Foreign Affairs

Facing the Truth About Egypt

Mark Noonan3 Comments

Representative Kay Granger (R-TX) says cut off Egypt if peace is threatened – from the Jerusalem Post:

Washington’s $2 billion in annual aid to Egypt will be cut off if Cairo backs out of the peace treaty with Israel, Congresswoman Kay Granger – whose job as chairwoman of the US House appropriations foreign operations subcommittee means she literally writes America’s annual foreign aid bill – told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

“The United States aid to Egypt is predicated on the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, and so the relationship between Egypt and Israel is extremely important,” the eight-term Republican from Texas said in an interview…

This is only sensible – in order to secure peace between Israel and Egypt, the United States and Israel went about 100 extra miles to secure Egypt’s agreement.  It must be remember that Egypt was the clear loser in two wars of aggression launched against Israel.

As a result of those two wars, Israel had gained and retained firm control of the Sinai…and could easily have pressed far beyond the Suez Canal at will.  Israel was under no moral or legal requirement to return a square inch of formerly Egyptian territory…heck, Germany has more claim to East Prussia these days than Egypt had to the Sinai after the Yom Kippur War.  But Israel sincerely wanted (and still wants), peace.  It seemed not too great a price to free Israel from the renewed threat of war with Egypt…and so Israel agreed to surrender to the losers in the matter of the Sinai.

For the United States, it was a matter that Egypt had played a huge role in messing up the Middle East, forcing the United States to expend vast amounts of time and resources fixing what Egypt had broken.  But we also wanted peace between Israel and Egypt – and so we figured a relatively endless number of billions of dollars was worth it.  In the end, what Egypt – the aggressor/loser – got was all that Egypt had justly lost, plus a massive, monetary bribe from us to make peace.  And so peace was made – but the price of peace on Egypt’s part is to not in any way, shape or form threaten Israel.

Right now, that is shifting…and if the Moslem Brotherhood gains even partial power in Egypt in the upcoming elections, then that shift will become more pronounced.  The price Egypt must pay for breaking the terms of the peace treaty is to lose the bribe we offered…and we’ll leave it up to Israel if they want to take back Israeli territory in the Sinai (and I think they should – forthwith, before the new Egyptian government gets organized and, perhaps, moves major military forces in to the Sinai).  A deal is a deal, and the Egyptians are breaking it…and I don’t have any concern at all about why Egypt might be doing this.  It is immaterial…there can be no justification, and so all deals are off.  The Egyptians must be instructed that the losers can make no demands…and can’t ever change the terms.

It is high time we learned that you can’t play around with things like this – watching and waiting and hoping things will come out right just doesn’t work.  The graves of Egyptians and Israelis are already being dug due to Egyptian actions…the quicker things are resolved, the fewer there will be.  It is a matter of acting forcefully in the near term in order to cut off a catastrophe in the long term.

The Gaddafi-Go-Round

Mark Noonan4 Comments

He’s captured, he’s dead…his sons are captured, they’re not captured…they will give you a tour of Tripoli.  The Right Scoop has links to the television video.

Anyone have the foggiest notion of what is going on in Libya?  I sure as heck don’t….but let’s not count Gaddafi out until he’s strung up somewhere…

I guess it all depends on how much money Gaddafi has…has he enough to buy mercenaries, or buy off part of the  rebels?  I guess we’ll have to sit tight and see.

The Libyan Revolution

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Hot Air has the best running thread – but it does look like the end has come, and perhaps not just for the regime.  From Twitter:

Mohammed Gaddafi to Al Jazeera: (gun fire got louder here) “I..I… I am being attacked right now..inside, inside my house, inside”

So, now what?  No one knows – I don’t think anyone has anything but the haziest notion of what is going on among the rising power players in Libya.  The vacuum caused by the downfall of a 40+ year regime is bound to be large and difficult to fill.  All sorts of people with motives from noble to base and everywhere in between will be vying for power.  It could get messy.

Mostly we’re just going to have to be spectators – we can try to help (and certainly must help in humanitarian matters), but until at least some sort of nationally recognized authority emerges, there’s no “side” for us to take, as it were.

I would like to pause a moment here and remember – Gaddafi has been in power for most of my life.  He’s been reviled and lauded…hated and admired.  But in all the commentary I’ve ever seen on him, no one has dared to hit the nail on the head…he was merely a corrupt and cruel man who for his own, personal ambition took control of a nation and ran it as a private estate.  Everyone, as far as I can tell, took the man seriously – that he actually had something of an ideal in his mind that he was striving for, even if a mistaken ideal.  No one ever said, “hey, a man who claims he wants justice and murders his opponents, who claims he’s an Moslem purists but buys his arms from an atheist USSR; who claims to be a man of the people but sets his family up in a lavish lifestyle is nothing more than a lying sack of feces.”

This is what bothers be about the world – the way we go along with whatever someone says.  No one is courageous enough to say the emperor has no clothes.  Utter BS draped in rhetoric and aping rationality is treated as the real thing.  It isn’t just Gaddafi…it is all such regimes we’ve seen..starting with Lenin’s Russia, Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany.  Here’s the truth about someone like Lenin – he kept a stash of western cash and a fake passport with him while he was ruling Russia, in case he had to make a quick getaway.  People who do evil know full well they are doing evil…they dress up their wickedness in fine words because it works…it hoodwinks people.

Stop being hoodwinked – the next Gaddafi to happen along, treat him as he is…a thief, a murderer, a liar, a philanderer…a complete creep who managed to gain power, and nothing more.

Germany Not Interested in Bailing Out Europe

Mark Noonan2 Comments

From Bloomberg:

Germany on Saturday rebuffed renewed calls that euro zone countries should issue joint euro-denominated bonds and have a joint finance minister, arguing that would only be possible if fiscal policy were collective already.

“As long as we don’t collectivise financial policy we also cannot have a uniform interest rate level. The different rate levels are the incentive to run a solid economy or the punishment if you are not running it properly,” Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, speaking at his ministry’s open day…

Really, it is the only way for Germany to act right now – the Eurobonds proposals, as they are, really amount to nothing more than bankrupt nation like Spain and Italy transferring a substantial part of their debt to German taxpayers.  Not only would this be political suicide for Germany’s ruling party, it would also be economically disastrous.  It wouldn’t actually stop the default, it would just delay it…and would ensure that when it came, it took Germany down with it.

Germany has tried very hard since World War Two – with great success – to put to rest the aggressive, wicked Germany of the two world wars.  They have gone way above and beyond the call of duty in being “good Europeans” and making things work.  But it is too much to ask that hard working, sensible Germans should have their economy killed off simply because Eurozone bureaucrats and profligate foreigners don’t want to pay the piper.

The bad news here – because Germany is unwilling to sign off on Eurobonds, there is not much the European Central Bank can do to sustain European banks and markets. Could be a rocky Monday in Europe…

Gaddafi Quits?

Mark Noonan1 Comment

From the Telegraph:

…Following an emergency EU meeting of foreign ministers on the situation in Libya, Mr Hague was asked if Britain, or other Western countries, knew if Col. Gaddafi had left Tripoli.

“About whether Col. Gaddafi, is in Venezuela, I have no information that says he is although I have seen some information that suggests he is on his way there,” he said.

British officials stressed that Mr Hague was referring “not to media reports but information from other channels”. “This is credible information,” said a diplomat…

We’ll know in a day or two if this is the case – good riddance to bad rubbish.  But, also, quite a mess to be cleaned up…and one which would have been cleaned up months ago, at much lower cost in blood and treasure, if President Obama had acted with force and decision early on.

What our concern must be now, outside of humanitarian assistance to those injured and displaced by war, is what sort of government emerges.  Reasonably sane, sorta-democratic – good.  Screwball Islamist, not so good.  And I would discount all current information on those leading the rebels – we don’t really know what they are about, and there could be massive changes in that area as the spoils of victory get divvied up.

The Crisis Between Egypt and Israel

Mark Noonan37 Comments

Getting a little hotter while diplomats scurry – from the New York Times:

Diplomats scrambled to avert a crisis in relations between Egypt and Israel on Saturday, and the Israeli government issued a rare statement of regret for the killing of three Egyptian security officers by an Israeli warplane.

Tensions between the two countries, which on Saturday led Egypt to announce that it would recall its ambassador from Tel Aviv, reached the worst point since the Camp David peace accords three decades ago, spurred by a burst of violence along their shared border in the Sinai Peninsula. A series of attacks there killed eight Israelis on Thursday; the Israeli government then retaliated against Gaza-based militants, and the three Egyptians died in the crossfire…

My question: were the security officers in Gaza?  If so, why?  If they were, then it is yet another indication that at least elements of the Egyptian government are fomenting war between Egypt and Israel.  That is really the crucial issue…not who killed whom, but why certain people did certain actions.

Naturally, the diplomats will miss this – their whole desire will be just to paper over the cracks and essentially pretend that nothing happened.  But something has happened…and it is a disturbing development in that Egypt may be in the process of breaking the peace treaty.

The best course of action right now is an assertive stance by Israel – a refusal to allow things to slowly disintegrate.  Put the Egyptians on the spot – do they want peace, or do they want war?  Either all attacks from Gaza cease, or not.  That is the price of real peace between Egypt and Israel at this moment – anything less than that means war, even if conventional battles are put off for months or years.

The Necessity of Pushing Egypt Back in the Sinai

Mark Noonan24 Comments

The attack in to Israel which came by way of Gaza terrorists infiltrating from the Sinai indicates the true state of affairs in Egypt – a significant part of Egyptian authority is willing to aid terrorist attacks against Israel.  This new fact by itself nullifies the Israel-Egypt peace treaty – we’re essentially back to 1967.

The proper response by the Israelis would be to push the Egyptians back from the Gaza and Israeli borders – at least 25 miles so as to put southern Israel out of easy rocket/terrorist range.  This would also allow a complete sealing off of Gaza and that would eventually result in the terrorists in Gaza running out of ammunition.

Remember, the Israelis gave up the Sinai in order to have peace with Egypt – unless the southern border of Israel is 100% secure against attack, there is no reason for Israel to stay out of the Sinai.  And it is better to act now than wait for the Egyptian government to move major military forces in to the area.

Jerusalem is in Israel

Mark Noonan30 Comments

In spite of what some might want us to believe – from Jewish Journal:

Jerusalem: To be or not to be part of Israel. That’s the question that White House administrations have tiptoed around for decades.

The State Department neither recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s official capital nor views the eastern part of the city—captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed—as part of Israel. But Congress passed a law in 2002 that effectively recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Presidents have been caught in the middle, cautiously balancing their pro-Israel rhetoric against longstanding U.S. policy.

That’s exactly where the Obama administration found itself last week after news reports revealed that the White House quietly had removed all references to Jerusalem as being part of Israel from a collection of photos on its website…

It is amazingly cowardly of us to not just recognize historic and current reality – Jerusalem is the capitol of Israel.  To all intents and purposes, it always has been and always will be.  Its been 44 years since the Israelis liberated the eastern section of Jerusalem from Moslem misrule and it is high time we just bit the bullet and did the right thing.

But we can’t do that!  It would offend Islam!  Yeah, and our failure to recognize Jerusalem as part of Israel has won us just so many friend in the Moslem world, right?  Get real – there is nothing we can do to make them hate us any more than they already do, while a course of forthright action will at least instruct them that we are people of courage and not to be trifled with.  Recognize the Israeli liberation of Jerusalem..and throw in the Golan for good measure.  Time to end this silliness and start acting like we’ve got a backbone.

Italy Seeks a Bail Out

Mark Noonan27 Comments

From Market Watch:

Italy’s economy minister has said that a solution to the euro zone’s current debt crisis would be the creation of euro bonds, according to a report published Saturday.

Reuters reported that Giulio Tremonti said that such bonds would have prevented the continent from reaching the point it has, with Greece, Ireland and Italy among countries pushing through austerity measures in the hope of avoiding sovereign defaults.

Tremonti said joint-issued bonds would make nations’ debt a shared burden, and was quoted by Reuters as saying that they would be “master solution” to the crisis…

It is actually a way of making Germany a co-signer on Italy’s debt…and Spain’s and Portugal’s and Greece’s, etc, etc etc.  I’m not enough of a finance guy to figure out exactly how such a thing would play out, but I do know enough to understand that Germany cannot underwrite the bad debt of the Eurozone.  This may well plug the leak, but only for a few months…and you’d have to get German taxpayers to agree to put their stellar bond rating on the line for Italy and the rest of the PIIGS.  That is a dicey proposition, at best.

In the end, the fact remains that the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) owe far more than their economies can pay back .  There is no way to make up for this deficit between debt and wealth…either by printing money (and thus devaluing the currency) or by straight default, those who hold the bonds of the PIIGS will have to take a loss.  There may be a way to soften the blow, but the blow must fall…default (straight up or disguised) absolutely will happen.

 

 

Dealing With China’s Aircraft Carrier

Mark Noonan47 Comments

How Obama is dealing with it:

As China’s first aircraft carrier takes to the open seas today for its inaugural sea trials, the U.S. government directed a pointed question at the Chinese military: Why would you need a warship like that?

“We would welcome any kind of explanation that China would like to give for needing this kind of equipment,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told reporters today. “We have had concerns for some time and we’ve been quite open with them with regard to the lack of transparency from China regarding its power projection and its lack of access and denial of capabilities.”…

Why would they want a carrier?  Uh, here’s a clue, guys – to challenge us.  You know, the only nation with a genuine navy and a substantial carrier force.

Now, there are two actual ways we can deal with this – grimly announce that we will always maintain at least three aircraft carriers for each Chinese carrier, or we can “Copenhagen” it.

Asserting that we’ll always build sufficient to be overwhelmingly powerful is essentially what Britain did in the early 20th century when challenged in battleships by Imperial Germany – after a certain point, asserting to Germany that Britain would lay two keels to one in order to maintain an overwhelmingly superior force no matter what the Germans built.  This is a fine response, but it does tend to a long-term increasing of tensions…in other words, it is an arms race.

The other way – “Copenhagen” – involves sinking the Chinese carrier.  The reason for describing it as “Copenhagen” is because in 1801 the British attacked and destroyed the Danish fleet in Copenhagen because of a concern that it might cooperate with the French against Britain.  This does have its attendant risk of full scale war, but it also is a complete solution to the problem…even if there is a war, one side then lacks a fleet to prosecute the war, so the conflict becomes rather one-sided.

I’d prefer we just sent a submarine over to Chinese waters and sank the blasted Chinese carrier.  They have no business having such weapons – the seas belong to us, won at great cost in blood and treasure and as we keep them freely open for navigation, no one has any need to challenge the United States in this area.  Unless, of course, they are envisioning a life-and-death struggle with us.  China is either just idiotically flexing muscle, or is seeking to be an existential challenge to the United States.  In neither case is it worth our while to just sit tight and let China build up a fleet.

But, you say, wouldn’t China go to war with us if we did that?  I doubt it.  Remember, the rulers of China are corrupt despots sitting atop an increasingly restive Chinese population.  Their economy is teetering on the edge of disaster and only massive exports to the United States keeps them afloat.  They don’t, at this time, have the capability of projecting power against the United States, nor our main Pacific bases.  War with us at this juncture would be entirely too costly – and so they won’t do it.  They’d complain and threaten and bluster…but at the end of the day they’d just have to take it.  And learn a valuable lesson – don’t bother putting money in to a fleet because when you put it to sea, we’re just going to sink it.

At any event, we do need a President who won’t have his staff merely ask stupid questions – anything is better than idiocy in policy.