Our Friday News Analysis | What the World Reads Now!

By Matt Taibbi
Substack.com
12 October 2024

On Wednesday night, in the Peter Norton Symphony Space on the Upper West Side, Lee Fang and I debated New York Times contributor and Atlantic Council fellow Jamie Kirchick and Times columnist Bret Stephens. The event, hosted by the Free Press and FIRE and moderated by Bari Weiss, turned on the question: “Should the U.S. Still Police the World?”

We won, but absurdly, moving opinion two points from an astonishing 81%-19% in favor of “World Policing” to 79%-21%. Lee was terrific and may have dealt the deciding sequence via an exchange with Stephens on Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. You can read his excellent opening and closing remarks here. There is not yet a video to post, which is a fact I’m not mourning.

I performed poorly. My weakness in debates is temper, and just being in a building with Stephens, who last year wrote “20 Years On, I Still Don’t Regret Supporting the Iraq War,” put me on the edge of losing it. In opening remarks, the coiffed, Yale-educated Kirchick riffed on nineties TV while Bret told an extended joke about a pig with a pegleg, whose punchline is, “You don’t eat a pig like that all at once.” The crowd roared.

Here are a few thoughts on the event and my reasons for joining Lee in believing the U.S. should not continue to police the world:

Two weeks ago, I gave a patriotic speech in Washington, D.C. I spent a month searching for words to articulate the peculiar state of being proud of one’s country while loathing its leaders. That the original Americans would have recoiled from the job of “World Policeman,” I don’t doubt. They were suspicious of a professionalized military. Madison, at the Constitutional Convention, warned the democratic project contained a built-in contradiction, that as it prospered and grew, it would create threats to itself. “The means of defense against foreign danger,” he said, “have always been the instruments of tyranny at home.”

America was born in revolt against the empire and the royalist twits who laid down its dictates in the colonies. The revolution was a clash of personality types, between those who thought they had as much right to pursue happiness as kings had to pursue “dominion and revenue” and those who made the cause of kings their own. One was their person, the other a servant, though often well-heeled.

I took a few lines out of the Washington speech address about how, on top of creativity, industriousness, and defiance, Americans have often shown themselves to be tough people with whom it’s a bad idea to pick a fight. There’s a reason Humphrey Bogart got cheers when he told Conrad Veidt’s Heinrich Strasser character that “there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to invade.”

Casablanca is the enduring artistic homage to one of the momentous turns in our history when we threw off isolationism to join the fight in World War II. Bogie’s Richard Blaine is a wounded cynic, a man burned in love whose creed is, “I stick my neck out for nobody.” Twin screenwriters Julius and Philip Epstein skillfully showed Rick conquering self-pity and sacrificing his happiness for the greater good. Significantly, the great patriotic scene is “La Marseillaise,” symbolizing how Rick’s cause isn’t America’s but that of all suffering nations. He gives up the girl, but his reward is the respect of a Czech hero, who says, “Welcome back to the fight.”

I love that movie. Who doesn’t? It’s gorgeous and funny and romantic, and historical truth saves it from being propaganda. World War II was a just war with a clear objective. We were attacked, we fought back, we defeated the enemy. The epic nature of the victory, charging up defended beach in history’s largest sea invasion in one hemisphere while splitting the atom in another, changed us overnight from middling power to the envy of Rome or Alexander. America was magnanimous in helping defeat Germany and Japan back on their feet, and the strength shown in turning enemies into allies made a powerful argument that we did deserve to inherit the world.

That was eighty years ago, though. Before World War II, the British mocked us as a bumbling giant too timid to become a global power. A Foreign Office memo said, “They have enormous power, but it’s the power of the reservoir behind the dam.” Now, we throw our weight around all the time, and somehow, there isn’t much left behind the dam.

That’s not a material or financial assessment. Our biggest losses since 1945 have been in the realm of things Caesar measured when considering the worthiness of adversaries: valor, dignity, judiciousness. With our awesome military and resources, we should never lose a war. Still, we’ve suffered numerous humiliations at the hands of more furious and determined adversaries in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, to say nothing of disasters like our Libyan engagement. The common theme has been politicians betraying soldiers by saddling them with unjust or unclear missions against people fighting on their land for their lives and families. These losses haven’t dented our military power, but they have drained any claims to honor, things unfortunately not detectable to those reading line items in Washington.

Casablanca made the “fight for love and glory” famous. However, there hasn’t been much glory in being the “World’s Policeman,” mainly because the people in charge of our wars and arguing for them are no longer the ones doing the fighting.

Kirchick, who has a long and colorful history that includes work for Tablet and the Prague desk of RFE/RL and fellowships with the Brookings Institute and the Foreign Policy Initiative, has a refined public persona. He aims for convivial and amusing in tone and usually hits it, and ably represents the well-turned-out-conservative tradition mastered by fellow Yalie Bill Buckley, wearing brash tie-jacket combinations that say, “The staunch national security advocate doesn’t have to be boring.” The ability to deliver arguments that hold interest even when you disagree is usually the sign of a good commentator, and Kirchick has it, even in the increasingly unreadable Atlantic.

I don’t have a transcript, but one of the themes of Kirchick’s presentation on Wednesday was, “If not us, who?” More than once, it was pointed out that while he and Bret clarified their positions, Lee and I hadn’t explained our plan or said who we thought should be running the world. I hadn’t prepared for the question because I didn’t realize it was an accepted fact that someone has to police the world. Instead of attacking that premise, something about Jamie’s cheery delivery and outfit roiled. I said something to the effect of being uncomfortable with well-fed intellectuals debating the wisdom of wars they’re not going to fight.

Jamie took offense. “We have a volunteer army,” he said. “They know what they’re getting into. They made a choice…”

“They chose because they’re poor and have no opportunity,” I said. “Why don’t you fight?”

“Me? I’m too old,” Jamie said.

Lee interjected that while a student at Yale was arguing for the Iraq war, Jamie said he didn’t fight because he was still in school. “Then, you’re too young. Now, you’re too old,” Lee quipped, adding that Ukraine is sending plenty of soldiers in their forties to the front.

Things got hot momentarily. Then Bari moved the discussion to the impact of “world policing” on the upcoming election. While traveling around the U.S. in the 2016 cycle, I noted that I met soldiers who showed up at Donald Trump’s rallies in larger and larger numbers. Some were responding to his “endless wars” rhetoric. Others said they were just curious. Many had been stop-lossed into multiple unexpected tours or had been injured or seen friends die in an idiotic war, and then come home to find VA services in tatters and economic opportunities hollowed out.

They were pissed, more than anything, at politicians and intellectuals who asked for sacrifice without making it themselves. Far more than the 2008 financial crisis, it’s America’s moronic wars that drive anger toward “elites.” Stephens once wrote a Python-themed satirical essay that spoofed the idea that rich Fox News hosts should have any gripe with “elites” (“What Have the ‘Elites’ Ever Done For Fox?”), and maybe that point’s well taken, but the people who watch Fox News have genuine reasons for real animosity toward the war-deciding class.

Kirchick doesn’t bother me personally. Stephens is different. It would take time to explain, but for instance, Bret, in a 2014 book on the horrors of isolationism (written while the paint was still drying on our Iraq disaster), once proposed that America bring “Broken Windows” to the entire world; I wrote two books on the failures of Broken Windows policing. Every time Bret spoke, I flashed to different interviews about Stop-and-Frisk encounters: the kid jailed for having Hi-Liter, the kid knocked by cops off the bicycle, the kid pantsed and testicle-searched in front of the laundromat, the kid put in Rikers for 37 days for having an amount of marijuana New York decriminalized in 1977, etc.

During his opening to laud Lee and me, Bret took time and offered expressions of his respect for our journalism when I had a fair idea he disliked me at least as much as I disliked him. It was an intimidation tactic, showing he could drink the battery acid of a compliment for the sake of a win. Meanwhile, the torture device hadn’t been invented that would induce me to speak something nice about him, which I tried to console myself, which meant my emotions were more sincere, even as I could see his garrulous approach was playing better with the crowd.

In response to the salvo about hawks who don’t fight, Stephens said several things. He’d been embedded in Iraq and Afghanistan, so it wasn’t like he didn’t take risk. (I’ve been embedded. You’re a tourist for whom soldiers are asked to take a bullet. Being anything but embarrassed by it is impressive.) He also spoke of soldiers in Afghanistan feeling betrayed that they weren’t allowed to continue their mission to protect the population. He conceded that there had been “blunders” in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t improve and do the policing job better. As he wrote in his “Why I Don’t Regret the Iraq Thing” piece, “We do better as a cop than as a savior.”

In closing, I quoted a passage from Colin Powell’s memoir, My American Journey:

My constant, unwelcome message at all the meetings on Bosnia was simply that we should not commit military forces until we had a clear political objective… The debate exploded at one session when Madeleine Albright, our ambassador to the UN, asked me in frustration, ‘What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?’ I thought I would have an aneurysm.

I thought I was making an obvious point that giving power to politicians who are interested in an intellectual way of using our “superb military” without grasping the spiritual gravity of those decisions leads to morally insane acts like Iraq. Invading a country whose people have done nothing to us isn’t something you can shrug off as a “blunder.” The shame sticks, it arouses hostility, and (in a way I don’t think hawks even try to understand) advertises superficiality of thought, a kind of weakness. A trigger-happy nation is a dumb nation, and dumbness doesn’t scare anyone.

We’ve been dumb a lot. We backed massacres of (conservatively) 500,000 by the Indonesian Army under Suharto in the mid-1960s, were complicit in deaths of nearly 2,000,000 civilians lost in Indochinese wars (including a generation of horrific congenital disabilities caused by Agent Orange), 160,000 killed in Guatemalan massacres, 200,000 civilians died in Iraq, 50,000 more in Afghanistan, tens of thousands more in Chile after the 1973 coup, the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador in 1981, and so on.

A few people after the event asked why Lee and I didn’t speak more concretely about when it would be appropriate to intervene to stop, say, a Rwandan-style massacre. They’re not wrong questions, but they’re what people ask after decades of editorials by decades of Brookings fellows. Given our history, which includes a long list of too-smart-by-half moves like (as Lee noted) supporting the Khmer Rouge as a counterweight to the Vietnamese, it seems to me the first question to answer is how to avoid actively promoting massacres and genocides. When we get that straightened out, hopefully, by returning to a proper necessity standard when using force, we can start arguing about when and how to save the world.

The crowd didn’t agree. Stephens followed me in his closing, pouncing on the quote. “Thank God Madeleine Albright didn’t listen to Colin Powell in Bosnia so that we could stop genocide and ethnic cleansing!” he said to cheers.

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What is the Side of the Story that is Not Yet Decisive? Edited by Abraham A. van Kempen. 

OPINION | WITH HOPE AND TRUST SHATTERED AFTER A YEAR OF DEVASTATION, WHAT CAN BRING AN END TO THE VIOLENCE IN ISRAEL-PALESTINE?

On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched a savage attack on southern Israel, massacring around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 240 people. The following day, I wrote an analysis for The Conversation.

As the fighting in Gaza grinds on with no end in sight, the prospects for resolving the most intractable conflict in the world between Israeli Jews and Palestinians seem dimmer than ever. (Photo by Abid Katib / Getty Images)

By Eyal Mayroz
ABC Net Australia
9 October 2024

For many Palestinians, this weekend’s events offered Israelis a small taste of what their own lives have been like under decades of occupation. However, the early celebrations will likely soon turn into anger and frustration as the number of Palestinian civilian casualties will continue to rise. Violence begets violence.

As the Israeli retaliation had only just begun, no one could have imagined how devastating it would end up being for the people of Gaza. There are now well over 40,000 Palestinians dead, mostly civilians, and countless wounded. Nearly two million people have been displaced within the coastal strip.

The ferociousness of the Israeli Defense Forces’ aerial bombings — and its subsequent ground invasion of Gaza — triggered intense global pressure to stop the violence. This was coupled with a worldwide campaign to end Israel’s decades-long illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. This popular movement placed its agenda at the forefront of the international media’s attention and sustained it there for many months.

A year later, however, concern for the people of Gaza — and for the dozens of Israeli hostages still locked up in Hamas’ tunnels — has begun to wane. The world’s focus is shifting to the fast-expanding misery along the Israel-Lebanon border and a possible full-scale war between Israel and Iran.

As the fighting in Gaza grinds on with no end in sight, the prospects for resolving the most intractable conflict in the world between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians seem ever dimmer. But is it so?

One conflict, two peoples, and many onlookers

The cycle of violence has barely stopped in a century-long struggle between two societies over the same small parcel of land. Today's challenges remain frustratingly robust: entrenched territorial claims, grave errors by leaders on both sides, and many missed opportunities. Years of polarising narratives have also bred mistrust, competing accounts of victimization, debilitating fears, and animosity.

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SABOTAGE OF THE ISTANBUL PEACE AGREEMENT

The Making of a Proxy War and the Unavoidable Istanbul+ Endgame

By Glenn Diesen
Substack.com
13 October 2024

In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine to impose a settlement after some NATO countries had undermined the Minsk-2 Peace Agreement for seven years. On the first day after the invasion, Zelensky confirmed that Moscow contacted him to discuss negotiations to restore Ukraine’s neutrality.^[1] On the third day after the invasion, Russia and Ukraine agreed to start peace talks based on Russian military withdrawal in return for Ukrainian neutrality.^[2] Zelensky responded favorably to this condition and even called for a “collective security agreement” to include Russia to mitigate the security competition that had sparked the war.^[3]

The following negotiations are referred to as the Istanbul negotiations. In these, Russia and Ukraine were close to an agreement before the US and the UK sabotaged it.

Washington Rejects Negotiations Without Preconditions

In Washington, there were significant incentives to use the large proxy army it had built in Ukraine to weaken Russia as a strategic rival rather than accepting a neutral Ukraine. On the first day after the Russian invasion, when Zelensky responded favorably to start negotiations without preconditions, the US spokesperson rejected peace talks without preconditions as Russia would first have to withdraw all its forces from Ukraine:

“Now we see Moscow suggesting that diplomacy take place at the barrel of a gun or as Moscow’s rockets, mortars, and artillery target the Ukrainian people. This is not real diplomacy… President Putin knows what he can do if he is serious about diplomacy. He should immediately stop the bombing campaign against civilians, order the withdrawal of his forces from Ukraine, and indicate very clearly, unambiguously to the world, that Moscow is prepared to de-escalate”.^[4]

This was a demand for capitulation as the Russian military presence in Ukraine was Russia’s bargaining chip to achieve the objective of restoring Ukraine’s neutrality. Less than a month later, the same US spokesperson was asked if Washington would support Zelensky’s negotiations with Moscow, to which he replied negatively as the conflict was part of a larger struggle:

               “This war is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine…. The key point is that principles are at stake here that have universal applicability everywhere, whether in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, or anywhere in between”.^[5]

The US and UK Demand a Long War: Fighting Russia with Ukrainians

In late March 2022, Zelensky revealed in an interview with the Economist that “There are those in the West who don’t mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives.”^[6]

The Israeli and Turkish mediators confirmed that Ukraine and Russia were both eager to make a compromise to end the war before the US and the UK intervened to prevent peace from breaking out.

Zelensky had contacted former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to mediate the peace negotiations with Moscow. Bennett noted that Putin was willing to make “huge concessions” if Ukraine would restore its neutrality to end the expansion of NATO. Zelensky accepted this condition, and “both sides wanted a ceasefire.” However, Bennett argued that the US and UK intervened and “blocked” the peace agreement, favoring a long war. With a powerful Ukrainian military at its disposal, the West rejected the Istanbul peace agreement, and there was a “decision by the West to keep striking Putin” instead of pursuing peace.^[7]

The Turkish negotiators reached the same conclusion: Russia and Ukraine agreed to resolve the conflict by restoring Ukraine’s neutrality, but NATO decided to fight Russia with Ukrainians as a proxy. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu argued some NATO states wanted to extend the war to bleed Russia:

               “After the talks in Istanbul, we did not think the war would take this long.… But following the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, I had the impression that those within the NATO member states want the war to continue—let the war continue and Russia get weaker. They don’t care much about the situation in Ukraine”.^[8]

Numan Kurtulmus, the deputy chairman of Erdogan’s political party, confirmed that Zelensky was ready to sign the peace agreement before the US intervened:

               “This war is not between Russia and Ukraine. It is a war between Russia and the West. By supporting Ukraine, the United States and some countries in Europe are beginning a process of prolonging this war. What we want is an end to this war. Someone is trying not to end the war. The U.S. sees the prolongation of the war as its interest”.^[9]

Ukrainian Ambassador Oleksandr Chalyi, who participated in peace talks with Russia, confirms Putin “tried everything” to reach a peace agreement, and they were able “to find a genuine compromise.” ^[10] David Arakhamia, a Ukrainian parliamentary representative and head of Zelensky’s political party, argued Russia’s key demand was Ukrainian neutrality: “They were ready to end the war if we, like Finland once did, would accept neutrality and pledge not to join NATO. In fact, that was the main point. All the rest are cosmetic and political ‘additions’”.^[11] Oleksiy Arestovych, the former advisor of Zelensky, also confirmed that Russia was mainly preoccupied with restoring Ukraine’s neutrality.

The main obstacle to peace was thus overcome as Zelensky offered neutrality in the negotiations.^[12] Fiona Hill, a former US National Security Council official, and Angela Stent, a former National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia, confirmed the tentative peace agreement. Hill and Stent penned an article in Foreign Affairs in which they outlined the main terms of the contract:

               “Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from several countries”.^[13]

Boris Johnson Goes to Kiev

What happened to the Istanbul peace agreement? On 9 April 2022, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson went to Kyiv in a rush to sabotage the deal and cited the killings in Bucha as an excuse. Ukrainian media reported that Johnson came to Kyiv with two messages:

               “The first is that Putin is a war criminal. He should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they [the UK and US] are not”.^[14]

In June 2022, Johnson told the G7 and NATO that the solution to the war was “strategic endurance” and “now is not the time to settle and encourage the Ukrainians to settle for a bad peace.” ^[15] Johnson also published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing against any negotiations: “The war in Ukraine can end only with Vladimir Putin’s defeat.”^[16] Before Boris Johnson’s trip to Kyiv, Niall Ferguson had interviewed several American and British leaders, who confirmed that a decision had been made for “the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin” as “the only end game now is the end of Putin regime.”^[17]

Retired German General Harald Kujat, the former head of the German Bundeswehr and former chairman of the NATO Military Committee, confirmed that Johnson had sabotaged the peace negotiations. Kujat argued: “Ukraine had pledged to renounce NATO membership and not to allow any foreign troops or military installations to be stationed’, while “Russia had agreed to withdraw its forces to the level of February 23”. However, “British Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened in Kyiv on the 9th of April and prevented a signing. He reasoned that the West was not ready for an end to the war”.^[18] According to Kujat, the West demanded a Russian capitulation: “Now the complete withdrawal is repeatedly demanded as a prerequisite for negotiations.” ^[19] General Kujat explained that this position was due to the US war plans against Russia:

               “Perhaps one day the question will be asked who did not want to prevent this war… Their declared goal is to weaken Russia politically, economically, and militarily so that they can turn to their geopolitical rival, the only one capable of endangering their supremacy as a world power: China… No, this war is not about our freedom… Russia wants to prevent its geopolitical rival USA from gaining a strategic superiority that threatens Russia’s security”.^[20]

What was Ukraine told by the US and the UK? Why did Zelensky make a deal, given that he was aware some Western states wanted to use Ukraine to exhaust Russia in a long war - even if it would destroy Ukraine? Zelensky likely received an offer he could not refuse:

               If Zelensky pursued peace with Russia, then he would not receive any support from the West, and he would predictably face an uprising by the far-right/fascist groups that the US had armed and trained. In contrast, if Zelensky would choose war, then NATO would send all the weapons needed to defeat Russia, NATO would impose crippling sanctions on Russia, and NATO would pressure the international community to isolate Russia. Zelensky could thus achieve what both Napoleon and Hitler had failed to achieve – to defeat Russia.

The advisor to Zelensky, Oleksiy Arestovych, explained in 2019 that a major war with Russia was the price for joining NATO. Arestovych predicted that the threat of Ukraine’s accession to NATO would “provoke Russia to launch a large-scale military operation against Ukraine,” and Ukraine could join NATO after defeating Russia. Victory over Russia was assumed to be a certainty as Ukraine would merely be the spearhead of a broader NATO proxy war:

               “In this conflict, we will be very actively supported by the West—with weapons, equipment, assistance, new sanctions against Russia and the quite possible introduction of a NATO contingent, a no-fly zone, etc. We won’t lose, and that’s good”.^[21]

NATO turned on the propaganda machine to convince its public that a war against Russia was the only path to peace:

• The Russian invasion was “unprovoked”
• Moscow’s objective was to conquer all of Ukraine to restore the Soviet Union
• Russia’s withdrawal from Kyiv was not a sign of good-will to be reciprocated, but a sign of weakness
• It was impossible to negotiate with Putin,
• and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg subsequently asserted that “weapons are the way to peace.”

The Western public, indoctrinated with anti-Russian propaganda over decades, believed that NATO was merely a passive third party seeking to protect Ukraine from the most recent reincarnation of Hitler. Zelensky was assigned the role of the new Churchill – bravely fighting to the last Ukrainian rather than accepting a bad peace.

The Inevitable Istanbul+ Agreement to End the War

The war did not go as expected. Russia built a powerful army and defeated the NATO-built Ukrainian army; sanctions were overcome by reorienting the economy to the East, and instead of being isolated – Russia took a leading role in constructing a multipolar world order.

How can the war be brought to an end? The suggestions of a land-for-NATO membership agreement ignore that Russia’s leading objective is not territory but ending NATO expansion, which is deemed to be an existential threat. NATO expansion is the source of the conflict, and territorial dispute is the consequence; thus, Ukrainian territorial concessions in return for NATO membership are a non-starter.

The foundation for any peace agreement must be the Istanbul+ formula: an agreement to restore Ukraine’s neutrality plus territorial concessions due to almost three years of war. Threatening to expand NATO after the end of the war will merely incentivize Russia to annex the strategic territory from Kharkiv to Odesa and ensure that only a dysfunctional Ukrainian rump state will remain that is not capable of being used against Russia.

This is a cruel fate for the Ukrainian nation and the millions of Ukrainians who have suffered so greatly. It was also a predictable outcome, as Zelensky cautioned in March 2022:

               “There are those in the West who don't mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives.”^[22]

________________________________________

[1] V. Zelensky, ‘Address by the President to Ukrainians at the end of the first day of Russia's attacks,’ President of Ukraine: Official website, 25 February 2022.

[2] S. Raskin and L. Brown, ‘Ukraine and Russia to meet for peace talks ‘without preconditions,’ Zelensky says,’ New York Post, 27 February 2022.

[3] M. Hirsh, ‘Hints of a Ukraine-Russia Deal?’, Foreign Policy, 8 March 2022.

[4] US Department of State, ‘Department Press Briefing,’ US Department of State, 25 February 2022.

[5] US Department of State, ‘Department Press Briefing,’ US Department of State, 21 March 2022.

[6] The Economist. ‘Volodymyr Zelensky on why Ukraine must defeat Putin’ The Economist, 27 March 2022.

[7] N. Bennett, ‘Bennett speaks out,’ YouTube Channel of Naftali Bennett, 4 February 2023.

[8] R. Simonsen, ‘Former Israeli PM: West Blocked Russo-Ukraine Peace Deal,’ The European Conservative, 7 February 2023.

[9] CNN, ‘Son dakika... Numan Kurtulmuş CNN TÜRK'te: (Rusya-Ukrayna) Birileri savaşı bitirmemek için çabalıyor’ [Last minute... Numan Kurtulmuş on CNN TÜRK: (Russia-Ukraine) Someone is trying not to end the war], CNN Turk, 18 November 2022.

[10] Breaking the Stalemate to Find Peace: The Russia-Ukraine War – A Geneva Security Debate (youtube.com)

[11] A. Sobczak, ‘Diplomacy Watch: Did the West scuttle the Istanbul talks or not?’, Responsible Statecraft, 12 September 2024.

[12] Guardian, ‘Ukraine has offered neutrality in talks with Russia – what would that mean?’, The Guardian, 30 March 2022. 

[13] F. Hill and A. Stent, ‘The World Putin Wants How Distortions About the Past Feed Delusions About the Future,’ Foreign Affairs, September/October 2022.

[14] R. Romaniuk, ‘Possibility of talks between Zelenskyy and Putin came to a halt after Johnson’s visit - UP sources’, Ukraniska Pravda, 5 May 2022.

[15] E. Webber, ‘Boris Johnson warns against seeking ‘bad peace’ in Ukraine,’ Politico, 23 June 2022.

[16] B. Johnson, ‘For a Quicker End to the Russia War, Step Up Aid to Ukraine,’ Wall Street Journal, 9 December 2022.

[17] N. Ferguson, ‘Putin Misunderstands History. So, Unfortunately, Does the U.S.’, Bloomberg, 22 March 2022.

[18] J. Helmer, ‘Whr. Gen. Kujat: Ukraine War is Lost, Germany Now Faces an Angry Russia… Alone, Veterans Today, 25 January 2023.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Emma, ‘Russland will verhandeln!’ [Russia wants to negotiate!], Emma, 4 March 2023.

[21] A. Arestovich, ‘Voennoe Obozrenie’ [Military Review], Apostrof TV, 18 February 2019.

[22] The Economist. ‘Volodymyr Zelensky on why Ukraine must defeat Putin’ The Economist, 27 March 2022.

CAN BIDEN REIN BIBI IN?

As Israel sets its sights on Iran, the US declares nuclear targets out of bounds

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on September 27. / Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images.

This week, according to a report in the Washington Post, an active and fully involved President Joe Biden finally set a limit on what Israel could do with the untold numbers of American bombs that Israel has recently been dropping on Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. The Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been debating how and when to respond to an earlier Iranian missile attack on Israel and an anxious world has been watching as the military madness of the Middle East, fueled by American weapons, continues to escalate.

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BUILDING THE BRIDGE! | A WAY TO GET TO KNOW THE OTHER AND ONE ANOTHER

Making a Difference – The Means, Methods, and Mechanism for Many to Move Mountains

Photo Credit: Abraham A. van Kempen, our home away from home on the Dead Sea

By Abraham A. van Kempen
Senior Editor
Updated 19 January 2024

Those who commit to 'healing our broken humanity' build intercultural bridges to learn to know and understand one another and others. Readers who thumb through the Building the Bridge (BTB) pages are not mindless sheep following other mindless sheep. They THINK. They want to be at the forefront of making a difference. They're in search of the bigger picture to expand their horizons. They don't need BTB or anyone else to confirm their biases.

Making a Difference – The Means, Methods, and Mechanism for Many to Move Mountains

Accurate knowledge promotes understanding, dispels prejudice, and awakens the desire to learn more. Words have an extraordinary power to bring people together, divide them, forge bonds of friendship, or provoke hostility. Modern technology offers unprecedented possibilities for good, fostering harmony and reconciliation. Yet its misuse can do untold harm, leading to misunderstanding, prejudice, and conflict.

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