The time from Pesach to Shavuot, as we renew our preparation for the receiving of the Torah, is a particularly apt one to reflect on fundamental values. That becomes even more important – and difficult – in what seems to be a truly “upside-down” world, possibly the most worrisome state of affairs in quite some time.
It is consequently appropriate to dissect key ongoing trends to see whether certain patterns can be discerned, and then to see whether one can see the way ahead in some fashion.
It is not only the rapid pace of events but also their hectic tempo that are disturbing and make them hard, if not impossible, to grasp. How can one make sense of these rapid-fire events both here and abroad? Hardly a day goes by in the U.S. without some mass shooting – whether at schools, stores, or malls? Can we possibly explain those other apparent innovations of “Palestinian” terrorists – the random knifing of civilians or the use of vehicles as weapons of mass murder, in Israel, Europe, and now in Canada? Clearly, not all of these have been the work of terrorists. The latest, in Canada, so far seems not to have been. Neither was the horrendous mass shooting in Las Vegas or recent school shootings. Nevertheless, the spread and adoption of the techniques by unbalanced individuals of all stripes is new to the digital age and represents an alarming trend. The types of people who are committing these crimes were always there. They somehow did not tend to act out in this manner. It is as if some psychological barrier has been breeched, as if such behavior is now an acceptable manner to seek attention and vent feelings.
On the international scene, increasingly violent outbursts – whether within countries or across borders – are almost too numerous to list. Americans largely view what is happening outside of America as not really out of the ordinary, rather, as routine and nothing to worry too much about. To be sure, there are, here and there, short bursts of anxiety, as with North Korea’s nuclear saber rattling. The “alleged” use of chemical weapons by the Syrian dictator – with the silent support of his sponsors – is briefly noted without becoming a source of major concern. The massive refugee flows and the killing of hundreds of thousands, also in Syria as well as in Yemen, are also noted. But who remembers the downing by a Russian missile of Malaysia Airline Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014? Who remembers Moscow’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine? That occurred also in 2014. What about Russia’s continuing invasion and control (nominally through Ukrainian proxies) of parts of eastern Ukraine?
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None of these significant developments is given any more than passing attention in a U.S. mass media obsessed with the supposed vileness of Trump. Indeed, the proverbial visitor from another planet would be hard pressed to realize that there might be anything important going on aside from the multiple alleged misdeeds of President Trump. Television and the other media seem obsessed with his tweets, indeed, with any statement or action, no matter how insignificant. Anyone associated with the President, it seems, is automatically suspect, corrupt, or evil. The U.S. government is close to paralysis at times. Democrats in the Senate delay and obstruct approval of his nominees and vote along party lines. The title of a recent opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, “Senators on the Verge of a Political Breakdown: Confirmation May Soon Become So Difficult that the Government Will Be Unable to Function at All” (Peter J. Wallison, April 26, 2018) sums up the situation well. The author points out that it is only because Democrats eliminated the filibuster for most nominees in 2013 that President Trump was able to get approval for most of his nominees with less than the previously required minimum 60 votes.
Trump’s election to the presidency represents the first time, certainly in modern history, that we witness a widespread refusal to accept the results of a national election. The unceasing, strident attacks on anything touching on President Trump have gone well past the bounds of what used to be acceptable. This mode of behavior is quickly becoming known as “the Resistance.”
One recent Washington Post leftist blog illustrates this. Its very title “How to End the Trump Presidency” is indicative of this lack of acceptance. It describes the Trump presidency “as a rampaging, unchecked kakistocracy[1] facing no meaningful oversight or accountability.”[2] President Trump has been called a “fascist” and a “Nazi.” He has been “killed” in a Central Park production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” and assassination talk and images have been proffered by several media figures. Former Vice President Biden even volunteered not long ago that he would gladly have given Mr. Trump a good beating had they been in high school.
An April 29, 2018 Wall Street Journal editorial on the latest White House Correspondents Dinner sums up the mainstream media’s attitude: “Much – not all – of the press corps has responded to Donald Trump’s surprising victory not by trying to understand it, much less report on it with any balance. Instead they have treated it like an alien invasion that must be repelled, and anyone associated with it as deserving disdain, ridicule, or worse. Any reporter who doesn’t follow this herd of contempt is expelled from polite media company.”
What we have now across America is a polarization of society that is probably unparalleled in recent history, a sharp division of society into two camps, each seeing the other as the enemy. There is little if any thought of even wishing to discuss issues, exchange views, or compromise. People in effect treat any issue as a “zero-sum game”: that is, “I win-you-lose” and “It’s my way or the highway,”
It is this underlying, widespread way of thinking that is behind the anti-Trump frenzy – not, as some people believe, any of the personality or character flaws that he admittedly possesses. The constant lashing out at anyone not agreeing with one’s views unfortunately reflects a deep loss of sense of direction, of self-identity, and self-worth. The propensity to always blame others is also a refusal to look inward, to examine oneself and seek to improve. Definition of the self, not in positive, specific terms, but by denigrating “the other,” by defining what one is not, results in an empty, thoroughly insecure self. It unfortunately also reflects the destruction of fundamental social and political values over the past several decades and their replacement by a profound void.
However serious this trend in the U.S., it is even worse in the rest of the world. In Western Europe, where the destruction of these fundamental values is at an even more advanced stage than in the U.S., there has been in addition a massive influx of Muslims from areas in which democratic traditions have been absent and in which violence remains to this day a generally accepted part of societal life (including so-called ‘honor killings’). The arrival over a relatively short time of such massive numbers makes integration into existing societies difficult if not impossible. To that is added the strong intimidating influence of radical elements that have made no secret of their objective of “reconquering” Europe and adding it to the World of Islam. These rapidly moving trends are bound sooner or later to end up in large-scale bloodshed as European publics, abandoned by governments unwilling to face up to developing realities, will more than likely violently resist such encroachments on their longstanding traditions.
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In the rest of the world, the situation is no better, and perhaps worse. Most states are internally weak, and many are poor. They are often ruled by corrupt elites. Few are what used to be called “nation-states,” that is, sovereign states whose citizens are relatively homogeneous in language or ethnicity. Many states are now made up of various ethnic and tribal groups – the result of colonial powers’ arbitrary drawing of international borders that cut across tribal areas. This is true of most states in the Middle East. It is also true of South Asia. Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Kashmir, and Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) are all formerly part of the British Empire.
Internal weakness in all these political entities has not only not prevented them from engaging in foreign adventures but has actually been a motivator for aggressive policies. It is not a secret that authoritarian regimes frequently resort to foreign adventures to distract their populations from ills, privations, and other grievances often generated or exacerbated by these regimes’ repressive internal policies.
Examples of Russian aggression were mentioned above. Moscow has also become a major agitator in the Middle East, at the very least condoning the use of chemical weapons and obstructing attempts to investigate such use. It is providing advanced weaponry to both the Iranians and Syrians – and then threatening the victims of such weaponry with dire consequences if they dare to respond!
Russia is far from alone in this. China has engaged in intimidation in the South China Sea, treating a huge area bordering on a number of other countries as a Chinese lake, building artificial islands, militarizing them, and harassing ships of the Philippines and other countries. That the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in 2016 against Chinese claims[3] had no effect on the Chinese, who labeled the ruling a provocation and disregarded it.
Iran, the main terrorism sponsor, has been engaged in open aggressive acts in an arc extending from Lebanon in the west to Pakistan in the east. They are arming and training various terrorist groups around Israel, and even using their own Revolutionary Guards. Turkey, which, under President Erdogan, has become increasingly aligned with extreme Islamists and begun to see itself as a modern reincarnation of the Ottoman Empire, has been acting more often as an opponent of the NATO Alliance of which it is a part than as a member.
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These kinds of adventurous and provocative policies were not the norm prior to the early twenty-first century. Why? What changed to generate what we could well now call a truly chaotic world environment? To be sure, the bipolar world structure that existed during the Cold War – with only two major powers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, confronting each other – in a perverse way, made for a more stable world order through a “balance of terror.” The disappearance of that structure with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the coming into being of a more multi-polar international system changed that – but not to the extent of generating what we now have. What could possibly have possessed these aggressors to so openly challenge the United States? Why would internally weak states undertake such reckless actions? Are they not aware that their internal weaknesses could prove fatal to their repressive elites in the event of failure? The answer is that they do not anticipate failure and, with perhaps a few exceptions, they have had little reason to worry, so far.
There are several major factors responsible for this wave of aggression that can be traced back to the Obama administration. President Obama viewed the United States as an “imperialist” power seeking to dominate and dictate to the rest of the world, and he sought to “redress” such past “wrongs.” To that end, he effected a major U.S. retrenchment from areas in the world. This was true not just in Iraq but in the rest of the region. Even the Syrian use of chemical weapons, which triggered one of Obama’s now famous “red lines,” did not lead him to act. In Afghanistan, he announced publicly at the end of 2009 that the U.S. would be out of there by 2014 – this in the middle of a war in which the U.S. was a participant! This was a policy decision he later had to abandon, but the damage had been done. This declaration was the equivalent of an admission of defeat while American troops were on the ground fighting.
Perhaps President Obama, following the liberal credo, thought that good intentions and a refusal to intervene would lead to reciprocal good deeds. If so, he was to be sorely disappointed. The American withdrawal from active participation in these various areas, in effect, led the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, Turks, and others to believe that they could engage in aggressive behavior with impunity. And until recently they were justified in their beliefs.
Were we to look at things from the perspective of America’s opponents, we would easily see why they are behaving as they are. Americans have long had a reputation for being naive. I still remember a conversation with foreign visitors during my days in the Pentagon in which, with not too much prodding, they readily admitted that “with Americans, you tell them what they want to hear, and they believe you.” That naiveté, however, used to be matched with a certain unpredictability. Opponents could never be sure that the U.S. – even after having ignored a crisis or provocations for a time – would not suddenly react with force. That nagging concern is something that pretty much disappeared over the course of the Obama years. Hence the freewheeling challenges to the U.S. and the resulting chaos.
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The year-long investigation into a possible collusion between the Trump campaign and officials with the Russians would be laughable if it weren’t taken so seriously by so many – certainly by the “mainstream” media. Anyone somewhat familiar with Soviet, now Russian, propaganda will know that Moscow has long been deeply involved in penetrating (or trying to penetrate) Western societies and governments. Their techniques are well known and have become more sophisticated over the years. Their interest is not in backing one or another candidate or party. Rather, they strive to create as much mistrust among Americans as possible, to get people at each other’s throats. What can be better from the Russian perspective than to keep Americans preoccupied and fighting with each other? The more, the better, and the less the opportunity to focus on real threats and dangers coming from the outside.
And in this, we must agree, they have succeeded beyond expectations.
How many people ever ask themselves why the extensive public self-questioning and hesitation? How often have we heard comments such as “We cannot do this, it would provoke (here take your pick: the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, etc.) or, more mildly, “We shouldn’t do that, it would upset…?” All this without much thinking and defining of the objectives we ought to pursue, the actual risks, the significance of the stakes, and the choices available.
The reaction of some to Israel’s stunning intelligence coup in seizing Iran’s secret nuclear files – over 100,000 of them – is but the latest illustration of the trouble in which we find ourselves. While the White House has praised the heist and accurately assessed its huge significance, the usual doubters – regardless of the facts – instinctively started to belittle it. All of that because, whether in the U.S. or Europe or elsewhere, they are mostly interested in pursuing narrow, selfish interests centered on their wallets.
More importantly, the timidity exhibited not only by the Democrats but also by many in the permanent bureaucracy (“Deep State”) and some Republicans is simply not justified by the facts. It was mentioned earlier that the chief culprits of aggression happen to be weak internally and, like all bullies, act aggressively only because they believe they will not be challenged. Russia’s weaknesses are its high mortality rate – higher than even under the Communists – which is due in part to extensive alcoholism but also the inability to control Russian territory itself (there has been a large migration of Chinese into Russia’s Far East), extensive corruption, economic fragility, and widespread discontent.
China’s problems include a low birthrate and a rapidly-aging population, putting increasing stress on the economy. Its economic expansion, which hid significant discontent, especially in the countryside, has now slowed down. Armed insurrection is present among its Muslims (Uighurs) in the border regions. And entire cities have been built but remain empty.
As for Iran, the increasingly widespread discontent of the population has been in evidence again of late. Already strong at the previous outburst of demonstrations in 2009, which were violently repressed, it has become even more pronounced. Much of that is due to a corrupt and repressive leadership that has mismanaged the economy while enriching itself at the expense of the public, used torture and other methods of intimidation extensively, and engaged in foreign adventures that have further diverted needed funds and exposed the country to increasing costs and dangers. More than half of Iran’s population consists of non-Persian minorities (Azerbaijanis, Kurds, and others) that are frequently subjected to discrimination and repression. Iran now, also in good part as a result of neglect and mismanagement, faces an increasingly dire and threatening lack of water resources.
In Turkey, the increasingly authoritarian regime has been restricting freedom of expression, with Erdogan manipulating the system to restrict any opposition, and in addition continues to face unrest in its Kurdish regions.
All of the above means that any meaningful pushback against those regimes’ aggressive policies would mean great danger for their continued existence. Their bravado is a bluff that would collapse when confronted by a strong U.S. response. They have far more to fear – and they know it.
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Here in the U.S. and even more so in Western Europe, those facts and implications do not appear to have sunk in yet. And there is similarly a strong reluctance on the part of the media and much of the establishment to recognize that President Trump is probably the first president in recent memory to actually translate (or try to translate) his campaign promises into reality, even in the face of stubborn opposition in certain quarters. This is not only so with regard to moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing the city as Israel’s capital, which, given the repeated failure to do so by previous presidents despite a Congressional mandate and continued opposition by the permanent bureaucracy, was not a minor achievement.
And regardless of all his famous “tweets” – or sometimes, perhaps, because of them – President Trump has also made significant progress on other major issues. His negotiating style, while indeed unconventional, needs to be far more appreciated. Although the situation with North Korea is far from clear – and anything could still happen – it is clear that he has managed to do what no one else had. His threats and erratic behavior (backed by a demonstrated willingness to use force in Syria, albeit in a very limited scale) are tactics that are demonstrably different from those of his predecessor. Bottom line, he is a very shrewd negotiator, and his moves are quite purposeful. His unpredictability, combined with actual military preparatory moves, no doubt scared (or was at the very least a source of concern) to both the Chinese and the North Korean dictators (“Who knows what such a crazy guy could do!”).
In his trade negotiations with China, too, the President’s superior negotiating skills are beginning to show some results. The Chinese may be forced to recognize the real imbalance in their favor and have as much if not more to lose from a trade war with the U.S.
If, as one would hope, President Trump succeeds in “fixing” the Iran deal (unlikely) or actually withdraws from it, one can expect that the enemies of this country will truly take notice. There is no doubt that calling the Iranian bluff and showing the timid souls in the West the needed resolve will lead to many positive results – not the least of which might be the actual overthrow of the Iranian regime by its own population. Pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, especially if accompanied by other measures, such as the re-imposition of sanctions, would very likely lead to Iranian failure in both Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. It is also clear that the Europeans, confronted with a choice between doing business with Iran or the United States, will choose the latter.
To be sure, a lot more is needed in order to rectify the sorry, passive, and negligent record of years past. A more systematic and coherent U.S. policy on various key issues and areas of the world will further improve things, and perhaps avert the dangers that now loom.
The very fact that so many things are happening simultaneously, that many of them appear to be contrary to any logic, and that moral standards once taken for granted are now either abandoned or in dispute – and that at the same time we see hopeful signs in a number of quarters – should give us hope. The Hand of Hashem is clearly in evidence, His active intervention into the affairs of the world palpable.
Prayer, always important, and improvement of the self by everyone are crucial and can actually play a far more significant role than people may assume.
Elie D. Krakowski is President and CEO of EDK Consulting, a Maryland company specializing in National Security and Defense with a focus on counterterrorism. He is former Special Assistant to the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, and a professor of International Relations and Law.
] Kakistocracy: defined in the Oxford Dictionary as “government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state.
[2] The Plum Line Blog by Greg Sargent (April 26, 2018).
[3] See, for instance, The Diplomat, July 12, 2016, which writes that a “tribunal of five judges at Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration issued a highly anticipated and unanimous award in Republic of Philippines v. People’s Republic of China, a case filed in 2013.”
