I learned then that Rumsfeld had asked the American military command in Stuttgart, Germany, which had responsibility for monitoring Europe, including Syria and Lebanon, to begin drawing up an operational plan for an invasion of Syria. A young general assigned to the task refused to do so, thereby winning applause from my friends on the inside and risking his career. The plan was seen by those I knew as especially bizarre because Bashar Assad, the ruler of secular Syria, had responded to 9/11 by sharing with the CIA hundreds of his country’s most sensitive intelligence files on the Muslim Brotherhood in Hamburg, where much of the planning for 9/11 was carried out… Rumsfeld eventually came to his senses and back down, I was told…

Last but not least, if you think like a realist, you’re likely to be skeptical about the ambitious schemes that idealists keep dreaming up to bring an end to conflict, injustice, inequality, and other bad things. Striving to build a safer and more peaceful world is admirable, but realism reminds us that the ambitious efforts to remake world politics always create unintended consequences and rarely deliver the promised results. It also reminds that even allies fear unchecked power and will have misgivings whenever the United States tries to run the world. If you think like a realist, in short, you are more likely to act with a degree of prudence, and you’ll be less likely to see opponents as purely evil (or see one’s own country as wholly virtuous) and less likely to embark on open-ended moral crusades. Ironically, if more people thought like realists, the prospects for peace would go up.

According to ABC, the US is going to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. An operation may start as early as next month. The UK and Australia will participate in intelligence efforts, such as identifying targets. The US-Iran relationship took a nosedive after Iran threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz in early July. President Trump told the Iranian leadership in a tweet that he would respond with force if Tehran’s hostile anti-US rhetoric did not stop.

Maybe we are misreading things. Not a small number of commentaries have suggested that President Trump intended for Helsinki to re-set the Kissinger-esque triangulation between the US, Russia and China. And there are good grounds for making such a hypothesis. At a 2015 press conference, Trump, himself, took the Kissinger line — that the US should always try to keep Russia and China divided, and never allied together against America Of course, what rankles most in America, and amongst European liberal elites, is the apparent according of moral equivalence of Putin to America, and to America’s intelligence capabilities. America believes it WON – it won the Cold War culturally, and in terms of its systems of government and economics. This ‘End to History’ hubris voided – in this ecstatic state – the need to treat Russia as other than a psychologically ‘defeated people’, (which they were not). What are the implications for Europe? For Europe this is a catastrophe. It means that US dialogue with Putin will continue. Where to run for the EU – to Washington or to Moscow? To remain loyal to an old suzerain or to try to adhere to a new one, before others get there first?

Trump’s respect toward Russia is worth mentioning. Trump is a man who values strength, and he attaches great importance to military strength, especially nuclear strength. The US has defined China as its strategic competitor and is exerting more pressure. The trade war may be just the beginning. Tensions between the two nations may spread to other areas. We believe that during this process, the White House will continue to evaluate, including a look at China’s nuclear arsenal.
China is different from Russia. China has a robust economy and has many tools at its disposal, which is an advantage. Yet China’s relatively weak military, especially its nuclear power, which lags behind the US, is a major strategic sore point. China’s nuclear weapons have to not only secure a second strike but also play the role of cornerstone in forming a strong deterrence so that outside powers dare not intimidate China militarily. Once major countries are engaged in military conflicts, each side must evaluate the determination of the other side to see the conflict through. Nuclear power is the pillar of that determination.

My old teacher and mentor, Elie Kedourie, Professor of Politics at the University of London liked to say that Clio, the Greek muse of history had a great sense of humor and irony. This thought comes vividly to mind rereading one of the most important books ever written on the causes of the decline and disintegration of the British Empire in the first half of the 21th century, Correlli Barnett’s The Collapse of British Power. Barnett most of all explored the crumbling and collapse of Britain’s once awesome industrial base. He put this down to a fatal, blind – indeed deluded – reliance on the workings of the free market without any government intervention, encouragement or protection for strategic industries. The British then, like the Americans today believed in Free Trade as an economic panacea blind to the avalanche of empirical, practical evidence to the contrary. Like modern Americans, they laid exaggerated importance on theoretical university education in the humanities and on liberal theories of economics and politics, while their ruling elites were pathetically ignorant of what today are known in the United States as the STEM subjects – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Chinese President Xi Jinping told the eighth ministerial meeting of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF) that the upgrade creates a “future-oriented strategic partnership of comprehensive cooperation and common development,” the Xinhua News Agency reported. This is the third time Xi has articulated China’s policy to the Arab world, indicating that China attaches great importance and gives full support to developing ties with Arab countries and construction of the CASCF, Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong told a press briefing on Friday. The two sides will promote an “oil and gas plus” mode, under which oil, gas, nuclear and clean energy will be developed, according to Xinhua. China has also offered to provide a $20 billion line of credit to Arab nations in need of help, Xinhua reported, adding the fund will be used for projects that provide large employment opportunities and stable benefits.

A conference of the ulema (religious scholars) drawn from 30 Muslim countries is taking place in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina on July 9-10. The host is notionally the secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), who is not known to act except at the bidding of Saudi Arabia. The agenda is to issue a fatwa effectively de-legitimizing the Taliban’s ‘jihad’, sowing seeds of ideological disarray amongst the insurgents and encouraging defection from their ranks. The tantalizing idea to hold such conferences in various Muslim countries was an American brainwave, which took shape during the visit by US Defence Secretary James Mattis to Riyadh in February when he sought a proactive Saudi role in Afghanistan after a prolonged period of absence since 2001.

Corea del Norte dijo el sábado que las conversaciones con una delegación estadounidense encabezada por el secretario de Estado Mike Pompeo fueron “lamentables”, y acusó a Washington de tratar de obligarla a abandonar unilateralmente sus armas nucleares.

La cumbre ruso-norteamericana se llevará a cabo el día 16 de julio en Helsinki. Ningún avance impresionante es inminente. Este evento será muy diferente a la histórica visita de Richard Nixon a la URSS el año 1972 cuando tres grandes acuerdos sobre seguridad fueron firmados. Existe una gran brecha entre lo que los líderes quieren conseguir y lo que en realidad pueden hacer, aparte de intercambiar cortesías, hacer algunas bromas, palmotearse la espalda y estrechar manos para las cámaras. Pero, a pesar de todas las profundas divisiones en torno a muchos problemas, las tensiones que están siendo muy altas, las actitudes negativas del congreso norteamericano hacia Moscú y otros factores que ensombrecen la relación, la cumbre planificada podría producir resultados concretos y tangibles, contrario a lo que generalmente se cree.