Who would be worse for US foreign policy?

[Legion Troll]

Is trying and failing better than not trying at all? Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state would probably answer the former. She has told aides, and written in her memoir, that she’d rather be “caught trying” in foreign policy than do nothing.

In short, and perhaps in contrast to her former boss President Barack Obama, when confronted with a foreign-policy crisis or challenge, Clinton was more inclined to act than not.

The reflex to be “caught trying” is very much part of the American —especially when set against Obama’s much-criticized “don’t do stupid stuff” mantra against taking action, which Clinton herself has derided as “not an organizing principle” worthy of a great nation.

But is “get caught trying” a mantra for America’s approach to the world?

The idea is hardly an HRC original. We first heard a version from her husband, President Bill Clinton, during a briefing in preparation for the Camp David Middle East peace summit in the summer of 2000. Reflecting on the failure of those efforts later, Clinton echoed the view: “We always need to get caught trying—fewer people will die.”

As for Hillary, whose penchant, at least rhetorically, is for action, it’s impossible to know what she might have done had she been elected president instead of Obama in 2008.

By her own account, Secretary Clinton argued for arming the Syrian rebels, though that recommendation wasn’t for giving them weapons systems that would have significantly altered the battlefield dynamics.

Nonetheless, it was more than the president was willing to do. She and others did manage to persuade a reluctant Obama to intervene against Qaddafi in Libya—a move Obama now views as a mistake, but which Clinton has not disavowed.

This year on the campaign trail, Clinton has called for a no-fly zone in Syria—an idea seemingly in search of a strategy.




http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/04/american-foreign-policy-get-caught-trying/479376/?google_editors_picks=true

 

[Leonthecat]

Carpet bomb a scattered urban guerrilla force anyone?

 

[Legion Troll]

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump promised 18,000 attendees at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference that he wouldn’t pander to them about Israel.

“That’s what politicians do. All talk, no action,” Trump told the pro-Israel lobbying group.

Then he spent the next 25 minutes pandering to Israel.

The real estate tycoon offered the usual Republican Party bromides: The Iran nuclear deal was terrible, the United Nations was an anti-Israel joke, and the Palestinians were to blame for the failure to reach a two-state solution.

But what set him apart from other presidential hopefuls, who aren’t rhetorically all that different, was the shallowness of his pander. Listing various failed efforts at reaching a two-state solution, Trump sounded as if he was reading an abridged version of the Wikipedia page on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The speech was billed as the self-proclaimed billionaire’s first scripted, focused foreign policy address, coming hours after he revealed his foreign policy team, which includes a former Blackwater executive and a former adviser to a Lebanese warlord.

In a shift from his usual meandering, unscripted riffs, Trump largely adhered to the speech his campaign released in advance — with the exception of a dozen repetitions of “believe me,” apparently added to emphasize his commitment.

And while he managed not to drift into blanket denigrations of any gender, nationality or religion, his speech was largely a list of problems facing Israel, an insistence that Obama is to blame, and a promise to solve everything. He didn’t explain how he would do so.

Indeed, if a Trump doctrine emerged from the AIPAC address, it was to trust in Trump.

He said he earned his chops by agreeing to march in the Salute to Israel Parade in 2004 in New York as the grand marshal. “It was a very dangerous time for Israel, and frankly for anyone supporting Israel — many people turned down this honor. I did not, I took the risk,” Trump said.

On Iran, Trump said his first priority is to “dismantle” the deal that has downsized Iran’s nuclear infrastructure to the point where it incapable of producing a nuclear weapon, reversing his earlier calls to strictly enforce the nuclear agreement between Iran, the U.S., and other nations.

But he didn’t explain what he would do to prevent Iranians from moving to acquire a nuclear weapon in the absence of the international agreement. And later in the speech, he went off script and said, “We will enforce it like you’ve never seen a contract enforced before, folks, believe me.”

On issue of confronting Iran’s support for groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, Trump’s prescription was comforting, perhaps, but comically simplistic. “We will totally dismantle Iran’s global terror network, which is big and powerful, but not powerful like us … We will work to dismantle that reach,” he assured the crowd, adding, “believe me, believe me.”

On the stalled peace process between Israelis and Palestinians — a complex geopolitical crisis with inflamed religious tensions and a long history of bloodshed that has vexed numerous presidents — Trump’s recipe for a breakthrough was his own strategic brilliance.

“Deals are made when parties come together, they come to a table and they negotiate,” he explained. “Each side must give up something.” But aside from boasting about his book Trump: The Art of the Deal, he gave no explanation how he would broker a compromise.

His only concrete proposal on how he would advance a two-state solution is to use American veto power at the United Nations Security Council “100 percent” to block any resolution that lays out the parameters for an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-aipac_us_56f044f8e4b09bf44a9e1437

 

[Legion Troll]

In a long interview with the Daily News, Sanders went into detail, giving us a sense of how he would run things as commander-in-chief.

Here he is on his Middle East views: "I think we can argue reasonably that the most important and significant and far-reaching debate that we’ve had on foreign policy in this country in recent years was on the war in Iraq. Not only did I vote against the war in Iraq, not only did I lead the opposition to the war, helped lead the opposition to the war in Iraq, if you look at the statements that I made on the floor of the House in 2002, sadly to say, much of what I feared would happen actually has happened.

Now, in terms of ISIS, this is a barbaric organization that obviously has got to be destroyed. But it must and can be destroyed without the United States getting involved in perpetual warfare in the Middle East, something that I fear very, very much. So my view is that, very similar to what King Abdullah of Jordan said, that essentially the war against ISIS is a war over the soul of Islam. And the war must be won by Muslim troops on the ground with the support of the United States and other major powers. That is what I believe."

On using drones: "What I do know is that drones are a modern weapon. When used effectively, when taking out ISIS or terrorist leaders, that’s pretty impressive. When bombing wedding parties of innocent people and killing dozens of them, that is, needless to say, not effective and enormously counterproductive. So whatever the mechanism, whoever is in control of that policy, it has to be refined so that we are killing the people we want to kill and not innocent collateral damage."

On handling Israeli–Palestinian issues, especially settlements: "Well, again, you’re asking me a very fair question, and if I had some paper in front of me, I would give you a better answer. But I think if the expansion was illegal, moving into territory that was not their territory, I think withdrawal from those territories is appropriate."

It’s worth noting that the words “Asia,” “Europe,” “Africa,” “cyber,” and other foreign affairs and national security terms did not come up.

Indeed, it wasn’t the most convincing performance by Sanders on foreign policy. He’s going to need to show more breadth and depth of his world affairs knowledge going forward instead of his Middle East and anti-Iraq War stance.


http://warontherocks.com/2016/04/natsec2016-bernie-sanders-foreign-policy/

 

[Legion Troll]

The Syrian Civil War has sidelined one of the thornier issues in Israeli foreign policy, possibly for the next several decades. Israel and Syria aren’t going to be making peace any time soon, which means Israel isn’t likely to relinquish control over the strategic Golan Heights until long after the conflict in the country has ended.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as much on April 17 after a cabinet meeting in the Golan. There, the Israeli leader announced that Israel would never return the area to Syrian control, and called on the international community to recognize the Golan as Israeli territory. A few days later, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz echoed Netanyahu’s claim, saying that the government of Israel had merely “reiterated the reality that the Golan Heights are part of Israel’s sovereign territory.” The Texas Senator is now the only contender for the presidency to go on-record in support of recognizing Israeli authority over the region.

The statement puts Cruz at odds with decades of U.S. policy. No country considers the Golan, which Israel captured during the Six-Day War and annexed in 1981 to be part of Israel—although the Syrian state’s loss of control over the areas bordering the Golan along with the chaos of the country’s civil war have taken away much of the international pressure for Israel to withdraw. The collapse of state authority in Syria has even bolstered arguments that Israeli rule over the Golan is legitimate under certain interpretations of international law.

But the Israeli-Arab peace process is premised on the return of captured territories. In the post-Oslo era, the Golan hasn’t been considered so fundamental a part of Israel’s territorial integrity that it couldn’t be bargained away, in spite of the 1981 annexation. Israel and Syria participated in a high-level peace summit in 2000, under the Labor government of Ehud Barak. Turkey mediated peace talks between Israel and Syria in the late 2000, when the centrist Ehud Olmert was in power. Even the Likudnik Benjamin Netanyahu—who likely saw peace with Syria as a way of isolating Hezbollah and flipping an Iranian client state—entered into talks over a possible withdrawal from the Heights in 2010.

Both Cruz’s and Netanyahu’s statements thus represent a break with past policy. Cruz’s is the more radical of the two positions, as it represents a rejection of longstanding U.S. policy on the region’s status. On April 19th, State Department officials once again clarified that America still does not believe the Golan to be part of Israel.

Cruz’s statement builds on Netanyahu’s, but it’s likely a reflection of sincere belief rather than opportunism. The Texas Senator had staked out a position on the Golan long before Netanyahu’s announcement. In early March, senior Cruz foreign policy advisor Victoria Coates told me that the Senator “has made very clear” that the status of Golan is “an internal matter for Israel.” She noted that the United States recognizes what could be considered more controversial territorial annexations–accepting Tibet as part of China, for instance–and that it should be less of a stretch to acknowledge the Golan as sovereign Israeli territory.

More generally, Cruz has positioned himself as a challenger of American foreign policy taboos, even before he entered the presidential race. In March of 2013, Cruz was the only sponsor on a failed amendment that would have “create[d] a point of order against any legislation that would provide taxpayer funds to the United Nations” as long as any member state forced its citizens or residents to “undergo involuntary abortions.” He was one of only three senators who voted against John Kerry’s confirmation as Secretary of State. He’s introduced legislation that would designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, an idea with relatively thin support among mainstream foreign policy experts. Cruz is also virtually alone among major elected U.S. officials in believing that the US should reverse its policy of calling for the removal of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Cruz’s support for recognizing Israeli authority over the Golan Heights is just the latest position that distinguishes him from the American foreign policy consensus, and from his opponents in the presidential race. In the domestic political sphere, Cruz’s unwavering principles—and alleged disregard for the resulting consequences–sparked a 21-hour Senate filibuster against the Affordable Care Act and even a government shutdown. His statement on the Golan is just the latest example of how a President Cruz’s iconoclasm could play out on foreign policy, too.



http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/200732/why-ted-cruz-broke-with-u-s-foreign-policy-to-say-israel-should-keep-the-golan-heights

 

[anatta]

Secretary Clinton argued for arming the Syrian rebels, though that recommendation wasn’t for giving them weapons systems that would have significantly altered the battlefield dynamics.

Nonetheless, it was more than the president was willing to do. She and others did manage to persuade a reluctant Obama to intervene against Qaddafi in Libya—a move Obama now views as a mistake, but which Clinton has not disavowed.

This year on the campaign trail, Clinton has called for a no-fly zone in Syria—an idea seemingly in search of a strategy.

Clinton the happy warrior

it wasn’t the most convincing performance by Sanders on foreign policy. He’s going to need to show more breadth and depth of his world affairs knowledge going forward instead of his Middle East and anti-Iraq War stance.

sanders inability to lead ( yes it takes leadership even to build coalitions)

Indeed, if a Trump doctrine emerged from the AIPAC address, it was to trust in Trump.

Trump the erratic

 

[Legion Troll]

Yet Canadian Cruz leads the poll for worst currently, doesn't he?