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Is the Ukraine really in a 'stalemate'? Experts warn that it is worse than that.Ukraine's summer counteroffensive, heralded by Kyiv and some Western observers as a turning point in the war, has failed to deal anything approaching a decisive blow to Russian forces in Ukraine. By most measures, Ukraine's Armed Forces (AFU) have made only modest progress in dislodging Russian troops from their entrenched positions in the country's south. When compared against assessed Russian advances in the same period, Ukraine's counteroffensive appears even less impactful. Further still, as observed by Foreign Affairs, "Russia has actually gained more territory over the course of 2023 than Ukraine has." The AFU appears no closer to achieving one of its potential victory conditions — namely, retaking the southern city of Melitopol with the aim of making Russia's presence in Crimea untenable — in late November 2023 than it was at the beginning of summer. The Ukrainians' lack of meaningful battlefield progress, coupled with the war's mounting costs to the country and its Western backers, has increasingly spurred conclusions that the war is headed for — or is already in — a stalemate. These views were lent credence by as authoritative a figure as Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the AFU's Commander-in-Chief, who bluntly stated in an interview with the Economist earlier this month that the war has entered a "stalemate" and warned observers not to expect a "deep and beautiful breakthrough."Yet the widespread view that the war has entered a stalemate, and many of the policy prescriptions stemming from this notion, have invited a growing degree of expert scrutiny. "I see no durable or stable stalemate at this stage," said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The present inability of either side to establish a decisive advantage is not structural. Extrapolating from the present phase of the war into the future is an exercise fraught with error in my view," Kofman added. George Beebe, Director of Grand Strategy at QI, highlighted the perils of extrapolating a "stalemate" from the current lack of significant battlefield movements in Ukraine. "Those who believe this war has settled into a long-term stalemate make the mistake of measuring the relative progress of each side with maps. They see that the frontlines have not moved significantly over the last year and conclude that the sides are stalemated," Beebe told me. "But other metrics, though, paint a different picture. Ukraine is using up its quite limited supplies of men, weapons, and ammunition, and the West cannot provide what Ukraine needs. That is not a formula for stalemate; it's a formula for Ukraine's eventual collapse or capitulation," he continued. A purely cartographical view of the Ukraine war neglects key military factors, including differentials in manpower and resources, attrition rates, and logistics challenges, that many experts say are not unfolding in Ukraine's favor. "Despite everything that's happened, despite all the stuff we have given, the Bradley's, the M1 [Abrams] tanks, Patriot air defense systems, the Challenger tanks, the Leopard [tanks], all those things, nothing changed at all except the casualty count," said former U.S. Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, Senior Fellow and Military Expert at Defense Priorities and host of the Daniel Davis Deep Dive. "While the lines haven't changed, I don't call it a stalemate because I think time is continuing to work against Ukraine," he said in an interview, noting the stark year-on-year decline in U.S. military aid to Ukraine. He added:"Biden is only shooting for $60 [billion dollars] for the whole FY [fiscal year] instead of $113 billion, so even if gets every penny that he's asking for, it's going to be half what it was last year, and we've given all the excess equipment that we have. Anything we give now comes out of the muscle, out of the bones, and I don't think we're going to give up that much more stuff, certainly not at the level they need to replace all their losses"Davis noted that the continued lack of sufficient output in Western ammunition production means that Ukrainian troops will face mounting munitions shortages. "They're not going to have the ammunition to continue to wage a stalemate," he added. Davis compared dwindling Ukrainian stocks with Russia's expanded domestic production of critical munitions and drones. Kyiv's munitions woes were recently compounded by the diversion of up to tens of thousands of 155mm shells, originally slated for Ukraine, to Israel in the weeks following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War. "The next year, and probably into this winter, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the Ukrainian army, at some point along the front, to actually buckle," warned Davis. The battlefield trends working in favor of Russia and against Ukraine were likely exacerbated by the AFU's costly counteroffensive. "It does seem like Russia has solidified their terrible personnel, morale, and supply problems enough that you think they have an advantage over time now. I'd say Ukraine had the advantage due to superior morale and support before their predictably ineffective offensive exhausted their manpower and undercut their Western support somewhat," said Ben Friedman, Policy Director at Defense Priorities. "Time is probably on Russia's side, although I wouldn't rule some hidden source of Russian dysfunction that changes things," he added.Though it appears that the initiative is gradually shifting back to Russia, it remains unclear whether Moscow will try to capitalize on Ukraine's setbacks with a major offensive of its own. "I think they are preparing for something larger, but I bet they would wait until the winter to continue to build up," said Davis, noting that Russia appears to be accumulating massive manpower reserves and munitions stockpiles for what may be a "big push" at a later time. "Every category is in Russia's favor and will continue to tilt in Russia's favor, so I just don't think it can continue to stay a stalemate, [but] I just can't say with any confidence whether Russia will choose the strategic path of a WWI model, overwhelming them with enough volume until they buckle, or if they're going to try to bust through somewhere with a big maneuver," he added. Russian forces have launched a renewed push since early October to encircle the heavily fortified city of Avdiivka as a key step on the path to consolidating control over the eastern Donetsk region, but it is too early to assess whether these operations are a prelude to a larger offensive campaign. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, despite the reported reservations of his advisors and the dire concerns publicly voiced by his own Commander-in-Chief, has not backed down from his maximalist vision of victory, defined as the complete expulsion of Russian troops from Ukraine's 1991 borders. Recent suggestions in the West of a stalemate and looming "frozen conflict," though a stark change in tone from the kind of rhetoric that characterized the war as late as the summer of 2023, still does not reflect what experts describe as the severity of challenges facing the Ukrainian war effort. Whether the Kremlin continues to bleed Ukraine white or opts for large-scale offensives, there is a salient threat that, in the absence of diplomatic off-ramps, Russia's growing advantages may eventually reach a critical mass and translate into the ability to impose a grim fait accompli on Kyiv and its Western partners.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro sent shockwaves through the diplomatic world recently when he accused Israel of carrying out a "genocide" in Gaza."The head of the state who carries out this genocide is a criminal against humanity," Petro wrote on X. "Their allies cannot talk about democracy."The comments are remarkable for a leader of Colombia, which has historically stuck with the United States on matters of international affairs. "It was just kind of unimaginable for the Colombian government to take a position like that, that would be so divergent from the U.S.," said Alex Main, the director of international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.Petro, who is the country's first-ever left-wing president, has doubled down on his criticism of Israel in recent weeks. He retweeted a poster depicting a cartoon baby being menaced by Israeli rifles and called Israel's attack on the Al-Shifa hospital a "war crime," promised to petition the United Nations to make Palestine a full member state, and threatened to bring Israel before the International Criminal Court.And Petro is far from alone in Latin America. While most states in the region condemned Hamas's initial attack, their harsh response to the Israeli offensive in Gaza has only been equalled by that of Arab- and Muslim-majority countries. Belize and Bolivia both cut ties with Israel over the war, and Colombia, Chile, and Honduras have all recalled their ambassadors from Tel Aviv. Even states that consider themselves neutral on the conflict — like Brazil and Argentina — have issued withering condemnations of Israel's attacks on civilians in Gaza. "This is not a war," said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. "This is a genocide."So why are Latin American leaders so pro-Palestine? Experts who spoke with RS said it mostly comes down to three factors: Latin America's increasing independence from the U.S.; the rise of left-wing and indigenous movements; and the presence of large Arab diasporas in much of the region.U.S. pressure 'doesn't count as much as it used to'Brazil's Lula, as he is popularly known, has spent much of his first year back in office carving out an independent path for the country's foreign policy. The leftist leader led a charge for talks to end the war in Ukraine while helping to bolster the influence of BRICS, a geopolitical grouping meant to offset the G7 that he had helped found in the late 2000s. So when a new round of fighting broke out in Israel-Palestine, there was little doubt that Lula would jump in with a pitch to solve it.In practice, this meant leading an effort to pass a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for humanitarian pauses to allow much-needed aid into Gaza. But his initiative hit a wall when the U.S. vetoed the resolution. That, combined with growing pressure from his domestic allies as well as the evacuation of Brazilians stuck in Gaza, led Lula to turn up his rhetoric on Israel's offensive, according to Guilherme Casaroes, a senior researcher at the Brazilian Center of International Relations."He's defending the right of Israel to exist, but not the right of Israel to massacre Palestinians in Gaza," Casaroes argued, adding that Lula views his approach to the conflict as a balancing act aimed at reaching a two-state solution. (The Brazilian leader is not the first to advocate for such a path forward; in fact, Brazil presided over the 1947 U.N. vote in favor of the partition of Mandatory Palestine.)The episode, experts say, highlights the extent to which American influence has waned in Latin America since the height of the unipolar moment after the first Gulf War.The U.S. has privately "expressed disappointment with governments that have done things like recall their ambassadors, or referred to genocide or used strong language and so on," according to Main of CEPR, who has extensive contacts in Latin American governments. "But that pressure doesn't count as much as it used to," he argued. "It's a region that's changed enormously in terms of its dependence on the U.S. and the level of influence that the U.S. can have on foreign policy."The 'pink tide' rolls onThe pro-Palestine stance of many Latin American leaders also stems from the "pink tide" of left-wing and indigenous activists who have taken power in recent years. Left-of-center politicians now hold power in two-thirds of Latin American states, representing more than 90 percent of the region's population and GDP.As Main noted, these groups have long been involved in Palestine solidarity campaigns and other indigenous rights movements, especially since Israel had helped to arm many of the region's most oppressive 20th century governments.For many activists in the region, the disappointment of the Oslo peace process in the 1990s led them to view the situation in Israel-Palestine as little more than a new form of colonialism, according to Casaroes."The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is very often pictured in the back of the minds of Latin American leaders as the conflict between the oppressor, which is Israel, and the oppressed, which are the Palestinians," he said.This helps to explain why the Latin American left has been so united on this issue, as opposed to the war in Ukraine, which has pitted progressive leaders like Chile's Gabriel Boric against traditional leftist stalwarts like Lula and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.While Boric has largely stood alone in his strong support for Ukraine, he has joined his fellow leftists in excoriating Israel for its conduct in Gaza and even withdrew Chile's ambassador from Tel Aviv. "These Hamas attacks are without justification, they deserve global condemnation, but the response by Benjamin Netanyahu's government also deserves our clearest condemnation," Boric argued following a meeting with Biden in Washington earlier this month.Deep ties to the Arab worldThe Arab diaspora in Latin America is also a major force behind pro-Palestine activism. Brazil alone has some 16 million citizens of Arab descent, and Chile has the largest Palestinian population of any country outside of the Middle East.
The phenomenon of Arab migration to the region dates back to the late 1800s, when many Lebanese and Syrian migrants fled to the Americas to escape the death throes of the Ottoman Empire. Palestinians followed in waves after each major war between Israel and Arab states.
This large diaspora has significant political influence across the region, with Arab politicians holding top positions in many governments. Fully 10 percent of Brazil's parliament had Arab origins as of 2016, according to the Washington Post.
Contrast this with the region's relatively small Jewish community, which numbered only 500,000 in 2017. As Main noted, Latin American Jews who support Israel also have no equivalent to powerful U.S. Zionist groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which will reportedly spend $100 million next year to try to push lawmakers advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza out of office.
Of course, there are notable exceptions in the Arab diaspora. El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, is of Palestinian descent but has thrown his full support behind Israel's campaign in Gaza. But, experts say, most Arabs in the region still favor Palestine over Israel.
A new shift, however, could upset the region's political balance in the coming years, according to Casaroes. Latin America has an increasingly large evangelical Christian movement whose leaders see the state of Israel as a crucial part of their theology of the "end times." And survey research suggests that, as a country's evangelical population grows, so does its support for Israel.This has already led to political dust-ups in places like Brazil, where former President Jair Bolsonaro has made pro-Israel activism a key part of his efforts to bolster his evangelical support. Bolsonaro sparked a controversy earlier this month when he met with Israel's ambassador to Brazil, a move that a ruling party official condemned as a "spurious alliance" between the former leader and the foreign diplomat.

After months of will-they-won't-they speculation, the Xi Jinping-Joe Biden summit in San Francisco next week is on. Unless of course some black swan should spoil the diplomatic inertia drawing the two leaders together.After jumping the hosting queue to take on the convening duties for this year's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting, the U.S. has now guaranteed that its own agenda for the summit — supply chain resilience, digital trade, connectivity, small and medium-sized enterprises, climate change and sustainability — will be well and truly overshadowed by the focus on the face-to-face between the two most powerful leaders in the world. The sideline session will be the main event.In the world of "omnicrisis" — in particular, the Ukraine conflict and the Israel-Hamas war and siege of Gaza, and the global challenge of climate change — China and the U.S. have to be in communication, settled into a working rivalry based on the Biden administration's "three Cs" framework of cooperation, competition and confrontation. Washington and Beijing are both an indispensable partner and an inevitable adversary — they can and will clash, even in a manner reminiscent of the brinkmanship of the Cold War, but for global stability, peace and environmental sustainability, they must work together on critical international crises, or at least talk about them. A China-U.S. war, which strategists in both countries have spent countless hours gaming out, would be a meaningless contest, with no winner, only losers and unfathomable collateral damage.Biden and Xi could have met in September at the G20 summit in Delhi, but Xi was a no-show — possibly to avoid a visit to India, the geopolitical belle-of-the-ball with which China has a bubbling border dispute. More likely he needed instead to attend to urgent domestic matters such as China's weak economy and troubles with two disappeared ministers who were eventually sacked. The Chinese have remained officially non-committal about Xi's attendance at APEC too, but Foreign Minister Wang Yi's two-day October visit to Washington, capped by an hour-long encounter with Biden at the White House, has apparently confirmed the appointment.Both sides appear willing to keep the tête-à-tête on track. For one thing, the stream of high-level contacts since Secretary of State Antony Blinken went to Beijing in June, a visit postponed by the "spy balloon" brouhaha, has continued unabated. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was in China shortly after, followed by Biden's climate envoy John Kerry. Commerce chief Gina Raimondo, the administration's point person on economic sanctions and trade restrictions, arrived in August. There have been telling cameo appearances, too. In July, centenarian Henry Kissinger flew in to be celebrated as an "old friend" by the Chinese leadership including Xi. In October, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer led a bipartisan congressional delegation to Beijing, meeting Xi two days after the surprise attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists. Later in the month, California Governor Gavin Newsom breezed through China on a tour pointedly focused on climate change. Widely regarded as a presidential hopeful, Newsom was the first American governor to visit China in over four years and the first to be received by Xi in over six years. Signs that China is eager for the Biden-Xi meeting to go ahead and for the two countries to put their relationship on a more productive footing have been discernible. Wang Yi has been meeting for hours of talks with both Blinken and Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan at different venues around the world. Besides receiving American officials in Beijing, China has reciprocated with visits to the U.S. by Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in May, Wang Yi at the end of October, and on the eve of the APEC meeting Vice Premier He Lifeng, Yellen's counterpart. But possibly the most significant re-engagement move so far was the resumption of defense contacts at the end of October when Chinese and American officials met briefly at a multilateral security forum in Beijing. The U.S. had been trying to restart military-to-military talks which China cut off after then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022. American Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had reached out to his counterpart Li Shangfu, also a U.S.-sanctioned individual, requesting a meeting on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore in June, but was refused. Li was removed from his position on October 24. Austin has requested a meeting with his yet-unnamed counterpart at an ASEAN defense ministers gathering in Jakarta on November 16. Where does all this put the China-U.S. relationship? There is little expectation that the Biden-Xi meeting will yield any significant outcome. When they met in Bali in November 2022, the two had discussed "guardrails" to prevent the contentious relationship from deteriorating into conflict. Some of those preventive mechanisms are now in place. The two governments launched working groups on economic and financial issues in September, with the former meeting for the first time by video conference on October 24. Both groups are supposed to convene again when Yellen and He confer in San Francisco on November 9-10.The diplomatic exchange between China and the U.S. is arguably the highest and broadest since the eighth and final round of the bilateral Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) in 2016. The S&ED was a series of senior-level discussions launched in a limited format during the George W. Bush administration and expanded in 2009 by Barack Obama. While the two nations are not yet back to that level of engagement, the launch of mechanisms for regular consultations goes against the persistent narrative of utter negativity. To be sure, the two sides may be talking at cross purposes, merely airing grievances. China is seeking relief or at least a pause from all the sanctions and exclusions, particularly on advanced technology transfer and financial flows. The U.S., however, is unlikely to comply, especially with the 2024 election campaign already underway. One of Beijing's demands for Xi's presence in San Francisco is for Washington to refrain from announcing fresh trade restrictions before, during or soon after the Biden meeting. Other complications are on the horizon. Some regional analysts argue that Beijing will want to challenge Washington at this geopolitically fraught time. But the Chinese are no less stretched diplomatically and, more to the point, are facing serious economic challenges at home. The Taiwan presidential election in January will surely be preceded and followed by the mainland's customary military menacing. Washington's drift away from its traditional ambiguity on defending the island is the biggest irritant in China-U.S. relations. Actions by both China and the Philippines in the South China Sea have raised fears of a conflict that could draw in the U.S., which has a mutual defense treaty with Manila. Meanwhile, Hong Kong is planning on passing more security laws in the first half of 2024. As the U.S. elections approach, the political rhetoric and policy making in Washington are likely to get more performative and provocative.This is not (yet) a G2 world, but Xi and Biden could capture imaginations by together engineering a diplomatic masterstroke in San Francisco if they were to announce a trio of cooperative projects: first, a joint effort to convene relevant parties to resolve the Israel-Hamas war and set a pathway to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; second, a collaborative initiative to bring peace to Ukraine; and third, an agreement to catalyze countries to increase commitments at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai in December. And while they are at it, they should endorse rebounding post-pandemic bilateral cultural and educational exchange (Washington can reinstate the Fulbright program with Hong Kong and the mainland), renew the U.S.-China science and technology agreement set to expire early next year, and reboot China's program to loan pandas to American zoos. An impossibility? Optimists in these dire times should dare to dream.

It's easy to forget now, but the shocking and horrific violence that set off the current hostilities in the Middle East, where Hamas militants slaughtered and kidnapped innocent Israeli civilians, was predicted. Specifically, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Donald Trump warned in October 2020 that terrorist violence was set to be imminently inflamed.
Trump's DHS didn't claim it was because, in President Joe Biden words, of "sheer evil" from those who exist only "to kill Jews." Rather, it pointed to the Abraham Accords: the U.S.-led effort to normalize relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which Trump claimed would shift the course of Middle Eastern history from "decades of division and conflict" and which the Biden administration claimed would make the region "safer and more prosperous."
So how did we end up with the exact opposite?
For decades, the peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, meaning the provision of an independent state for the Palestinian people and the end of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, was central to the task of engineering peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. This was a problem, since between successive Israeli governments steadily chipping away at the possibility of a two-state solution to the conflict and dwindling U.S. interest in pressuring the Israeli state to follow through on the commitment, that resolution started to look increasingly impossible.
But over time, the priorities of the Arab states shifted away from the Palestinians, too. Their largely authoritarian leadership became more preoccupied with matters like maintaining political control in the wake of the Arab Spring protests — for which support from an advanced military power like Israel might prove useful — and an increasingly assertive Iran, which then-newly appointed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman called a "much more urgent and more important" issue.
This shift dovetailed with the Trump administration's ultra-Israel-friendly stance and its own goal of further isolating Iran in the region. The resulting Abraham Accords were, at least in the neoconservative world, considered a stroke of "genius." Rather than finding a solution to the seemingly intractable question of Palestinian statehood, it simply sidelined it.
The signers dropped this long-standing precondition as they re-established diplomatic relations and deepened security and economic cooperation with Israel, while Trump lavished them with rewards, like an arms deal for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and U.S. recognition of the annexation of West Sahara for Morocco. It effectively supplanted the Saudi government's Arab Peace Initiative, which since its 2002 introduction had been the foundation of the Arab world's program for resolving the conflict, placing the Palestinians front and center.
The new normalization agreements' foundational and cynical assumption was that the plight of the Palestinians could and would be safely ignored and forgotten about by both the region's governments and the broader international community. Both the Trump administration and, reportedly, bin Salman, pressured Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to assent, while the states that signed continued paying lip service to the Palestinian cause, claiming this normalization push would halt Israel's annexation plans for its illegal West Bank settlements.
In reality, the text of the agreements barely mentioned Palestinians, outside of a few vague assurances to keep working toward a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that Morocco maintained a "coherent, constant and unchanged position" on the matter. This was, to put it mildly, far short of what both Palestinians and their supporters in the U.S. Congress demanded.
As Arab states began gradually deepening ties with Israel, they increasingly backed away from their historic positions. Bin Salman declared (and subsequently walked back) that Israelis "have the right to have their own land," effectively sanctioning the loss of what the Muslim world viewed as Palestinians' historic land. When violence broke out in April 2021 at the Al-Aqsa mosque, with Israeli forces raiding one of Islam's holiest sites, the UAE response was notably muted. That the normalization process continued despite what would earlier have been viewed as an unacceptable provocation against both Palestinians and Islam itself was celebrated by the accords' supporters, as proof that ongoing repression of Palestinians could indeed be safely ignored.
But the Palestinian issue could not simply be wished away, and the signing of the pacts created a set of contradictions that fueled the tensions that erupted October 7. The vast majority of the populations of Israel's Arab neighbors opposed the accords, as did some leaders, like Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who charged that the signers had "lost their moral compass," and Jordan's King Abdullah, who declared that "no architecture for regional security and development can stand over the burning ashes of this conflict."
So did Palestinians themselves, across opinion surveys, with both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas calling it a "betrayal," a "treacherous stab," and "grave harm." Hamas also called for "an integrated plan to bring down normalization." Protests against the accords erupted in Morocco, one of the signers.
The signing of the Accords was particularly fraught in Saudi Arabia. The country's powerful clerics continued to oppose Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. But beyond that, the Saudi leadership's internal legitimacy and its standing as the region's leader of the Islamic continued to rest in part on its commitment to the Palestinians. Regional rival Iran quickly stepped in to fill this vacuum left by Saudi support for the deals, sharply criticizing the normalization effort as a "betrayal of Palestinian aspirations for freedom."
Meanwhile, Israeli policy didn't change as promised, and in fact, only hardened. Since 2020, when the accords were signed, illegal settlements have expanded and even ramped up alongside settler violence. The Netanyahu government has now advanced a record number of settler housing units, and transferred administration of the occupied territories from military to civilian hands, widely interpreted as signaling plans for annexation, even as figures like former Abbas adviser Ghaith al-Omari claimed the accords had "already delivered to the Palestinians" by stopping this policy. This past September, the UAE's ambassador to the United States admitted annexation hadn't actually stopped.
The Biden administration could have reversed Trump's efforts, and placed pressure on Israel to halt these plans, as well as end its settlement expansion while making good on its promises and obligations under the peace process. Instead, the president continued Trump's normalization efforts while breaking from presidential precedent and not even attempting to advance the peace process, all while issuing little to no criticism of the Israeli government's violations. He has in fact escalated the issue, pushing for an Israeli-Saudi normalization agreement, with the only concession to Palestinians the mere preservation of the possibility of Israeli-Palestinian peace — an agreement that would also entail further nuclear proliferation in the region and giving Saudi Arabia security assurances. Even so, Biden's secretary of state continues to claim that this could "be used to advance" such a peace.
So while Hamas had reportedly planned this operation for two years, and claimed it was motivated by years of violence at Al-Aqsa, its attack also can't be understood without the bipartisan push for Israeli-Arab normalization at the Palestinians' expense, and the outrage, anger, and despair it has inspired.What is clear — from Hamas's extraordinary violence, the wider regional war it threatens to spark, as well as the major pro-Palestinian protests across Arab countries in response to Israel's bombing campaign — is that almost every assumption that undergirded the Abraham Accords was disastrously wrong, not least the idea that dismissing the Palestinians would make for a more peaceful Middle East.

With all but one contest at the state and local
levels resolved, elections this cycle in Bossier Parish demonstrated that to come
close to beating its political establishment, you had to have a pretty organized
effort behind you.

At stake were all the seats on the Police Jury as
well as two state Senate and two state House of Representative slots, with a
couple of House posts already decided when House District 10 incumbent
Republican Wayne
McMahen and House District 5 newcomer Republican Dennis Bamburg didn't draw
opponents, as well as a few juror positions with just incumbents filing. Among
the others, in all but one Jury and one House seat establishment forces had a
rooting interest in, if not intense involvement supporting, a particular candidate.

The House race it didn't particularly care about
was the District 2 matchup between Caddo Parish Democrats Terence Vinson from
the School Board and Steven Jackson from the Parish Commission. It offered a contrast
in styles both in terms of candidates and campaigns: Vinson utilizing
traditional canvassing methods and with a steady record in office, while
Jackson spent more overall and more on media to go with his more controversial
personality, most recently being convicted
for impersonation of a police officer. That apparently didn't faze enough
voters, who gave him a narrow win.

Bossier political powers-that-be did care about
the House District 9 race between Republicans state Rep. Dodie Horton and
businessman Chris Turner, with them backing the challenger. Horton decisively
turned him back, in part because of the assistance she received from the Louisiana Freedom Caucus through its
political action committee, a group of consistent conservative House
members of which she is a member and is led by another area House member,
Republican Alan
Seabaugh.

Seabaugh himself was on the ballot and in the
crosshairs of the establishment – not just Bossier's but of other big government,
get-along-go-along politicians and special interests across the state – for
Senate District 31. Those forces aggravated at his reform and smaller
government agenda propped up to oppose him retired basketball coach Mike
McConathy running under the GOP label. Seabaugh prevailed in a contest that,
when all is said and done, likely in terms both of dollars spent by the campaigns
and by others on their behalf, will end up as the most expensive in state
history.

Thus, strong candidate organizations and allied
interests could maintain their foothold against the establishment. That lesson
also was the case in the other Senate contest, District 36, that turned into a
big establishment win, but not so much because of its efforts. There, GOP
incumbent Robert Mills lost
handily to Republican Bossier Parish School Board member Adam Bass.

Mills had angered conservatives by voting in the
Senate this year not to hold back surplus money to pare down pension
obligations and deposit more into the state's Budget Stabilization Fund savings
account, against the preferences of Horton, Seabaugh, and the Freedom Caucus.
The politically ambitious Bass, who had been testing the waters for Bossier
City mayor in 2025 with establishment backing, stepped into an ideal situation where
he could have that support and benefitted from some conservatives deserting
Mills (for example, Seabaugh, busy with his own campaign, didn't aid Mills as
he had in 2019). Despite the Mills campaign gaining an advantage monetarily in
the closing weeks of the campaign, conservative acceptance of Bass and local
powerbroker backing (in a district that had changed to his favor through
reapportionment) was more than enough to make Mills the only incumbent senator
to lose this cycle.

That establishment success, minus reformist or small
government conservative backing with one possible exception, was more pronounced
in Jury races. All but one incumbent ran again, and in the District 10 exception
former School Board member Democrat Julius Darby, the incumbent's brother, qualified,
with most finding success without great difficulty

Given their level of campaigning, resources
committed, and district demographics, three Republican challengers – all reformers
and conservatives – had the best shot to win of all challengers. In District 1,
small businessman Mike Farris took on GOP incumbent Bob
Brotherton; in District 5, former juror Barry Butler faced off against GOP
incumbent Julianna
Parks; and in District 12, small businessman Keith Sutton squared off against
GOP incumbent Mac
Plummer.

Brotherton looked vulnerable given his health that
made him difficult for him to attend Jury meetings, much less campaign. He and
Parks both served, likely
illegally, on the parish-appointed Library Board of
Control and certainly illegally had appointed Parish Administrator Butch
Ford as interim director of libraries for several months. They and Plummer had
made Ford administrator in full knowledge legally he didn't qualify, a matter still
in doubt nearly two years later.

Yet Brotherton supporters are dug in like ticks in
a district that swings north to south along the eastern edge of the parish –
his wife represents a very similar district on the School Board – and his
surrogates campaigned well enough for him to win without a runoff. And Parks
was able to draw upon her connections – her husband Santi is Bossier City's
elected judge – to seal a comfortable win.

 However, Sutton knocked off Plummer and did so because
of superior organization. South Bossier has gained a reputation as the most
rebellious part of the parish to the existing power elite, with reformist political
activism from a handful of elected (past and present) officials that are allies
of Sutton's, including former School Board member Shane Cheatham (his podcast
partner), Bossier City Councilor Brian Hammons,
and Bamburg (Republicans all), as well as from others not in office. Sutton
also aggressively canvassed the district on foot and by mail.

 As things turned out, he might be the only
reformer on the new Jury. One other incumbent lost, but that came from District
9's tilt between two establishmentarians, Democrat incumbent Charles
Gray and Republican former Bossier City chief administrative officer Pam
Glorioso. Demographics favored Gray with a Democrat voter registration advantage
of 2:1 and a near-majority black registration (Gray is black).

Perhaps
overconfidently given those demographics, Gray concentrated on outdoor
advertising while Glorioso ran a more retail-oriented campaign. Also hurting
Gray was dispirited turnout by black Democrat voters, who weren't excited by
their party's offerings at the state level, and possibly reputationally in being
a Library Board of Control member likely serving illegally who also approved of
Ford's illegal service in two different capacities. So, Glorioso won a
low-turnout contest, but she won't join any reformist efforts Sutton might
back.

Sutton
might get help from an unlikely source. In District 10, despite the Darby's
family hold over that area of town (brother Jeff is on the Bossier City Council
and sister Samm is on the School Board), Julius got pushed into a runoff by Democrat
military retiree Mary Giles, who herself courted controversy with careless
placement of campaign signs. It's the only legislative or local race left
to be decided on Nov. 18.

Even if
Sutton remains the only juror not tied into the Bossier good-old-boy-and-girl
network, at least citizens will have one voice on the Jury to question
orthodoxy and bad decisions such as those surrounding the library and Ford's
employment. And that this
cycle attracted more competition than any since 1987, even if most challengers
lost, foists more pressure for accountability onto the nine returning
incumbents, knowing that questionable actions will provoke a need to campaign
ending possibly in losing.

As much of the world's attention shifted to the Middle East this week, Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky staked out contrasting positions on the war between Israel and Hamas.
The Russian president has reportedly not called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since the weekend, and did not release a message of support or condolences following the attacks on Saturday.
Instead, Putin took the opportunity to blame U.S. policy for the latest outbreak of violence. "I think that many people will agree with me that this is a vivid example of the failure of United States policy in the Middle East," Putin said. "[Washington] tried to monopolize regulating [the conflict], but was unfortunately unconcerned with finding compromises acceptable for both sides. It put forward ideas on how it should be done and pressured both sides. Each time, however, without taking into account the fundamental interests of the Palestinian people," he added, according to the Moscow Times.
On Thursday, Russia's foreign ministry called on Israel to agree to a ceasefire and allow goods to come into Gaza. "The unacceptability of the indiscriminate bombardment leading to numerous civilian casualties was emphasized," a Russian statement said.
Putin and Netanyahu have reportedly shared a friendly relationship in the past, but it has deteriorated over the course of Russia's war in Ukraine. Israel has refused to join the Western sanctions regime, abstained from providing weapons to Kyiv, and largely maintained neutrality on the war, but tensions between Moscow and Tel Aviv have grown due to other factors.
For one, the war in Ukraine has brought Russia closer with Iran, who some have been quick to blame for the attacks in Israel over the weekend.
Second, as Moscow's former chief rabbi explained to reporter Pjotr Sauer, many Jewish people are uncomfortable with Putin's framing of the war as a fight against a "neo-Nazi" government.
Sauer elaborates in the Guardian: "Last summer, these tensions first spilled over into the public, when Russian officials accused Israel of supporting the 'neo-Nazi regime' in Kyiv. The spat was ignited after Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, recycled an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that Adolf Hitler 'had Jewish blood' – comments that Israel described as 'unforgivable and outrageous.'"
Zelensky, meanwhile, has repeatedly affirmed his country's support for Israel, comparing Hamas's attacks over the weekend to Russia's conduct during the war. "The only difference is that there is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel, and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine," Zelensky said during a speech to NATO on Monday. He later told a French television station that he was confident that Moscow was supporting Hamas "in one way or another."
During his visit to Brussels, the Ukrainian president also acknowledged that "everybody's afraid" that Western attention and support for Kyiv could diminish as focus shifted toward the Middle East.
Zelensky earlier said Moscow stood to gain from tumult around the world. "We have data very clearly proving that Russia is interested in inciting war in the Middle East. So that a new source of pain and suffering would erode global unity and exacerbate cleavages and controversies, helping Russia in destroying freedom in Europe," he wrote on X. "We can see Russian propagandists gloating. We can see Moscow's Iranian friends openly extending a helping hand to those who attacked Israel."
In Responsible Statecraft this week, Mark Katz, professor of government and politics at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government, explored these dynamics and analyzed why, contrary to some opinions, a larger war in the Middle East could run counter to Moscow interests.
"While many in the West seem to think that Russia somehow benefits whenever conflict erupts in the Middle East, this might be an occasion when it does not. Moscow may be calling for a ceasefire, then, because it sees this as the best way to protect its interests," he concluded. "The problem for Moscow, however, is that it is not in a strong position to either persuade or coerce Israel or Hamas to agree to one. Perhaps this is why Foreign Minister Lavrov indicated that President Putin would not be making calls to any other leaders about this."
In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:
—A recent poll conducted by Gallup found that "After 18 months of grinding conflict, Ukrainians remain deeply committed to winning the war with Russia -- although slightly less so than they were in the early months of the war." The number of Ukrainians who would want to keep fighting until "it wins the war" dropped to 60% from 70% in September 2022. The number of respondents who wanted to seek a negotiated settlement "as soon as possible" increased slightly during the same time period, from 26% to 31%.
The poll also found that "In the South (45%) and East (52%) regions closest to the front line, support for continuing the fight is still lower than the rest of the country. As a result, the proportion who favor a negotiated end to the war as quickly as possible is also highest in the South (41%) and East (39%)." Just over 70% of residents of the north of Ukraine, which includes Kyiv, and the West were in favor of continuing to fight.
—Another poll — from the Eurasia Group Foundation — found that a majority of Americans (58%) think the United States should push for a negotiated settlement in the war in Ukraine. As Daniel Larison notes in RS today, "Support for diplomatic solutions [in Ukraine and elsewhere] has majority backing of Americans from across the political spectrum, so it is remarkable how little support for those same solutions can be found among our elected representatives and policymakers in Washington."
The poll also found that a plurality of respondents named "avoiding a direct war between the U.S. and nuclear-armed Russia" as the top goal for the future of U.S. support of the war effort. More respondents believed that the "U.S. responded well to Russia's war in Ukraine than did not," though there was a strong partisan divide on that question.
— A New Yorker profile of national security adviser Jake Sullivan examines the administration's approach to the war in Ukraine, explores some of the internal debates over which weapons to send to Kyiv, and looks into how Sullivan thinks about the question of diplomacy. The piece reports that the White House was "fully briefed" on the Track Two talks that took place between former and prominent Russians in the spring.
"There is little doubt that the Biden Administration has actively considered ways to get Russia to the negotiating table," writes Susan Glasser. "Privately, Sullivan has had extensive discussions about what a peace deal might look like. 'My conversations with him all the way through have been about what can you do to eventually bring this war to an end,' an informal adviser of Sullivan's told me. (...) 'they want to find a way to eventually get to a freeze, to eventually get to a negotiated settlement. But it has to be something that keeps nato together. It has to be something that doesn't isolate the Ukrainians or have them go off and undermine everything that's been done. That's a hard square to circle.'"
—National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that funding for Ukraine would not be endless. "On the Ukraine funding, we're coming near to the end of the rope. Today we announced $200 million, and we'll keep that aid going as long we can, but it's not going to be indefinite," he said. The White House is reportedly planning to try to get its languishing aid request for Ukraine through Congress by combining it with funding for Israel, Taiwan, and border security, though some Congressional Republicans have balked at the proposal.
U.S. State Department news:During a press briefing on Tuesday focused almost exclusively on the war in Gaza, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that he didn't have any evidence suggesting that Russia was involved in Hamas's attacks.

Ambiguity over Louisiana law regarding boards of
library control, and unambiguous illegal activity of Bossier Parish police jurors possibly not serving legally on it,
have become issues in Police Jury contests.

Since
2016, the Jury has had members serving on the parish's Library Board
of Control. At present, the entire composition of the Board is made up of
jurors: Republicans Glenn
Benton, Bob
Brotherton, Julianna
Parks, Doug
Rimmer, and Democrat Charles
Gray. All ran for reelection this fall, with Benton and Rimmer drawing no
opposition.

By state law, the parish if
it chooses (or enough citizens petition it) to have a library system must have
this panel with five to seven citizens of the parish appointed by it. State statute also grants
the board some powers independently of the parish: to elect and employ a
librarian, and, upon the recommendation and approval of the latter, to employ
assistant librarians and other employees and fix their salaries and
compensation; provided that no contract of employment shall be made for a
longer period than four years nor with any person as head librarian, or
director, who has not been certified by the State Board of Library Examiners.
Otherwise, the parish controls all other aspects of library operation that it
chooses to do so.

Bossier Parish established its libraries in 1939 (Ord.
75 of 1939) following state statute operating at the time (Act
36 of 1926), which scarcely differs from statute addressing that today that
creates and defines a board. Opinion since, as recently as this
summer, since then has reaffirmed that this process makes a board a
creature of the parish.

Yet juror service on a library board is deemed
illegal by Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff
Landry's office, forcefully stated in a document released in
February. It explicitly reads that "Louisiana's Dual Officeholding and Dual
Employment Law prohibits a member of the governing authority from serving in an
office that they have the authority to appoint. The law provides that the
governing authority appoints citizens to the library board of control. The
governing authority may not appoint a member of the governing authority to the library
board of control."

Given the status of boards as a creature of
governing authorities, that would appear to grant an exception to the dual office-holding statute,
in that the prohibition applies "except that local governmental subdivisions
may appoint members of the governing body to boards and commissions created by
them and over which they exercise general powers as provided in Article VI, Section 15
of the Constitution of Louisiana." On the surface, this would seem to exempt the
prevention of jurors from serving on a board and is the justification the
parish uses to back the practice.

However, it seems unlikely that the AG's office
would make something up out of thin air contrary to that and there must be some
rationale as to its declaration of the illegality of juror service on a board.
Unfortunately, Parish Attorney Patrick Jackson reports that inquiries about
this have gone unanswered. But, oddly, that's the extent to which the Jury has
gone to clarify the matter. It's had nearly eight months where it could have instructed
Jackson to request formally an opinion rendered about the question whether
juror service on the board violated dual-officeholding, which would have forced
action on behalf of the AG and likely would have produced an opinion by now
with an explanation/resolution.

As it stands, while the AG has issued several opinions (such as 19-0143, 19-0113,
19-0096, 11-0022, 08-0126, 03-0454, and 93-710
particularly related to incidents in Caddo and Bossier Parishes) over the
decades about members of a governing body in a parish serving on the library board
of a parish (or parish/city's board, as the law allows joint library systems
and a number of parishes operate under this mode), none involved the current
situation in Bossier Parish: can a police juror in a Lawrason-governed parish (that
is, without a home rule charter whose governance state statute therefore
mandates) serve on a library board that solely governs library operations across
the entire parish? And while it is speculation as to why the AG's office declares
the answer to this question in the negative, two reasons suggest themselves.

First, if a parish (or parish/city) is to have a
library, state law dictates that a board with certain composition and powers be
established to run it. That could mean that legally a board is not considered
to be entirely a creation of a jury, because the state gives no option for that
so in some sense a board is an instrument of state policy. Second, because
statute gives boards those few powers independent of a jury, that independence
becomes destroyed if a juror is allowed in part to exercise both and creates
dual officeholding.

A review of several larger-populated parishes (Ascension,
Jefferson, Livingston, Ouachita, Rapides, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa) with over
100,000 people that don't have joint parish-city government or library
operations, whether operating under a charter, shows no members of the parish
governing authority serving on their boards, except in a few instances where such
a member (on behalf of the authority's chairman) serves in the ex-oficio
capacity as allowed under statute. Even among the smallest parishes in the
state, under 10,000 in population, with parish libraries (Caldwell, Cameron, Red
River, West Carroll; information couldn't be located for Catahoula, East Carroll,
Madison, Tensas), where because of the small populations a jury might take the
shortcut of appointing their own except for the ex-oficio allowance no jurors
served as board members. Thus, Bossier Parish is an absolute outlier in adopting
this practice, and that this large sample of similarly-governed parishes for
library matters in the state doesn't follow that method indicates at least in
part hesitancy to do so over legal concerns that don't seem to bother Bossier.

Altogether, this suggests the practice is of
dubious legal validity and, that as discretion should be the better part of
valor, Bossier would do best to avoid it. Regardless, the Jury-driven Bossier Board
members did unambiguously break the law in one matter: last year hiring Parish
Administrator Butch Ford as the interim library director for several months.
Under Louisiana law, as he doesn't have a librarian certification, he could not
have served in that position.

At the time of Ford's appointment, Brotherton,
Gray, and Rimmer served on the Board, comprising a majority. Within three months
Benton and Parks joined, and all acquiesced to Ford's continued service – much
like they and the rest of the Jury
allowed Ford to serve as parish administrator for almost a year illegally
as they surely knew he lived in Caddo Parish and did not have a Bossier Parish
address at which he could register to vote as required by law. Since then, Ford
established a sham residence in Bossier Parish that likely if challenged as a registered
voter in the parish would have that registration deemed fraudulent.

The way incumbent Bossier Parish jurors like to
play fast and loose with the law should trouble voters, especially when
considering the illegal behavior of Benton, Brotherton, Gray, Parks, and Rimmer
on the Board and the probability they continue to serve on the Board illegally.
At least the electorate will have the chance to register its views about this in
the cases of Brotherton, Gray, and Parks.

Federal prosecutors unveiled charges against Sen. Bob Menendez (D–N.J.) on Friday that read like a combination of James Bond and The Sopranos. The indictment accuses Menendez of accepting bribes for a variety of favors, from helping local businessmen stay out of jail to green-lighting arms deals with the Egyptian military. Prosecutors allege that Menendez's wife Nadine Arslanian was paid, in the classic Sopranos style, through a no-show job at an Egyptian meat company. The FBI found hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold at Arslanian's suburban home.The senator and his co-defendants pleaded not guilty during a Wednesday court hearing. He claimed at a Monday press conference that the indictment was a "limited set of facts framed by the prosecution to be as salacious as possible." While Menendez has stepped down from his post as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he vowed on Monday to stay in the Senate "on behalf of the 9 million people who call New Jersey home." However, a growing chorus of Democrats — including both national and New Jersey officials — has demanded that Menendez step down from his seat in light of the charges.The combination of local wheeling-and-dealing with international intrigue is nothing new in New Jersey politics. While the state is often known for its weird ambient smells, Mafia families, and party beaches, New Jersey also hosts some of New York City's wealthiest suburbs. Many well-organized diasporas have roots there, and many powerful foreigners park their money there. The career of a New Jersey politician is often intertwined with foreign policy.FBI agents raided Arslanian's home in Englewood Cliffs, 15 minutes away from the exclusive country club where Nikki Haley spoke to pro-Israel donors last week. The nearby town of Englewood had previously been the center of an international incident in 2009, when Libyan ruler Muammar Qadhafi was preparing to address the United Nations. The Libyan foreign ministry owns a mansion in Englewood for its UN ambassador, and sudden construction led to rumors Qadhafi was staying there.Qadhafi's next-door neighbor would have been Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a prominent pro-Israel activist with ties to settlers in the Palestinian territories. The rabbi waged a high-profile campaign to ward off Qadhafi, using his column in the Jerusalem Post to complain about the construction workers' treatment of his trees. Shmuley threatened to sue the Libyan foreign ministry so that "Libyan money will go toward peaceful projects like planting trees rather than blowing up planes," and offered to host Qadhafi himself if Libya recognized Israel.The Libyan delegation ended up renting property in suburban New York from Donald Trump, who took the money and kicked them out. Qadhafi was so enraged by his treatment that he scattered unsecured nuclear materials across a Libyan airfield. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lives close to the Trump property, had to talk Qadhafi down. All politics is local politics, as they say.Menendez started his political career within the Cuban community of Hudson County, the region of New Jersey just across from midtown Manhattan. The large Cuban diaspora there, traumatized by Fidel Castro's revolution, turned to militant anticommunist politics. The Weehawken Duelling Grounds, where Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton in 1804, now features a statue of Cuban national poet José Martí and a monument to Assault Brigade 2506, a force sent by the CIA to overthrow Castro during the Bay of Pigs incident in 1961.

The monument to the fallen from the CIA's Assault Brigade 2506, which fought against Fidel Castro's government at the Bay of Pigs. Photo: Matthew PettiDuring the Monday press conference, Menendez implied that he was also one of the many fleeing Communism. He called himself the "son of Cuban refugees," and said that the cash found by the FBI was "from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies, and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba." But Menendez was born in New Jersey years before Castro's revolution, to a family of working-class immigrants who had left Cuba under the previous, capitalist dictatorship. Menendez's Senate office did not respond to a question about what confiscation his family faced.Menendez was surrounded by the politics of the anticommunist emigres nonetheless. In the 1970s, when Menendez was on the Union City school board, several rival Cuban-American guerrilla groups held rallies and ran extortion rackets. Union City brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo were convicted of killing Chilean leftist politician Orlando Letelier with a car bomb in Washington; their convictions were overturned on appeal. Menendez himself helped raise money for the legal defense fund of Eduardo Arocena, a Union City guerrilla leader convicted of murdering a Cuban diplomat in New York and organizing other bomb attacks, in the 1980s.Since branching out into statewide politics, Menendez cultivated ties with other diaspora groups. He's member of the Friends of the Irish National Caucus and the Armenian Caucus, and has touted Arslanian's Lebanese-Armenian roots. The senator is sure to show up at Hindu holiday festivals, and once condemned Time Magazine for making fun of Hindu believers in New Jersey. Rabbi Shmuley, himself a Republican, praised Menendez for being a non-Jewish friend of Israel. A local Greek diaspora newspaper simply described Menendez as "our guy."

Aerial photo of Englewood Cliffs just across the river from New York City. Photo: Matthew PettiThese diaspora ties have sometimes landed Menendez in legal trouble. The senator was indicted in 2015 for a scheme that involved Dominican-American doctor Salomon Melgen's attempts to score a contract in the Dominican Republic. (Menendez escaped jail time after a mistrial was declared in 2018, and successfully pressured the Trump administration to grant Melgen clemency.) Friday's indictment similarly involved immigrant businesspeople in Menendez's social circles.Two of the alleged bribe-givers were Lebanese-American real estate developer Fred Daibes and Egyptian-American meat merchant Wael Hana, whom Arslanian was friends with in the past. Like many things in New Jersey politics, the alleged favors to his associates mixed the local and the global. Menendez allegedly tried to protect Daibes and another local businessman, José Uribe, from fraud charges. He also allegedly tried to help Hana maintain his monopoly on halal meat exports to Egypt — a monopoly that caught the attention of Egyptian media in 2019.The most explosive accusations involve Menendez's contacts with Egyptian military and intelligence officers that he met through Hana. Menendez allegedly passed on sensitive data about U.S. Embassy staff and ghost-wrote a letter on behalf of an Egyptian general asking for military aid. Prosecutors also claimed that the Egyptians bribed Menendez to make sure American arms sales to Egypt went through smoothly.Menendez allegedly asked Arslanian to tell Hana that he had approved the sale of 10,000 tank ammunition rounds and 46,000 target practice rounds to Egypt, for use against the Sinai insurgency. Arslanian forwarded the senator's text message to Hana, who forwarded it to an Egyptian army officer, who responded only with a 👍 emoji, according to the indictment.The indictment also includes a photo of Menendez and Arslanian at the house of an unnamed "senior Egyptian intelligence official," whom researcher Amy Hawthorne identified as Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel. Menendez, on his return from Egypt, allegedly googled "how much is one kilo of gold worth." Hana also allegedly helped pay off the mortgage on Arslanian's Englewood Cliffs home. He returned to the United States and was arrested at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City on Tuesday.On Friday, news reporters showed up in Englewood Cliffs, looking for the Mercedes-Benz convertible that Menendez had allegedly bought with Uribe's bribe money. One reporter seemed surprised to see that Arslanian's house — the place where so much cash and gold were hidden — was an average-sized suburban bungalow. But looks are deceiving. Englewood Cliffs is an expensive area, and Arslanian's house is worth about $1.1 million.New Jersey, in a nutshell: global power hidden in plain sight.A version of this article first appeared on the author's Substack page, "Matthew's Notebook."

Last month, Human Rights Watch released a report documenting massacres of migrants and asylum seekers by U.S.-trained Saudi border guards. Far from holding the Saudi government accountable, the Biden administration announced last week the first proposed arms sale to Saudi Arabia in over a year, and the sale includes repairs and spare parts for some of the very same equipment to carry out what Human Rights Watch describes as possible crimes against humanity.The proposed sale comes just months after the Biden administration released its Conventional Arms Transfer policy — which, on paper, elevates human rights concerns in the administration's arms transfer policy. The sale demonstrates the need for more congressional attention to the human consequences of U.S. arms sales. Meanwhile, Congress is now poised to consider repealing the overly-vague authorizations underpinning the "war on terror" that expanded executive power over war-making after the Senate passed a repeal of the 2002 Iraq war authorization in March. However, despite interest from both members of Congress and the public, further legislative action to address long standing gaps in foreign policy accountability does not look promising this year. Over the summer, the House and Senate passed their respective versions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the defense policy bill that serves as an annual vehicle to pass many foreign policy laws. Largely absent from either chamber's versions were measures to reassert congressional oversight for the use of military force and arms sales, two of the chief ways that the U.S. fuels armed conflict around the world. Although the House and Senate versions contain some reporting requirements on weapons and the use of military force, more ambitious reform proposals were left on the cutting room floor. Among the nearly 8,000 bills introduced since the start of the 118th Congress, several would explicitly address congressional oversight of foreign policy. These bills were excluded from the FY2024 NDAA and are not likely to become law on their own — Congress only enacts about 2 percent of proposed stand-alone legislation. However, these proposals provide an important foundation for ongoing conversations about the policy changes required to ensure effective oversight of U.S. defense and national security policy including through war powers reform, increased arms sales oversight, and improved human rights standards.War Powers ReformFollowing the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Congress passed far-reaching authorizations for the use of military force that both Democratic and Republican administrations have used to conduct lethal force operations throughout the world, including in places where the U.S. is not a party to the conflict, where the adversaries did not exist at the time of the September 11 attacks, and even in the absence of an ongoing armed conflict.
In an effort to counteract this over-extended executive authority, the Reclamation of War Powers Act (HR. 3370), introduced by Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), would limit funding for any new military engagement without explicit approval from Congress — essentially preventing the president from authorizing any more activity via the two-decades-old AUMFs.
It would also create additional reporting requirements for the president when utilizing emergency executive authority. Additionally, Sen. Dick Durbin's (D-Ill.) Accountability for Endless Wars Act of 2023 (S.1151) would establish sunset provisions for both future and existing authorizations for the use of military force and declarations of war, requiring that any future authorizations terminate 10 years after enactment. The bill would repeal currently active authorizations after six months, forcing Congress to reauthorize the U.S. military's active engagement in Somalia, Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere.Flipping the Script on US Arms Transfers Oversight
The National Security Reforms and Accountability Act, or NSRAA, (HR. 4928) is a bipartisan bill recently reintroduced by Reps. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) that seeks to reassert Congress's national security powers in three key areas: war powers, arms exports, and national emergencies.

The portion of NSRAA addressing weapons exports would "flip the script" on how Congress approves U.S. arms transfers. Current law requires Congress to muster supermajorities in both chambers to block a president's proposed arms sale in light of a near-inevitable veto. Given this high barrier, Congress has never been able to block presidents of either party from arming human rights abusers, even when the endless supply of weapons to foreign governments is unpopular in Congress and with the U.S. public.

The flip-the-script approach, first introduced by then-Senator Joe Biden in 1986, would require an affirmative congressional vote to approve a subset of the riskiest arms transfers. This process would require Congress to pass risky arms sales by voting for them, as it does other bills, rather than allowing concerning arms sales to proceed in the absence of a congressional vote of disapproval which, historically, has been impossible to achieve.
Human Rights and U.S. Security Assistance
In addition to an increasingly expansive global military presence, the United States is the world's largest arms dealer, responsible for selling roughly 40 percent of all weapons in the global market. Many of these weapons go on to fuel conflict, human rights violations, and civilian harm, and there are credible reports of the negative impact of the U.S. commercial arms trade in countries that import American-made weapons. Despite the known risks, human rights and civilian harm issues are often not adequately considered in arms transfer decisions — the term "human rights" does not even appear in the Arms Export Control Act, the main statute governing U.S. arms exports. What's more, current U.S. "end-use monitoring" processes don't actually monitor the use of U.S.-origin weapons in human rights violations or civilian harm.

The Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act (HR.1471), introduced by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), would explicitly prohibit the United States from selling weapons to any foreign country found to be in violation of international human rights law or international humanitarian law, which would likely include several prominent buyers of U.S. weapons. The bill would establish a new federal commission to monitor and enforce this mandate.

The Safeguarding Human Rights in Arms Exports Act of 2023 (SAFEGUARD) was reintroduced this year in both the House and Senate. Introduced by top foreign policy Democrats in the House and Senate, the SAFEGUARD Act would make significant changes to the Foreign Assistance Act and Arms Export Control Act, including by clarifying that the human rights restrictions in the Leahy Law apply to all U.S. arms sales. It would also increase notifications to Congress when arms sales are proposed to a country where gross human rights violations have occurred, ban arms exports to countries where the government has committed genocide or war crimes, and mandate that the U.S. government track whether U.S. weapons are used to violate human rights or international humanitarian law. Ironically, and notwithstanding the strength of the bill, the SAFEGUARD Act's sponsor Sen. Menendez was recently indicted on corruption charges involving, in part, helping funnel weapons to Egypt, whose regime has an abysmal human rights record.

Although Rep. Meeks introduced SAFEGUARD as an amendment to the House NDAA in its entirety and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) introduced an amendment that drew from SAFEGUARD's provisions on end-use monitoring of U.S. weapons for human rights violations, neither made it into the versions of the FY24 NDAA that are now being reconciled.

***

Deliberations on the NDAA will continue this fall, with a reconciled bill expected to reach President Biden's desk by the end of the year. While the current NDAA drafts leave much to be desired, there are still opportunities to improve transparency and oversight of U.S. military engagement, security assistance, and arms transfers — no matter the recipient country or political party in control of Congress or the executive branch. Congress should take up and pass these bills, which are critical to protecting our constitutional balance of powers, providing accountability for U.S. taxpayer dollars, and maintaining U.S. legitimacy on the world stage.

China and the United States, like sports captains picking sides, have been engaged in a considered effort to enlist partners. In the recruitment rush, the Biden administration has given short shrift to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its much vaunted balancing, or "centrality" in the Asia Pacific. Washington, like Beijing, has favored certain ASEAN members over others, frustrated no doubt by the group's lack of cohesion and effectiveness. But in the new multipolar world, these hinge countries and their groupings can be as important as power poles. There has been a lot of coalition building lately. In August, the BRICS bloc — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — invited six new members to join at the start of 2024. In March, Iran and Saudi Arabia reestablished ties after years of antagonism in a deal brokered by Beijing. In July, China signed an accord on law enforcement and security with the Solomon Islands and announced a strategic partnership with Georgia. This month, China upgraded its relationship with American bugaboo Venezuela to an "all-weather" partnership.The U.S. has been similarly busy — perhaps more so to make up for Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) bridge-building over the past decade. In August, President Joe Biden and his Japanese and South Korean counterparts launched a trilateral grouping at Camp David. The U.S. and the Philippines in February revived an agreement giving increased American access to Filipino military facilities. In May, the U.S. and Papua New Guinea concluded a defense pact. At the G20 summit in New Delhi this month, the leaders of the U.S., the European Union, India, Saudi Arabia and other countries committed to developing an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor for cooperation on clean energy, power grids and telecommunications. After the G20, Biden traveled to Hanoi where the U.S. and Vietnam announced that they were elevating relations to a "comprehensive strategic partnership," deepening cooperation in cloud computing, semiconductors and artificial intelligence — all areas of contention between Washington and Beijing. In a 2021 lecture, Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan described how the administration was assembling a "latticework of alliances and partnerships globally." This was "not just about refurbishing the old bilateral alliances," he explained, "but modernizing those elements of the latticework and adding new components." Sullivan cited as examples the upgrading of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S.), to leader level and the creation of AUKUS, the partnership among Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Canberra and collaborate on advanced technologies.Both Washington and Beijing say they are not forcing countries to pick sides, though the impression that they do just that is unavoidable. Beijing has applied economic pressure on states for actions that it perceives to hew too closely to American positions — Canada, Australia, South Korea and Japan have had to deal with such coercion. In network building, the U.S. has offered more carrots than sticks, particularly when it comes to courting pivotal states that Washington deems to have distinct geostrategic importance and — more to the point — the capacity to contribute to countering or containing China. In the Indo-Pacific, India, the Philippines and Vietnam have been the chief recipients of American courtship. But what about ASEAN? Washington insists that it values ASEAN centrality, but the proof of its perspective is in its actions. Biden skipped ASEAN's annual leaders' jamboree with dialogue partners, leaving it to his vice president to go to Jakarta, but squeezed in a visit to Hanoi just days later. The president's participation in the G20 was a not-to-be-missed opportunity to butter up Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who only in June had been feted at the White House. India is the most-prized pivot country in the Indo-Pacific (that status so obvious in the term). Under Modi, it sees itself as a power pole in its own right. New Delhi has proven its multi-alignment credentials, with its participation in the Quad, the BRICS and the China/Russia-conceived Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and its refusal to turn against traditional ally Moscow since the Ukraine war broke out. Biden is oiling the Indian hinge so it swings more Washington's way — and may be succeeding, given India's border clashes with China and its participation in joint military activities in the Pacific, Quad initiatives and Biden's Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF).ASEAN should be as critical a hinge player if not to win over, at least to keep "central" as the region's balancer — a crucial section of the lattice that would act as a security blanket for peace and stability. Some member states, worried that the China-U.S. rivalry undermines their agency, have warned the two great powers against forcing them to choose sides. ASEAN has not bought into the American Indo-Pacific construct, merely articulating an "outlook" on the concept. Southeast Asian nations will profit more not by putting on any one team's jersey, but instead playing the field as something of a referee or honest broker in good stead with both sides, however heated the competition.U.S. administrations have never taken the centrality of ASEAN seriously, largely because member states themselves have failed to show what it means to be the region's ballast. It is a systemic problem — ASEAN is no EU in either form or practice. Even though it has launched an "economic community" and has sought to address thorny problems, such as Myanmar and the South China Sea, as a group, it remains a politically divided, economically diverse collection of states, with a reputation for glacial progress and ineffectiveness. It was born this way, though it was successful in its founding mission to be a bulwark against communism's spread.But ASEAN has strengths beyond being the world's fifth largest economy. Its convening power is unmatched, reaching across economic and strategic spheres. Its ASEAN Regional Forum and ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting-Plus are as evolved and inclusive a strategic framework for the region as is possible. ASEAN-led platforms offer a neutral space for the great powers to interact on a wide range of issues. By lavishing attention on certain ASEAN members — the Philippines, Vietnam and Singapore (host of a U.S. military facility) — Washington is mimicking the Chinese divide-and-conquer approach (Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are reckoned to be on Team Beijing). But even small gaps weaken a lattice. The ASEAN way may be slow and plodding — negotiations with Beijing on a code of conduct in the South China Sea have dragged on for years — but this tortoise cannot be written off.In a speech on September 13 outlining "the power and purpose of American diplomacy," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tellingly never mentioned ASEAN. Yet, the Biden administration may be smartening up. Seven of the ASEAN 10 are part of the IPEF, the American answer to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), from which the U.S. withdrew, and the ASEAN-China concocted Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade accord. And guess who's coming to the White House for a bilateral with Biden in November? Indonesian President Joko Widodo, the very leader whom Biden "snubbed" in favor of one night in Vietnam. With its sizable population, strategic geographical position, participation in China's BRI, a maritime dispute of its own with Beijing, a growing strategic relationship with Washington, and a critical presidential election next year, Indonesia is the key hinge power in Southeast Asia. Like India, it has proven its agency and pragmatism, particularly in vital areas such as data security standards and infrastructure development. Giving Jakarta more attention would bolster ASEAN's position in the American Indo-Pacific latticework, especially with Laos, a country that tilts towards Beijing and is taking over from Indonesia as ASEAN chair next year.

When Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup d'état to oust the civilian government of the Directorate in France, he justified his actions as necessary to save the spirit of the Revolution. The army, in Napoleon's view, had a solemn obligation to defend the nation against threats both at home and abroad.The notion that a military, as guardians of a national spirit, has the right to seize the authority of the state became known as Bonapartism. This seemingly persistent belief in certain militaries in Africa emphasizes the need for comprehensive reform.Military regimes can perceive themselves to be better at governance than civilians. The simplicity of efficiently carrying out orders stands in stark contrast to the seemingly endless bureaucracy impeded by incompetence and corruption. In crises where politics leads to impasses in service delivery, the military's projection as being "above politics" can help it seize and keep power in fragile states.Despite the anti-French rhetoric of coup leaders in Africa, many of them nonetheless invoke this spirit of Bonapartism in acting to "save" the state. As the French Revolution began to eat itself under the Reign of Terror, for Napoleon the only means to preserve the Revolution was for its defenders to remove the civilian leadership by force.This was no singular event. Several times in the 19th and 20th centuries, the French army forced dramatic changes in the state whenever the national spirit had been challenged. Bonapartism furthermore formed a significant part of military formation in France's colonies, particularly in Africa.The problem with Bonapartism is that it has greatly undermined attempts to professionalize security forces. When we speak of professional soldiers outside of a (former) colonial setting, we mean a trained soldier who readily accepts and defends civilian authority. Such a situation is so taken for granted today that we do not always appreciate how necessary this is for a thriving democracy.If a military perceives itself to be better, more competent, or in some way less fallible than the civilian government, then a risk of Bonapartism can persist regardless of how well trained they might be. U.S. training of officers, such as those in Niger, may unintentionally lead to a growing confidence in the military about their competence and increase the risk of a takeover.The officers leading the coups in Niger and Gabon cite persistent civilian misrule, aided in no small part by continued French dominance in domestic political and economic policies in both countries, as the primary justification for their intervention. They present themselves as acting in the best interests of the nations they are nominally intended to protect. Seizing power away from incompetent civilians is merely a continuation of their duty.Scenes of crowds celebrating the removal of decades-long dictatorships do indicate at least a modicum of legitimacy for the military's actions in Gabon. Many coup leaders across Africa have justified their actions on the demonstrable misrule by civilian governments. In almost every scenario, however, the coup leaders merely became the new dictators. These actions further emulate Napoleon's hold on power, although few did so as blatantly as Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic, who declared himself Emperor 4 December 1977.Bonapartism is not solely a francophone problem and can exist in any state with weak democratic institutions. In the cases of Zimbabwe and Egypt, despite the civilian façade, the spirit of Bonapartism still lingers. For both states, the military has long been the true source of the state's authority.Zimbabwe's elections are a mere formality, a political tradition rather than any substantive effort to change the civilian authority. Aside from the Egyptian military's brief foray into relinquishing power to the Muslim Brotherhood in 2012, the civilian leadership serves at the pleasure of the military, not the electorate. When the military felt that Egypt was at risk under the leadership of the Brotherhood, they acted to save the state by retaking authority, a quintessential Bonapartist action.The coup in Sudan that ousted Omar al-Bashir was a remarkably similar instance of a military acting to change the civilian leadership during a crisis. However, the current infighting among senior officers points to an entirely different matter. It's actually a misnomer to refer to states like Sudan as "weak." Rather, the problem lies in the fact that the state is too powerful in relation to other aspects of the society, particularly the economy.Such states are the 'only game in town' in terms of attaining mobility, income, and basic security. Fights over who controls the state become so violent because of a lack of options. As long as other sectors remain underdeveloped, the risks of coups will persist. In such cases, it may well be counter-productive to invest too much in the militaries, and making control of the military all the more tempting.There are steps the African Union and other international bodies can take to militate against Bonapartism. The first concerns the AU's Lomé Declaration of 2000, which established a norm against unconstitutional regime changes by stating that any extra constitutional changes in a government is grounds for immediate suspension. In practice, this commitment has been far from rock solid, with the AU making numerous exceptions over the years.Moreover, tougher penalties could be applied, especially in the form of mandating Security Sector Reform (SSR) as necessary processes to return to the AU.SSR entails a comprehensive overhaul of a state's security sector. The security sector includes not only the military but also the police, judiciary, and any intelligence services. Importantly, SSR requires more than mere training, as the Niger and Burkina Faso cases demonstrate. Therein lies the rub of military governance and strengthening democracies: the only body with the authority to restructure the military is the military itself.Save for the odd counter-example, democratic promises by army officers have rarely been realized. Even in instances where elections have been held, the military nonetheless retains inordinate influence over the civilian leadership, and the threat of future coups persists.SSR is neither cheap nor easy to adequately implement. One of the most important factors is rewriting a constitution with sufficient judicial strength to ensure that an elected legislative body has the ultimate authority over all security forces. Doing so must result in the end of Bonapartism for the military and the conclusion that they are not the sole nor ultimate defenders of the nation.The rush to hold elections after a coup is often seen as an act of good faith by coup-leaders to return a country to democracy. However, to be a democracy does not only mean having elections, as democracy contains a set of values, including civilian oversight and regulation of all coercive forces in a state.Every soldier needs to be educated on the importance of civilian leadership as they are far more likely to know what is in the best interests of the civilian population than a general. Military training by foreign experts without complementary democracy training is, as Niger bears out, counter-productive to the overall mission objectives of combating Islamist insurgencies. US foreign military training reportedly includes instruction on safeguarding democracy and human rights.While US policy is to immediately halt all military aid following a coup, the policy has not always been strictly enforced, more rigorous enforcement may be more effective in the long term. These recent coups raise the difficult question on the efficacy of democracy and human rights training for militaries who are evidently not receptive to the message.Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte attempted a similar overthrow of a civilian government as his more illustrious uncle in 1851. This more foolhardy power grab led Karl Marx to quip that "history repeats itself, the first as tragedy, the second as farce." Unless the right lessons are learned, the Bonapartism lurking in African militaries will continue the tragedy of military rule.

An American envoy and a Bahraini academic posed for the camera at a Washington hotel in October 2020, grinning ear to ear. They held a copy of an agreement between the U.S. State Department and the King Hamad Global Center for Peaceful Coexistence to combat antisemitism in Bahrain. Ellie Cohanim, then the U.S. assistant special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, called it "a model for a society that actively espouses religious freedom, tolerance and diversity of peoples."Thousands of miles away, in Bahrain itself, Sheikh Zuhair Jasim Abbas was sitting in a solitary confinement cell. His family had not heard from him since July. They would not again for several more months. According to a UN panel, the Shi'a Muslim cleric was allegedly beaten, starved, sleep-deprived, chained, attacked with water hoses, forbidden from using the bathroom, threatened with execution, and prevented from practicing his religious rituals.The Abraham Accords, the diplomatic agreements between Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, have been hailed as a victory for religious tolerance. The image of Muslims and Jews dancing together has convinced American policymakers from both parties that peace is breaking out across the Middle East. The Biden administration is reportedly offering the Saudi government a huge bribe — perhaps even a commitment to go to war on the kingdom's behalf — to get Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords as well.New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman seems to sum up the Biden administration's logic: that a Saudi-Israeli agreement would "open the way for peace between Israel and the whole Muslim world" and "dramatically reduce the Muslim-Jewish antipathy born over a century ago with the start of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict."But the Abraham Accords are attached to a social order that is deeply unequal, divided along ethnic and religious lines. While Israel allows foreign Muslims to visit Jerusalem, it rules over millions of Palestinians against their will. (That conflict is more about nationalism in the here and now than "Muslim-Jewish antipathy.") And while some monarchies in the Persian Gulf are beginning to embrace foreigners of different religions, those same states — especially Bahrain — treat their native Shi'a Muslims as a potential fifth column.For the past few years, some of the Gulf monarchies have been engaged in a project to replace Israel with Iran as the main enemy of the Arab masses. On one hand, these countries have repressed pro-Palestine activism and promoted an image of Palestinians as parasitic ingrates. On the other hand, they have encouraged fears of Iranian power, often conflating Iran with Shi'a Muslims as a whole. Israel has encouraged both prejudices as part of its outreach to Middle Eastern publics. Rather than a victory for religious tolerance, the Abraham Accords are the culmination of an attempt by Israel and its new Gulf allies to rearrange their official enemy lists.In 2018, as Israel was beginning direct talks with Emirati and Bahraini diplomats, Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee turned into a fountain of anti-Shi'a incitement. Quoting medieval Sunni scholars, Adraee claimed on video that Shi'a Muslims are "fundamentally hypocrites and liars who invent falsehoods to ruin Islam." A few months later, he complained that Iran is "transforming citizens into Shi'a" across the Arab world.After the Abraham Accords were signed, Adraee ranted that Sunni Palestinians who prayed alongside Shi'a were leaving the fold of Sunni Islam: "How do these 'believers' justify praying behind those who stab the back of the Sunni world?" The spirit of Muslim-Jewish reconciliation, with its emphasis on interfaith photo ops, clearly does not apply to Sunni-Shi'a relations.It's worth noting that, although Iran is the largest Shi'a-majority state, most Shi'a Muslims live outside of Iran, in India, Pakistan, and the Arab world. And religious Shi'a have been at the forefront of resisting the Iranian theocracy, both inside and outside Iran. However, casting all Shi'a as Iranian agents serves a political purpose. Unrest in areas like eastern Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, where the majority of the population is Shi'a, can be dismissed as foreign terrorism, rather than a case of Arab citizens demanding equal rights. In the words of one Saudi commentator, Arabs who embrace Shi'a identity politics "have sadly become Persian."While trying to terrify Sunnis about the Iranian menace, the Israeli government has also worked to turn Iranians against Palestinians. Last year, when a few Iranian protesters were filmed stomping on a Palestinian symbol, the Israeli foreign ministry loudly promoted that image. The ministry's Persian-language account is filled with sarcastic jokes about the "oppressed Palestinians," along with claims that "they teach hatred and violence" to their children.As the Abraham Accords were finalized, the Gulf states that moved closer to Israel also began to take more of an anti-Palestinian line. Americans celebrated, and rightfully so, when Saudi television or the Emirati school system presented a more sympathetic view of Jews. At the same time, however, Saudi and Emirati media figures got louder about what they considered Palestinian "treachery." In the words of a Saudi soap opera character, the average Palestinian is an ingrate who "doesn't appreciate you standing by him, who curses you day and night — more than the Israelis." Given the heavy censorship that Saudi and Emirati media are subject to, this change in tone must have reflected official policy. Just as political concerns led Gulf states to tone down anti-Jewish prejudice, different political concerns could lead them to tone down other prejudices. At times when Israeli authorities aggressively asserted their sovereignty over Islamic holy sites — especially under the ultra-nationalist Israeli government elected in 2022 — the Gulf has returned to a more pro-Palestine tone. After Saudi Arabia mended ties with Iran earlier this year, Saudi authorities loosened restrictions on Shi'a pilgrims, and prominent Saudi propagandist Hussain al-Ghawi embraced Shi'a as his Muslim brothers. Ironically, American media did not celebrate the Saudi-Iranian pact as the dawn of religious harmony, but instead raised the alarm that Washington was losing its influence in the region.The American cultural understanding of the Middle East is centered on Israel, and anti-Palestinian racism is normalized in U.S. politics. On the other hand, Washington views Sunni-Shi'a sectarianism as a geopolitical game. During the occupation of Iraq and the decades of war that followed, U.S. policymakers treated "Sunni" and "Shi'a" like pieces on a chessboard, debating which side to favor at any given time. Instead of seeing this sectarianism as a terrible policy failure, U.S. politicians blamed Muslims' own attachment to "tribalism" and "conflicts that date back millennia," as former President Barack Obama put it.And so the Abraham Accords help flatter American elites. Israel and its Gulf allies can make a big show of overcoming Muslim-Jewish tensions — which Americans see as the central moral question of the Middle East — with U.S. support. The other prejudices involved in maintaining the system simply don't register on Americans' radar.Other states are starting to appeal to the West through the same strategy. Azerbaijan is fighting a brutal ethnic conflict against Armenia. Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani government has made a big show of hosting foreign Christian and Jewish delegations. Those guests often go on to praise Azerbaijan as an oasis of Muslim tolerance — rather than a secular nationalist dictatorship whose ethnic hatred of Armenians outweighs any religious concern.It's noble to want American diplomats to resolve conflicts and promote harmony between religions. But the Abraham Accords are intentionally misleading in that regard. Under the guise of peacemaking, the alliance helps authoritarian governments maintain divisions, albeit among communities that U.S. elites don't care about. The real path to peace comes through justice and mutual respect, not simply rearranging enemy lists.

It is inevitable in any war — even a proxy one — that identical actions by the "enemy" and by your own side will be portrayed as wicked in the first case, moral and justified in the second. In much of the U.S. establishment and media however, belief in the innate righteousness of U.S. actions is so deeply-rooted that it can become a serious danger to the successful conduct of Washington policy. Why? Because it blinds American policymakers to the likely consequences of their own actions.The latest example of this involves the scheduled meeting between President Vladimir Putin and North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un. Most Western analysis has focused — probably correctly — on the likelihood that this will lead North Korea to provide Russia with artillery shells, of which North Korea has enormous reserves and considerable production capacity.The fighting in Ukraine seems to be moving towards a long-term war of attrition, and in such a war, levels of ammunition will play an absolutely central role. This is not an issue of the wickedness of the Russian invasion and the righteousness of support for Ukraine. It is a matter of hard military logistics.In return, Russia will at the very least help Pyongyang's cash-starved economy with subsidized energy. Depending on the scale of North Korean ammunition supplies to Russia, it is, however, very likely that Russia will agree to supply advanced missile technology in return.This would be a very serious step. While North Korea has possessed the capability to make nuclear weapons since at least 2006, its ballistic missile technology has developed much more slowly, limiting the range and accuracy of its arsenal. If North Korea with Russian help develops a significant number of nuclear missiles capable of striking the continental United States, this would mark an important shift in the military balance of power in North East Asia. At the very least, it would strengthen the North Korean regime considerably. In the worst case, the desire to prevent this from happening at all costs could propel a U.S. administration into some hideously dangerous preemptive military action.This anticipated deal between Russia and North Korea has led to predictable expressions of outrage from U.S. officials and journalists. So we must ask: What exactly did the Biden administration expect to happen as a result of its own actions? This spring, Washington brought intense pressure to bear on the government of South Korea to supply Ukraine with weapons and ammunition, though Seoul had made its reluctance to do this extremely clear. In the end, a compromise was reached whereby South Korea would not supply Ukraine directly, but would "lend" 500,000 artillery shells to replenish U.S. stocks — thereby allowing the U.S. to transfer a similar number to Ukraine.You do not have to be a Russian sympathizer to see this as a distinction without a difference. Did nobody in the CIA, Pentagon, or State Department warn the White House that this would likely lead to a deal on weapons supplies between Russia and North Korea, and see the potential negative consequences for U.S., South Korean, and Japanese security? This does not mean Washington could not or should not support Ukraine. However, if Washington wished to do this while avoiding broader negative ramifications globally, then there are only two possible paths to follow. First, refrain from certain actions (like the attempt to universalize sanctions against Russia) that have tended in this direction. Second, pursue talks with Russia — such as what took place at the height of the Cold War — aimed at formal or informal agreements that would rule out certain international actions by both sides, such as procuring weapons and ammunition from other countries in regions of high local tensions. Despite this Cold War precedent, all proposals for such talks have been howled down with accusations of "cowardice" and "treason."This is what the great American Realist thinker on international relations, Hans Morgenthau, meant when he wrote that it is a fundamental duty of statesmen to cultivate the ability to think themselves into the shoes of their opposite numbers — not to agree with them, but to understand how they are likely to behave in a given situation, so as to be able to craft your own policies accordingly. As Morgenthau also wrote, blind national self-righteousness is the greatest single obstacle to the cultivation of this ability.In the case of North Korea, this attitude long predates the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The description of North Korea as a "rogue state," endlessly repeated by an uncritical media, has helped to lock in this attitude until attempts by analysts to understand the conflict from the perspective of Pyongyang become completely impossible. Blind hostility to North Korea extends to relations between North Korea and its neighbors — which in addition to South Korea are, it may be remembered, China and Russia, but not the United States. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia drastically reduced its economic relations with North Korea and generally played a constructive role in cooperating with Washington to constrain Pyongyang's nuclear and missile development. China has maintained trade with North Korea, and this has undoubtedly played a key part in preserving the North Korean state; but Beijing has also used its economic influence to punish overly inflammatory actions by Pyongyang and has put pressure on the recalcitrant regime to engage in disarmament talks.Yet instead of recognizing this – and in consequence recognizing the consequences for America and South Korea if Moscow and Beijing were to move to actual full-scale support for North Korea – the overwhelming U.S. establishment and media response has been to blame Russia and China for not joining the U.S. in strengthening sanctions against North Korea even further. No understanding at all has been shown of the fears of both countries that an implosion of the North Korean state would create a massive crisis on their own borders.The U.S. failure to predict the likely — even inevitable — consequences of the U.S.-South Korean ammunition deal was bad enough. Much worse could be the consequences of the Biden administration's action last month in pulling South Korea into a much tighter security relationship with Japan as well as the United States — a grouping that Beijing will no doubt see as a threat to its interests and a probable future U.S. tool for the containment of China. Once again, has nobody in the U.S. foreign and security establishment warned the administration that the result is likely to be stronger Chinese support for Pyongyang?On the Korean peninsula, in Ukraine and everywhere else, developing the capacity to understand the motivations and predict the actions of other states requires that U.S. policymakers look honestly at the U.S. record and how America is likely to act and react in given circumstances. This includes self-awareness about the history of the Monroe Doctrine and U.S. determination to exclude any potentially hostile alliance or even influence from countries close to America's own borders — even if this means supporting or bringing to power some extremely vile local allies. Thus if American diplomats complain to their Chinese counterparts about Beijing's relationship with Kim Jong Un, the Chinese might reply wo men de wangba dan. This is (I am told) how you say "our son of a bitch" in Chinese; and it is an ancient Chinese principle most famously stated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. If U.S. policymakers remembered that aspect of their own history and policies, we can begin to develop a capacity for strategic empathy, and avoid increasing the dangers on the Korean peninsula, which Lord knows are dangerous enough already.

The leaders of the world's largest economies will gather this weekend in New Delhi, India, for the G20 summit. The meeting comes at a complex time for the grouping, which is one of the rare venues where Russian, Chinese, American and European leaders have to rub shoulders each year.India no doubt hopes to boost its profile as a Global South leader by focusing on issues like climate change and global food prices, but this year's summit risks being paralyzed by Russia's war in Ukraine, arguments over which prevented the grouping from agreeing on a joint communique at its 2022 meeting.Further complicating the summit is the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are not planning to attend. Xi's snub has drawn particular attention given increasing tensions between the U.S. and China, which got a rare respite last year when the Chinese leader held a three-hour meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden.Few analysts are better positioned to break down these dynamics than Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's former ambassador to the United Nations and a distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute. After a 30-year career in diplomacy, Mahbubani has emerged as a leading commentator on international affairs with a special focus on Asia and the Global South.RS caught up with Mahbubani over email to get his take on the summit and the shifting geopolitical landscape that will frame it. The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.RS: What is India hoping to get from the G20 Summit? How does it factor into Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision for India's role in the world?Mahbubani: The G20 summit is a big deal for PM Modi and his government. He has both domestic and international goals to achieve at this meeting. Domestically, a successful G20 will raise the stature of his government and himself in the build-up to the national elections in 2024. Internationally, PM Modi would like to position India as an emerging world leader. Hence, he will work hard to enhance the voice of the Global South in the G20 summit in India. He will push hard to get the African Union represented as a member.RS: Notably, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin have both chosen to forgo this year's event. How will their absence affect the meetings?Mahbubani: Putin's absence is not surprising. He also missed the G20 summit in Bali last year. He is preoccupied with the war in Ukraine. He may also be shunned by other leaders. Hence, it is wise for Putin not to attend. However, if Xi Jinping decides not to participate, it will sadly diminish the significance of the G20 Summit. The most important bilateral relationship in the world is between the U.S. and China. Just before the G20 summit in Bali in November 2022, [Indonesian] President Jokowi invited me to breakfast to discuss the agenda. I told him that the world would thank him if he organized a good meeting between President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping. He responded to me by saying, "Please don't worry. I've given them the nicest room in Bali for the meeting." This worked. Biden and Xi had a good meeting. The world breathed a sigh of relief. There will not be a similar sigh of relief after the G20 summit in New Delhi.Please let me add here that it is possible that President Xi may have decided not to attend this meeting in New Delhi as he will have another opportunity to meet President Biden in the U.S. for the APEC Summit in November.RS: Biden will be in attendance in New Delhi. Do you have a sense of what the United States is hoping to get from the summit?Mahbubani: The U.S. is courting India ferociously. Paradoxically, the best comparison to make of this courtship is with the ferocious courtship of China by the U.S. to counterbalance the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Today, to counterbalance China, the U.S. is courting India. This is why President Biden is attending the G20 summit in India and skipping the East Asia Summit in Indonesia. Realistically, the U.S. does not expect to get much from the G20 Summit in India. The most successful G20 summit ever was the 2009 meeting in London, when the G20 came together to rescue the U.S. and other Western economies during the global financial crisis. Today, the U.S. economy is doing relatively well. Hence, the U.S. expects little from the G20 summit in New Delhi. Little of substance will emerge from the summit. It may well prove to be, like many G7 meetings, a photo opportunity for the leaders attending it.RS: Do you expect the war in Ukraine to dominate conversation as it has in other international forums? Are you concerned that it will pull attention away from other global issues, like climate change and the ongoing food crisis?Mahbubani: There will be a continuing tension between the leaders of the Global South and the G7 leaders attending the G20 meeting. The Global South would like to focus on their preoccupations, like their ongoing development challenges, including the food crisis. They would also like the G7 leaders to fulfill their commitments to help the Global South fight climate change. By contrast, the G7 leaders would want to focus on the war on Ukraine and try to get a strong statement condemning Russia at the meeting. There will be no meeting of minds between the Global South and G7 leaders. At best, one can expect a compromise which tries to fudge the big differences between the two sides.In many ways, it is fortunate that India is hosting the G20 summit this year. The only major country that enjoys a high level of trust from both the Global South and G7 countries is India. Only India can pull off a compromise solution between the two sides. If India fails, it will show that the gap between the two sides is too big to be bridged. The world will remain divided.RS: The event comes less than a month after BRICS held a much-remarked summit in South Africa, where the group formally invited Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UAE, Ethiopia, Argentina and Egypt to join. BRICS and the G7 each now have seven members of the G20. Do you expect these groups to act as competing blocs in the summit? How does the rise of BRICS change the G20's dynamics?
Mahbubani: Over the past 20 years, the global media, especially the Western media, has paid far more attention to G7 events than to BRICS events. This reflects a major error of judgment. The G7 is a sunset organization. BRICS is a sunrise organization. In 1990, in PPP terms, the combined Gross National Product (GNP) of G7 was more than double that of the BRICS countries. Today, it is less. Equally significantly, 40 countries have applied to join BRICS. There is no similar rush of applications to join the G7. In my book, The Asian 21st Century (which is an open access book), I describe how the world is psychologically preparing for the Asian century. The 88 percent of the world's population who live outside the West understand this reality. The 12 percent who live in the West don't understand this.If the West wishes to pursue a wiser course of action, it should use the forthcoming G20 summit in New Delhi to build new bridges with the Global South. It should also learn to share power by allowing, for example, Global South representatives to run organizations like the IMF and World Bank. Sadly, the West is unlikely to do this. Hence, it will waste the valuable opportunity provided by the G20 summit meeting in New Delhi to build new bridges to the Global South.

Countries with consulates in Hong Kong are trying to figure out how to reengage with the Chinese special administrative region (SAR). Diplomacy and people-to-people interaction (including tourism) stopped in 2019 when anti-government demonstrations erupted. The freeze continued as the protests were quelled, first by Covid-19 fears and infection-control measures and then by China's imposition of a national security law (NSL) for Hong Kong.With conferences and big-ticket events resuming, Hong Kong is back in business. Tourists have returned, though arrivals in the first six months of 2023 were less than half the pre-pandemic level. Business, academic and civil society delegations have trickled in, what with mainland China itself open again.On the political front, countries are only gingerly reengaging with Hong Kong. Official visits by foreign government representatives are not happening – with one exception. In May, Dominic Johnson, Britain's minister for investment, became the first UK minister to visit in five years. In a local newspaper op-ed, he explained that, while Britain would engage "robustly and constructively" with China and Hong Kong when interests converge, it would "stand up for our values and be clear about our right to act when Beijing breaks its international commitments or abuses human rights."In March, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Rick Waters spent a few days in Hong Kong on an unofficial visit before making similarly low-key stops in Shanghai and Beijing. Even as the U.S. and China have reengaged in senior-level talks, including between national leaders, Washington seems intent on keeping its distance from Hong Kong. The White House is reported to be barring Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee from participating in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in San Francisco in November. After the NSL was imposed in 2020, the U.S. sanctioned Lee, then Hong Kong's secretary for security, along with 10 other SAR and Chinese officials. What are the obstacles to U.S. reengagement with Hong Kong? Domestic political pressure from supporters of Hong Kong democracy activists, many in prison in the SAR or in exile, has played a part. The Congressional-Executive Committee on China recently issued a report on the Hong Kong judiciary and the NSL in which it called for sanctions to be imposed on 29 of the city's judges, including the chief justice. The Hong Kong government has not made it easy for the U.S. and other countries to reengage. The announcement of bounties for fugitive dissidents, prosecutions of politicians and activists, the closing down of media outlets, refusing visas to overseas scholars or blocking civil-society figures from entering the SAR, the legal effort to force online platforms to remove a protest anthem from the internet, and other actions by the SAR government have meant that diplomatic outreach can be politically problematic, especially for Washington, given that it no longer recognizes Hong Kong's autonomy. Apocalyptic narratives about life in the SAR have only gained currency inside the Beltway.Has the NSL eviscerated "one country, two systems?" Hong Kong continues to have agency, but under pressure, the government chooses to act in ways that it perceives Beijing would want it to. For example, Hong Kong's ban on seafood imports from Japan after Tokyo began to release Fukushima waste water into the ocean on August 24 hewed to Beijing's position. Second-guessing the sovereign has been a well-established modus operandi of Hong Kong public administration since British colonial days. That the common law still underpins Hong Kong's rule of law remains evident – the legal system continues to function as before, albeit with security-related cases in a separate domain. Consider court judgments such as the rejection of the government's request to remove the protest song from online platforms. (The government is appealing.) Or the overturning of the conviction of an investigative journalist for making false statements. Or a judgment by the Court of Final Appeal on a sentencing case that rejected lower-court references to mainland legal texts. As British minister Johnson argued for his country, it is still in the interest of the U.S. to engage with Hong Kong. The SAR will remain an important international financial center — granted, an international financial center in China – closely aligned with China's growth needs. Hong Kong's role in China's financial and economic development is secure, especially now that the city has restored law and order and moved beyond Covid. Should the U.S. continue to work with the SAR, despite the argument that doing so would benefit China and the Chinese Communist Party? American business and the market will answer that question, if Washington will let them rather than fixate on escalating decoupling. Ask local business leaders or foreign investors in Hong Kong, and many will say that the NSL has at least restored order, public safety and predictability. Whatever one's perspective on the law, what is clear is that the SAR's operating system remains distinct from the mainland's. Indeed, for some in Hong Kong, that Beijing moved ahead with the NSL, despite expectations of sharp criticism from the U.S. and the West, has put paid to the idea that China is setting up Shenzhen or Shanghai to eclipse the SAR. One China watcher in Hong Kong points to the city's universities and their academic freedom, still broader than in mainland institutions, as another key indicator.Cora Chan, a law professor at The University of Hong Kong, has analyzed the relationship between the Hong Kong and Chinese legal orders using German political scientist Ernst Fraenkel's "dual state" framework, which is useful for understanding why it is crucial for the U.S. and other countries that have had robust working relationships with Hong Kong to continue doing so. It is critical to bolster the normative state, which includes the judiciary and higher-education system, that exists in the SAR even as mechanisms of the prerogative state, as represented by the national security apparatus, are applied. Those who care about defending norms should step up — not limit — people-to-people exchanges and other contacts. Now is not the time to shun Hong Kong. In the aftermath of the 2019 protests, the U.S. and other nations sought to attract immigrants from Hong Kong. Facilitating a brain drain may help the destination country in manpower and skills development, but it does not benefit Hong Kong's people and society. For Washington, finding politically palatable ways to work with Hong Kong is challenging. There are collaborative frameworks already in place that could be strengthened, including those for academic exchange, countering human and drug trafficking, customs facilitation, and programs such as the U.S. Container Security Initiative for safeguarding maritime trade and the China-US agreement to allow a U.S. accounting oversight board to investigate audit firms in Hong Kong and the mainland. One obvious low-hanging fruit: the restoration of the Fulbright educational exchange programs for Hong Kong, which Donald Trump suspended in 2020 along with those for China. In March, three members of the House of Representatives introduced a bill to restart the exchanges for both China and Hong Kong. Congressional staffers familiar with the proposed legislation are skeptical that it will pass, especially with the 2024 elections looming. Joe Biden could be politically "bold" and reinstate the exchanges — even if just for Hong Kong — with one signature. Doing so would be a significant sign of support for the SAR's daily norm defenders.