nuclear-news

Biden’s Shifting ‘Red Line’ Lets Israel Get Away With Murder

Biden threatened Israel with pulling military aid if it invades Rafah, but Israel is attacking anyway. It won’t face consequences so long as Biden remains vague on what amounts to sufficient grounds for suspending military aid.

with Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken driving the process, the prospects for real pressure were dubious.

the report made excuses and found that, while Israeli soldiers and officers engaged in human rights abuses, they did not amount to sufficient grounds to suspend military aid. 

MITCHELL PLITNICK  11 May 24 https://scheerpost.com/2024/05/12/bidens-shifting-red-line-lets-israel-get-away-with-murder/

Over the seven months of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, the United States has worked vigorously to offer maximum support for Israel while trying to give the impression that it is concerned about the massive loss of Palestinian life. The performance has been difficult to maintain, as virtually every American action contradicts the occasional words of concern for the devastation being fully abetted and enabled by American policy.

In recent weeks, political pressures have forced President Joe Biden to try to take more concrete steps to deter what he considers “excessive” Israeli actions. Such Israeli actions — which apparently do not include killing over 34,000 people, wounding over 78,000 more, completely destroying the health, education, and civic infrastructure in Gaza, and a daily flow of war crimes — raise concerns in the White House that Israel’s image around the world is becoming one of a genocidal regime and that image is reflecting on its American patron.

Rafah has become the focal point of this concern. Biden was prepared to support the horrors of the past seven months, but with some 1.4 million people stuffed into Rafah (an area that was crowded when it was home to 275,000 people before Israel’s onslaught), he realizes that a full-scale ground invasion of the kind that we witnessed in most of Gaza will cause a horror show that even Americans and Europeans — most of them, anyway — will not be able to abide.

So Biden made a statement. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gone in Rafah yet — if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities — that deal with that problem.”

Those words, in typical Biden fashion, were as clear as a muddy lake and left massive amounts of wiggle room for the White House to continue to arm Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. They also provided a roadmap for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to follow if he wishes to continue his genocidal campaign and not risk harming the one aspect of Israel’s relationship with the U.S. that Netanyahu cares about: the inexhaustible supply of arms.

Biden’s words are the latest in a series of statements and actions meant less to deter Netanyahu than to deter protesters and the voters who have been abandoning him in large numbers over his genocidal policy in Gaza. As we have seen over the past seven months, these words have, at best, pressed Israel to slow its genocidal attacks just a little and occasionally relent in some small, largely symbolic way, in its staunch efforts to block humanitarian aid from reaching the people in Gaza. 

Problematically, those results may give the impression that Biden is trying to rein Israel in, at least in a limited way, but actually, they help support Israel’s genocidal program. By occasionally allowing a small amount of aid in for a brief period, Israel has a tool with which to fend off half-hearted Western criticism. And, by proceeding more slowly, Israel continues to move inexorably toward its genocidal goal, but because moving slower means slightly less horrific images, or at least fewer of them, Israel again keeps a debate going over its actions rather than making defending it completely impossible. 

False promises, but consistent policy from Biden

Months ago, the pressure was already starting to build. Democratic thinkers and pundits were wringing their hands over the “divisions” in the party. In the Senate, as many as 18 Democratic senators were pushing a bill that would have required all counties receiving U.S. military aid to abide by American and international law and included a regular reporting requirement. 

The bill was specifically aimed at Israel, though it applied to all aid recipients, and Biden desperately wanted to avoid a vote that would show stark divisions among Democrats, even though the bill had no chance of passing into law. The man who had sold himself in 2020 as a “unifier” did not want such damning evidence of his inability to even keep his own party unified.

So, Biden issued a directive that required written assurances from recipients of U.S. military aid that they would only use the weapons in accordance with U.S. and international humanitarian law, and also included a reporting requirement. The key difference is that the White House would control this process. 

We’re seeing the result of that key difference right now.

The memorandum Biden issued — National Security Memorandum 20, or NSM-20 — was greeted with some cautious optimism and a good deal of skepticism. It did nothing to actually change U.S. law regarding the use of American military aid, but the specific reporting requirement might be hoped to bring the sort of scrutiny on how that aid was used that Israel has always avoided.

But with Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken driving the process, the prospects for real pressure were dubious. Israel fulfilled the first part of the memo, which was to submit written assurances about how it would use the aid. No need to tell the truth there. The proof would, ostensibly, be in its report two months later. That would be the test both for what could be done with the report politically by Israel’s critics and, more importantly, whether the White House was going to abide by its own laws regarding aid to Israel. Hopes for the latter were not high.

The report on Israel’s compliance was due to be presented to Congress on May 8. That day came and went with no report. State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said, when asked about it, “It will not be transmitted today. We continue to work to finalize the report. We expect to deliver it in the very near future, in the coming days.”

The vague timing of the report is noteworthy, considering the State Department knew from the day Biden issued NSM-20 when it would be due and they’ve been able to make definitive statements about Israeli behavior pretty consistently ever since, including some minor criticism and objections. 

The delay was even more notable as the due date was the very same day that Biden decided to talk to CNN and announce that he intended to withhold certain offensive weapons if Israel launched a “full-scale” invasion of Rafah. 

Finally, the report saw the light of day just after five o’clock on Friday. This is what government agencies do when they need to release something publicly but want the least possible attention drawn to it. Unsurprisingly, according to initial reports, Israel was found to have “likely” violated international law and, therefore, U.S. law in its use of American-supplied weapons; Israel was also found to have been less than forthcoming with the required information; but Israel wouldn’t be punished since “Israel does have a number of ongoing, active criminal investigations pending and there are hundreds of cases under administrative review.”

Israel routinely opens investigations but, with exceedingly rare exceptions, those cases either remain unresolved or, more usually, they are simply closed with no action taken. 

Performative reports while Rafah starves

The affair feels very choreographed. Last week, Biden held up a shipment of heavy bombs of the type that Israel has routinely been using to annihilate civilian sites in Gaza. After Hamas accepted a ceasefire and hostage exchange proposal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped up both his threats toward Rafah and his ongoing attacks there, both in the air and on the ground. 

That context tends to be missing from reports about Biden threatening Israel if it should invade Rafah. Israel has already begun its invasion of Rafah, but it has not yet stepped up that invasion to the horrific levels that have been seen in other cities in Gaza. It would seem that this level of firepower, killing “only” dozens every day rather than hundreds is perfectly tolerable for Biden.

Israel has seized the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing and shut it down, cutting the area off from its leading source of aid. It also seals in critically ill and injured patients, who can only seek the medical care that is now unavailable in Gaza by going to Egypt. Rafah is the main access point for fuel supplies and most aid for the south, where the vast majority of Gazans are packed in. In other words, Israel is escalating its killing by other means, a tactic which also has the side effect of killing people who don’t get counted in the death toll statistics. 

None of this rises to the point of stopping the flow of weapons to Israel, in the estimation of the United States government. When the State Department finally revealed its report on Israeli human rights abuses, it could not avoid being damning without completely fabricating Israeli behavior, something which isn’t possible given how many State Department staff members are already furious about Biden’s policy and the administration’s refusal to listen to anyone with actual knowledge of the region. 

But the Secretary and President cannot be totally ignored, and thus the report made excuses and found that, while Israeli soldiers and officers engaged in human rights abuses, they did not amount to sufficient grounds to suspend military aid. 

Biden has laid out the framework, and it will work out just fine for Netanyahu. Israel’s closing of the Rafah crossing; its assault that has forced over 100,000 Palestinians, who had already been displaced, many multiple times, to flee once again; and its devastation of an already devastated area does not meet the American standard of a “major ground operation,” according to White House mouthpiece John Kirby. 

That means Israel can continue these actions indefinitely as far as Biden and Blinken are concerned. This allows Netanyahu to wage a prolonged war, and, crucially, to massively increase the already considerable number of fatalities among Palestinians from curable disease, malnutrition, starvation, lack of access to medical care for chronic conditions, and other causes that are not included in death tolls. 

This also illustrates the danger of the credulity of too many in the foreign policy community who were so quick to applaud Biden for changing his policy. It’s true the public pressure is having an effect, but it has not yet forced Biden to change his policy in a material way that would affect Israel’s behavior. His statement this week did not represent that shift, though it was at least an indication that sufficient pressure and enough Israeli obnoxiousness could bring it about eventually. The pressure must continue and increase, a fact that, while it may be lost on some in the DC foreign policy bubble, has not escaped those brave students and other protesters. 

May 13, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Patrick Lawrence: The Impotence of Antony Blinken

“Impotence” !      That is too kind.

I cannot at this moment find the statements that Blinken has made in support of Zionism. And they seem to have disappeared from the Internet.

The thing that stands out now is Blinken’s repeated moans about the need for compassion , humanitarian treatment of Gazans –     while he continues to support the attack on Gaza.

His slimy hypocrisy is a masterpiece of deception –   making sure to prolong wars, while appearing sweet and peace-loving. These quotations from January 2024, –  but he’s persistently now made “peaceful” statements and promoted war.  Not impotence – but cunning ruthlessness..

 “Inside the State Department, Blinken has fielded multiple internal dissent cables decrying U.S. support for Israel.”

  “He has made four trips to Ukraine and more than a dozen to visit European allies, reinvigorating the NATO alliance and helping to coordinate more than $110 billion in support of Kyiv.” https://time.com/collection/davos-2024-ideas-of-the-year/6551990/antony-blinken-israel-gaza-us-power/

Antony Blinken goes to Beijing he does not talk to the Chinese: He talks at them

By Patrick Lawrence /  ScheerPost  https://scheerpost.com/2024/04/28/patrick-lawrence-the-impotence-of-antony-blinken/

Antony Blinken is now in China for his second such journey as secretary of state and his third encounter with senior Chinese officials: This is our news as April marches toward May. I have to say, it is a stranger state of affairs than I can figure when the State Department and the media that clerk for it tell us in advance that America’s top diplomat is going to fail to get anything done as he sets out for the People’s Republic.

“I want to make clear that we are realistic and clear-eyed about the prospects of breakthroughs on any of these issues,” an unnamed State Department official said when briefing reporters last week on Blinken’s agenda. This is how State warns in advance that the secretary will be wasting his time and our money during his encounters in Shanghai and Beijing.

What is this if not an admission of our secretary of state’s diplomatic impotence? Or do I mean incompetence? Or both? This is the man, after all, who arrived in Israel five days after the events of last Oct. 7 to announce, “I come before you as a Jew.” Does this guy understand diplomacy or what?

The media followed the State Department’ lead, naturally, in advising us of the pointlessness of Blinken’s sojourn in China—this at both ends of the Pacific. CNBC: “Washington is realistic about its expectations on Blinken’s visit in resolving key issues.” Japan Times: “While crucial for keeping lines of communication open, the visit is unlikely to yield major breakthroughs.” 

Matt Lee, the very able diplomatic correspondent at The Associated Press, got it righter than anyone in his April 22 report: The point of Blinken’s three days of talks with top Chinese officials, he reported, is to have three days of talks with top Chinese officials. “The mere fact that Blinken is making the trip might be seen by some as encouraging,” Lee wrote, “but ties between Washington and Beijing are tense and the rifts are growing wider.”

This is our Tony. As the record makes pitifully clear, there’s no mileage in predicting success when Blinken boards a plane for the great “out there.” This is unequivocally so in his dealings with the western end of the Pacific. 

There is a long list of the topics Blinken was set to raise with Chinese officials, notable among these Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Taiwan and the South China Sea, military-to-military contacts, artificial intelligence applications, illicit drug traffic, human rights, trade: These are standards on the American menu when a U.S. official addresses Chinese counterparts. The last is especially contentious just now, given the Biden regime’s disgraceful determination to subvert those Chinese industries with which the U.S. cannot compete. With plans to block imports of Chinese-made electric vehicles already afoot, last week President Biden announced new tariffs on imports of Chinese steel. And it is now “investigating” China’s shipping and shipbuilding industries, which sounds to me like prelude to yet more measures to undermine China’s admirable economic advances. 

But the premier question Blinken was to address has to do with Sino–Russian relations. As he made clear before departing, the secretary of state will more or less insist that the Chinese stop selling various industrial goods to Russia because the U.S. considers them “dual use,” meaning the Russians could use such things as semiconductors in their defense industries—so implicating China in Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.

Before going any further, let’s try one of those “imagine if” exercises. Imagine if Beijing sent Foreign Minister Wang to Washington to tell the Biden regime to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine as this implicates the U.S. in Ukraine’s war with Russia and this is not on because China and Russia are friends. 

It is not even fun, this “imagine if,” so nonsensical is it. Any such exercise would turn Wang, an acutely skilled diplomat, into another Antony Blinken—the thought of which is nonsensical times 10.

But never mind sense and nonsense. Blinken and those who speak for him at State boldly previewed the secretary’s presentation in the days before his departure. Here is Blinken speaking to reporters last Friday:

We see China sharing machine tools, semiconductors, other dual-use items that have helped Russia rebuild the defense industrial base that sanctions and export controls had done so much to degrade. Now, if China purports on the one hand to want good relations with Europe and other countries, it can’t on the other hand be fueling what is the biggest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War.

A day later the unnamed State Department official elaborated with this:

We’re prepared to take steps when we believe necessary against firms that … severely undermine security in both Ukraine and Europe. We’ve demonstrated our willingness to do so regarding firms from a number of countries, not just China. We will express our intent to have China curtail that support.

As tough diplomatic talk goes, it does not get much tougher. And as dumb diplomacy goes, it does not get much dumber. 

For one thing, the Biden regime is demanding that China act against what we can count Beijing’s closest partner—this as leading non–Western nations are coalescing behind a joint project to create a new, let’s call it post–Western world order. I am reminded of a brilliant tweet someone wrote just after Russia began its Ukraine operation two years ago and the Biden regime sought to recruit Beijing against “Putin’s Russia,” as people such as Blinken insist on referring to the Russian Federation. “Please help us defeat Russia,” the tweet read, “so we can turn our aggression on you when we’re done.”

But precisely. 

For another, the Chinese Foreign Ministry made its response to Blinken’s preposterous intentions clear even before the secretary boarded his plane (and just prior to the passage in the House last week of $60.1 billion in new aid for the Kiev regime). “It is extremely hypocritical and irresponsible for the U.S. to introduce a large-scale aid bill for Ukraine,” a ministry spokesperson said last week, “while making groundless accusations against normal economic and trade exchanges between China and Russia.” 

I cannot think of a handier way of shutting down Antony Blinken. 

One other thing while we are on this topic. Among the principles on which a post–Western global order will rest are respect for the sovereignty of all nations and noninterference into the internal affairs of others. These are two elements of civilized statecraft, as it is destined to be in the 21^st century and of which the secretary of state has absolutely no clue.

Why did Secretary Blinken bother to raise this question of Sino–Russian trade when he must have known the response as well as you and I know it. I see two immediate explanations. 

One, the crooks in Kiev have already lost Washington’s proxy war with Russia—and goodness knows how much of the just-approved aid they will steal—and Blinken’s presentation in Beijing reflects mounting desperation among the policy cliques who got the U.S. into this hopeless-from-the-start conflict.  

Two, and closely related to the above, when Antony Blinken goes to Beijing he does not talk to the Chinese: He talks at them and is not especially concerned about their responses. He is talking only to the American public and the China hawks on Capitol Hill, who have the White House stretching to out-hawk them at every turn.

If you need support for this latter thought, there is Blinken’s assertion Monday, when introducing the State Department’s annual human rights report, that China is guilty of “genocide and crimes against humanity” against the Uighur population in Xinjiang Province. This charge has been highly suspect since Mike Pompeo, Blinken’s fanatically Sinophobic predecessor at State, conjured it before leaving office in 2021. And given no charge of genocide has ever been supported with evidence, what in hell was Blinken doing raising this question (1) on the eve of a diplomatic visit to Beijing during which he purported to want other things out of the Chinese, and (2) given his government’s open sponsorship of what we must now call the Israeli–U.S. genocide in Gaza? 

My mind goes back to March 2021 when I read these things. It was then, in an Anchorage hotel (named the Captain Cook) that Blinken and Jake Sullivan, Biden’s new national security adviser, made an utter disaster out of their first encounter with senior Chinese officials, Wang Yi among them. It was then and there that Blinken and Sullivan, all by themselves, tipped over Sino–U.S. relations with just the sort of shockingly ignorant display of late-imperial presumption Blinken is trying on yet again in Beijing this week. 

Sino–American ties have never recovered from the encounter in Anchorage. And Blinken has learned nothing from the mess he made.  

April 29, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment