles with Israel with a few rockets launched here and there have been all that has happened between Israel and Hezbollah since the 2006 flare-up. In general, Hezbollah has been quiet in its actions (if not words) when it comes to Israel, then, for most of the last decade. So a few isolated and sporadic rocket attacks do not characterize Israel’s interaction with Hezbollah since 2006 so much as an uneasy unofficial cease-fire. Besides, Hezbollah had been much more preoccupied the last few years with fighting on behalf of Bashar al-Assad’s Shiite Alawite regime. Hezbollah, Assad and his government, and Iran are all Shiites, and it is natural for them to stick together. Iran has always been the patron and protector of Shiites Muslims facing persecutions from Sunnis, and Iran’s support is pretty much the only major support in the world than Shiites have. We may not like this, but, frankly, Shiites populations have fared pretty poorly under Sunni rule all over the Muslim world, and they face a steady stream of oppressive attacks, which frequently occur in packed Shiite mosques in the middle of a prayers and involve suicide bombers. Shiite funerals, shrines, and religious processions have also been targeted by the likes of Sunni ISIS and Sunni al-Qaeda. Conversely, Iran’s proxy* (wish I hadn’t used that word, “allied” would be better-6/24/25) actors like Hezbollah and other Shiite militias, though far from angels, have generally avoided these much more extreme tactics against civilians and places of religious worship. If anything, Hezbollah and other Shiite groups that Iran helps like the Houthis are practicing much more normal military activities, albeit of the rebel and guerilla variety, rather than that which would more fairly be called terrorism these days.

The point here is that Sunni sponsorship of terrorism, particularly from the Gulf countries (including America’s biggest allies there, though not in an official capacity), is a far greater problem than Iran’s sponsorship of Hezbollah, and that Hezbollah, unlike al-Qaeda and ISIS, has been pretty restrained in the last decade. So Iran’s relationship with Hezbollah should not make or break this nuclear deal. And, in general, Hezbollah has shied away from the type of terrorist attacks that earned it its notoriety in decades past. Sinn Fein/IRA was once a terrorist group, until it was no longer one at on point, and while Hezbollah still has some distance to travel to be like the next Sinn Fein, it is without question moving in the right direction compared to its earlier incarnation.

“An agreement will keep the U.S. and others from being able to use force to stop Iran’s program”

Not at all. Saddam Hussein agreed to terms to have his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs disarmed to conclude the Gulf War (1990-1991), but when he violated them, that did not stop Bill Clinton from striking Saddam’s regime repeatedly, nor did it stop George W. Bush from taking the massive military action that he (incorrectly) felt was needed. No one cited an agreement that was clearly being violated, or which Saddam Hussein was clearly trying to publicly pretend to violate, as reason to hold back (though in 2003 there were certainly many other good reasons to hold back) at the time of these actions. In other words, it should be made clear that if Iran plays games and violates the agreement, there is nothing stopping the U.S. or other world powers from taking strong action to disarm Iran, and certainly the agreement itself would not stop anything. The agreement will only protect Iran, then, if Iran stays true to the terms.

“This agreement would threaten the very survival of the state of Israel.”

Why? The above is almost a direct quote from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, perhaps the master of short-term-at-the-expense-of-long-term thinking (in other words, a master politician). With no agreement, Iran is free to continue its robust nuclear program. With an agreement, this program will be severely limited, reduced, and subjected to intense and powerful inspections by the West. Without an agreement, only military force could possibly succeed and that would be incredibly difficult and not guaranteed, by any means, to succeed. In fact, just about the last thing the Middle East needs right now is a major war in Iran, and whole other books and articles could be written about the spillover effects from such an event. Any war here would almost certainly involve Israel and that would be bad, not good, for Israel’s security. And if Iran and the West come to friendly terms, there will be far more willingness on Iran’s part to rein in Israel’s nuisance, Hezbollah, which I have already explained has been reining itself in for quite some time anyway. With this agreement, it would be fifteen years before Iran would be able to develop a bomb if this agreement is observed, but this would very likely happen much, much sooner if there is no agreement. How is this bad, then, for Israel? One wonders why anyone takes Netanyahu and those who think like him seriously on this point at all.

*****

This is a fine diplomatic achievement of the Obama Administration, President Obama himself, and Sec. Kerry and their teams, but also of the other Western governments involved and of Iran’s government, as well. There is no guarantee that this will forever keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, but we have fifteen years of majorly slowing Iran down on this path and weakening its overall nuclear program, of having many sets of close eyes on the ground making sure that this is the situation, of preventing wars, and of increasing cooperation between Iran and the West.  Just as Peter Beinart writes, it may very well be the thaw in diplomatic relations that might be the biggest achievement here.

And the alternatives to this agreement are very likely going to involve war, possibly carried out by the U.S. and the West, but there seems to be little appetite for that among Western governments or peoples. It is far more likely to be carried out by an Israel that is more and more isolated because of its positions on and treatment of the Palestinians, and because of the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu in general. The recent fighting in Gaza against non-state terrorist militia Hamas cost dozens of Israeli lives; a fight with Iran, a powerful country with a powerful and well equipped military, would very likely cost thousands of Israeli lives and could see serious destruction all across Israel’s major cities. There is no guarantee that war would end Iran’s nuclear program, either. Even if there is not a war or military action, the current situation—with very little formal cooperation with Iran and with Iran and the West working against each other on so many issues in the region, from Israel to Yemen to Syria, and with Sunnis in the region increasing their zones of conflict with Shiites—is in no way better than a shot at really working together on these issues and defusing tensions. But Republicans and Netanyahu and the others who seek to sabotage this very necessary deal fail to mention any of this, and provide no alternatives but cold war or hot war.

Time to stop listening to these irrational, impractical naysayers and give peace a chance. Yes, the many details still need to be worked out, but we should throw all our support behind making this framework turn into a lasting deal. This deal has a high probability of happening, because why agree to the major framework and then let it fall apart? That would be like announcing a party you are hosting, only not to show up to your own party; it makes you look really bad. War is always an option no matter what, but peace is much more difficult to reach and maintain. While skepticism about all this is understandable, as Obama recently noted, “We are powerful enough to be able to test these propositions without putting ourselves at risk.” Ultimately, there is much reason to hope this will work and that Iran—a country with a large chunk of its population that is very young, liberal, reform-minded, and pro-Western—and the U.S. could accomplish much good by working together. And with Iran, with which the U.S. has been at odds for so long, it is time to try peace and a normal relationship before we think of war, which should never be a “preferred” option.

© 2019 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

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Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse November 2, 2014  

By Brian E. Frydenborg- LinkedIn,Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at @bfry1981) November 2nd, 2014

Republished by the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), where it was the “Post of the Month” for Jan/Feb (the first month I wrote for RIAC) and by Ammon News

How Did It Come To This?

At some point during Obama’s second term of his presidency, he and his Administration realized that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was part of the problem, not part of the solution. It did not help that when the administration realized this, violence in Iraq was increasing to levels not seen since the height of the near-civil-war experienced in 2006-2007 during Bush’s second term and only seriously reduced with the so-called “Surge” of Gen. David Petraeus and the “Sunni Awakening” with its “Sons of Iraq.” The combination of increased U.S. military effort and increased political effort towards enlisting Sunni Arab Iraqis to fight extremists, especially in Iraq’s western Anbar province on Syria’s border, saw the defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq/Mesopotamia and similar extremist Sunni groups that had alienated local Sunnis with their brutality and extreme form of Islam; sure, the old Baathists were still there, ready to fight the Iraqi government again under certain conditions and timing, but long before the U.S. formally withdrew late in 2011, the horror of al-Qaeda operating with impunity in Iraq was over, its activities falling into the status of a mere nuisance, while the overall security situation in Iraq was vastly better than the peak of violence and civilian casualties happening before the surge, with record-low numbers of civilian deaths.

Long before the U.S. formally withdrew late in 2011, the horror of al-Qaeda operating with impunity in Iraq was over, its activities falling into the status of a mere nuisance.

During that conflict with U.S. troops and Iraqis Sunnis, in a move that got little attention at the time, al-Qaeda in Iraq started calling itself, along with several allies, “The Islamic State (of Iraq).” At the time, this would have sounded like a joke, so far was the group from having anything like a state. In the roughly three-year period since the withdrawal of the majority of U.S. troops from Iraq, a process which saw the final formal withdrawal of U.S. troops in December 2011, up through December 2013, this changed, and the story of the Islamic State’s rise has far more to do with the dynamics and happenings inside Syria and Iraq over these three years than anything the U.S. did—or did not—do. In particular, the dynamics inside Syria have spilled over into Iraq in a way that has devastated the security situation there. Pieces arguing to the contrary are extremely misleading and ignore the agency and roles of actors such as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Iraq’s Maliki (though it would admittedly be silly to argue that the U.S. does not bear the most overall responsibility for the big-picture situation in Iraq over the course of the last decade and then some).

During this roughly three-year period, things got really bad in both Syria and Iraq. Obama came close to, but ultimately backed down from, direct intervention in Syria against Assad in September 2013, deferring to a Russian proposal to disarm Assad’s chemical weapons peacefully and opting for meager, tepid, and inconsistent support for certain rebel groups in Syria. Meanwhile, in Iraq, as Maliki’s policies exploded sectarian tensions and proceeded to erase all the gains from the U.S. “Surge” and the “Sunni Awakening,” Maliki’s government increasingly and repeatedly called on the U.S. for help, in terms of both direct action and support. Unlike Syria, where Obama felt really torn, feeling compelled to act but with his personality and beliefs clearly not inclined for military adventurism of the type for which George W. Bush, neocons, and Republicans are quite enthusiastic, with Iraq, Obama clearly and unequivocally wanted to play no direct role. He was elected to get out of Iraq, and that is what he did, Maliki’s pleas be damned. Obama had no ear or appetite for any Iraqi intervention.

The same had been the case for Syria, but the chemical attacks in the summer of 2013 had awoken Obama to the ugly reality of the Syrian Civil War: the region was so divided in who supported who, and Russia so active in its support for Assad, that the war—now involving repeated use of chemical weapons—would go on and on without the U.S. intervening to end it. Yet the U.S. Congress and the American people were very against intervention, with silly comparisons to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 being bandied about the airwaves and blogosphere. Obama felt compelled to act, but he clearly didn’t want to; when Russia put forth a plan to disarm Assad of chemical weapons—a plan that I have argued was designed to keep Assad in power and prevent U.S. strikes against his regime—the side of Obama that did not want to intervene seized on the initiative as a way to back away from talks of “red lines” and “strikes” for Assad.

In both Syria and Iraq, then, Obama started off as extremely disinclined to intervene directly in either country, but then horrors of the war perpetrated against civilians, especially WMD attacks, compelled Obama to seriously consider action. Obama came to that threshold of intervention in Syria and blinked (not without good reason, but I believe he ultimately should have acted then in a limited military way against Assad’s regime as I explain in this five-part series here), then backed away. (Personally, I think that Obama made a huge mistake in not following through with his threats here, a view shared with the recently-former Obama Administration Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. I believe that it was not Obama’s decision to withdraw from Iraq that was a determining factor in the chaos in Iraq today, but, rather, his decision to more or less stay on the sidelines in the Syria conflict that has contributed more to the deteriorating security in the region, but that is not the focus of this article).

I believe that it was not Obama’s decision to withdraw from Iraq that was a determining factor in the chaos in Iraq today, but, rather, his decision to more or less stay on the sidelines in the Syria conflict that has contributed more to the deteriorating security in the region.

When Obama was confronted by a somewhat similar horror in Iraq, he finally did decide to act. And herein lies one of the shrewdest, most complicated, and most deft moves of Obama’s entire presidency, particularly within his very stalled second term.

To Intervene, or Not to Intervene, That Is the Question

By the summer of 2014, there were two very strong cases to be made on Iraq confronting Obama: one for intervention, one against intervention, with the Administration considering both.

In the for column, the former al-Qaeda in Iraq/Mesopotamia groups calling themselves first the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/the Levant/al-Sham (ISIS or ISIL) and now just Islamic State (IS) might possibly have been the worst, most brutal, most powerful terrorist organization in the history of the world at that point. The group now controlled huge swaths of Syria and had taken over huge swaths of Iraq in a just a few months, the Iraqi army was melting away in the face of the ISIS onslaught, Baghdad itself was under threat, the group had indicated that Lebanon and Jordan were next, infiltrating and carrying out attacks in Lebanon and seizing the border crossing between Iraq and Jordan, from which it seems it is also probing Jordan’s border defenses, and the chaos and violence could have spread to even other countries. Baghdad could even possibly have fallen and Iraq’s government with it. Too much blood and treasure had been expended in Iraq by the U.S. for the U.S. to just sit back and watch this happen. And Iraq and the U.S. were supposed to be allies. In addition, the Kurdish people in northern Iraqi Kurdistan had been allies with the U.S. for decades and they were under threat. And world oil markets and production were being threatened. Finally, and certainly not least among the reasons, ISIS was murdering and abusing thousands in ways that even al-Qaeda thought went too far. Christians, Yazidis, Shiites, other minorities, and even Sunnis that were not subscribing to ISIS’s rule and extreme, murderous, barbaric interpretation of Islam have been and could still be victims, potentially on a mass scale. By early August, tens of thousands of Yazidis who had fled to a mountain because they were given the choice by ISIS to convert to Sunni Islam or be exterminated or sold into slavery were surrounded and were without food, water, shelter, or any way to defend themselves.

In the against column, to reiterate, the U.S. had little responsibility for what had happened of late in Iraq (the overall situation from 2003 on, clearly, yes it bore a lot of responsibility for that, but not the specific developments of the last few years). Maliki had done his best to stoke an insurgency and alienate and/or persecute Iraq’s Sunnis and Kurds; the main reason that ISIS made any serious gains in Iraq’s Anbar province is because Maliki had betrayed those Sunnis there who had fought for the U.S. and Maliki’s government during the Surge, and betrayed them to the degree that the Sunnis in Iraq’s west were in open rebellion against Maliki and seeking allies; in came ISIS, filling that vacuum created by Maliki’s terrible and oppressive policies. Maliki wanted Kurdish support for his government against ISIS, but was unwilling to grant them any political concessions. Any help to Maliki’s government at this time would have solidified Maliki’s position and made him even less likely than he already was to work with or include or lessen the pressure on Sunnis and Kurds. Even worse, U.S. aid could potentially be directed by Maliki against his Sunni and Kurdish citizens and political opponents with legitimate grievances, not just ISIS. America, as it had in Lebanon in the 1980s when it unwittingly became a puppet of Lebanese Christians and had its power used against Muslims and Druze without realizing it, could become a party to the conflict and responsible for Maliki’s oppression of non-Shiite Muslims in Iraq, especially the Sunnis, further driving them into ISIS’s fold. In addition, helping Maliki would basically further all the political trends in Iraq that had allowed ISIS to gain so much in power there in the first place, further fragmenting an already disintegrating nation and creating more problems for the U.S., the region, and the world. U.S. support would also strengthen an Iraqi government that was in line with Iran in many ways and had resisted accommodating the U.S. government when it came to a whole array of issues. Helping Maliki’s government would thus provide little advancement for U.S. interests other than blunting ISIS’s advance in the short-term, and could cause more damage in the long-term.

Obama, himself a black man and his worldview exposed to the colonial struggles of Kenya and Indonesia, among others, was no stranger to the fact that in the Cold War, the U.S. and the Russians generally cared little about how their allies treated their own people and everything about whose side they were on. Thus, mass murder, mass torture, and mass oppression were to be overlooked if the “son of a bitch” leader was “our son of a bitch.” But this approach had helped create and had helped lead to many problems, including 9/11 and radical, terrorist Islam. How could Obama really help Maliki without being partly responsible for terrible things he was doing to Sunnis, things which drove them into the arms of ISIS? And yet, how could the U.S. not do something to help the people of Iraq—including 40,000 defenseless Yazidi civilians who could all perish or be killed in a matter of days—or the country of Iraq in the face of such a reckless and violent onslaught and possible formal disintegration?

The Solution: Local Politics First, or No Cavalry

Obama brilliantly approved and executed a plan that minimized the potential pitfalls and maximized the potential payoffs of both action and inaction. For one thing, he decided that in the process of helping Iraqis in this fight, he would do everything possible to avoid helping Maliki and his regime directly. As a result, Obama did not aid Maliki directly, instead opting for a three-tiered approach: 1.) putting intense pressure on Maliki at first to accommodate Sunnis and Shiites, and, when that failed, putting intense pressure on him to step down while signaling a readiness to Iraq in general to offer much more robust support for Iraq should Iraq’s factions unite behind someone else, and someone else less divisive, which in itself put enormous pressure on Maliki’s supporters; 2.) U.S. forces would intervene selectively and directly, rather than give much equipment and firepower to Maliki so that he could abuse that power; and 3.) America would support the Kurdish north, bypassing the Iraqi central government and Maliki, as well as the rest of Iraq and Maliki’s political base, until a political breakthrough occurred. Such involvement would be in stark contrast to the 2003 full-scale ground invasion and occupation of the Bush Administration, but also to the Surge as well, the gains of which has been carelessly wasted by by Maliki.

Clearly, then, one of main goals behind Obama’s approach was for Maliki to be removed as part of the problem (either by becoming part of the solution of stepping down) and to give non-Shiite Iraqis at least a hope that someone better might respect and listen to them more, thus giving Iraq at least a chance to begin to mend its sectarian wounds and to be able to have U.S. forces intervene against ISIS in a way that could save lives and halt its advance without further stoking Iraq’s spreading sectarian flames.

Clearly, then, one of main goals behind Obama’s approach was for Maliki to be removed as part of the problem (either by becoming part of the solution or stepping down) and to give non-Shiite Iraqis at least a hope that someone better might respect and listen to them more, thus giving Iraq at least a chance to begin to mend its sectarian wounds and to be able to have U.S. forces intervene against ISIS in a way that could save lives and halt its advance without further stoking Iraq’s spreading sectarian flames. This would also avoid aiding a budding neo-tyrant in Maliki; and, as events played out, along these lines the Obama Administration’s plan was a perfect success. Obama for months even before ISIS’s devastating advance resisted calls by both Republicans and Maliki to aid Maliki’s regime directly, well aware of the increasingly sectarian nature of his rule, his ignoring of the Kurds, and his particularly cruelty towards the Sunnis. His constant pressure on Maliki to govern more inclusively coming to naught, he and his administration finally began to distance themselves from Maliki in the second half of June.

At the same time, the Obama Administration made clear to Iraq’s Shiite leaders that any kind of robust help would not be forthcoming until Maliki was gone. After the middle of June, Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and the Administration went from urging Maliki to cooperate with Sunnis and Kurds to dropping his name altogether from the conversation in only a matter of days, with Obama declining to endorse Maliki, preferring instead to talk about Iraqi leadership in the abstract, very much signaling both that it was the time, and that the Administration was ready, for another leader. This was apparently matched by behind-the-scenes encouragement for Iraqi officials to find a replacement for Maliki, a process which began at this time. This swift and sudden transition was mirrored by similar statements and non-endorsements of Maliki from senior Iraqi Shiite clerics, including the most senior Shiite cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. But even without America’s prodding, some important Shiites in Iraq had already publicly noted Maliki was part of the problem, not part of the solution. The cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose family had a long history of resistance in Iraq, going back at least to his great-grandfather who led a revolt against the British after WWI, and through the Saddam era, when Sadr’s father organized against Saddam and was assassinated in 1999, most likely by Saddam’s regime, had risen after the 2003 U.S. invasion to become one of the most prominent Shiites in Iraq. Part cleric, part militia leader, part community leader, part militant, Sadr had publicly sparred with Maliki over the years and was still doing so in 2014. As Maliki’s consummate failurebecame apparent in the face of ISIS’s rapid advance, other Shiites followed Sadr’s lead, to even include members of Maliki’s own party as the end of June approached.

Even without America’s prodding, some important Shiites in Iraq had already publicly noted Maliki was part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The Beginning of Maliki’s End

At this point, the U.S. only had unarmed and a few armed drones flying over Iraq, but not engaging ISIS, in addition to assessors and some advisors, hardly anything Maliki could use to increase his position in relation to rivals or oppress the Sunnis and Kurds; Obama was still very reluctant to openly aid Maliki’s government at this time and had rejected recent pleas for robust, direct airstrikes. Maliki, for his part, resisted all pressure from other nations and from within Iraq to accommodate Sunnis and Kurds, actions which only further inflamed Iraq’s dire circumstances. And even while he knew many of his own Shiites were distancing themselves from him, early in July Maliki announced he was seeking a third term, breaking a promise he made not to. Just days after Maliki announced this, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani sent a private letter to the leaders of Maliki’s own party, Dawa, telling them “I see the need to speed up the selection of a new prime minister who has wide national acceptance;” shortly after they received this letter, Dawa’s leadership voted 10-1 to find a replacement for Maliki. A few days after this, the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq publicly called on Maliki to step down.

As political contenders and factions scrambled and argued for weeks to find a (relatively) suitable replacement for Maliki and form a new government throughout July, the situation only became worse and worse as far as security, killing, massive numbers of refugees, and an emerging humanitarian catastrophe, yet Maliki still stubbornly refused to compromise. More territory was falling to ISIS and the Kurds themselves coming under intense pressure. With no progress on the political front, even Maliki’s closest allies, including the Shiite Iranian regime (arguable even a bigger supporter of him than the U.S.), began to distance themselves from him and abandon him.

The Obama Administration Makes Its Move: Checkmate on Maliki

Tens of thousands of Yazidis were running out of time, though, and facing genocide, and ISIS kept making gains, even threatening Erbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. With intense pressure coming at Maliki from all angles, Obama announced on August 7 that U.S. forces would carry out limited air strikes in Iraq aimed at halting ISIS’s advance. Many of these initial strikes were in the north, helping the Kurds and the Yazidis. Obama was careful to let Iraq’s other factions know that deeper U.S. involvement would be contingent on a resolution to Iraq’s political impasse, would still be limited, but also that involvement could be long in duration. Just a few days after these strikes began, after seeing tantalizing benefits of U.S. airstrikes in the north averting catastrophes, and after a defiant Maliki reiterated yet again that he was seeking a third term and publicly appealed to the Iraqi Army to aid him in his bid to remain in power, on August 11 the Iraqi Parliament in Baghdad, after roughly two months of intense wrangling, finally picked a successor to Maliki, Dr. Haider al-Abadi. Obama immediately offered him his support and noted that this could lead to greater U.S. assistance as had been advertised, remarking this was a “promising step forward” while Kerry warned Malikithat it was time for him to step aside and not to try to use force to stay in power. Maliki defied this pressure and redeployed military units to Baghdad as whispers of a coup began to be heard. But even Iran publicly came out against him (after some behind the scenes lobbying from Grand Ayatollah Sistani) and much of the Iraqi Army indicated it would not stand behind him. After this happened, Maliki appeared to back away from using force and said he would instead try to block Dr. Abadi’s nomination through Iraq’s courts, a path that had worked in Malik’s favor repeatedly in the past. With tanks and Iraqi Special Forces flooding the Green Zone, the seat of Iraq’s government, on Maliki’s orders, the country seemed to be facing its darkest day since the American invasion in 2003.

And here, with Iraq in the middle of a Sunni rebellion, invaded by an ISIS on the outskirts of Baghdad, and facing a coup, Maliki finally agreed on August 14 to step aside in favor of Dr. Abadi instead of becoming a Shiite Saddam.

And here, with Iraq in the middle of a Sunni rebellion, invaded by an ISIS on the outskirts of Baghdad, and facing a coup, Maliki finally agreed on August 14 to step aside in favor of Dr. Abadi instead of becoming a Shiite Saddam.

There are still many dark days ahead for Iraq and its long-suffering people, and the damage from what can very fairly be termed the “biggest mistake in American history”—the 2003 invasion of Iraq of the George W. Bush Administration—will be felt for a generation or more in this part of the world. America’s overall responsibility for the big picture in Iraq is undeniable. Yet as I noted before, the U.S. is not some deity of a puppet-master. Individuals and leaders ultimately make their own decisions in many situations, and Maliki was certainly no puppet and never acted like one. And now, the man who has done more than any single person in the past several years to further fragment Iraq, drive Iraqi Sunnis into the arms of ISIS, facilitate the rise of ISIS in Iraq, and who offered no prospect for an Iraq inclusive of Sunnis and Kurds, has stepped aside. At least now, there is a chance of moving forward politically, even in the midst of awful violence engulfing even some the most previously peaceful parts of Iraq. Dr. Abadi is a still Shiite, but all of his signals have been suggesting he will try much harder than his predecessor to unite, rather than divide. Now, under Dr. Abadi, international and American support for Iraq’s government has greatly increased. Dr. Abadi himself has already set a different tone: he has already halted the bombing of populated cities that ISIS controls, in part as part of an effort to avoid civilian casualties and further alienating the mainly Sunni civilians under ISIS control. He has demonstrated real inclusiveness, nominating and getting confirmed a Sunni for Defense Minister, alongside the Interior Minister one of the two most important security positions in Iraq (though admittedly after some delay and infighting). This is in stark contrast to Maliki, who held both ministries himself since 2010 along with being Prime Minister. This is a major concession to Sunni Iraqis worried that the Army would continue to be used to oppress then. Dr. Abadi’s task won’t be easy, but Iraqis seem to be willing to place some hope in him, especially compared with Maliki.

A Rare Win for Embattled President and an Embattled Team

And this was all part of the Obama Administration’s plan since the ISIS crisis in Iraq began. Obviously it would have been better if the path was smoother. It could be argued that the U.S. should have begun airstrikes earlier, perhaps saving more of those being killed by ISIS, but on other hand, that might have relieved pressure on Maliki and his supporters and kept him and his divisiveness in power. I am certainly not arguing that the execution was flawless or perfect. But in the face of an unprecedented situation in Iraq, the Obama Administration realized that it was the divisiveness of Maliki’s politics in Iraq that needed to change for any hope for Iraq’s security in the long-run. That mean he had to change, or he had to go, and everything the U.S. did was designed to produce one of those two outcomes. Ayatollahs and tribal leaders and all manners of people, including Europeans and Iranians, were part of an intense behind the scenes diplomatic-ballet-of-a-process (or perhaps mosh pit is a better term?), pushed and prodded along by the U.S. and shaped by it each step of the way. The Obama Administration united Iraq, Iran and others against the biggest obstacle to political progress, and now that the obstacle is removed, Iraqis of all stripes—Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, and others—are genuinely giving Dr. Abadi a chance. So is America and the international community, to the tune of a whole host of dozens of nations that are willing to share a stake in the security and future of Iraq, including nations like Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark, and many Middle Eastern nations. This change at the top by itself does not solve any of Iraq’s major problems, and some problems might be unsolvable, some of the damage may be permanent, but it does mean that Iraq can start to try to work towards solutions or at least manage these problems. When the dust from the major fighting finally settles, Dr. Abadi is far better able to lead all Iraqis forward than Maliki if his early actions are any indication. Orchestrating this vital first step in Iraq moving forward and healing was no small accomplishment at all. And the Obama Administration had a lot of help, from Sistani to Iran to Maliki’s own political party. But it was the U.S. leading the way politically from the start, uniting all these disparate actors in pushing Maliki out peacefully, without a coup or a revolution.

Ayatollahs and tribal leaders and all manners of people, including Europeans and Iranians, were part of an intense behind the scenes diplomatic-ballet-of-a-process (or perhaps mosh pit is a better term?), pushed and prodded along by the U.S. and shaped by it each step of the way. The Obama Administration united Iraq, Iran and others against the biggest obstacle to political progress, and now that the obstacle is removed, Iraqis of all stripes—Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, and others—are genuinely giving Dr. Abadi a chance.

So let’s give credit where credit is due. President Obama and his team have struggled in many ways lately, but here they deserve a pat on the back and the gratitude of millions. It is sad that it took such horrendous, terrifying, and genocidal circumstances for Iraq’s political leaders to do what needed to be done, and needed to be done years ago. Let us hope, especially for the sake of the Iraqi people, that they give Dr. Abadi the support he needs without such acrobatic diplomatic efforts on behalf of the U.S.

See previous related article by same author:

A Point of No Return for “Iraq?” ISIS march into Iraq exposes new realities

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The story of how Russia won the (First) Russo-American Cyberwar because American President Barack Obama did not fight back and failed to protect America’s democracy from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s well-orchestrated, wide-ranging cyberassault, part of Russia’s wider war on Western democracy

 January 21st, 2019. Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse December 7, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Twitter @bfry1981, YouTube, Facebook) December 7th, 2016 (a condensed, edited version of this article is featured on War Is Boring, and that version was quoted in another article by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty [RFE/RL] here and was also mentioned in a morning briefing here by that article’s author; here are the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and ePub eBook versions)

Support Brian and his work by donating here.

Reuters

AMMAN — It is fitting that, on the anniversary of Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack, I am publishing an article discussing an attack far worse in its overall effects on America than Pearl Harbor: if December 7th, 1941, is “a date which will live in infamy,” 2016 is a year which will live in infamy.

All things being equal in an election that was decided by, at current count, less than 38,600 votes spread across three states (a few over 22,150 in Pennsylvania, slightly more than 5,350 in Michigan, a few under 11,100 in Wisconsin) out of over 136 million votes cast (under 0.0284% of all votes cast), it is certain that without Russia’s political cyberwarfare offensive in the (First) Russo-American Cyberwar—and Obama’s stunning lack of response to it—Hillary Clinton would now be President-elect.

Full disclosure: I am a liberal Democrat who proudly voted twice for Obama, but I will make clear what no one seems to want to, though it pains me: I tried making excuses before and after the campaign—he thought she would win anyway, he wanted to play it safe, maybe he has something secret in store, etc.—but as the days turned to weeks after the election and I spent more and more mental energy thinking it through, the stubborn truth reared its ugly head: Obama failed miserably in his role as Commander in Chief, protector, and defender of the United States of America in the final months of his eight-year presidency. In doing so, he ensured his own legacy would be destroyed, likely along with the American political system as we know it and possibly (likely?) the U.S.-led international system that has been a bulwark of great-power peace since WWII.

Here is the story of how Obama lost the war.

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First Strikes

In June of 2015, a unit of elite Russian hackers known as Cozy Bear, or APT 29, working at the behest of the main security service of the Russian government—the F.S.B., main successor to the famed Soviet-era K.G.B., where Vladimir Putin had served for over 15 years—successfully hacked into the systems of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the national governing body of the Democratic Party, completely unbeknownst to DNC staff.

The FBI contacted the DNC in the fall of 2015, warning it of possible hacking and asking its people to look for suspicious activity, but not providing any specifics; when DNC staffers responded with a sweep and found nothing, they asked the FBI to provide specifics, but it declined, keeping from them then and in future meetings the fact that U.S. officials suspected the Russian government; if the DNC had known this, it would have taken additional steps that could have limited the damage that came later. Only late in March 2016, did the DNC realize its systems were compromised and later bring in private cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike in April for help.

Also that March, another group of elite Russian hackers known as Fancy Bear, or APT 28—working at the behest of the G.R.U, Russia’s military intelligence service—targeted the DNC as well, in addition to targeting Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, namely the e-mail accounts of senior campaign officials, including Chairman John Podesta. The FBI warned the campaign in March about possible hacking, but, again, did not mention anything specific about the hackers; only in April did the campaign realize its systems had been penetrated, something U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper publicly hinted at vaguely in May.

It took until June for the DNC to expel the Russians, and on June 14th, DNC officials and CrowdStrike experts informed the Washington Post of the successful hackings. The next day, CrowdStrike released an analysis that detailed ample evidence of Fancy/Cozy Bear’s involvement. The following day, the Clinton campaign hacks were first reported.

Only days after this, a hacker/hackers going by the moniker Guccifer 2.0—an homage to the Romanian hacker made famous by publicly outing Clinton’s private e-mail server—began publicly posting DNC documents, but it was quickly clear from a consensus of experts citing overwhelming evidence that Guccifer 2.0 was actually a front for Russia’s Fancy Bear.

Soon after, it was also reported that government officials realized in June that the Clinton Foundation was also the target of attempted Russian hacks. The same month, the Russians tried to breach voter databases in Arizona but apparently failed; in July, the Russians succeeded in hacking into Illinois voter databases, stealing information on some 200,000 voters; experts suggested it was likely other states’ voter databases had been hacked undetected.

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Information Bomb

The hacking stories largely receded until the evening of Friday, July 22nd, just after Donald Trump’s official nomination and days before Clinton’s Democratic National Convention, when WikiLeaks posted close to 20,000 e-mails from the DNC that had been hacked by Russia. The grossly overblown fallout from that release has been well-documented.

The leaks could not have come at a worse time for Clinton, who was desperate to rally liberals (particularly the conspiratorially-minded among hardcore Millennial Bernie Sanders supporters, whose emotional state demanded an alternate reality where the only possible explanation for their savior’s loss was that Clinton “cheated”) wary of her to her banner for the coming fight with Trump and to display Democratic Party unity at her convention; the leaks slowed and partly prevented this process, creating remarkable public displays of disunity at the Convention and in the streets outside of it and reopening wounds that had only just begun to heal. By the time a later round of leaks came, the ability of Clinton to have built up enough goodwill among many of these people to stay with her in the face of such new leaks playing into their negative stereotypes of her was greatly diminished by this first round of DNC-related leaks.

This was not a coincidence, and it was clear from the beginning that WikiLeaks and the Russians who gave WikiLeaks the hacked information (either directly or indirectly) had designed the release to have a maximum negative impact on Clinton. Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ extremely anti-American founder and leader, made no secret of his intent to harm Clinton’s campaign and his visceral dislike of her, even while refraining from criticizing Trump, Republicans, and Russia, as he and his organization have a complicated but largely beneficial relationship with Russia.

Putin had far more reason to fear a Clinton presidency than one led by Trump, who has spent many years courting Russian favor, whose positions were the most pro-Russian for a major party candidate in American presidential campaign history, and whose campaign manager at this time, Paul Manafort, was notoriously known to have for years been on Putin’s payroll, even if indirectly.

During the week of the Democratic National Convention, it became even more obvious how intent the Russians were on damaging Clinton and the Democratic Party, and Trump even publicly called on Russia to hack Clinton. That week, it was reported that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a voter database used by the Clinton campaign and other Democrats were also targeted by Fancy Bear. It was also reported during the same period that both cybersecurity experts and U.S. government officials had determined that that the Russian government was behind the hacking of the DNC (including a consensus of FBI officials), that officials saw this as a full-blown national security issue, and that U.S. government officials had shared this conclusion—and evidence that Russia was responsible—with the White House, which had discussed the hacks prior to the WikiLeaks DNC release; some officials had also concluded that the DNC e-mails’ release was part of a Russian attempt to hurt Clinton’s chances and help make Trump president. 

Numerous Obama Administration officials were concerned enough with the lack of response that they anonymously shared their frustrations with the media. Apart from serious internal pressure on Obama from some of his advisors, the day Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination a bipartisan group of dozens of prominent former military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials and experts called on Obama to act swiftly and forcefully to counter, deter, and punish those responsible for the hacking, describing the attempt to hack and influence the American electoral process in the gravest, starkest of terms. In addition, senior Democrats on congressional intelligence committees called on Obama to publicly name the attackers. 

Later it was discovered that the hacking efforts were on a wider scale than initially thought, including the Democratic Governor’s Association, left-leaning think tanks tied to the Party, and other Democratic insiders and organizations.

Presidential Pensiveness and Paralysis

Despite all of this, Obama was steadfastly refusing to publicly name Russia as the culprit, in part because of fears of igniting a conflict and uncertainty as to how to respond to such attacks. 

The most absurd part of his rationale was that he was worried naming the Russians and taking a strong stance against them would harm John Kerry’s then-ongoing diplomatic efforts to win cooperation with the Russians on Syria, as all recent diplomatic talks with them on Syria had been a farce. The same officials noted that Obama “fear[ed]” additional cyberattacks by Putin, additional military harassment in the Black and Baltic seas, and further aggression in Eastern Europe. 

Yes, incredulously, Obama imagined that turning a blind eye to Russian interference in domestic American elections would somehow invite Russian compromise on other fronts, frustrating some on his team.  I am reminded of the scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, when the heroes are trying to convince Théoden, King of Rohan, to stand up for his people against the disinformation and aggression of Saruman; Théoden responds by saying “I will not risk open war,” to which Aragorn retorts “Open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not;” in the real world, we had Obama playing the role of a Théoden in denial.

His maddening naiveté manifesting hardly for the first time during his presidency, Obama, demonstrated how poorly he understood his adversary, and unsurprisingly, Putin was emboldened on all these fronts.

Even during Kerry’s fastidious diplomacy, on September 19th Russia deliberately bombed a well-known UN aid convoy heading for an Aleppo, Syria, civilian population that was under siege and desperate for supplies; a few days after, Russia and Syria launched a “ferocious” indiscriminate air offensive against Aleppo, an “unrelenting assault” that quickly became the most intense campaign to date in the war and involved systematic targeting of hospitals (today, Russia and Assad are, with impunity, threatening whole parts of Aleppo with mass slaughter); Ukraine also saw Russian escalation.

Kerry’s talks failed because the Russians were never serious about them, much like previous negotiations on both Syria and Ukraine had repeatedly failed. After some two weeks of these Russian war crimes, the U.S. formally broke off negotiations on October 3rd; the day after, the Guccifer 2.0 APT 28 front released fake documents it claimed proved corruption at the Clinton Foundation.

In the face of Russian mockery of Obama’s diplomatic efforts and his continued non-response to Russia’s cyberwarfare, some of Obama’s “top national security officials” grew furious with him and felt U.S. credibility was being severely damaged, especially in the intelligence community and State Department, while even top Democrats in the House and Senate intelligence committees were either criticizing Obama’s caution (Rep. Adam Schiff) or publicly stating that Russia’s goal could be to harm Clinton’s candidacy and empower Trump’s (Schiff and Sen. Diane Feinstein). Calling on Obama to do more, they issued a joint statement on September 22nd publicly blaming Russia and stating its intent was to influence the election; incredibly, the White House had repeatedly urged them to delay the statement.

In fact, for all of 2016, Russia’s own media was decidedly pro-Trump and anti-Clinton. Additionally, all throughout the campaign, up to and through Election Day, it is now quite clear that Russia’s propaganda machine of hundreds of websites and many thousands of social media accounts—some unwittingly duped, others complicit or even an army of paid agents—posted many thousands of anti-Clinton, pro-Trump, pro-Russian, and anti-American comments, posts, and stories. Sometimes they amplified true stories like the DNC hacks, often they promoted only partly true or even totally false stories that were seen hundreds of millions of times by American voters, with a core of some 15 million Americans regularly consuming the propaganda and sharing it with much larger audiences on Facebook and Twitter, to the extent that in the final months of the election, fake U.S. election news produced greater engagement and shares than real U.S. election news, a period for which Trump had just placed the despicable Steve Bannon—a major American master of creating and promoting fake news—in charge of running his campaign. I can personally tell you from my own experience that Russian trolls even have ample time left over to direct their blatant propaganda at someone of my own lowly status often, repeatedly, and energetically.

*****

Bloodless Victory Against a Passive Opponent

Even considering all this, Obama waited the better part of a week after the Syria talks formally ended, and some two-and-a-half months after his administration had reached a consensus that Russia was behind the hackings and at least involved in the passing of the information to WikiLeaks, to finally formally accuse Russia on October 7th, explicitly asserting that the aim of its operations was to “interfere” with our presidential election, the conclusion of 17 American governmental intelligence agencies. 

Later the same day, a recording from 2005 of Donald Trump vulgarly bragging about committing serial unwanted sexual advances appeared; “almost immediately after” it surfaced, Russia and WikiLeaks came to play defense for Trump and offense against Clinton, with WikiLeaks beginning a series of releases of many thousands of Clinton campaign Chairman Podesta’s e-mails, obtained earlier by Russia; they highlighted campaign infighting, transcripts of Clinton’s paid-by-Wall Street-banks speeches, and Clinton’s ties to political and financial elites, all of which generated negative publicity for Clinton. The batches were released almost every day from October 7th through Election Day on November 8th, ensuring they would constantly be in the headlines in the closing month of the election, even as U.S. officials were coming across even further evidence that Russia was feeding them directly to WikiLeaks. Exit polls—especially in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and others—showed that voters who made their time up during this period broke overwhelmingly for Trump; additionally, they showed that far more voters broke for third-party candidates in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—as well as every swing state that Trump won—in the final weeks and month than before. For those who had been deeply angered by the DNC leak but were trying to give Clinton a chance, these new Podesta leaks were a reminder of the previous controversy and played into many of the same negative emotions and perceptions these people had harbored about Clinton.

At this point, Obama was considering a “proportional” response to Russia, but such a response still has not materialized, as any appropriate response of any proportion would have sent a public message that the world would unmistakably have heard, being that this Russo-American conflict is playing out very markedly on the global public stage; what has materialized instead is a deafening silence of action from Obama, causing Western democracies to despair. To add insult to injury, weeks before the election Trump claimed America “had no idea” if Russia was behind the hacks at the final presidential debate and Russia even requested it be allowed to send election observers to several U.S. states, which rejected the requests.

Pathetically, Obama warned Putin directly on October 31st on a sensitive nuclear-related hotline not to hack the electoral process (but making no mention of the WikiLeaks DNC and Podesta leaks), only eight days before the election and long after so much damage had already been done, clearly enough to shape public opinion and achieve Putin’s aims without direct election hacks, and the WikiLeaks leaks still continued after this message was delivered. 

Obama laughably claimed the warning amounted to successful deterrence, yet even if Clinton had won, the U.S. was possibly facing massive unrest and a Congress intent on impeaching Clinton, its constituents incensed in part by Russian propaganda. 

In charge of a relatively weaker Russia taking on the most powerful nation in the world and regardless of the election’s outcome, Putin had already won: he took to heart von Clausewitz’s maxim that “War is the continuation of policy [or politics] by other means,” something that Obama seems to have missed. Putin had essentially “weaponized” WikiLeaks (and, in the process, the unwitting U.S. news media) against Clinton, the Democratic Party, the U.S. electoral process, and American democracy itself. And almost overnight, he has largely silenced the Republican Party’s hostility to him and his regime: most Republicans seem to prefer not to attack their new benefactor, while the most vocal GOP critics of Putin are mostly a fading old guard (as a case in point, just a few days ago, all Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence called for the Obama Administration to declassify information on Russia’s interference in the U.S. election; not one single Republican on the Committee joined the call). 

Russia’s hacking and disinformation campaigns coupled with Obama’s dismal failure to respond appropriately to them were themselves certainly more than enough to explain Clinton’s razor thin loss, even as other factors—Clinton’s e-mail server scandal, the way FBI Director James Comey engaged with the public (or did not) during the FBI’s multiple investigations, the Bernie Sanders phenomenon and the behavior of Bernie Sanders, polling errors, the style and focus of media coverage, and, of course, many Americans’ irrational, visceral hatred of Clinton born largely out of still-pervasive sexism and misogyny—undeniably also played a role. Any one of those alone not becoming a factor could have swung the election to Clinton, but they were largely out of the hands of the Clinton campaign. President Obama could have declassified most or all of Hillary’s e-mails and shown the public how innocuous they actually were; he could have reigned in Comey and the rogue actors within the FBI, as they were part of the Executive Branch, though this would have carried considerable political risk and could have at least created the appearance of a president interfering in an official investigation for political reasons; but the single area where the president could have had the most impact and been able to act in a way least tainted by questions of propriety was concerning all things related to Russia.

*****

The Worst Defeat in American History and a Serious Blow to Western Democracy

Russia had simply waltzed into America’s national election, President Obama’s political party, and the campaign of President Obama’s chosen successor Hillary Clinton, did what it pleased for all the world to see, stared us down at our own gala, grabbed the microphone, repeatedly endorsed the savage critic of Obama and rival of Clinton Donald Trump, repeatedly badmouthed both Obama and Clinton, took a crap on the dance floor, the dropped the mic and laughed hysterically while doing a slow waltz out the door.

Wars have been fought for far less, and yet Obama’s response was to avoid confrontation with his legacy and the future of the nation, even the future of Western democracy, very much at stake.

In a follow-up piece, I shall deal with the many options Obama had as Commander in Chief besides doing virtually nothing. But for now, perspective:

The most successful cyberattack in world history also involved the weakest response by any American president ever to foreign aggression. It was also the worst foreign attack on American soil since the War of 1812: neither Pearl Harbor nor 9/11 resulted in a regime change that put in place a President of the United States who is so unwitting a mole for Russia, grossly unfit for high office, and oblivious to how much he will undermine critical institutions and values as Trump. It is the first time a party in power in America was toppled by foreign interference and the first time a foreign power toppled the political leadership of a long-reigning first-tier power since arguably Alexander the Great took over Persia. 

Additionally, Russia’s activities have greatly helped to diminish confidence in the American system, further fan the flames of cynicism, and normalize fake news, making America overall more divided, less governable, and more confused than at any time since the Civil War/Reconstruction period; these acts have also damaged the U.S.-led international system that has been in place since WWII.

It can only said of Putin’s resoundingly successful cyberwar that he played so many segments of American society to his ends without their knowledge that it was a masterful orchestral performance and that Putin was a legendary conductor. This (First) Russo-American Cyberwar will be studied for generations, for centuries, as a brilliant way for a state to take down a democratic nation, no matter how powerful, if its people are divided, and to do so without actually firing a single shot but by turning that nation’s strengths against itself. 

This is part of a larger Russian war against the West that is becoming increasingly brazen: until this year, Syria and Ukraine were the most glaring centerpieces in Russia’s disinformation campaigns; then, Russian disinformation caused a faux scandal early this year in Germany that weakened Merkel and her party ahead of key regional votes; Russia’s propaganda machine went intensely against Remain and for Brexit in the UK’s big vote this year and its efforts were clearly crucial in swaying votes in what was an intensely close decision; Russia has also been active in non-NATO Sweden this year, particularly when it was voting on closer ties with NATO; Finland, which shares a huge border with Russia, has also seen a surge in Russian disinformation; early in November, it even became apparent that Russia may have even been involved in an attempted coup in Montenegro, which is on the verge of ascending to membership in NATO.

Since Trump’s election and just this week, Russia’s tool WikiLeaks is already unleashing its might against Angela Merkel and her party in Germany, which fears far more interference in its 2017 national elections, and Russian propaganda was active in supporting the right-wing parties in Italy’s big vote that was a stinging defeat for it centrist pro-EU leader and his party (he will now soon resign), though efforts were less successful in Austria, where the pro-Russian far-right candidate failed by only a modestly large margin in an election that still signaled a significant weakening of Austria’s political center and in which fake news (not yet directly linked to Russia) played a major role during the campaign. In Russia, lawmakers cheered the developments in both Italy and Austria, seeing them as further signs of the demise of the current European system. Also since Trump’s victory, pro-Russian presidential candidates won in Moldova and Bulgaria, where Russian political meddling has been a significant force in shaping the political climate in the years preceding the recent votes. Additionally, Russia’s neighboring three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—already subject to heavy Russian disinformation operations—have seen a significant increase in Russian disinformation since the U.S. election and many there fear what is to come next. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the leader of close U.S. ally South Korea is now facing impeachment during a period of massive unrest in part provoked by Trump, even as a politician known as “Korea’s Trump” is rising in the polls.

Today, right-wing extremists—now that the Soviet Union is gone and Russia is not a champion of communism and the international left—admire Putin’s authoritarianism and see him as a defender of the West, a newly increasingly illiberal, rather than liberal, West, and Russian support for right-wing pro-Russian parties in Europe is hardly limited to propaganda and disinformation: Russia has been orchestrating loans to right-wing parties all over Europe, including (but hardly limited) to France. And Trump and his advisor Bannon have made no secret that they want to ally with and support the same far-right, anti-NATO, pro-Russian parties in Europe that Putin wants to see succeed. Even in just four, let alone eight, years of a Trump presidency, the damage such a coordinated effort could do to the EU and NATO as institutions should not be underestimated, especially as Russia’s successful disinformation and propaganda operations increase Putin’s standing and support across Europe. 

Putin sits on Europe’s eastern border, part wolf, part vulture, both inflicting wounds and picking those wounds apart, weakening the body politic of the West. And by any standard, 2016 was a year of spectacular success, with Russia’s desired outcomes being achieved in the US, the UK, Italy, Bulgaria, and Moldova, while seeing trends favorable to its interests significantly increased in places like Germany and Austria. Furthermore, U.S. and NATO “ally” Turkey has taken a decidedly sharp anti-democratic and anti-Western plunge and is clearly cozying up to Russia. 

2017 may be even better for the Kremlin, and even worse for what is still referred to as the West.

This is the new face of warfare, one in which the lines between politics and war are erased and in which Russia is dominant and ahead of everyone, and this should be terrifying all of us. I am not going to write that this is a fatal blow for the U.S. or the West, but it is a grievous one, and that it is one that the public and news media seem unable to discover or acknowledge, let alone comprehend or respond to appropriately, makes it all the more dangerous and all the more likely to happen again… and again.

AP

© 2016 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome

See related articles: EXCLUSIVE: Top Trump Aides’ Deeper & Linked Roles in Putin Agenda Revealed; Russian Mafia Nexus With Trump & Aides Goes Back Years

Trump, Putin, Russia, DNC/Clinton Hack, & WikiLeaks: “There’s Something Going on” with Election 2016 & It’s Cyberwarfare & Maybe Worse

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