Obligations (April 26, 2024)
Welcome to Home & Away. This week’s newsletter promises to be something of a departure for me, for the simple reason there is quite a bit of good news to report. I’d like to say it marks the beginning of a trend but experience tells me that is unlikely.
The Speaker Steps Up
One piece of good news – make that excellent news – was the political evolution of the Speaker of the House. Mike Johnson demonstrated his willingness to rethink his opposition to aid to Ukraine and stand up to the radicals in his caucus who could strip him of his job. What he did will allow aid to again flow to Ukraine, as well as to Israel and Taiwan. The legislation includes $26 billion mostly going to Israel but also designating aid for Gaza, $8 billion for Taiwan and others in the Indo-Pacific, and $61 billion for Ukraine. The legislation also forces TikTok’s Chinese owners to divest the app or face a ban here in the United States. This is sure to be contested in the courts, but also certain is that it will trigger Chinese retaliation and exacerbate strains in the world’s most important and complex relationship if it goes ahead.
The Ukraine component is the most significant, as it will provide the country with the means to push back against heightened Russian pressure. The fact that it got approved sends a reassuring signal to friends around the world that the United States is still willing to meet its obligations, although the process is a textbook case of Churchill’s wry comment, that Americans can be counted on to do the right thing but only after they’ve tried everything else.
Several comments. First, the Speaker’s transformation on this issue is a welcome example of an individual doing the right thing even at considerable risk. It is what I had in mind when I wrote The Bill of Obligations. The tenth and final obligation is to put country before party or person. He deserves our respect for doing just that.
Hopefully he will survive in his job. I never want to see someone pay a price for doing the right thing, as happened to Liz Cheney for standing up to Donald Trump. My guess is Johnson can only remain as Speaker with the support of Democrats, who still oppose his positions on most important issues. They would be wise not to overplay their hand and make a condition of their support something no Republican could agree to. I expect the most interesting questions will revolve around the border.
I also want to say something about the renewed aid to Ukraine. It comes at a time it is desperately needed, and it will make an impact from the moment it arrives. It will provide much-needed air defense, artillery shells, and deep-strike missiles that can inflict economic pain on Russia much as Moscow has been doing to Ukraine. That said, the impact will still be limited given what Russia is willing and able to throw into the battle, above all manpower. So those hoping this will turn the tide in Ukraine’s favor may be asking too much. A more realistic goal is that the tide will no longer run in Russia’s favor.
All of which raises an associated but awkward issue. I see that American advisors are accompanying the military assistance. But what will be their message? I expect the temptation of some in Ukraine and their most ardent backers here will be to encourage the Zelenskyy government to go back on the offensive and launch operations to regain lost territory in the east. That would be a military and a political mistake as it is unlikely to succeed, will consume precious lives, ammunition, and equipment, and raise renewed questions as to the wisdom of supporting Ukraine.
It would be far better for Ukraine to concentrate on defense and frustrating Russia, something that would save Ukrainian lives and possibly set the stage for useful diplomacy down the road once it is clear to Putin that U.S. and Western support for Ukraine is here to stay. My position on diplomacy remains what it was: the United States should favor an interim but open-ended ceasefire that reflects the existing territorial division (without recognizing any Russian acquisition of territory), long-term economic and military support for Ukraine, and a relaxation of sanctions only when Russia accepts a peace based on the 1991 borders and other mutually-acceptable arrangements.
Iran and Israel
The good news is that the choreography between Israel and Iran to avoid armed escalation and a wider war seems to be holding. I have been highly critical of this Israeli government for how it has responded to the October 7 attacks, but here it deserves credit for its subtle reaction to the Iranian attack – highlighting its ability to inflict punishment on Iran without in this instance actually inflicting it – and for its discipline in not crowing about what it did.
The Biden administration also deserves credit for its handling of the crisis. A lot has been said here and elsewhere about the increasingly dysfunctional U.S.-Israel relationship and Israel’s refusal to accept American counsel over the past six months, but here at least the relationship worked as well as anyone could have hoped for. Members of any alliance or friendship have an obligation to take the preferences of the other into account and to give it great weight before acting in a way not welcomed by the other. This happened here.
The question is whether any of this carries over into the three active fronts Israel is contending with: Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank. Here I will revert to my normal self and be more pessimistic, especially when it comes to Gaza and the West Bank, where there is no evidence this Israeli government is prepared to pivot when it comes to offering Palestinians a political path that would encourage many to eschew violence and turn away from Hamas. Nor is there reason to expect any restraint on settlement activity. The United States will need to act more forcefully if backsliding is to be avoided or, more positively, if there is to be any progress.
There is also the big question of whether Israel will choose to attack Rafah, which is more likely than ever as hostage-related negotiations appear stalled and because Netanyahu will feel the need to offset his restraint on Iran. The Biden administration would be well-advised to focus more on how Israel chooses to use force there and to push hard for restraint to minimize civilian casualties. But whatever Israel does, it will have to confront the reality that an unknown number of hostages will remain in Gaza as will Hamas. What we are looking at is a future defined by an open-ended low-level war in Gaza, increasing violence in the West Bank, and no prospect of meaningful political progress between Israel and Palestinians unless the Saudis make an offer that Netanyahu decides he cannot refuse linking normalization with a meaningful political process.
Campus Clashes
The Middle East is increasingly taking over (literally and figuratively) life on America’s university campuses. I cannot write this week’s newsletter without a reference to what is taking place. Universities have an obligation to provide their students with an education while maintaining an environment that is physically safe, protects free speech, and encourages debate. Getting the balance right is easier said than done. But something is seriously amiss on too many of our campuses.
Criticism of Israeli policy is legitimate, which could include calls for a ceasefire, divestment, a Palestinian state, descriptions of Israel as apartheid, and much else, a good deal of which I would take issue with. But putting aside the fact that private institutions can set their own rules to a significant degree, the First Amendment is not an absolute. If any other minority group were the target of such abhorrent and violent language that is currently being directed at Jews, colleges and universities would have zero tolerance for it – as would be correct.
University presidents might want to question this double-standard and rethink their stance vis-a-vis the glorification of Hamas or calls on Jews to go back to Poland or worse. In addition, free speech cannot be a license to intimidate or encourage violence, physically attack another person, or prevent the normal functioning of a school. Encampments ought to come down. Those students and faculty who refuse to accept such limits ought to be suspended and removed from the premises, by the police if need be. The answer is not to capitulate and offer up remote learning or cancel commencements for students who because of Covid were unable to attend their high school graduation but to stand firm and demand civility and responsible behavior.
Passover
I write this midway through the holiday of Passover, when Jews everywhere celebrate their liberation from Egypt. A number of the holiday’s lessons are relevant and then some. The first is that Passover and the exodus from Egypt are treated not as something experienced by others in the past but by all of us in the present. This has a special meaning this year, as Passover takes place against the backdrop of Jews held hostage who cannot be with their families. At my seder, the Hebrew word for order that gives its name to the festive meal in which everything is done is a prescribed sequence, the empty chair in front of a place setting at the end of the table was a poignant reminder.
There is a moment in the seder (which happens around the dinner table, as everything eaten is of symbolic importance) when the Red Sea closes in on the Egyptian army that was pursuing the fleeing Jews after Pharoah had a change of heart. (He had agreed to let the Jews go following the tenth and final plague, the killing of every first-born Egyptian.) At this point, some include the Talmudic passage in which God admonishes the heavenly angels for celebrating, reminding them that all humans are his creation.
What makes this so relevant is that this Passover takes place some six and a half months after October 7. More Jews were killed on that day than on any other since the Holocaust. Israel, as every reader of this newsletter is well aware, has responded to the violence, murder and rape that was October 7 in a way that also deserves condemnation, for its insufficiently measured use of military force in Gaza and for its refusal to allow sufficient humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. My point is this: one can and should be sympathetic to Israel for what it suffered and supportive of its right to defend itself, but also sympathetic to Palestinians for their suffering. It cannot be and should not be an either/or proposition.
I want to make another point drawn from the seder: There is an obligation for every generation of Jews to observe the holiday and to use it as a teaching moment, to make sure the rising generation of children understands their heritage and identity. This was and is essential for Jews, who are, with the exception of those who live in Israel, a minority and have had to endure centuries of exile and often a loss of access to places of worship.
Why am I writing about this? Because this is precisely what we Americans are failing to do but need to do to ensure that rising generations of young Americans understand what it is to be an American, why democracy is valuable, and what is expected of each and every citizen to make it succeed. Think of it as our collective obligation.
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Richard Haass in the news
Friday, April 19: Bloomberg Wall Street Week
Saturday, April 20: Wall Street Week Newsletter
Tuesday, April 22: BBC HARDtalk (U.S. audiences, and for those outside the U.S.)