Digest 33: The single best debate you will hear on Israel/Gaza
Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr, and comedian turned (extremely informed) political commentator, Dave Smith. A vigorous and robust – yet ultimately civil – debate. Both are brilliant, formidably well-read, and courageous in so boldly stating their views. Plaudits to both.
Just, the discussion gets mired in chronological detail. It’s simultaneously fascinating (to hear two accounts, so forcefully argued – by figures who respect one another and are friends) and tragically unproductive. The discussion advances the situation hardly one bit.
Such a discussion would be far more productive inside a framework focused on solution-making.
Get a written chronology (in bullet-points) from both parties before a debate.
Acknowledge: neither side is likely to budge much here, if at all. Rather than butt heads on detail (and questions of motivation of a region’s ancestors), can we take two reasonable and well-intentioned historical accounts as they are, and – given these sentiments each represent the views of millions of people – see if there are creative, viable, middle paths forward that could be palatable to both?
Let’s please debate solutions. This was only a tiny fraction of the stimulating 80-minute conversation – the most illuminating part being RFK Jr laying out how he would have handled events differently, had he been US President on October 7; a plan that’s eminently sensible, that I would support enthusiastically.
In the West, we urgently need to direct our best intellectual firepower toward solution-making. Chronological detail – though important – can be set out in written bullet-points ahead of time.
This is arguably the single best (and bravest) debate on Israel/Gaza one can listen to:
Yet such a debate, in its present format, is a waste of intelligence. It helps not the West, nor the casualties – on either side – who are at the mercy of our ineffectual present discourse.
Difficult though it may be, our best and brightest can be more constructive – harnessing their erudition and intellects to offering solutions. It is incumbent that they do.
If the constellation of countries RFK Jr cites in his answer are assembled – the US, China, Russia, Egypt, Turkey – all of whom have their own self-interest in achieving resolution – and the power of resource at their disposal can be marshalled, and allowed to interact, and shared ingenuity be summoned, a better solution can be conceived – while ensuring Israel’s security – than bombing Gaza to smithereens and chancing WWIII.
This is what my new diplomatic-journalistic outfit, Listening to the Other Side, endeavours to do. Please share the posted tweet version of this, to encourage RFK Jr and Dave Smith (and many others) to look at it:
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Ukraine on the ropes
Stephen Bryen, the defence analyst (and former US Deputy Under Secretary of Defense) I consider most clued-in of anyone on Ukraine, has written in the past 48 hours on Ukraine’s new General:
Syrskyi is a walking disaster. He will throw thousands of reserves into Avdiivka and they will be annihilated. The war is reaching an end point, and people will soon be in the streets in Kiev as the regime crumbles. This is a classic end game, no less. I don’t think NATO can save Ukraine. It is too far gone.
Simple GDP statistics (likening Russia’s GDP to that of Spain or Italy) have lulled the West into a false sense of superiority. Which the UK’s present Foreign Secretary still does not understand.
Most haven’t yet realised we are at this stage of the conflict:
The primary reason this is continuing is political face-saving – for Biden, Boris, and Zelensky himself. Even on that front, it appears doomed.
The furore around Tucker Carlson merely speaking to Putin (a ‘traitor to journalism’) – despite Biden not having spoken to Putin for over two years – is a distraction from the dire straights Ukraine’s military is now in.
I think it increasingly likely (+50%) Ukraine will not hold on militarily until US election day, and that if neither Rishi nor Biden fly in like Moe (in the above Simpsons clip) to break things off and initiate diplomatic talks, Biden will go down as one of the worst foreign policy Presidents in recent history.
Further, is Ukraine turning into an international black market?
If you ignore US Congressional shenanigans and instead read some foreign media, it seems plausible that a chunk of Western ‘military aid’ is going straight on the black market – and perhaps ending up pointed straight back at the West.
According to The Jerusalem Post:
Iranian foreign minister says Hamas or Hezbollah could obtain weapons via ‘black markets’ in places like Ukraine.
The Iranian diplomat was at the Doha Forum speaking about Iran’s policies… ‘If you ask me where they can obtain weapons, then one of the black markets where they can get them is Ukraine. Very easily, without much effort they can get whatever [they need] in Ukraine.’
The US Congress has long shown itself unwilling to impose any proper audit to track spending of military aid. Is it at least willing to impose some kind of geo-tracking – to follow where its military equipment is actually ending up?
Listening to the Other Side
A plug for the pilot of my new diplomatic-journalistic outlet. If you haven’t yet, please check out the video and site on: https://lttos.org/start
And please follow our X account. It would mean a lot if you share our prospectus:
https://twitter.com/listeningtother/status/1755167918596190441
I’m presently reading a book of letters from Harold Ross, the editor of The New Yorker – who founded the magazine 100 years ago, at the same age I am now. Ross noted: ‘Never go into anything like this. It is killing until you get up momentum. I don’t know whether I will ever recover or not.’
Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin being the biggest global news story in ages validates my instinct that this is needed, and the opportunity space exists.
I have been very vocal that this is needed, most strongly put in a July 2023 job advert to find a research assistant.
While going back to the 9th Century (as Putin did with Tucker) is surely excessive, there is a chasm of space for ‘serious talk’ that captures balanced historical chronologies, with civil and creative-minded dialogue from a foundation of historical context. This is near entirely absent in today’s traditional media.
This Substack will remain as-is with my personal thoughts. At Listening to the Other Side, I hope to build an editorial team that extends well beyond me.
Lavrov: NATO expansion is why we invaded
Lavrov (Russia’s Foreign Minister) is more to the point than Putin.
Here, 23 January 2024 – in perfect English – he says clearly that NATO expansion was the reason for Russia’s invasion:
How could this be clearer?
But isn’t it paranoid for Russia to think like this?
Here’s the unclassified 1990 promise from James Baker:
Many highly educated Western people seem to think ‘joining NATO’ is merely signing a piece of paper.
But it’s not. It’s entirely refactoring a country’s military to be interoperable with the United States.
Are readers aware that the US houses nuclear weapons in Germany?
This is publicly stated – yet almost nobody seems cognisant of it:
Further:
In 2021, it is estimated that there are 100 U.S.-owned nuclear weapons stored in five NATO member states across six bases: Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Büchel Air Base in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi Air Bases in Italy, Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands, and Incirlik in Turkey. The weapons are not armed or deployed on aircraft; they are instead kept in WS3 underground vaults in national airbases, and the Permissive Action Link (PAL) codes used to arm them remain in American hands.
- Fact Sheet: U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe - Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation
Russia has an adversary (in the West) that routinely goes back on its word, and moves nuclear weapons into its neighbouring territories. The US would never itself put up with this (as evidenced in Cuba).
It is striking that so many otherwise-smart people seem unable to grasp this, still think joining NATO is an innocuous signing of bureaucratic paper, and don’t think Russia at all justified for perceiving a threat to its own homeland.
Dominic Cummings on Bismarck
How could Austria go year after year without being able to decide a critical issue of interests/priorities (i.e whether to prioritise her position in Germany or Italy), then tumble into a shattering war still without resolving the issue, and even tumble into this war after making a secret deal with France such that Austria would have to give up its position in Italy even if she won? (Having trawled through Austrian sources I can’t find a document showing one occasion on which someone tried to set out the core issues and likely scenarios to the Austrian Emperor and try to force disciplined thinking through priorities and the consequences of deciding priorities. The most essential question seems always to have been fudged. This may seem ‘extraordinary’ but I think it’s a routine part of history and we saw it in 2020 over covid, in 2021 over Afghanistan, and in 2022 over Ukraine — and we’ll see it over Taiwan.
We must do better.
What did Boris say to Zelensky?
Boris was quoted in The Times, literally three weeks ago:
In private Johnson had another message for Zelensky. Less than two weeks had elapsed since the Istanbul talks and, despite the outrage in Bucha, the two negotiating teams still pursued contacts via Zoom. “I was a bit worried at that stage,” Johnson recalled. “I could not see for the life of me what the deal could be, and I thought that any deal with Putin was going to be pretty sordid. Any deal would be some victory for him: if you give him anything he’ll just keep it, bank it, and then prepare for his next assault.”
This opinion wasn’t shared in some other western capitals, where a quick end to the war was considered a priority. Johnson said he hadn’t co-ordinated his message with the Biden administration, and senior American officials confirmed they had not been consulted. Yet, as the British prime minister sat down with Zelensky, he delivered his pitch. “It is not for me to tell you what your war objectives can be, but as far as I am concerned Putin must fail and Ukraine must be entitled to retain full sovereignty and independence,” he recalled saying. “We’re not directly fighting, you are. It’s the Ukrainians who are fighting and dying. But we would back Ukraine a thousand per cent.”
Post Tucker-Putin, this is already being memory-holed.
In the Kremlin Putin was certain that Washington, rather than London, had forced Zelensky’s hand to abandon the talks. Senior Russian officials kept angrily raising this point with their American counterparts. “Utter bullshit,” a senior Biden administration official told me. “I know for a fact the United States didn’t pull the plug on that. We were watching it carefully.”
Is there a sane middle-ground in what happened? Did Boris pressure Zelensky to abandon talks? There is no evidence of this. But that Boris gave firm suggestion cannot be airbrushed from history. At the same time: many Ukrainians wanted to fight on, and Zelensky would have had an incredibly tall order to make any negotiated outcome palatable to his own team and people. What happened is more nuanced than either ‘Boris torpedoed the deal’ or ‘Putin never wanted to negotiate’ – both of which are wrong. But that Boris was integrally involved in the break off of talks is undeniable.
Robert Kennedy, 1968, on Gross National Product
An inspiring note on which to close:
Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
And, briefly from the same speech on negotiations and compromise. Replace “National Liberation Front” with “Russia” and “South Vietnam” for “Ukraine”, and the speech reads near-perfect today:
I don't want to be part of a government, I don't want to be part of the United States, I don't want to be part of the American people, and have them write of us as they wrote of Rome: "They made a desert and they called it peace."
I think that we should go to the negotiating table, and I think we should take the steps to go to the negotiating table.
And I've said it over the period of the last two years, I think that we have a chance to have negotiations, and the possibility of meaningful negotiations, but last February, a year ago, when the greatest opportunity existed for negotiations the Administration and the President of the United States felt that the military victory was right around the corner and we sent a message to Ho Chi Minh, in February 8th of 1967 virtually asking for their unconditional surrender, we are not going to obtain the unconditional surrender of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong anymore than they're going to obtain the unconditional surrender of the United States of America. We're going to have to negotiate, we're going to have to make compromises, we're going to have to negotiate with the National Liberation Front. But people can argue, “That's unfortunate that we have to negotiate with the National Liberation Front," but that is a fact of life. We have three choices: We can either pull out of South Vietnam unilaterally and raise the white flag - I think that's unacceptable.
Second, we can continue to escalate, we can continue to send more men there, until we have millions and millions of more men and we can continue to bomb North Vietnam, and in my judgment we will be no nearer success, we will be no nearer victory than we are now in February of 1968.
And the third step that we can take is to go to the negotiating table. We can go to the negotiating table and not achieve everything that we wish… One of the things that we're going to have to accept as American people and that the United States government must accept, is that the National Liberation Front is going to play a role in the future political process of South Vietnam.
And we're going to have to negotiate with them. That they are going to play some role in the future political process of South Vietnam, that there are going to be elections and the people of South Vietnam, are ultimately going to determine and decide their own future.
That is the course of action, that is the course of action that I would like to see.
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