Condoleezza Rice Blasts Obama on Weakness and Lack of Leadership. By Stephen F. Hayes.

Condi Rice Blasts Obama on Weakness, Leadership. By Stephen F. Hayes. The Weekly Standard, March 27, 2014.

Condoleezza Rice blames Obama for “vacuum” that’s led to Putin. By Stephen Dinan. Washington Times, March 27, 2014.

Condi Rice lectures on war “weariness.” By Steve Benen. MSNBC, March 28, 2014.

The Fundamental Transformation of the Nation Rolls On. By Monica Crowley. MonicaMemo.com, February 25, 2014.

Why did Condi Rice blast Obama’s leadership “vacuum” now? Video. On the Record with Greta Van Susteren. Fox News, March 28, 2014. YouTube. Also at GretaWire.




Hayes:

“Right now, there’s a vacuum,” she told a crowd of more than two thousand attending the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual dinner last night in Washington, D.C. “There’s a vacuum because we’ve decided to lower our voice. We’ve decided to step back. We’ve decided that if we step back and lower our voice, others will lead, other things will fill that vacuum.” Citing Bashar al Assad’s slaughter in Syria, Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, al Qaeda’s triumphant return to Fallujah, Iraq, and China’s nationalist fervor, she concluded: “When America steps back and there is a vacuum, trouble will fill that vacuum.”

 

Rice – measured in tone, but very tough on substance – excoriated Obama administration policies without ever mentioning the president by name. She mocked the naïve hope that “international norms” would fill the vacuum left by U.S. retreat and blasted the president for hiding behind the weariness of the public.

 

“I fully understand the sense of weariness. I fully understand that we must think: ‘Us, again?’ I know that we’ve been through two wars. I know that we’ve been vigilant against terrorism. I know that it’s hard. But leaders can’t afford to get tired. Leaders can’t afford to be weary.”

 

Rice’s speech was the highlight of an evening that brought in $15.1 million for House Republicans. The former secretary of state has mostly limited her political appearances since leaving office to major events. She delivered a well-received speech at a donor event that Mitt Romney held in Park City, Utah, in 2012 and addressed the Republican National Convention in Tampa that summer. But those familiar with her thinking say she’s determined to help Republicans pick up the Senate and maintain the House heading into the 2016 presidential elections.

 

House majority whip Kevin McCarthy introduced Rice and raised the prospect that she might become even more involved in politics in two years. After listing various prestigious positions she’s held, he noted, “There’s one thing that’s not on her resume and I want her to put her mind to it to resolve that in 2016.”

 

Rice has downplayed those suggestions and there’s little reason to believe she’s angling for a run. Still, she has been increasingly active on behalf of her fellow Republicans. Earlier this month, Rice spoke at a Kentucky fundraiser for Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and the spring convention for the California Republican party. Rice appeared in an ad touting Alaska Senate hopeful and Marine reservist Dan Sullivan, a spot paid for by Karl Rove’s super PAC, American Crossroads. In the coming months, she will make appearances for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

 

Rice began her speech Wednesday with something of a civics lesson, praising the wisdom of the framers of the Constitution for the limits they placed on government and noting that Americans, despite being the “most individualistic people on this earth, are also the most philanthropic and communitarian.” Rice trundled through well-worn Republican lines on lower taxes and less regulation before once again touting the American system for its recognition of a “vast private space into which the government should not intrude” and a “personal space, where we respect each others’ choices.”

 

Before turning to foreign policy, Rice urged the crowd, including many Republican House members, to keep America a “nation of immigrants” and strafed liberals who send their kids to private schools but write New York Times op-eds claiming that school choice will ruin public schools.

 

But the most powerful part of her speech came when Rice expressed her frustration with Obama on national security. “As Ronald Reagan said: Peace only comes through strength,” she recalled.

 

“So, what are we doing? What are we doing when our defense budget is so small that our military starts to tell us that we may not be able to carry out all of the requirements put upon it? What are we doing, when a couple of weeks before Russia invades Crimea we announce that we are going to have an Army smaller than at any time since the Revolutionary – I’m sorry, not the Revolutionary War, but World War II. What are we doing? What are we doing? What are we signaling when we say that America is no longer ready to stand in the defense of freedom?”


Crowley:

We have seen this movie before and it doesn't end well . . . for us or for the rest of the freedom-loving world. When the U.S. is weak or perceived as weak, the wheels come off the world. The bad guys advance, the good guys retreat, and major violent conflagrations are never far behind.

 

The “fundamental transformation of the nation” of which Obama spoke in 2008 has three major components: moving America from individual liberty to government dependency and collectivism, from capitalism to socialism, and from superpower status to also-ran status.

 

Gutting the military, which was well underway before Hagel’s announcement yesterday, is another critical part of that transformation. The extremist Left has always wanted to take America down a notch or two . . . or ten. Hollowing out America’s armed services while ceding global power to our enemies is the fastest and most efficient way to do that.

Campus Brownshirts on the March. By Caroline Glick.

Campus Brownshirts on the March. By Caroline Glick. Jerusalem Post, March 27, 2014. Also at CarolineGlick.com.

Putin’s Manifest Destiny. By Father Raymond J. de Souza.

Putin’s manifest destiny. By Father Raymond J. de Souza. National Post, March 26, 2014.

Unpacking Putin’s Crimea Speech. By Don Thieme. American Thinker, March 27, 2014.

Full Text and Analysis of Putin’s Crimea Speech. By Bob Dreyfuss. The Nation, March 19, 2014.

Address by Vladimir Putin on Crimea. President of Russia, March 18, 2014. Full video with English translation by EuroNews at YouTube, by RT at YouTube.

The Other Refugees and the Path to Peace. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

The Other Refugees and the Path to Peace. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, March 27, 2014.

“We Acted as They Would Have Done to Us”: An Interview with Arie Lova Eliav. By Arieh O’Sullivan.

“We acted as they would have done to us.” An interview with Arie Lova Eliav (1921-2010). By Arieh O’Sullivan. Jerusalem Post, June 1, 2010. Originally published June 18, 2004.

Eliav:

First of all, 1,000 [Jewish] refugees were arriving daily. Every day another thousand. One day, one thousand. And we had to settle them. Remember this wasn’t the same state that absorbed 1 million Russian immigrants and had cities like Ashdod and Ashkelon and Upper Nazareth. We were a small and poor country. We had to absorb hundreds of thousands of refugees from Morocco and Iraq and Poland and Hungary.

 

Look, we had just gone through a terrible war [the War of Independence]. Where they won, like in Gush Etzion and the Old City and Atarot, they won. They killed soldiers, destroyed the houses and took the women and children and residents and made them into refugees. The Arabs were victorious in about 20 places. In that war it was either them or us. It was a zero sum war. That is the context. There was a war, and wherever they won, they turned us into refugees.

 

To our good fortune, we were victorious in over 400 places. And I don’t need [historian] Benny Morris to tell me what we did. We acted as they would have done to us. We did to them what all victors throughout history and for all generations and through all the miserable history of mankind did. The victor conquers, kills in battle and those who remain are banished.

 

They won in 20 places, and if they had won in 400 or 300 or 100 places, then I wouldn’t be sitting with you today. They would have either killed me or made me into a refugee. This was the horrible war of 1948. The result of this awful war was the creation of two groups of refugees. We are 5 million Jewish refugees and they are 5 million Palestinian refugees. They need to solve this humanitarian problem of their refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is my position that not one refugee will return. Not one.

Ex-Ukrainian PM Yulia Tymoshenko: Time to Grab Our Guns and Kill Those Damned Russians.

Yulia Tymoshenko

Time to grab guns and kill damn Russians – Tymoshenko in leaked tape. Russia Today, March 24, 2014. Video at YouTube.

Leaked Call Shows Tymoshenko Urging Violence Against Russians, Report Says. By Christopher Brennan. Moscow Times, March 25, 2014.

In latest wiretapping leak, Yulia Tymoshenko appears to say “nuclear weapons” should be used to kill Russians. By Adam Taylor. Washington Post, March 25, 2014.

Tymoshenko “shot herself in the foot” as compromise political figure. Interview with Mark Almond. Russia Today, March 25, 2014.

Sans braid, with F-bombs blazing, Tymoshenko is back. By Olga Rudenko. Global Post, March 27, 2014.

Crimea will always be Ukrainian. By Yulia Tymoshenko. The Christian Science Monitor, March 20, 2014.

Changing the Historical Narrative: Saeb Erekat’s New Spin. By Alan Baker.

Changing the Historical Narrative: Saeb Erekat’s New Spin. By Alan Baker. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, March 23, 2014.

Saeb Erekat: Palestinians Were Here Before Jews. NJBR, February 3, 2014. Collected articles.

The Truth About Palestinian Immigration. By Evelyn Gordon. NJBR, September 10, 2013. With related articles and video.


Baker:

SUMMARY

 

Palestinian leaders are manipulating the history of geographic Palestine/Land of Israel. They have manufactured a curious claim, expressed recently by Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, that they are descended from Canaanites and are therefore the indigenous people of the area, present before the emergence of the Jewish people around the year 1500 BCE.

 

Saeb Erekat’s family is Bedouin. According to Bedouin genealogy, the family is part of the Huweitat clan which originated in the Hejaz area of Saudi Arabia, arrived in Palestine from the south of Jordan, and settled in the village of Abu Dis in the early twentieth century.

 

Several leading scholars of Middle Eastern studies and Islamic history have confirmed that the Palestinians do not have ancient roots in the area and are trying to invent origins for themselves that predate the Jewish people’s presence.

 

They explain that most of the Palestinians arrived as part of the waves of immigration that began in the nineteenth century at the time of the emergence of Zionism, attracted by employment opportunities and economic benefits.

 

The historical presence of the Jewish people in the “Holy Land” is well-documented, not only in the scriptures of all three monotheistic religions, and visible in extensive archeological remains, but also in historic writings by early Greek, Roman, pagan, and other visitors to the area. The fact that Christianity emanated from Judaism is further proof of the presence of a thriving Jewish community in the area.

Russian State TV Anchor Evelyn Zakamskaya: Jews Brought Holocaust on Themselves.

Jews brought Holocaust on themselves, says Russian state TV. By John Aravosis. AMERICAblog, March 23, 2014. Video at YouTube.

Russian state TV anchor says Jews brought Holocaust on themselves. Jerusalem Post, March 24, 2014.




Aravosis:

It’s beginning to look a lot like Stalin.

 

A Russian state TV presenter, during an interview about Ukraine, told a guest that Jews helped bring the Holocaust on themselves.

 

As context, the Russians have been justifying their invasion of Ukraine, and annexation of Crimea, by claiming that the Maidan protest movement in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian government, is run by neo-Nazis.  In fact, the truth is slightly more complicated than that, as many European governments also include people we would call “neo-Nazis.”

PROKHANOV: It is strange that Jewish organizations – European and Russian – support Maidan. They do that? They do not realize that they are, with their own hands, closer to the second Holocaust?

 

HOST EVELYN ZAKAMSKAYA: They also advanced the first [Holocaust].

 

PROKHANOV: It’s dreadful, it is astonishing blindness — which, apparently, is repeated, because until 1933 in Europe many liberal organizations were feeding Hitler.

 

HOST EVELYN ZAKAMSKAYA: Yes.

I confirmed the transcript with Miriam Elder at Buzzfeed, who speaks Russian, and says it’s “accurate, if incomplete.”

 

This is what passes for “journalism” in Russia.  State-employed extremists who spout pretty much anything to further the Kremlin’s cause.

 

Ironically, Russian President Putin claims he invaded and annexed Ukrainian Crimea to defend Russian-speakers from neo-Nazis.  (The truth is slightly more complicated.) Yet, Russian state television, run by Putin, thinks Jews are to blame for the Holocaust.  Then again, Russia has a long history with anti-semitism.

 

And, Putin himself lets neo-Nazi gangs operate at will across Russia, doing his dirty work against minorities that the Kremlin doesn’t like, including Jews.

 

So it’s no surprise that the Russian propaganda organs now believe Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves.

Cold Man in the Kremlin. By Roger Cohen.

Cold Man in the Kremlin. By Roger Cohen. New York Times, March 20, 2014.

Worlds Apart. By Anna Nemtsova. Foreign Policy, March 24, 2014.

Ukrainian Women Have Launched a Sex Strike Againt Russian Men. By Olga Khazan.

Ukrainian Women Have Launched a Sex Strike Against Russian Men. By Olga Khazan. The Atlantic, March 24, 2014.

Ukrainian Women’s Sex Boycott Against Russian Men. By Kevin Rothrock. Global Voices, March 23, 2014.

Ukrainian Hipsters Say No to Sex with Russians. By Hanna Kozlowska. Foreign Policy, March 24, 2014.

Katerina. By Taras Shevchenko. Translated by Mary Skrypnyk. Toronto, 1960.

The Overprotected Kid. By Hanna Rosin.

The Overprotected Kid. By Hanna Rosin. The Atlantic, March 19, 2014.

Discussing Your Homework Assignment on The Overprotected Kid. By Rush Limbaugh. RushLimbaugh.com, March 24, 2014.

Shattered Hopefulness: Back to Realpolitik. By Robert J. Samuelson.

Shattered Hopefulness: Back to Realpolitik. By Robert J. Samuelson. Real Clear Politics, March 24, 2014. Also at the Washington Post.

Samuelson:

For the record, it’s worth noting that Russia’s swift seizure of Crimea confounds and contradicts one of the hopeful axioms of conventional wisdom. The presumption — rarely stated openly but widely believed — has been that the growing economic interdependence of nations reduces traditional geopolitical conflicts. Globalization deters war. Countries have too much to lose to risk conflicts that will antagonize trading partners and international investors. The tendency is to “work things out” rather than threaten these vital relationships.

 

This vision of a world pacified by economic self-interest is largely an American one. It projects U.S. optimism onto the rest of the world. Americans’ obsession with “getting ahead” defines us. It provides a common denominator for inclusion. The shared striving for economic success mutes differences of religion, region, race and ethnicity, where conflicts and contrasts are more unyielding. We can all join the rush for riches without sacrificing the exclusionary aspects of our personal identities. What worked for us can work for everyone. It is easier to settle economic disputes than more stubborn disagreements stemming from heritage, history and values.

 

Up to a point, the past half-century has vindicated this vision. Its greatest achievement is the European Union, which started as “the common market” and demonstrated that economic integration can muzzle the animosities of centuries of war. “Our story is of enemies making peace,” as one E.U. official says. Conflicts along national lines haven’t disappeared, but they have moved from battlefields to bureaucracies.

 

The end of the Cold War gave the vision another boost. The competition between capitalism and communism was settled. The American money chase seemed to go global. Cross-border trade and investment increased rapidly. The emergence of middle classes in some countries (South Korea, Brazil, India, China) provided strong constituencies for economic development. Although conflicts didn’t vanish, they seemed to originate increasingly from non-state actors (al-Qaeda), regions (Africa) and countries (Afghanistan) at the fringes of the global economy.

 

This economic ideology was uplifting. For some countries, it rationalized reduced military budgets. But in annexing Crimea, Russia defied the norms of this new world order. Russia resorted to military power, not diplomacy. It disregarded the threat to its economic interests and the economic interests of its trading and investment partners. It flaunted its nationalism.

 

We’re relearning an old lesson: History, culture, geography, religion and pride often trump economics. The nation-state remains, reminds Harvard political scientist Jeffry Frieden, author of “Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century.” It defines its interests on its terms. Vladi­mir Putin, not illogically, sees Russia threatened on its borders by an U.S.-led coalition that, Frieden says, “is hostile in the sense that most people in the West would like to see Putin’s regime go — it’s authoritarian; it frustrates our interests.”

 

Globalization could never swamp everything else. Economics is not omnipotent. One blow to this mythology was the 2008-09 financial crisis. Markets promote prosperity and deliver benefits, but they also stir instability and impose costs. The world may be flat, as columnist Thomas Friedman argued in his 2005 book, in that modern societies compete and cooperate in a large global system. But the world remains round in the sense that traditional geopolitical conflicts, aspirations and pressures often dictate events. (Think Iran.)

 

What’s left is a messy mix of old and new. Countries pursue their goals in ways that involve, but are not limited to, their economic interests. (Think China and, yes, the United States.) Global economic integration has run ahead of political integration, and the divergence is a source of instability. Putin surely knew that his move against Crimea would have adverse repercussions — and they have. Writes one Financial Times commentator:

 

“Russian companies and banks have withdrawn billions of dollars of deposits from U.S. and European banks, fearful that the money could be seized or frozen in the event of tough sanctions. Likewise, Western institutions have been busy minimizing their exposure to Russian banks and industrial companies.”

 

The financial turmoil has (so far) been limited and localized. The same can be said of the sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union to deter further Russian moves against Ukraine. These have been tempered for understandable reasons. As diplomatic levers, the tools of globalization are a double-edged sword. Mutually beneficial economic transactions, if reversed abruptly or forcefully, can become mutually destructive.

 

All this could change in a flash. Crises are inherently hard to predict and subject to miscalculation. Whatever happens, we’ve been given a harsh refresher course in realpolitik.

Three More Palestinian “No’s” to Peace. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

Three More Palestinian “No’s” to Peace. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, March 23, 2014.

Hamas MP Yunis al-Astal: We Must Massacre Jews.

Hamas MP Al-Astal: We Must Massacre Jews, Impose Jizya Poll Tax on Them. MEMRI TV. Video Clip No. 4202, March 6, 2014. YouTube.




Transcript:

In a recent address, Hamas cleric and MP Yunis Al-Astal said that the Koran indicates that “we must massacre [the Jews]... to prevent them from sowing corruption in the world.” Al-Astal further said: “We must restore them to the state of humiliation imposed upon them... They must pay the jizya security tax while they live in our midst.” The address was aired on March 6, 2014, on the Hamas-owned Al-Aqsa TV, broadcasting from Gaza.

 

Following are excerpts:

 

Yunis Al-Astal: In today’s show, we will discuss the demand that the Palestinian people recognize [Israel] as a Jewish state, so that the occupation will graciously hand them out scraps. I would like to begin by quoting what Allah said about them: “The worst of beasts in the sight of Allah are those who disbelieve. They are the ones with whom you made a covenant, but they break their covenant every time.”

 

[...]

 

The obvious question is: What is the solution to this gang of people? The Al-Anfal chapter of the Koran provides us with the answer. After He said: “They are the ones with whom you made a covenant, but they break their covenant every time,” Allah added: “If you gain mastery over them in a war, use them to disperse those who follow them that they may remember.” This indicates that we must massacre them, in order to break them down and prevent them from sowing corruption in the world. They are the ones who still spark the flame of war, but Allah has taken it upon Himself to extinguish it.

 

[...]

 

We must restore them to the state of humiliation imposed upon them. They should be dhimmi citizens. This status must be imposed upon them by war. They must pay the jizya security tax while they live in our midst.

 

[...]

 

However, in Palestine, where they are occupiers and invaders, they cannot have the status of dhimmis.

 

[...]


Commentary by Elder of Ziyon:

The next to last paragraph is actually very important. While Muslims like to claim how well they treated second-class dhimmis over the centuries, al-Astal is admitting the truth: the entire point of dhimmitude is to impose a state of humiliation on Christians and Jews.

 

Which is why Muslims will never accept Israel. The idea that the weak, dhimmi Jews are more powerful than Muslims – in the middle of the Muslim world – is the worst humiliation that can be imagined. They can sort of accept that 2 billion Christians have a lot of power outside Muslim geographical centers, after all, that’s been the status quo for 500 years. But 6 million Jews building a country that a billion Muslims cannot destroy? That cannot be accepted, no matter what.

 

And this is why these Jews in Israel are not even accorded dhimmi status, according to al-Astal. Their humiliation of Muslims is so egregious that the Koran itself must be interpreted to demand that they be massacred.

 

But the West still thinks that a couple of Muslim national leaders signing a piece of paper can change the entire Islamic psyche overnight or in a few years.

British Zionist Richard Millett Boycotted at BDSer Ben White Amnesty Event. By Richard Millett.

Boycotted at Ben White Amnesty event as David Hearst announces “I know who you write for.” By Richard Millett. Richard Millett’s Blog, March 22, 2014.

Bibi declared “most dangerous political world leader today” by Walid Khalidi at Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS. By Richard Millett. Richard Millett’s Blog, March 7, 2014.

Jews under attack at Centre for Palestine Studies as Ilan Pappé comes to SOAS. By Richard Millett. Richard Millett’s Blog, March 6, 2014.

“Right of Return” Is Not About “Refugees.” By Rick Richman.

“Right of Return” Is Not About “Refugees.” By Rick Richman. Commentary, March 23, 2014.

Richman:

In “A Jewish State,” the Wall Street Journal notes that “the right of return, with its implicit promise to eliminate Israel, is the centerpiece of the conflict” between Israelis and Arabs. The Journal observes that it is a “right” recognized “for no other refugee group in the world,” and that its acceptance by Israel would risk “a demographic time bomb that could turn the country into another Lebanon, sectarian and bloody.” The Journal explains the Palestinian rejection of a Jewish state as follows: “As to why Mr. Abbas won’t accept a Jewish state, it’s because doing so means relinquishing what Palestinians call the ‘right of return.’”

 

The Journal’s otherwise excellent editorial confuses a tactic and a goal. The reason the Palestinians won’t accept a Jewish state is not because it means relinquishing the “right of return.” It is the other way around: they won’t relinquish the “right of return” because it would mean accepting a Jewish state. Nor is this simply a matter of substituting the converse for the Journal’s formulation. Rather, it reflects a fundamental point that Ron Dermer (then one of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s closest aides and currently Israel’s ambassador to the U.S.) made in a May 2009 AIPAC presentation. Dermer’s point was that the “core issue” in the conflict was not refugees, but recognition:

The half of the Palestinian polity that is not openly dedicated to Israel’s destruction is unwilling to recognize Israel as the Jewish state . . . For those of you who think that this has anything to do with the refugee issue — you’re wrong. In 1947, there wasn’t a single refugee, and the Palestinian and the Arab world was not willing to recognize a nation state for the Jewish people. That is a core issue, the core issue . . .

The Palestinians use a definition of “refugee” that makes their “refugeehood” hereditary. Other refugees get resettled; Palestinian refugees get born. They may have never lived in Israel, but they are classified as “refugees” at birth, on grounds that their grandparents (or great grandparents) were refugees 65 years ago. This is why each year the number of Palestinian refugees increases, while the number of other refugees in the world decreases. The Palestinians have been repeatedly offered a state to which their refugees could “return,” but they repeatedly reject it, clinging to a specious “right” of “return” to Israel not because it is necessary for the “refugees,” but because it is a tool in the fight against the Jewish state.

 

The latest tactic is the Palestinian assertion (swallowed whole by the New York Times) that recognition of a Jewish state is a new issue, allegedly raised by Netanyahu to prevent peace. It is a Big Lie. Last Wednesday Ambassador Dennis Ross, speaking on “Israel, America, and the Middle East: Challenges for 2014,” summarized the Israeli position (my transcription and italics):

From the Israeli standpoint, they say look, if you believe in two states, why is it that Israel being the nation-state of the Jewish people is something that you can’t accept? Why is it that self-determination for the Jewish people in a part of historic Palestine is something that you can’t embrace? And it’s pretty fundamental.

 

When I hear it said that this is the first time this issue has been raised – the people who say that think that no one knows history.  Now maybe it’s true that most people don’t know history. But they should never say it to me. When we were at Camp David, this issue was raised. In the period after Camp David, before we did the Clinton Parameters, this issue was raised. This issue has been raised for obvious reasons. From the Israeli standpoint, there is a need to know that the Palestinians are committed to two states, meaning in fact that one state is Palestinian and one is the state of the Jewish people. They need to know the Palestinians are not about two states, one Palestinian and one bi-national.

In 1947, the Jews accepted the UN two-state resolution; the Arabs not only rejected it, but started a war the next day. In 1948, when Israel declared itself a state, the Arab states sent their armies in, seeking to destroy it. Instead, they created a “catastrophe” for themselves. More than 65 years later, the Palestinians and their Arab allies still reject a Jewish state. They need to recognize it, not only for Israel’s benefit but their own: it is the necessary first step on their long road back from the self-created “catastrophe.” For the reasons succinctly stated in Ambassador Ross’s summary, no “two-state solution” is possible until they take that first step. But the Palestinians appear to have already made it clear they will not miss the opportunity to say “no” once again.

 

 

The End of the New Deal. By Walter Russell Mead.

The End of the New Deal. By Walter Russell Mead. Video. The American Interest, March 23, 2014. Also at Real Clear Politics, Fox Business.

The Case for Nationalism. By John O’Sullivan.

The Case for Nationalism. By John O’Sullivan. Wall Street Journal, March 22, 2014.

O’Sullivan:

Incessant “antifascist” propaganda from Moscow, baseless claims of attacks against Russians in Ukraine, incitement of Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine, Russian troops without insignia seizing official buildings in Crimea, a stage-managed illegal plebiscite there and then its annexation by Russia, assurances from President Vladimir Putin that he has no further territorial designs in Europe (though, alas, he may be forced to intervene elsewhere to protect ethnic Russians)—yes, it all has the disturbing ring of the 1930s.

 

Isn’t this where nationalism leads—to fascism and war?

 

That is a common interpretation of Europe’s recent crises. It is also, coincidentally, Mr. Putin’s interpretation of events in Ukraine, which he blames on neo-fascist followers of the nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, who was murdered by the KGB in 1959. But this view is really too simple by half.

 

Nationalists are certainly implicated in the Ukraine crisis, but more as victims than perpetrators. The crisis began as an attempt by Moscow to rescue its stillborn concept of a Eurasian Economic Union by forcing Ukraine to join it and to reject associate membership in the European Union.

 

Mr. Putin, who isn’t a nationalist (see below) but the ruler of a shaky multinational empire hostile to nationalism, sparked off the crisis by closing Russia’s borders to Ukraine’s agricultural exports. He did so to compel a reluctant President Viktor Yanukovych to abandon the more popular EU option.

 

The Ukrainian government, encouraged by Mr. Putin, unified the assorted democrats, nationalists and activists of the left and the right who protested this move by firing indiscriminately on them. Mr. Yanukovych’s power crumbled almost visibly; he fled; and a new Ukrainian government that includes nationalists took over.

 

Nationalism was thus one impulse in this general movement. Others were love of freedom, desire for a more democratic system, economic hopes for greater prosperity through ties to Western Europe and simple human decency. The Ukrainians inspired by these aims have just sustained an (inevitable) defeat in Crimea, but they still govern most of Ukraine, which is now escaping from Moscow’s post-Soviet institutions. While that remains the case, Mr. Putin has suffered a reverse overall.

 

If Ukrainian nationalists have been reactive, even victimized, in this crisis, what about Mr. Putin himself? His actions have certainly been objectionable—ruthless, aggressive, deceitful, illegal, repressive, subversive. But to describe them as “nationalist” is to reduce the concept of nationalism to a politics of aggressive self-assertion. There is no reason to suppose that nations and nation-states are more prone to indulge in such folly than are federations, empires or states founded on nonnational principles.

 

Mr. Putin has indeed acted ruthlessly of late, but he has done so in the service of what he sees as clear state or even personal interests, not from a commitment to Russian peoplehood.

 

The history of the 1930s is instructive for making the necessary distinctions here. World War II began as the result of a conspiracy by Hitler and Stalin—the Nazi-Soviet Pact—to invade Poland and divide Eastern Europe and the Baltic states between them. Nazi Germany was a state built upon the ideology of racial nationalism (which places race above nationhood), the Soviet Union upon the ideology of proletarian internationalism (which rejects nationalism entirely). Both acted far more brutally and unrestrainedly than any conventional nation-state of the period.

 

Besides, today’s Russian Federation is itself not a nation-state but an empire. Mr. Putin’s conduct of the crisis, in addition to being aggressive, might best be described as imperialist or neo-imperialist, not nationalist. We should not illegitimately associate the nation-state with crimes that aren’t uniquely nationalist and may even be less likely to be committed by stable nation-states.

 

This matters because nationalism is an increasingly necessary word that is too often misused as a term of abuse. Nationalisms and nationalist movements are popping up all over Europe. These can take very different forms: left, right and ambivalent. Some are straightforward secessionist movements, like the nationalist parties in Scotland and Catalonia, striving to establish new states rooted in historic nations. Others are movements resisting further integration of their existing nation-states into the European Community, such as the True Finns party in Finland and the U.K. Independence Party in Britain.

 

Still others want to protect the nation and its distinctive political spirit (the National Front in France), or the welfare state (the Danish People’s Party in Denmark) or “liberal values” (the Party of Freedom led by Geert Wilders in Holland) that each feels is threatened by mass immigration. Even the mercifully cautious Germans have the Alternative for Germany party, which, though not avowedly nationalist, emits a distinctively postwar German anti-Euro economic nationalism—and should probably be renamed the Alliance of Patriotic Bankers.

 

Most of these parties, which didn’t exist 20 years ago, are now represented in Europe’s parliaments. They are expected to do well in May's elections. They probably won't win power or enter government, but they force mainstream parties to deal with such issues as the loss of national sovereignty.

 

In the eyes of Europe’s various political and cultural establishments—what the British call the Great and the Good—none of this should be happening. It is akin to water running uphill. For several decades now, we have heard from these precincts that the nation-state is on its way out, losing power upward to supranational institutions and downward to organized minority groups. Behind their hands, the critics of resurgent nationalism murmur that it is nothing but xenophobia, authoritarianism or even fascism, in folkloric drag. They see Europe’s rising nationalist parties as the preserve of bitter losers or those in the grip of nostalgia.

 

Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, expressed this view perfectly in 2010 when he announced for the umpteenth time that the nation-state was dead, adding: “The biggest enemy of Europe today is fear; fear leads to egoism, egoism leads to nationalism, and nationalism leads to war.”

 

This pronouncement didn’t foresee Mr. Putin’s recent actions. But it illustrates nicely how Europe’s political elites see events like the Ukraine crisis in the distorting mirror of anti-nationalism. This view persuades them to consider nationalism a threat, but a dying one. And it is, quite simply, wrong on both counts.

 

A practical refutation of this view lies in the fact that there are more nation-states in the world today than ever before. They have multiplied since 1945 in two great leaps forward: the decolonization period of the 1950s and 1960s, and the years following the dissolution of communism in 1989 and 1991. Some of these nations gained their independence, alas, by war and revolution—Zimbabwe, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo. Others did so by peaceful negotiation. Most former British colonies and Soviet republics took this route, but the most significant example of it is the “velvet divorce” that produced successful Czech and Slovak states.

 

This upsurge of nationhood might be dismissed as a detour on the high road to global governance if the establishment view of nationalism weren’t so absurdly crude. It elides vital distinctions and treats all forms of national loyalty as if they were the most aggressive and exclusivist type. In reality, the full spectrum of nationalist loyalties runs roughly as follows: from Nazism, which is totalitarian racial nationalism; to fascism, which is authoritarian and aggressive nationalism; to ethnic nationalism, which is exclusivist, treating ethnic minorities as second-class citizens (if that); to civic nationalism, which opens full citizenship to all born in the national territory in return for their loyalty to the nation and its institutions; and finally, to patriotism, which is that same national loyalty plus simple love of country—its scenery, its sights and sounds, its characteristic architecture, its songs and poems, its people, its wonderful familiarity.

 

Here, for instance, is George Orwell, perhaps the most famous critic of nationalism, upon returning to southern England from Spain: “Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wildflowers, the deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen—all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England.”

 

England has changed since then, of course; men no longer wear bowler hats. But it would be as absurd to condemn such a tender patriotism as likely to lead to fascism as it would be to abstain from all interest in sex on the grounds that it might lead to promiscuity. Ordinary people, attached to reality as they must be to survive, feel exactly that sense of absurdity when they hear statements like Mr. Van Rompuy’s.

 

But that hasn’t hitherto affected their political behavior. Why have they suddenly begun thinking and voting in line with such sentiments?

 

One obvious reason is that all the ideological rivals to patriotism have been largely discredited. Orwell pointed out that those who abandoned patriotism generally adopted a more virulent ideological substitute. In our day, the most obvious rival ideologies are Europeanism in Europe and multiculturalism in the U.S., both of which seek to weaken national patriotism to change the political character of their societies.

 

But neither of these creeds has yet become more than a niche loyalty, even though they enjoy lavish official support and the sympathy of those government officials, international bureaucrats, NGO executives, “denationalized” corporate managers and academics ambitious to be the vanguard of the new or transformed nation. Old-fashioned patriotism survives, perhaps weakened by such defections, but not seriously challenged. It remains in the shadows until tempted into the open by a 9/11, or an anniversary of D-Day or the funeral of a Margaret Thatcher. It is then suddenly recognized as the sentiment of most of the nation.

 

Until recently, those voters for whom patriotism and the national interest were determining issues found comfortable homes in parties of both the left and the right. But that has gradually ceased to be true.

 

As parties of the left swapped their working-class identity for that of middle-class liberalism, they began to think patriotism vulgar, cheap and xenophobic. At the same time, mainstream parties of the right drifted unthinkingly into a posture that treated nationalist and socially conservative voters as somewhat embarrassing elderly relatives whose views could be safely ignored. Party leaders reasoned that their atavistic voters had nowhere else to go.

 

The result can be seen most dramatically in Britain, where the U.K. Independence Party, having secured its base among traditional middle-class Tories, is now harvesting new votes from patriotic blue-collar Laborites. But one can see similar outcomes throughout Europe.

 

Another factor in this resurgence is a change of intellectual fashion toward bigness. Fewer people in all classes are still confident that the future belongs to the big battalions. They have noticed that smaller states are likely to be richer, easier to manage and closer to the people than larger states. As the Economist magazine pointed out a few years ago: “Of the 10 countries with populations of over 100 [million], only the U.S. and Japan are prosperous.”

 

These economic facts remove an important obstacle to secession. And if there ever was a link between prosperity and bigness, it has been dissolved by free trade and globalization, which ensure that the size of a nation need no longer coincide with the size of the market open to it. At the same time, a government can shrink to the size that its citizens find most convenient to control.

 

The U.S. is the exception to these rules—it is both large and prosperous—because its federalism distributes power to states and localities, where it can be better controlled. Switzerland is another example. Europe might imitate America’s success if it were to model itself on Switzerland and distribute power downward. But the opposite is happening—in both Europe and America.

 

A final brief argument is perhaps the strongest: Nation-states are an almost necessary basis for democracy. A common language and culture, a common allegiance to national institutions, a common sense of destiny, all within a defined territory, with equal rights for all citizens—these seem to be the conditions that enable people with different opinions and interests to accept political defeat and the passage of laws to which they strongly object. There are a few exceptions to this rule—India, Switzerland—but many more confirmations of it.

 

None of these many considerations justify supporting nationalism as a universal principle of statehood. There is no such principle. States rooted in ideas as different as popular consent and the dynastic principle have been handed down to us by history. Wholesale reconstruction of them is utopian and nearly always fails. The best we can hope for is to improve them by piecemeal reform along the grain of their history.

 

But trying to abolish or replace the nation-state is almost certain to produce more evils than it deters. The lesson of recent history is that nationalism is here to stay—and that secure, stable and satisfied nation-states are likely to want friendship with neighboring countries rather than their conquest. Wise political leaders anxious for peace will concentrate on shaping their people's nationalism into an amiable patriotism rather than on submerging it in a new sovereignty and driving it toward its darker manifestations.

Nasa-Funded Study: Industrial Civilization Headed for “Irreversible Collapse?” By Nafeez Ahmed.

Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for “irreversible collapse?” By Nafeez Ahmed. The Guardian, March 14, 2014.

Natural and social scientists develop new model of how “perfect storm” of crises could unravel global system.

Here’s How NASA Thinks Society Will Collapse. By Alex Brown. National Journal, March 18, 2014.

Too much inequality and too few natural resources could leave the West vulnerable to a Roman Empire-style fall.

Did Nasa fund “civilisation collapse” study, or not? By Nafeez Ahmed. The Guardian, March 21, 2014.

About that Popular Guardian Story on the Collapse of Industrial Civilization. By Keith Kloor. Discover, March 21, 2014.

Judging the Merits of a Media-Hyped “Collapse” Study. By Keith Kloor. Discover, March 21, 2014.

What happened to space exploration? NASA’s new project predicts the end of civilization. By Glenn Beck. GlennBeck.com, March 18, 2014.

NASA-backed study says human civilization is headed for irreversible collapse. By Scott Sutherland. Yahoo! News, March 19, 2014. 

Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies. By Safa Moteshaerrei, Jorge Rivas, and Eugenia Kalnay. Ecological Economics, draft accepted for publication. Also here.

Introduction:

There are widespread concerns that current trends in population and resource-use are unsustainable, but the possibilities of an overshoot and collapse remain unclear and controversial. How real is the possibility of a societal collapse? Can complex, advanced civilizations really collapse? It is common to portray human history as a relentless and inevitable trend toward greater levels of social complexity, political organization, and economic specialization, with the development of more complex and capable technologies supporting ever-growing population, all sustained by the mobilization of ever-increasing quantities of material, energy, and information. Yet this is not inevitable. In fact, cases where this seemingly near-universal, long-term trend has been severely disrupted by a precipitous collapse – often lasting centuries – have been quite common. A brief review of some examples of collapses suggests that the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history, making it important to establish a general explanation of this process.

 

The Roman Empire’s dramatic collapse (followed by many centuries of population decline, economic deterioration, intellectual regression, and the disappearance of literacy) is well known, but it was not the first rise-and-collapse cycle in Europe. Prior to the rise of Classical Greco-Roman civilization, both the Minoan and Mycenaean Civilizations had each risen, reached very advanced levels of civilization, and then collapsed virtually completely. The history of Mesopotamia – the very cradle of civilization, agriculture, complex society, and urban life – presents a series of rise-and-declines including the Sumerians, the Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, Sassanid, Umayyad, and Abbasid Empires. In neighboring Egypt, this cycle also appeared repeatedly. In both Anatolia and in the Indus Valley, the very large and long-lasting Hittite and Harrapan civilizations both collapsed so completely that their very existence was unknown until modern archeology rediscovered them. Similar cycles of rise and collapse occurred repeatedly in India, most notably with the Mauryan and the Gupta Empires. Southeast Asia similarly experienced “multiple and overlapping histories of collapse and regeneration” over 15 centuries, culminating in the Khmer Empire based in Angkor, which itself was depopulated and swallowed by the forest during the 15th Century. Chinese history is, very much like Egypt’s, full of repeated cycles of rises and collapses, with each of the Zhou, Han, Tang, and Song Empires followed by a very serious collapse of political authority and socioeconomic progress.

 

Collapses are not restricted to the “Old World.” The collapse of Maya Civilization is well-known and evokes widespread fascination, both because of the advanced nature of Mayan society and because of the depth of the collapse. As Diamond puts it, it is difficult to ignore “the disappearance of between 90 and 99% of the Maya population after A.D. 800 . . . and the disappearance of kings, Long Count calendars, and other complex political and cultural institutions.” In the nearby central highlands of Mexico, a number of powerful states also rose to high levels of power and prosperity and then rapidly collapsed, Teotihuacan (the sixth largest city in the world in the 7th C) and Monte Alban being just the largest of these to experience dramatic collapse, with their populations declining to about 20-25% of their peak within just a few generations.

 

We know of many other collapses including Mississippian Cultures such as Cahokia, South West US cultures such as the Pueblo and Hohokam, Andean civilizations such as Tiwanaku, Sub-Saharan civilizations such as Great Zimbabwe, and many collapses across the Pacific Islands, such as Easter Island. It is also likely other collapses have also occurred in societies that were not at a sufficient level of complexity to produce written records or archeological evidence. Indeed, a recent study of the Neolithic period in Europe has shown that “in contrast to the steady population growth usually assumed, the introduction of agriculture into Europe was followed by a boom-and-bust pattern in the density of regional populations.” Furthermore “most regions show more than one boom-bust pattern,” and in most regions, population declines “of the order of the 30-60%” can be found. The authors also argue that, rather than climate change or diseases, the timing and evidence point to endogenous causes for these collapses in 19 out of 23 cases studied, suggesting the possibility of “rapid population growth driven by farming to unsustainable levels.” Moreover, through wavelet analysis of the archeological data, S. Downey [personal communication] has shown that the average length of such boom-and-bust cycles is about 300-500 years.

 

In summary, despite the common impression that societal collapse is rare, or even largely fictional, the “picture that emerges is of a process recurrent in history, and global in its distribution.” As Turchin and Nefedov contend, there is a great deal of support for “the hypothesis that secular cycles – demographic-social-political oscillations of a very long period (centuries long) are the rule, rather than an exception in the large agrarian states and empires.”

 

This brings up the question of whether modern civilization is similarly susceptible. It may seem reasonable to believe that modern civilization, armed with its greater technological capacity, scientific knowledge, and energy resources, will be able to survive and endure whatever crises historical societies succumbed to. But the brief overview of collapses demonstrates not only the ubiquity of the phenomenon, but also the extent to which advanced, complex, and powerful societies are susceptible to collapse. The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent.

 

A large number of explanations have been proposed for each specific case of collapse, including one or more of the following: volcanoes, earthquakes, droughts, floods, changes in the courses of rivers, soil degradation (erosion, exhaustion, salinization, etc), deforestation, climate change, tribal migrations, foreign invasions, changes in technology (such as the introduction of ironworking), changes in the methods or weapons of warfare (such as the introduction of horse cavalry, armored infantry, or long swords), changes in trade patterns, depletion of particular mineral resources (e.g., silver mines), cultural decline and social decadence, popular uprisings, and civil wars. However, these explanations are specific to each particular case of collapse rather than general. Moreover, even for the specific case where the explanation applies, the society in question usually had already experienced the phenomenon identified as the cause without collapsing. For example, the Minoan society had repeatedly experienced earthquakes that destroyed palaces, and they simply rebuilt them more splendidly than before. Indeed, many societies experience droughts, floods, volcanoes, soil erosion, and deforestation with no major social disruption.

 

The same applies to migrations, invasions, and civil wars. The Roman, Han, Assyrian, and Mauryan Empires were, for centuries, completely militarily hegemonic, successfully defeating the neighboring “barbarian” peoples who eventually did overrun them. So external military pressure alone hardly constitutes an explanation for their collapses. With both natural disasters and external threats, identifying a specific cause compels one to ask, “yes, but why did this particular instance of this factor produce the collapse?” Other processes must be involved, and, in fact, the political, economic, ecological, and technological conditions under which civilizations have collapsed have varied widely. Individual collapses may have involved an array of specific factors, with particular triggers, but a general explanation remains elusive. Individual explanations may seem appropriate in their particular case, but the very universal nature of the phenomenon implies a mechanism that is not specific to a particular time period of human history, nor a particular culture, technology, or natural disaster.

 

In this paper we attempt to model collapse mathematically in a more general way. We propose a simple model, not intended to describe actual individual cases, but rather to provide a general framework that allows carrying out “thought experiments” for the phenomenon of collapse and to test changes that would avoid it. This model (called HANDY, for Human and Nature Dynamics) advances beyond existing biological dynamic population models by simultaneously modeling two separate important features which seem to appear across societies that have collapsed: (1) the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity, and (2) the economic stratification of society into Elites and Masses (or “Commoners”). In many of these historical cases, we have direct evidence of Ecological Strain and Economic Stratification playing a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse. For these empirical reasons, and the theoretical ones explained in section 3, our model incorporates both of these two features. Although similar to the Brander and Taylor model (hereafter referred to as “BT”) in that HANDY is based on the classical predator-prey model, the inclusion of two societal classes introduces a much richer set of dynamical solutions, including cycles of societal and ecological collapse, as well as the possibility of smoothly reaching equilibrium (the ecological carrying capacity). We use Carrying Capacity in its biological definition: the population level that the resources of a particular environment can sustain over the long term. In this paper, we call these environment resources “Nature.”