Tag Archive for: Middle East

The paradigm shift on Palestine

Nobody should be surprised that US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace proposal is heavily tilted towards the Israelis. What is surprising is that, rather than rejecting Trump’s proposal, the world has left the Palestinians largely on their own.

While dismissing the Palestinians’ national yearnings with the patronising promise to ‘improve their lives’, the Trump peace plan embraces Israel’s national narrative that it alone has valid historical claims to Judea and Samaria, the Jews’ biblical homeland. So, while it would give the Palestinians their own state, it would be a fragmented territory covering Gaza and 70% of a West Bank dotted with Israeli settlements and surrounded on all sides by Israeli-annexed territory. Its capital would be located in a suburb of East Jerusalem, which would remain Israel’s undivided capital.

The plan ignores Palestinian demands for the right of return to homes left when Israel was established in 1948—a right that was recognised at the time by United Nations General Assembly resolution 194. Moreover, in line with Israel’s far-right ethnocratic ambitions, the border would be drawn in a way that strips 300,000 Israeli Arabs of their citizenship, making them citizens of the Palestinian state.

The Palestinian territories would be connected by a maze of tunnels and bridges, and much like the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa, they would be subject to overwhelming Israeli military control. Anyone entering the new Palestine—by air, sea or land—would have to go through Israel.

Meanwhile, Palestinians would be prohibited from creating their own armed forces or engaging in any activities ‘that adversely affect the State of Israel’s security’—as determined by Israel’s government. Likewise, the Palestinians would have to earn the right to this sham state by disarming Hamas and proving—not to any international body, but to Israel and the United States—that they have created a democratic system governed by the rule of law.

In presenting such a deeply unfair plan, Trump has destroyed any credibility that the US may have still had as an honest mediator. Moreover, he has undermined the belief—crucial for progress towards a fair deal—that internationally agreed principles of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, from the need to adhere to the pre-1967 borders to the illegality of Israeli settlements, are unassailable.

Given how willing the rest of the world seems to be to abandon the Palestinians, these losses will not be easy to reverse, even if Trump loses the November presidential election and his successor abandons the plan, as candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren seem prepared to do. The fact that anyone is taking Trump’s skewed plan seriously is a testament, first and foremost, to the radical transformation that the Middle East has undergone in recent years. Solidarity with the Palestinians used to be the glue that held together an otherwise fragmented Arab world; now, their plight is seen as a nuisance, a burden and above all an obstacle to rapprochement with Israel.

Yes, the Arab League repudiated the US plan at a meeting of its foreign ministers in Cairo. But the truth, as Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement put it, is that Trump’s ‘deal of shame’ would not have happened without the ‘complicity and betrayal’ of several Arab states.

The ambassadors of Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates participated in the White House unveiling ceremony, implying these countries’ approval. Moreover, despite ‘renewing its assertion’ of support for the Palestinian people, Saudi Arabia noted that it ‘values the efforts’ of the Trump administration in ‘developing a comprehensive peace deal between the Israeli and Palestinian sides’. Given Trump’s apparent loyalty to Saudi Arabia—based, not least, on lucrative arms deals—the kingdom’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was probably privy to the plan’s contents before it was released.

In Jordan, King Abdullah initially warned that Israel’s annexation of the Jordan Valley would have serious security consequences. But he has since advised other countries to ‘look at the glass half full’. Judging by its ambiguous attitude towards Palestinian statehood, one must wonder whether Jordan would prefer having as its neighbour Israel, with which it has historically colluded to rein in Palestinian aspirations, rather than a Palestinian state.

Similarly, Egypt’s foreign ministry called upon both sides ‘to carefully consider’ the peace plan, and even claimed that creating an independent and sovereign state in the occupied territories would restore all the ‘legitimate rights’ of Palestinians. And though Tunisia’s president condemned the peace plan as ‘the injustice of the century’, the country’s ambassador to the UN was soon sacked for leading the challenge against it in the Security Council.

But it is not only the Arab world that is letting down the Palestinians. The European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell, strongly condemned the plan. However, his unilateral statement was needed precisely because some EU countries—including the Czech Republic, Hungary and Italy—blocked a shared resolution. France, for its part, gave the plan a cautious welcome.

Beyond the EU, the UK government hailed the Trump peace plan as ‘a serious proposal’ and ‘a positive step forward’. And despite officially condemning the plan for ‘contradicting UN resolutions’, Russia stands to gain from what a Moscow Times editorial called the ‘unilaterally imposed humiliating terms’ of the deal. This ‘provides a precedent for major powers dictating terms to weaker ones’ and vindicates Russia’s occupation of Crimea, ‘Russia’s West Bank’. In fact, ‘limited sovereignty’ was exactly what the Kremlin wanted to give the former Soviet republics.

If, with the probable connivance of the Trump administration, Israel annexes its West Bank settlements, the paradigm shift in the Israeli–Palestinian peace process would be complete. Israel’s status as an apartheid state would be officially confirmed. And the Palestinians will face a stark choice: submit or struggle. If they choose the latter, it had better be a diplomatic struggle; a third intifada would be calamitous for their cause. Boycotting America, still an indispensable power for an equitable regional solution, proved to be a wrongheaded Palestinian policy.

Water scarcity and global politics are taking the world to the precipice

The link between climate change and human security has been on the global security radar for decades. Researchers have long understood how and why the earth’s climate is changing and what these changes mean for human and environmental systems. But the tenor of analysis of the implications of climate change has intensified in recent years as the scale of change and the enormity of the challenges facing humanity become clear.

The most critical element of the human security dimension of climate change is water security. As noted in the World Bank’s 2016 report on global water:

The impacts of climate change will be channeled primarily through the water cycle … Water-related climate risks cascade through food, energy, urban, and environmental systems. Growing populations, rising incomes, and expanding cities will converge upon a world where the demand for water rises exponentially, while supply becomes more erratic and uncertain.

This assessment is particularly troubling because the amount of available fresh water per capita has already declined by more than half since 1960, and demand for fresh water is expected to exceed supply by around 40% by 2030.

New research indicating that 80% of high-altitude snow and ice will be gone by 2100 if the world continues along its current path, affecting 1.9 billion people and half of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, suggests that the global problem of water scarcity is rapidly becoming more acute. This research identified the transboundary Indus River basin—which serves densely populated and heavily irrigated regions of China, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan—as one of the most vulnerable systems.

For India and Pakistan—nuclear-weapon states already at odds over a number of issues—the significance of this could be devastating. Since 1960, tensions between the two countries over water have been managed through the Indus Waters Treaty, which has been assessed as the most successful water-sharing mechanism of recent times.

The problem is that the Indus Waters Treaty—and other treaties like it—are under pressure from the forces of climate change and population growth and from regressive policy approaches to water security. The commitment of states party to these treaties is wavering as they increasingly act unilaterally to protect declining water resources.

For India, climate change means that the question of water security is becoming an existential one. The figures are staggering: 330 million people—a quarter of the country’s population—are already affected by severe drought conditions. Analysis from 2018 predicted that Delhi along with 20 other major cities would run out of groundwater by 2020, affecting access for 100 million people. By 2030 the country’s water demand is projected to be twice the available supply. India’s population is predicted to surpass China’s by 2030 before hitting a peak of around 1.68 billion by the middle of the century, further straining available water supplies.

Pakistan also faces a dire future of overpopulation combined with severe water scarcity. The Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources predicts that Pakistan could face absolute water scarcity by 2025. Pakistan’s population has increased more than six-fold since 1951, and will increase further from around 208 million in 2017 to over 400 million by 2050.

These pressures are now manifest in several ways. Both Delhi and Islamabad are focusing on either finding unilateral solutions to their impending water crises, deflecting blame for gross mismanagement of water resources, or seeking to weaponise water resources in their conflicts with their neighbours. India has already raised the stakes by threatening to cut off the flow of water in the Indus River basin to Pakistan in response to terrorist attacks conducted by Pakistan-based militants.

Worryingly, the case of Pakistan, India and the failing Indus Waters Treaty is just one example of how the intersection of worsening water scarcity—driven by climate change, overtaxed groundwater supplies and growing populations—and politics is pushing countries to the brink of conflict over water.

Globally, tension over shared water resources is increasingly featuring in communal and interstate relations: China, India and Bangladesh are locked in a dispute over the Brahmaputra; China is also at odds with its southern neighbours over the Mekong Delta; dam-building on the Nile by Ethiopia has created a risk of war with Egypt; and Turkey, Syria and Iraq are increasingly at odds over the Tigris–Euphrates.

A key problem is that, while about 60% of global fresh water is supplied by the transboundary river basins, only around 40% of these basins are governed by a framework for dispute resolution. Climate change, combined with asymmetrical population growth, is further undermining the likelihood that signatories to water treaties will continue to be bound by them.

As the World Bank report notes, ‘If current water management policies persist, and climate models prove correct, water scarcity will proliferate to regions where it currently does not exist, and will greatly worsen in regions where water is already scarce.’ But the problems facing the world’s freshwater supplies are also being exacerbated by politicking and denial by countries that are either withdrawing from global climate accords or fudging their commitment to those agreements.

The increasingly fractured global polity, where the global rules-based order is being challenged by countries pursuing zero-sum goals, Hunger Games–style policymaking across a range of economic, environmental and strategic issues will likely limit progress on water security. It will limit the space for cooperative management of shared water resources at a time when water scarcity is becoming more prevalent; it will reduce the prospects for countries to take meaningful and concerted action to restrain the anthropogenic causes of global warming; and it will fuel tensions between states.

One only has to examine the situation in India and Pakistan, and in the Middle East and the Nile Delta, to predict how these tensions will play out in the many countries challenged by worsening water scarcity.

The US and Iran are hostages of history

During the recent flare-up between the United States and Iran, US President Donald Trump tweeted that he was prepared to bomb ‘52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago)’. Some of these targets, he added, would be ‘important to Iran and the Iranian culture’, suggesting that he was willing to strike Iranian national heritage sites.

Trump’s tweet indicates that his entire Iran policy is rooted deep in the past, as if actions taken today represent a belated response to wounds inflicted long ago. If so, his administration has something in common with the Iranian regime, which has long dwelled on the real and perceived wounds of bygone eras.

After all, Iranians (and many others) point out ad nauseam that the US had a hand in the 1953 coup that deposed the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and installed the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, which itself was toppled in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Likewise, Iranians note repeatedly that the US assisted Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s ruthless war against Iran in the 1980s.

Listening to the litany of grievances on both sides, it’s difficult to avoid the impression that both the US and Iran are hostages of history. Obsessed with the real or imagined injustices of the past, each finds it impossible to move forward. In Iran, the US is still the ‘Great Satan’, just as Iran remains the quintessential bête noire for many in the American foreign-policy establishment.

Although there are real issues of contention between the two countries, the US–Iran conflict has long since broken the bounds of rationality. It persists because it serves domestic political interests in each country. Iranian hardliners benefit enormously from having such a visible enemy against which to mobilise. As tensions have escalated in recent years, their position has been strengthened. The regime has increasingly used the perceived US threat as a pretext to repress its own people and to foment chaos across the region. For every voice in the US advocating regime change in Iran, there are Iranians seeking to defend the regime by any means necessary.

Similarly, listening to some of the US pundit and political class, it sometimes sounds as if hostility towards Iran is a fundamental American value. Whether their goal is regime change or something else, most in the US foreign-policy establishment claim to want Iran to become a ‘normal country’. But do Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other US regional allies count as ‘normal countries’? And what about the US itself? American exceptionalism dictates that it is anything but ‘normal’.

A more rational, objective approach is still possible. It might not seem like it now, but there is ample room for bilateral cooperation. Iran’s leaders have long insisted that the purpose of their country’s nuclear program is peaceful. But, given Iran’s past behaviour, there clearly needs to be an intrusive system of international inspections in place before the world can have confidence in that claim. Picking up where the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action left off and negotiating such a system should not be seen as an impossible task.

Both countries have a profound interest in maintaining stability in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US doesn’t want these countries to become Iranian satellites, and the Iranians don’t want them to serve as bases for aggression against Iran. These aims are not irreconcilable; in fact, proper diplomacy could achieve both sides’ primary objectives.

The US and Iran also have a joint interest in developing a more robust security structure for the broader Gulf region. In recent months, Gulf countries have been calling for strategic de-escalation vis-à-vis Iran, with even Saudi Arabia expressing a desire for dialogue. There are some diplomatic initiatives already on the table, and negotiating a new regional agreement on ballistic missiles could serve as a good starting point for ongoing engagement.

More broadly, a gradual de-escalation of the conflict between the US, Iran and their respective allies and proxies would allow for all parties to focus more on their own priorities for the future. Iran, Saudi Arabia and many other countries in the region clearly need to liberalise their respective economic and political systems, not least by introducing more protections for human rights. But this is unlikely to happen in a climate of confrontation. The longer the conflict continues, the less chance these countries will have to pursue constructive long-term reforms.

And as long as both the US and Iran remain prisoners of their respective histories, regional stability will be at risk. The sooner they can look to the future instead of the past, the better it will be for everyone. There is plenty of common ground for fruitful cooperation. Someone needs to step onto it and show that it isn’t mined.

Protests over petrol put Iran’s government on notice

Petrol rationing and major fuel price hikes in Iran, and the rioting that followed, have demonstrated the extent to which international sanctions are hurting the oil-rich nation.

Protests broke out in more than 50 cities and towns after the government’s announcement on 15 November that the rationing and price rises would be imposed with immediate effect. Most of the demonstrations appear to have been peaceful. However, international TV has shown scenes of destructive violence in some cities. About 1,000 people have been arrested and an unknown number of demonstrators have been killed in confrontations with security forces.

These new measures have imposed a monthly petrol ration of 60 litres, and a 50% price hike to 15,000 rials (about A$0.52, at the official exchange rate) per litre, with an additional 30,000 rials (about A$1.04) per litre for purchases in excess of the ration. Although these prices appear very low compared with most other countries, they are significant in an Iranian context. Traditionally, fuel has been heavily subsidised by the government, and given that most people are suffering the multiple effects of the US ‘maximum pressure’ program targeting Iran’s economy, they are less able to absorb higher prices.

The decision to impose these new measures was taken by Iran’s Supreme Council of Economic Coordination, its leadership comprising President Hassan Rouhani (a moderate), chief of the judiciary Ebrahim Raisi (a hardline cleric and Rouhani’s major rival in the 2017 presidential election), and speaker of the parliament (Majlis) Ali Larijani (a conservative). Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly backed the council’s decision in a statement on 17 November.

This broad-based decision suggests the increases are irreversible and, for now, above factional politics. They were imposed without any prior public notice, although local media had been speculating about the possibility since May. But the state of the economy, and the urgent need for budget reform, indicate the increases were unavoidable.

US sanctions have hit Iran’s economy very hard. According to the International Monetary Fund, Iran’s economy is expected to contract by about 9.5% this year. Reasons include the very high loss of revenue from heavily restricted oil and other exports, and significant reductions in foreign investment and industrial activity. Tax revenue has dropped accordingly, the rial has depreciated about 60% over the past year, unemployment and underemployment have increased, and inflation is running at 35%.

Against this background the government can no longer afford to subsidise petrol to the same extent. In addition, it pays monthly cash subsidies to some 18 million families, or about 60 million of Iran’s 83 million people, and it’s looking at ways to supplement these payments with bonuses to those on low and middle incomes. It is to cease all subsidies to the wealthy, and use the revenue from higher petrol prices to fund the increased payments and some other priority development requirements.

Whether this concept will work as clinically as is proposed remains to be seen. The hope is that, combined with other budget reform measures, it will help to consolidate incomes and tide over the economy and the government until November next year, when Americans go to the polls. The favoured Iranian scenario is that President Donald Trump will not be re-elected, and Iran can negotiate the lifting of sanctions with a new US administration. This thinking assumes the Iranian economy will last the distance. If Trump is re-elected, a radical rethink will be needed.

Iran’s decision-makers must have anticipated a strong negative public response to the fuel price increases, including potentially some violence, especially given the concurrent demonstrations in Lebanon and Iraq driven by demands in those countries for less politicking and corruption, and more economic reform. That Iran’s government took the risk attests to the extent of economic damage suffered so far, and the urgency of measures now being taken in an attempt to offset that damage.

The demonstrations appear to be largely over—at least for now. It’s unclear how many were spontaneous and how many were organised through national networking. If they were nationally orchestrated, who was responsible and was that done from inside Iran or externally? The government’s decision to all but shut down the internet was intended to disrupt anti-government networking from all sources, especially overseas.

Not unexpectedly, Washington noted these events, the first real public sign its economic measures against Iran are biting, with Secretary of State Pompeo tweeting to demonstrators, ‘The United States is with you.’

Interestingly, Khamenei acknowledged the right of Iranians to protest peacefully. He attributed the violence to domestic ‘thugs’ backed by (foreign) enemies and made it clear the government would crack down on those responsible for the rioting and related threats to state security.

These demonstrations have not threatened the survivability of the Iranian regime. Nor does it appear that Tehran’s decision to hold firm against US pressure, and to refuse to renegotiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on US terms in order to get sanctions lifted, has been challenged, at least on this occasion. But the public has sent a clear message that it’s facing serious economic hardship and it expects the government to do everything it can to provide relief.

The government is on notice, and it knows that. It’s well aware of the challenges ahead if the economy, and national unity, are to survive the next 12 months. Iran’s parliamentary elections due in February will be a litmus test of interim progress.

The spirit of 2019

As in 1848, 1968, 1989, and 2010–2012, a wave of popular protests has taken the world by surprise. Ongoing mass revolts—in Beirut, Santiago, Hong Kong, Algiers, Baghdad and other cities—are gaining strength and wrongfooting governments. But although the temptation to seek historical comparisons is understandable, the 2019 uprisings have a distinct flavor of their own.

Nearly a decade ago, many in the West referred to the 1848 ‘springtime of peoples’ when describing the protest movements that began in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, Libya, Syria and other Arab countries. Likewise, many of the Lebanese whom I met on a recent visit to Qatar had no doubt that a new ‘Arab Spring’ cycle was unfolding today, except this time on a global scale, and seemed torn between excitement and anxiety.

Today’s protests also carry echoes of May 1968, not least in their youthfulness, spontaneity and lack of identifiable leaders. Yet, as with any historical development, the events of 2019 must be understood on their own terms.

In 1968, at a time of full employment, a combination of boredom and revolutionary utopianism led young demonstrators to erect barricades in Paris. In 1989, the hope of attaining freedom and prosperity mobilised protesters to help bring down communist regimes. But in 2019, anger and despair have replaced dreams and hope, notwithstanding the reasonable possibility of improvement in countries such as Sudan and Algeria.

If the 2019 revolts have a common thread or unifying explanation, it is the yearning for dignity and respect. People have taken to the streets because they feel they have been humiliated, ignored and despised for too long by irresponsible, corrupt and distant political elites.

The immediate triggers for the various protests—whether a tax on the use of WhatsApp in Lebanon, or an increase in metro fares in Santiago—often seem secondary or even trivial. And, like in Cairo in 2011, or in Beirut in 2005 after the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, mobile phones are the primary instrument for rallying fellow rebels.

But regardless of whether the initial cause of the revolt was primarily economic (as in Lebanon or Chile) or political (as in Hong Kong), the authorities have in each case been caught by surprise and responded too slowly. The protesters, too, seem amazed by their sheer numbers and strength. Having started by opposing a new tax, they suddenly find themselves calling for an end to the regime.

Camillo Cavour, the architect of Italian unification in the 19th century, once remarked, ‘Reforms made in time weaken the revolutionary spirit.’ Reforms that come too late, on the other hand, succeed only in feeding popular anger.

As a result, political leaders who had long refused any kind of compromise or concession now give the impression of being seized by panic. They are seemingly ready to reduce their privileges either spectacularly, as in Lebanon, or more symbolically, as in Chile. But, for many of the demonstrators, whatever governments do now seems too little, too late.

Complicating matters further, the protests are taking place at a time of exceptional geopolitical instability, fuelled by the strategic disengagement of the United States under President Donald Trump and the continued rise of authoritarian powers. Disorder in the streets is reinforcing a sense of global turmoil, and vice versa.

For starters, the US no longer seems willing or able to play a significant role in Latin America, its traditional backyard. US disengagement from the region has helped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro remain in power, despite massive popular protests against his rule. And although Chileans may be legitimately afraid of a return to the sort of civil violence that the country hasn’t experienced in decades, they, like other Latin Americans, must face their destiny largely alone.

The US is still a significant player in the Middle East, as the recent killing of Islamic State’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi showed, but it is withdrawing from that region as well. Russia is progressively replacing the US, at least in Syria, and probably will give way to China at some point. There, too, those calling for political and economic reform will find themselves largely on their own. It’s hard to see how popular demands for freedom and equality in the region can be reconciled with the rise of authoritarian powers such as Russia and China, not to mention regional players like Iran and Turkey. All fear pro-democracy protests like the plague.

Against this background, the presence of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at the first Russia–Africa summit in Sochi recently was particularly significant. It suggests that Egypt, which became a US ally in the 1970s, is hedging its bets by reviving its traditional alliance with Russia (and previously the Soviet Union).

In Lebanon, protesters of all confessions have united under the banner of ‘We are a people’, thereby challenging the sectarian balancing acts that have long shaped the country’s politics. But it remains to be seen whether this popular revolt will reshuffle the geopolitical cards like the protests in East Germany in 1989 or Syria in 2011 did.

Protesters around the world are rising up against systems that often are rotten to the core and cannot be reformed. But creating a fairer, and therefore more stable, new order will be a hugely difficult task.

For that reason, the year 2019 could end up resembling the ‘unfinished spring’ of 2010–2012. But given the unique spirit of the current protests and the current state of geopolitical flux, almost any prediction is mere speculation. The future—as it always is at such historical moments—is open.

Strike on Saudi oil facilities shows need to adapt to new ways of warfare

The news that drones were likely employed in a major attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities at Abqaiq over the weekend has highlighted how unmanned aerial technology can be exploited by state and non-state actors at range and with precision. The attack generated strategic effects by cutting 5% of global oil production in minutes. It represents a serious escalation of tensions in the Middle East. The US has pointed the finger at Iran and the attack could trigger US military retaliation if it’s determined that Iran was indeed responsible.

When considering the broader implications of this attack a reality check is important. It’s still unclear whether drones alone were used. It’s more likely that a combination of drones and cruise missiles were fired at the Saudi facilities. And they were certainly not off-the-shelf drones available to the general public but would have been military-spec systems. For example, Iran is equipped with the Shahed 129, which can carry four Sadid-345 precision glide bombs and has a combat range of 1,700 kilometres—more than enough to reach the target area from parts of Iran, Iraq or Yemen.

Such a system, if supported by advanced geospatial intelligence and effective operational analysis, could produce the level of accuracy and precision shown in the strikes on the Saudi facilities. The use of drones at Abqaiq, potentially in combination with Soumar cruise missiles, highlights the potential impact of long-range precision attacks guided by effective intelligence.

Drones can ‘swarm’ to attack a target en masse—without human control and at a much lower cost than traditional military aircraft. Chinese companies associated with the People’s Liberation Army have demonstrated swarms of more than 1,000 drones coordinating together and flying autonomously. If each drone carried an explosive charge, or could release a precision weapon, the effect of such a swarm on ground targets—or potentially naval vessels or exposed personnel—would be deadly.

The swarm is significant in how future warfare is envisaged. In the 1994, US defence analyst Martin Libicki suggested a future prospect of ‘fire-ant warfare’ in which traditional military forces would be overwhelmed by thousands of drones; we’re now seeing the early stages of that type of capability emerge.

It’s that reintroduction of massed attackers in warfare that’s the potential game changer. This is a ‘back to the future’ transformation that exploits a numbers advantage over Western military forces, which, over the past few decades, have relied on an information advantage to ensure precision, rather than a weight of numbers to win wars. An emphasis on developing technologically advanced and costly multirole manned platforms means that many Western military forces have become boutique. Militaries—like Australia’s—with small numbers of high-end manned platforms in the air, on the ground, and on and under the waves are confronting a future in which adversaries can attack using relatively cheap mass firepower.

At a more fundamental level, the emerging challenge posed by China’s anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities and the implications of swarming in warfare indicate that our adversaries have studied the Western way of warfare that has largely stood still conceptually since the early 1990s. Our information edge is also not unassailable. In a future conflict, China and Russia could use counter-space and cyber capabilities to render the US and its allies deaf, dumb and blind from the outset, and then conduct a swarming strike via long-range cruise and ballistic missiles together with advanced drones.

For Western forces, the information edge is still important, but it’s also increasingly vital for our adversaries. Iran (if indeed it is behind the attacks) could not have delivered a precision strike against Saudi oil facilities without access to advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

If Iran had the support of a major global actor with such capabilities, then carrying out the Abqaiq raids becomes possible. In any future war, the use of advanced space and near-space sensors will be critical for those states wishing to employ long-range strike capabilities and swarming technologies. That means the battle for an information advantage—on earth and in space—will become ever more critical.

For Western liberal democracies, the challenge posed by drones isn’t just about the risk of technology proliferating into the hands of potential adversaries; it’s also about the ethical and legal issues associated with how we use such capabilities. These concerns become acute when we consider autonomous systems directed by artificial intelligence, which at some point could be making their own choices about the use of lethal force. There is, quite rightly, an intense debate on how to use such a capability—or whether to ban it outright.

The Australian Defence Force will soon acquire its first armed unmanned combat aerial vehicle—a variant of the US MQ-9 Reaper. These UAVs will remain under human control, with humans ‘on the loop’, especially in relation to weapons release. Political oversight and the meeting of strict requirements in terms of discrimination and avoidance of civilian risk will be of key importance in their use.

For our opponents, either in authoritarian states or terrorist organisations, it’s not at all clear that ethical and legal issues matter. Authoritarian states seeking to develop and deploy swarming drones can’t easily be prevented from doing so. The relatively low cost of drone technology and its effectiveness in providing a new type of long-range precision firepower that can circumvent Western defence advantages makes it an attractive option to our opponents.

The strike on Abqaiq demonstrates that adversaries can hit vital targets and generate quick strategic effects—evading sophisticated air defence networks in the process—at relatively low cost. Had the perpetrator of this attack launched simultaneous cyberattacks to disrupt the target’s ability to recover from drone and missile strikes, for example, the damage would have been far worse. Our defence planners need to learn the lessons the attack on Abqaiq teach us about the risks of sticking with traditional mindsets and maintaining old paradigms in the face of rapid change in warfare.

The Palestinian Authority needs to get its priorities straight

The Palestinian Authority boycotted the US-led international conference held in Bahrain in mid-June on the economic aspects of the US Middle East peace plan. PA President Mahmoud Abbas made the decision to reject the US proposal—which would have provided around US$50 billion towards improving healthcare, education, investment and infrastructure for Palestinians—even before it was released. He also launched a campaign of intimidation against Palestinian businesspeople who attended the summit. The PA’s intelligence forces arrested one of them, Salah Abu Miala, on his return to the West Bank city of Hebron, while another reportedly went into hiding.

US pressure led to the release of Abu Miala, but the message to Palestinians was clear: those who dissent from Palestinian orthodoxy and seek to normalise ties with Israel in the interests of peace and prosperity will be punished.

The old guard of the Palestinian leadership has for decades relied heavily on international aid, but that funding is now drying up as more and more countries place conditions on it. For example, both Australia and the US have refused to directly fund the PA because it continues to make salary payments to terrorists and their families.

The Trump administration is offering the Palestinians an economic model that would end the reliance on aid. The plan aims to more than double Palestinian GDP, create a million new jobs, and reduce poverty in Palestinian areas by 50%. Infrastructure projects under consideration include desalination and energy plants and a road and rail corridor between Gaza and the West Bank. More than half of the funds would be spent on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, with the remainder divided among Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon for the Palestinians living in those nations.

Before dismissing the proposal, perhaps the PA should have asked the Palestinian people, whom polls show are overwhelmingly concerned about economic and quality-of-life issues, if they would like to have improved education, job prospects, healthcare, electricity and water management? In Gaza the unemployment rate is estimated at 44% and in the West Bank it’s close to 20%.

The PA has said that it will not consider the economic plan without first resolving the political aspects of the conflict. For its part, the US has indicated that it intends to unveil the political dimensions of its plan after the upcoming Israeli elections, probably in November.

However, the reality is that Israel and the PA have time and time again negotiated to resolve the conflict with little success. In 2000, 2001 and 2008, Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert offered the PA nearly all of the West Bank, Gaza and Arab neighbourhoods of east Jerusalem to create a Palestinian state and end the conflict, but these proposals were rejected or ignored by the Palestinian leadership. Israel also withdrew from Gaza in 2005, which led to a Hamas takeover of the territory and thousands of rockets repeatedly fired towards Israel. Meanwhile, the PA has been refusing to negotiate on any issues—economic or political—since 2014.

In light of these realities, it makes sense to try something new—like improving the economic situation before addressing the intractable political gaps. As Jared Kushner, the chief architect of the US economic plan, said in his speech at the Bahrain conference, ‘For too long the Palestinian people have been trapped in a framework for the past.’ He also noted, ‘Agreeing on an economic pathway forward is a necessary precondition to resolving the previously unsolvable political issues.’

The PA might be wise to seize the momentum for dealing with Palestinians’ needs while the offer is on the table. For even while the Bahrain conference was taking place, another issue was brewing that’s considered more important by many of the Arab nations attending the summit: the growing tensions with Iran and what to do about it.

The PA needs to understand that the situation has changed and that Israel is no longer the primary target of hatred from Arab states and indeed is seen by many as a useful ally against Iran. As a result, many of the Arab nations which attended the summit, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, will likely put pressure on the PA to participate in talks—economic and political—so, logically, it’s hard to see what they have to gain by refusing to even engage on the Bahrain proposals.

Money can’t buy Palestinians’ love

‘Man shall not live by bread alone’, says Jesus in Matthew 4:4. But biblical wisdom seems to have been lost on the organisers of the economic conference held on 25–26 June in Bahrain, where Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and key foreign-policy adviser, finally presented the outlines of his ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan to end the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

The talks in Manama focused only on the plan’s ‘economic dimension’—in other words, the carrot before the stick. Over 10 years, some US$50 billion will be made available to the region (not only to the Palestinians), with wealthy Gulf states footing much of the bill. The tougher, political side of the deal is expected in the northern autumn, once a new Israeli government takes office after the election scheduled for 17 September.

Some US commentators close to the Trump administration have drawn comparisons with the US-led Marshall Plan after World War II. Having saved Western Europe from communism and Soviet imperialism during the Cold War, the argument goes, America is about to do something equally brave in the Middle East to counter the twin threats of Islamic fundamentalism and Iranian imperialism.

In launching the plan, the United States seems to be calling in favours from the Sunni Arab states that it has protected for so long. Moreover, resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict would be in these countries’ interests as well, because it would remove a potential source of destabilisation at home.

If this is not the art of the deal, then what is? The solution looks so rational, tempting and irresistibly simple. With real money now on the table, the participants will next discuss the political conditions, meaning the price the Palestinians will have to pay in order to receive such generosity. But there lies the snag.

The Marshall Plan sought to encourage Europeans to come together to receive American money. At the time, communist parties, supported and directed by the Soviet Union, appeared poised to take power in many Western European countries. Instead, Marshall’s visionary plan bolstered these countries’ national identities and strengthened their sovereignty.

Kushner’s plan, by contrast, would do the opposite, because it essentially ignores the issue of Palestinian sovereignty. More fundamentally, the US plan raises an existential question: can one buy the emotions and sentimental commitments that lie at the heart of people’s collective identity?

That seems highly unlikely; after all, governments find it hard enough to buy off their own people. In the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, for example, Algeria’s rulers spent generously to protect themselves from something similar. But although that bought the regime some time, structural problems such as corruption and incompetence didn’t go away. They simply became more acute, adding humiliation to public anger and eventually leading to the resignation in April of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, after 20 years in power.

If buying the loyalty of one’s own people is difficult, buying others’ is much harder still. In fact, it’s probably impossible, as the Manama summit showed. The Palestinian Authority refused to take part; as a result, Israel was not represented at official level either. Arab states have often betrayed the Palestinian cause before, but never as spectacularly as now. Demonstrators have taken to the streets in Morocco, for example, to denounce what they call the ‘Summit of Shame’.

Kushner has clearly never seen the 2008 Palestinian movie Salt of this Sea, which describes the plight of a young American woman of Palestinian descent who is searching for her grandfather’s home in Jaffa in present-day Israel. The message is that a big, fat check can’t compensate for the loss of sovereignty.

The Trump administration may not even seriously believe in its own peace plan. Perhaps Kushner’s initiative, therefore, is just a ploy to prepare the ground for possible US disengagement from the Middle East—freeing the administration to pursue a new form of neo-isolationism, or, alternatively, to concentrate all its efforts on containing China’s growing global influence.

The near-certain failure of the Kushner plan could allow Trump to tell US voters before the 2020 presidential election that he did his best to bring about Israeli–Palestinian peace, but there was nothing else he could do. He might add that he had managed to cement the long de facto collaboration between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the West’s two pillars of regional security. And with the US helping in the background, these powers would be strong enough to contain Iran, should Trump’s latest economic sanctions not suffice to overthrow the regime in Tehran.

The fundamentals of Israel’s situation haven’t changed. The country’s security depends on its legitimacy, which in turn continues to require the existence of a viable, sovereign Palestinian state. Yet the current status quo is simply too comfortable for the majority of Israelis to revive the two-state solution. Contrary to what Trump apparently believes, his policies are making Israel’s future more problematic.

The Palestinians, meanwhile, still cling to the hope that demographic trends mean time is on their side. But, in the meantime, prospects for peace in the region seem vanishingly slim. And Kushner’s recent presentation in Bahrain has done nothing to change that.

The Afghanistan conundrum

In January 2018, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani publicly admitted that without American support, his government and the Afghan National Army couldn’t last very long. That remains the case today: the government is in disarray and the ANA is barely holding out against the Taliban-led insurgency.

Yet US President Donald Trump understandably wants to disentangle America, if possible through a political settlement, from what has become an unwinnable war. As such, the Taliban and their supporters have no compelling reason to let the Afghan government and the United States off the hook easily. And given the complex web of conflicting interests in Afghanistan, separate US and Russian efforts to reach an enduring settlement may not succeed.

Afghanistan’s problem is not primarily a military one. Despite the ANA’s heavy losses (more than 45,000 personnel since mid-2014) and increased insecurity in the country, the army has managed to prevent the Taliban from taking over any major city on a lasting basis. US funding of the ANA to the tune of some US$4 billion per year, together with allied operational assistance, has been crucial in this regard.

Rather, the worsening security situation mostly reflects political and regional factors. For starters, Afghanistan has lacked the leadership it has needed ever since the US-led intervention began, initially under the post-Taliban administration of President Hamid Karzai (2001–2014) and then under Ghani’s national unity government.

The West had hoped that these leaders would strive to nurture national unity and seek to institutionalise politics instead of personalising power in the country. Instead, the traditional practice of divide and rule—along ethnic, tribal, linguistic and cultural lines, and also involving corruption and maladministration—has prevailed. Behind a fig leaf of sham democracy, Afghanistan’s leaders have focused on building personal power and influence at the expense of the national interest.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, Afghan governments since 2001 have been weak and almost entirely dependent on US and allied support. As a result, Afghanistan has been vulnerable to predatory behaviour by its neighbours—Pakistan in particular—and to regional rivalries and great-power competition.

The Afghanistan conflict is now deeply entangled with the India–Pakistan dispute, the Iran–Saudi Arabia rivalry, the Pakistan–Saudi Arabia strategic partnership, US–Iran hostilities, the Pakistan–China friendship, the periodic India–China border tensions, US–India camaraderie and US–Russia competition. Afghanistan has become a zone of conflict in a region of them, each one posing yet another obstacle to a political settlement.

Recent US efforts at reaching a political settlement have been unsuccessful. The US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, the Afghan–American Zalmay Khalilzad, who began his peacemaking mission last September, has made little or no progress. Khalilzad has repeatedly claimed progress; in reality, he is struggling to make headway through the Afghan and regional political thicket.

Because of his own controversial involvement in Afghanistan for more than three decades as a self-declared US neoconservative, Khalilzad faces the mistrust of many Afghan leaders, including Ghani, and of governments in the region. He has excluded Iran, one of Afghanistan’s influential neighbours, from his consultation process. He is also viewed with suspicion in Islamabad and Moscow, given his past anti-Pakistan views and criticism of Russia’s regional ambitions.

The only concession that Khalilzad has thus far obtained from the Taliban—after meeting its representatives several times in Qatar’s capital Doha—is that the group has agreed not to allow Afghan territory to be used for hostile action against the US and its allies. But that pledge is conditional on the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan. And Khalilzad has been unable to persuade the Taliban to recognise the Afghan government as anything other than a US puppet and to enter direct negotiations with it.

Meanwhile, Russia has pursued its own peacemaking initiatives for Afghanistan, hosting several multilateral meetings in Moscow since late 2018. Participants have included Taliban representatives, Afghan dignitaries (led by Karzai, who now criticises the US for failing to bring stability and security to Afghanistan), the country’s immediate neighbours and India.

The Ghani administration had viewed these Moscow meetings as contrary to its alliance with the US, but nonetheless found it expedient to permit Afghanistan’s ambassador to Russia to attend the most recent gathering in late May. But with the Taliban refusing to agree to a ceasefire, let alone settle other substantive issues, this meeting also produced no tangible results.

Should US and Russian efforts fail to produce a lasting political settlement in Afghanistan, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council may need to reach a consensus among themselves and then implement a resolution based on Chapter VII of the UN Charter, concerning threats to international peace. The goal would be to prompt Afghanistan’s neighbours to cease proxy involvement in the country in support of rival interests; to facilitate the orderly withdrawal of US and allied forces from the country; and to guarantee Afghanistan’s geopolitical neutrality, from which the country benefited before its current troubles began with the invasion of the Soviet Union 40 years ago.

At that point, sufficient help and pressure will be needed to move Afghanistan’s leaders towards achieving a national consensus for their own sake and that of the country. Unfortunately, this may not come soon enough for Afghanistan’s suffering people.

Netanyahu’s re-election was Israel’s liberal democracy in action

The re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been described by some of his critics as a blow to democracy, or as evidence of Israel’s progression towards becoming an ‘illiberal democracy’.

However, several democracy watchdogs disagree with this assessment, as do some constitutional law experts and political analysts in Israel—and some of them are on the left.

In fact, according to a variety of benchmarks, Israel’s democratic system remains among the world’s most stable and healthiest. Its quality has actually improved in certain aspects in recent years.

Israel’s election, as always, was direct and free, and the result unambiguous. While the outcome was never assured, in hindsight there’s no shortage of reasons why Israeli voters chose Netanyahu over his challenger, political newcomer and leader of the Blue and White party Benny Gantz, regardless of whether they agreed with Netanyahu’s worldview or approved of him personally.

Political analyst Anshel Pfeffer, of Israel’s left-leaning paper Haaretz, wrote after the election, ‘[Netanyahu] has delivered a decade of uninterrupted economic growth. His last term has seen four of the calmest years in Israel’s history, and he is now on close terms with the most powerful leaders in the world’, adding, ‘The biggest surprise of this election for me was that Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t win by a landslide.’

Although a recent biographer of Netanyahu, Pfeffer is no fan. ‘I’m one of the 47 percent who voted against Netanyahu, and I’m pretty depressed he won’, he wrote. ‘But I can’t for the life of me see how the result is the death of Israeli democracy, as some are now writing in op-ed columns and on social media …[T]his election … was probably one of the most democratic we’ve had.’

Much of the angst over the risk to Israel’s democratic institutions has focused on clashes between members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition and the Supreme Court of Israel, which has occasionally made rulings they dislike.

Yet voters turned their backs on Naftali Bennett’s New Right party, which had built its campaign around returning Ayelet Shaked as justice minister and continuing her crusade against what she saw as the high court’s judicial activism against popular interests. New Right failed to cross the electoral threshold.

And Netanyahu’s incoming government will likely be more moderate than the previous one. Parties to the right of Netanyahu’s Likud party have gone from 14 seats in the previous Knesset to 10.

Meanwhile, the robust state of Israel’s democracy and freedoms holds up to scrutiny and compares well with other democracies in the eyes of impartial and respected watchdog groups.

For the past two years, Israel has placed 30th in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. Its ranking in 2018 placed it ahead of Belgium and just behind France.

In 2017, the Israel Democracy Institute’s annual survey found that ‘the international indicators suggest that, on the whole, Israel has been a stable democracy over the past decade’. Last year’s report, the most recent, only continued the trend.

Some of Israel’s respected academics have also assessed the condition of the nation’s democracy as robustly healthy.

In December 2018, Pnina Sharvit Baruch, an expert in international law and senior research fellow and head of the program on law and national security at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies published a paper on the topic ‘Is Israeli democracy at risk?’

In her paper, Shavit Baruch narrowed her focus to four spheres in which Israeli democracy is tested: protection of human rights, control over the West Bank, critics of the government and civilian activists, and checks and balances and the status of gatekeepers.

‘At the bottom line’, she concluded, ‘it appears that Israeli democracy remains strong and rests on solid foundations’.

While Shavit Baruch cautioned against ‘complacency’ and added that ‘steps aimed at eroding democratic values should be countered’, she lashed out at those who would overstate the threat to Israeli democracy. ‘The tendency on the part of some critics to portray any view contrary to their political position as undemocratic is dangerous in itself’, she wrote, ‘because “crying ‘wolf’” makes it difficult to distinguish between legitimate, albeit politically controversial measures and measures that are truly undemocratic by nature.’

Shavit Baruch’s opinion has been shared by others.

For Israel’s democracy to be considered illiberal, it would have to compare poorly with other democracies on major benchmarks such as freedom of the courts and the press and on civil liberties. And yet these are precisely the areas in which Israel continues to excel.

The World Economic Forum’s 2017–18 Global Competitive Index ranked Israel 14th out of 137 countries globally in terms of judicial independence, an improvement of four places over the previous report.

Freedom House’s 2019 Freedom in the World report gave Israel 13 out of 16 points for ‘political pluralism and participation’, a perfect score for ‘electoral process’, and 10 out of a possible 12 for ‘functioning of government’.

Freedoms for the press, religion, minorities, women and LGBTQ communities are broad, enshrined in law and embraced and protected by Israel’s national institutions. The country’s culture of freedom and open debate of sometimes radically opposing ideas is a hallmark of its political culture within and outside of the Knesset.

In a 2016 poll by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 68% of Palestinian respondents (73% in the West Bank and 59% in the Gaza Strip) expressed admiration for Israel’s democracy, describing it as either good or very good.

Given the healthy state of Israel’s democracy and civil liberties, to characterise the country as ‘illiberal’ or anything close to it is a pejorative exaggeration and a distortion.