Why Netanyahu Will Never Agree To A Peace Plan

 It's unclear the degree to which young people's anger over Gaza tilted the election away from Harris. I have my doubts, simply because it was not those demographics that really hurt her. It was also not like 2016 where a few thousand votes could have swapped the result.

Still, Israel and Gaza remain a contentious issue within the Democratic Party (and though less of one, an issue among the right as well). The most recent effort to fashion a peace deal has foundered when Netanyahu rejected it.

To really understand WHY Netanyahu rejected it, you really should read Martin Longman's piece in full. 

Is Netanyahu a terrible person? Why, yes. He is. But he's also acting out of political and personal necessity that is shaped by the electoral politics of the Israeli right.

Talking Past Each Other

 Yglesias takes issue with Josh Marshall's take on why leftists are winning primaries in safely blue districts. On the one hand, he does make the solid point that Democrats need to run moderates in swing districts. I don't think Marshall would argue any differently. Marshall - and I actually exchanged emails with him on this - is talking more about system vs anti-system politics. 

Two things I would disagree with Yglesias on is first of all the true "pundit's fallacy." He coined that term to describe the fallacy that pundits engage in when they assume that if a candidate just takes their favored policy positions, then they will win. I think the true pundit's fallacy is that voters - especially persuadable voters - really make sophisticated judgments based on policy at all. The American people were so upset about nominal higher prices that they elected a guy whose signature policy - tariffs - was going to be inflationary. 

The second thing I think is false is that the winning of safe blue seats is somehow draining resources to fight Trump. Sure, at the margins, every dollar spent in a primary battle is a dollar that could have been spent in the general election. I don't think that means that holding THOSE seats is going to be a problem, and I doubt that the person giving to Brad Lander was going to give to Mary Peltola anyway.

Where I agree with him is that I think the Left has largely abandoned reason in its politics. Yesterday I briefly engaged in a Twitter exchange (that I finally wised up and walked away from) where I responded to someone saying the Gaza was a litmus test for candidates. My question was "Why, in 2026, is Gaza not just important, but some people's whole personalities?" I can understand being upset by Israel's conduct in Gaza, deeply upset. I can't understand why this has become someone's entire personality, both politically and even socially.

I think we should cut off military aid to Israel. I think we should stop protecting their bad behavior with our veto power in the UN. I think Biden was slow to arrive at the realization that Israel had gone off the rails, but I also think Biden did a lot more to rein in Israel than Trump ever did. I've also noticed that once you go offline, the campus protests and sit-ins have all pretty much ended now that Trump - who is WAY closer to Netanyahu than any Democrat - is president. Weird.

What I don't believe is that Israeli policy in Gaza is a first order issue in the 2026 midterms. One of the crazier - but I think very emblematic - assertions in the Twitter thread was someone saying that the US was directly responsible for the depredations visited upon Gaza. We did that. We bombed them. Not even, we sold weapons that Israel used, but that we were the ones ultimately responsible for the IDF's actions in Gaza. 

Yeah, no. 

Israel is a wholly sovereign country with a very powerful military. They are perfectly capable of setting their own policy and conducting their own operations. To assume that the US is responsible for that is a form of egocentrism bordering on narcissism. It asserts that there are no other actors in the world but us. That means that MY vote for city council is entirely going to determine what Netanyahu does in Gaza.

Attacking Israel has become part of anti-systems politics. We've been overtly allied with Israel since the 1960s at least. To stand against that is stand against the status quo, which is what seems to be motivating a lot of primary voters - in both parties. Trump is anti-systems politics, too. 

UPDATE: Marshall responds.

Civic Education

 In his mailbag, Yglesias talks about "stealth democracy."

Stealth democracy is a theory that people have this idea that all that is required to solve a problem is for people of goodwill to sit down and hash out their disagreements like colleagues do. They see "corruption" as any action by a government that does not really benefit them. Sure, they can see things like Trump's desecration of the White House and DC in general as being "corrupt" for THAT reason, when the real reason is that he is accruing money to himself and his family and acting outside the cover of law. 

This misconception about "corruption" is really interesting. 

The elections in NYC are the flavor of the minute, and the factionalism expressed there is not an advantage for the Democratic Party in November. Adults - or at least people who really understand our politics and history - understand that you need a Big Tent to win elections, and what resonates in the congressional district around Columbia University does not resonate 25 miles to the north. Still, elements of the Left - and I do not really include Mamdani here - think that if a Democrat representing suburban Yonkers has a difference of opinion on, say, Israel, that isn't a difference of opinion. It's "corruption." They are corrupted by AIPAC.

(I need to take a moment and express my exasperation with the primacy of the Israeli-Palestine issue in Leftist politics at the moment. I fully support the idea that Israel has and continues to commit war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank; I do not think it is genocide, but I understand the arguments that it is. I fully support conditioning American military aid to Israel on the ousting of Netanyahu from power and Israel re-committing to a two-state solution. What I do NOT agree with, is that this is the most important issue facing this country. It is not in the top-10. Ultimately, much of the Israel-Palestine discourse feels performative, and that's just exhausting and not a path to winning control of Congress this fall. <end rant>"

Back to the issue at hand. So much of our politics - from MAGA to the DSA - seems fixated on a version of politics that is simply false. Yes, there is corruption, and Trump is so far and away our most corrupt president, that second place isn't even in the same league. You'd have to run through about 20 Trump scandals before landing on a previous scandal of similar depth. Most of those did not involve the direct participation of the president himself. Only Watergate rises to that level, maybe Iran-Contra. 

So, Trump is legit corrupt. When members of Congress disagree with each other, THAT IS NOT CORRUPTION. 

We've reached this perilous moment, because our parties are more ideological than perhaps they have ever been, and Trump adds breathless stupidity to the mix. The left of the Republican Party does not overlap with the right of the Democratic Party in any meaningful way. When they actually DO accomplish something, like Chris Murphy and James Lankford coming together to fix the immigration system, it gets blown up by Trump. The same thing could be happening with the bipartisan housing bill, but I think that has the votes to override Trump's veto. 

You've had this sort of venomous partisan discord since the '90s, but at least some of it was performative. That's the old "Senate Club" idea, where they yell at each other on CNN and then go have dinner together. Trump, because he has no saving graces or subtlety of thought, has turned that into a politics of grievance that has truly broken Congress and perhaps American democracy. Election denialism is really an offshoot of this. Democrats cannot legitimately win an election is not a position Newt Gingrich or Tom Delay would have entertained.

All of this is to say, we have to find a way out of this moment. 

People do not seem to understand the basics of how democratic governance and politics actually work. Hey, sometimes you lose an election! That's not corruption! Sometimes a good bill dies for bad reasons. That's not corruption! Sometimes there really aren't easy solutions to problems! That's not corruption! 

I've argued that we live in a consumer culture where we really don't have to compromise. You never have to go to Blockbuster only to find out the movie you wanted is checked out and then you have to compromise on whether to watch the rom-com or the action-buddy movie. You just click and stream. 

We've made much of our society frictionless and that simply isn't how politics works. Our whole system is based on friction! That's the point of the separation of powers. 

Instead, both the median voter AND the voters at the extremes simply decry the whole thing as "corrupt" because they can't get what they want all the time. 

That allows a demagogic troll to eviscerate our national institutions, just in time for the 250th anniversary of republican self-government. 

UPDATE: Slightly different take on the same issue of "corruption" from Martin Longman.

UPDATE II: Yet another take on the rise of "dirtbagism."

Dire Straits

 Josh Marshall has been tracking the impact of Iran's threats to shipping through the Straits of Hormuz. Basically, there was no planning and insurance carriers can't insure all these ships.

This basic level of fuck up is exactly what we should expect from an administration of Fox News rejects, podcasters and mediocre white supremacists. Any idiot could have predicted that Iran would close the Straits, just like any idiot could have predicted that American citizens (and others) might not want to be stranded in a war zone. In Afghanistan, the collapse was so fast and unpredictable that there probably wasn't anything that could be done. This was a war of choice being planned for weeks, if not months. 

And apparently no one considered the fact that Iran might strike back at the Straits or at commercial air traffic?

Fucking morons.

The Politics Of Trump's War

 It is inevitable that any discussion of the conflict in Iran turn to the impact on Trump and his political fortunes. Especially given the fact that a Democratic Wave in the November elections might be the difference between America surviving as a democracy or not.

Trump's inherent incoherence is going to work against him here. As he tosses out contradictory war aims and negotiating positions, it becomes clear he doesn't have a framework for "winning the war." What's more, Trump made no effort to "sell" the war to the American public. He did not use the State of the Union address to make the case; he only tossed out a few videos on his social media site. He did not engage Congress or the American people in this conflict. It seems that he assumed he would get a quick and clean Venezuelan outcome - neglecting the fact that Venezuela is still a mess.

Americans don't seem pleased with this. YouGov threw out a snap poll (take with a grain of salt) and only 34% of Americans supported the war. In March 2003, 71% of Americans supported the invasion of Iraq, largely because the Bush Administration made a relentless (and flawed and mendacious) case to the American public. Republicans naturally support Trump far more than Democrats, but while 10% of Democrats express any support for the war, only 20% of independents do. Democrats oppose the strikes at 70%, but independents oppose it at 52%. 

Trump never made the case for war, and now he's throwing off bangers like "there will likely be more (casualties) before it ends. That's the way it is." He routinely references Venezuela, "What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario." He thinks he can waltz in and out of a Middle Eastern war, the way he did in the Caribbean, which betrays an unsurprising but woeful level of ignorance.

Meanwhile, Iran's closing the Straits of Hormuz is unlikely to make people think that Trump is laser focused on affordability. It might not crater the economy the way the 1979 Iranian Revolution did, but supply chain disruptions have a way of making themselves felt. One driver of the "Biden" Inflation was the supply chain disruption to world oil and gas markets by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There is no reason to believe that we won't see another oil shock, even if it doesn't tip us into stagflation.

Trump is an idiot. Most of the people around him are idiots. They believe in performing on social media over doing the hard work of crafting policy and long term strategy. "The Venezuelan raid went great, let's do that again. It will make great TV." Except the American people are really not at all ready for this, and they made no effort to prepare them for it.

Trump has no reservoir of good will or public trust to draw on, beyond his diminishing base. He is absolutely incapable of filling the role of selfless war time president. I would be shocked if he met the caskets of fallen soldiers at Dover. What's more, it is precisely his rural voter base that is sick and tired of these wars, because they disproportionately fight them. 

Iran is playing the long game, because it must. It can launch swarms of cheap drones until America's supply of anti-missile weapons is gone. If it resorts to tactics that have served it in the past, one would have to expect terrorist attacks at some point. They merely have to hunker down and endure. 

Trump is talking about a four week war. Venezuela might be instructive here, in that we really haven't changed much about the government of Venezuela, except who sits atop it. But we declared victory and moved on. Maybe we see a bunch more dead people - American, Iranian, Israeli, Qatari, Kuwaiti - we degrade the Iranian military...and then the war just ends. It's pretty clear that Trump has no real plan to make "regime change" happen. 

I would be shocked if Trump benefits from a "rally 'round the flag" effect. 

Why?

 Why attack Iran now? 

That question is really paramount in my mind as I try and discern why we have engaged in yet another war of choice in the Middle East. Richardson runs through some of the possibilities.

The proper time to launch strikes was during the massive civil unrest that led to the Revolutionary Guard gunning down thousands of its own citizens. However, most of our military assets were tied down off the coast of Venezuela. So there was a lag between the optimal time to launch strikes and the ability to do so. (Apparently the strikes were planned for earlier, but they learned that Khamenei was going to be in a meeting, so they moved the strikes to target that meeting.)

The popular theory online is, of course, that this should be named Operation Epstein Fury. It's all just another distraction from the Epstein Files. Perhaps. More likely this could be seen as a way to "project strength" or "dominate the news" in the face of sagging poll numbers and widespread dissatisfaction with Trump's presidency. The operation in Venezuela went so well, why not try it again? Of course the operation in Venezuela did not arrest Trump's declining poll numbers, but whatever.

Timothy Snyder suggests that this could be part of the overall corruption of the Trump Administration, in particular their cozy relations with the Gulf States. This feels less like a corrupt quid pro quo ("Attack Iran and we will give you billions in crypto.") and more the corruption of shared values. Trump and his minions love the rich emirs of the Gulf, and they could imbibe their perspectives just by constant contact.

It is the opinion of this humble blog that Donald Trump is a profoundly stupid person. He has the vocabulary of a third grader, fer chrissake. Intelligence can take many forms, and Trump's feral ability to attack and lie is kind of intelligence. What he is clearly incapable of doing is looking ten steps ahead. There is a reason no American president has taken this step, despite almost 50 years of hostile relations between the US and Iran. We have no idea what will come next. Trump doesn't care. Venezuela is currently struggling through a humanitarian crisis. Same with Cuba. Trump doesn't care. Iran might collapse into a failed state, like Libya. Trump doesn't care.

Maybe everything works out. Maybe the Iranian army and elements of the Revolutionary Guard switch sides and drive the hardliners from power. Maybe we kill enough hardliners to facilitate that happening. Maybe Iran doesn't degenerate into civil war and chaos, but becomes a vibrant democracy. It's not totally impossible. What IS clear is that we have no plans or ability to shape that particular outcome.

Special Military Operation

 The seemingly inevitable attacks on Iran began a few hours ago. The two ideas need to be held together in everyone's mind. The first is that the Iranian regime is incredibly malevolent. The second is that air strikes are not going to topple the regime. 

Is there a realistic endgame for these strikes? Almost certainly not. 

Are we at war with Iran? Not technically, because Congress has been excluded from this decision. Only Congress can declare war.

Why are we doing this? This feels like the Trump Administration's incessant efforts to "create content" and "project strength" rather than any overarching strategic goal.

Would it improve the world if the Iran had a new government? Absolutely. There is no evidence that this will topple the regime. Air power can't do that.

Can't a global military power enforce it's will militarily on a weaker power? History suggests not. 

Are the adults in charge? Absolutely not. Epic Fury? We are governed by middle schoolers.

Is this a distraction from the Epstein Files? Maybe, but more likely it's a distraction from the various setbacks that Trump has been dealt recently. Military action is usually a way to restore presidential authority. This seems unlikely to do that.

Personalist Foreign Policy

 Trump is an 80 year old man who spent his whole life running a closely held company where he made personal relationships the key to his branding exercises that made him his money. As President, he has basically extended that worldview to his foreign policy. "Are you my 'friend' and can we work together in a way that will ultimately benefit me?" He is not capable of learning a new trick.

This led him to negotiate the temporary cease fire in Gaza that has - unsurprisingly - already broken down. His relationship with the Gulf States allowed him to pressure Hamas to give up the hostages, but Hamas is not ready to cede Israel's right to exist or certainly to rule Gaza and Israel still wants to kill every last member of Hamas. Since Trump has no personalist relationship with Hamas, there is no way to keep them in line and Israel won't let Hamas sneeze without bombing a refugee camp. 

The credulity with which the news media treated this "peace deal" was disgusting.

Now, we have Martin Longman laying out the same dynamic in the Caribbean. As he notes, Trump seems to be inching us towards war with Venezuela based on trumped up (ahem) charges that Maduro is in league with Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan narco-gang. At the same time, it seems pretty clear that Trump is fine with the actual close relationship that his friend Bukele has with the Salvadoran narco-gang MS13. 

It doesn't matter which gang is more deadly or more responsible for drug trafficking. All of that is noise. What matters is that Bukele has cultivated Trump and Maduro hasn't (or more likely can't). You can also see this dynamic with the bailout for Javier Milei. 

Put another way: The United States no longer conducts foreign policy on the basis of principles or long term strategic needs; it conducts foreign policy based on how well a foreign head of state kisses Trump's diapered ass. This presents real problems for global stability. We have seen this for quite some time with Trump's treatment of Ukraine. Zelensky has finally learned to kiss Trump's ass, and that has led to Trump softening his hardline towards Kyiv, but we should be supporting Ukraine because it is a fledgling democracy under assault by an imperial autocratic regime.

Principles matter, because they are fixed and predictable. Trump has no principles beyond personal aggrandizement, so America has no principles beyond what he requires from any given moment or circumstance.

The protests yesterday were great. There was a lot of sentiment about how it was only about 9 months of this shit. The list of degradations by Trump is very, very long. We are already seeing some of his policies create real problems - killing renewable and higher electricity prices; tariffs and deportations leading to inflation; trade wars leading to a collapse in American agricultural exports; personal vindictiveness weaponizing the Justice department against his critics; rampant corruption - both within his family and his administration; forcing media and other conglomerates to kiss the ring or suffer the consequences. The list seems endless.

The reason 7,000,000 Americans took to the streets yesterday (and judging by the reaction of passing cars, many millions more supported them) is that we are seeing the real time effects of having a fucking moron make economic policy. We are seeing what happens when a petty little tyrant has unconstrained access to power.

We haven't yet seen how this personalist foreign policy will play out. There's always a lag with these things as old systems slowly change.

I'm willing to bet that before long, we will blunder into a shooting war.

The Peace President

 Trump's daily assault on the Constitution is...a lot. It can be hard to keep up with. Let's not let all the domestic stuff distract us from the fact that Trump is committing war crimes in the Caribbean. As Campos notes, even if these people were drug runners, you cannot simply vaporize people who are not an active threat to life and limb. This is extrajudicial murder even if there was evidence of criminality. As of now, Trump has produced exactly zero evidence to corroborate his claims.

The odds are that Stephen Miller is behind this to try and scare the shit out of anyone from South America to come anywhere near the US. Or maybe Trump is pissed that a Venezuelan got his precious Nobel Peace Prize. Hey, Donnie. Killing people without due process isn't going to get you a Nobel Prize.

Meanwhile, his signal achievement - the one every Fox News and Congressional fluffer has gotten on their knees to polish his tiny knob - seems to already be falling apart. The Gaza peace deal was basically the deal Biden had on the table last fall. Trump and Netanyahu scuttled it, so that the IDF could kill more Palestinians, Iranians and maybe a few Qataris. The hostage deal is good, the ceasefire will hopefully alleviate suffering in Gaza. But this is not "solved" because Likud will not let a Palestinian state exist and Palestinians will not stop fighting to get one.

One of the things that drives me craziest is how Trump says something, and the press corpse reports it as somehow being true. "Trump announces peace deal" or "Trump strikes trade deal". 

No.

Stop it.

He's a liar and an idiot. He's likely senile.

Peace Or Pause?

 Did Trump and the various entities around him finally bring the Gaza war to a close? We have to concede he might have, even if the durability of this peace seems doubtful. As Marshall laid out, Trump's uniquely close relationships with both the Gulf State emirs and Netanyahu mean he probably had the right levers to work. Marshall:

“Credit” is a funny word. Do I give Trump credit for this? I’d say this. Because of those relationships, Trump is in a unique position to do this. Only he can force the hands of both groups, to the extent they need to be forced. He can do it. He is doing it. And I’m glad he’s doing it.

That doesn't mean the conflict is over, really. The culminating solution is that there is a Palestinian state. It's actually in the plan, but while Netanyahu might agree to this in Washington, I struggle to see him agreeing in Tel Aviv.

This is a great first step, and it at least ends this episode of the cycle of violence that is self-reinforcing. 

But get back to me in a year.

UPDATE: This also feels important from Robert Farley: The reason we have a peace deal today and not in 2024 or even January of this year is that Israel has largely accomplished its goals. Yes, Trump had latitude that Biden did not, given the above-referenced closeness between Trump and Netanyahu. But Trump also greenlit even great barbarism by the IDF that created the close to total victory for Israel. This agreement is a real capitulation by Hamas, because Gaza has been flattened completely. There is no "Gaza" left. 

This Seems Important, Up To A Point

 The decision by more and more countries to recognize a Palestinian state is a direct result of the increasing brutality of Israeli actions in Gaza. This is really a massive "own goal" by Israel, who enjoyed a window of international support after October 7th but has more or less completely forfeited that since. As Israel moves further and further from international law, it risks becoming even more a pariah state. Unlike other dysfunctional and cruel states in the Middle East, Israel doesn't have oil and is therefore more dependent on international goodwill than Netanyahu perhaps realizes.

Of course, the US - especially under Trump - will use their veto to thwart full UN recognition of Palestinian statehood, but that could create a ticking clock for Israel. If we assume - and it's an assumption at this point - that we will have free and fair elections in the future and Democrats will once again gain power, why would they wish to protect Netanyahu, who has openly allied himself with the GOP? Yes, Jews are an important constituency for Democrats, but arch-Zionists in America have likely already moved to the GOP. Recognizing Palestine (or at the very least not using the veto) would be A) the right thing to do B) pay back for Netanyahu being a complete prick and C) lay the groundwork for real Palestinian autonomy.

As the US becomes isolated in its full bore support for the Likud government and its policy of ethnic cleansing, I'd like to thank the pro-Palestinian voters in the US who told us there was no difference between Harris and Trump.

Genocide

 I have been very reluctant to call Israel's conduct in Gaza "genocide." The reason is that I think that when you broaden the use of a very powerful word, you dilute the impact of it. When some folks started saying that expecting people to be on time was "white supremacy" and racism...suddenly racism isn't real. It's just a thing someone doesn't like.

Anyway, I've felt that the IDF was conducting war crimes and that the long term goal of the Israeli Right was slow motion ethnic cleansing.

I think what we are seeing in Gaza now rises to the level of genocidal intent. Of course, if my theory of language is right, then my and others calling it genocide has lost the punch it might have because people have been throwing that word around at various forms of urban combat. 

Still, we are likely to see more and more countries, including the EU, recognize a Palestinian state. The US veto will prevent full UN recognition, but the conduct of Israel has gotten worse and worse, when it should have been getting better and better. Hamas is crippled, Syria is neutralized, Iran is licking its wounds. Now is the time to "win hearts and minds" and instead we are seeing escalating crimes against humanity.

Middle Path On Israel

 Like, I think, the majority of Americans, I believe that Israel has a right to exist. I believe that there should be a Palestinian state. I believe Hamas committed war crimes on October 7th, and that they have continued to do so. I believe that the IDF has committed war crimes in Gaza, and that they have continued to do so.

I also believe that Netanyahu has made the Likud party in particular and the Israeli Right in general a political ally of the GOP.

Yglesias actually has a proposal that makes sense for whenever Democrats are allowed to govern again. It's unlikely to satisfy extreme partisans on either side of the issue, but it does makes broad political sense. He suggests that we should simply stop giving Israel aid.

Americans have a warped sense of foreign aid. They think it's a massive part of the budget, when it's actually pennies. This makes aid unpopular, and it's why Trump and Musk attacked it first. As with any large program, there were aspects of aid that were weird or problematic, but on the whole, foreign aid is incredibly effective.

However, sending aid to Israel only made sense when Israel was surrounded by enemies intent on its destruction. Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon are largely at peace with Israel. There is at least a possibility that Syria may make peace. That pretty much leaves a diminished Hamas and other Iranian proxies like the Houthi as the only belligerent forces arrayed against a much, much more potent Israeli military.

So, the rationale for giving billions in aid to Israel no longer applies. What's more, the ethical questions of being involved on either side are likely too thorny to untangle in a way that makes sense and satisfies various veto points. Simply withdrawing aid from Israel would divorce us from the entire mess and satisfy those who oppose foreign aid. 

Now, if this is going to happen, it would probably be best if President Shapiro or President Ossoff were to take the lead, but I don't see why that should be a problem. No aid for Israel as long as the Israeli government stands in the way of a two state solution.

Tactical Success, But...

 I don't agree with Yglesias most of the time, but I think his points here are very strong. Iran should not be allowed to have nuclear weapons, but that was precisely what the JCPOA had done: prevented them from getting a nuclear weapon. Trump pulled out of the JCPOA because Obama and now has resorted to bombing Iran to stop them from acquiring the weapon that the JCPOA prevented them from having before he tore it up.

Someone noted about Netanyahu that he has enjoyed multiple tactical successes since 10/7. The decimation of Hamas and Hezbollah; the brutal cowing of Gaza; the fall of Assad. What he has not achieved is anything like strategic success. He hasn't created long term security for Israel. 

This feels very similar to what we have just done in Iran. Israel has largely destroyed Iran's air defenses, so dropping the bombs on the three nuclear sites was actually fairly low risk/high reward - if all you care about is delaying their nuclear program. Not ending it, mind you, just delaying it again. This all feels like something we are going to have do again and again, as long as Iran is a rogue state.

Yglesias also notes that Netanyahu played Trump perfectly with this, because Trump is stupid and vain. What's more, there is a stunning lack of experience in the entire national security apparatus right now. These are not 12 dimensional chess type people. Do we really think the president and those around them are looking weeks and months and years down the line?

The initiative now shifts to Iran. Trump has said that Iran has to "negotiate" - which I think means capitulate - in order to avoid more strikes. Iran, however, is in an existential crisis. The regime HAS to strike back. The Straits of Hormuz and various oil sites around the Middle East would be a natural target to retaliate. Driving up oil prices is their most immediate tools available. Certainly various terror attacks against soft targets should be expected. Or, given the state of their air defenses, they simply lay low and wait. Strike next fall.

The strikes on Iran were unconstitutional and illegal, but LOL nothing matters. The next step will be taken by Iran. They are in a precarious place, but I don't think capitulation is something that they can entertain. At some point, I could see a decapitation strike against Khamenei, but I could also see Iran strike at American politicians, too. 

I suppose they could shoot up a school, but Republicans don't seem to care about that.

Terror attacks in the US would further enflame Trumpist assaults on civil liberties and would be the worst outcome for the US and accelerate our descent into authoritarianism. Blowing up some oil tankers and attacking some embassies...that's probably a best case scenario at this point.

Strategically, this doesn't make us safer in the long run.

And for other would-be Irans, the lesson is clear: get a nuclear weapon before the US can blow your program up. 

The Status Quo And What's To Come

 Joe Biden and thus Kamala Harris were hurt by the unfair perception that they were in charge during much of Covid and therefore responsible for things like school closings and inflation. The American economy is the envy of the world and it sure looks like Trump is going to fuck that up. So, it's important for people to feel good about the economy now, so they feel the brunt of Trump's economic shocks appropriately. The worst thing that could happen politically for Dems is if Trump doesn't do what he says he will.

In international relations, we have something similar, but less obvious. Many poorly informed people feel the world is falling apart. Again, I think the post-Covid societal dynamics have created an effect similar to sloshing a bowl of water around. Some of it is spilling over the edge and this has created some odd disruptions. 

The pre-eminent stories are Ukraine and Israel/Palestine, and the former looks bleak. It doesn't look like Ukraine will regain its lost territories and will be forced to sue for peace.

In the Middle East, things are moving very fast and very chaotically. Hamas is beaten to shit; Hezbollah has been decapitated; Assad has fled; the Iranian regime can't keep the lights on. I'm not certain Israel has completely won that conflict, because they have taken a very real hit in terms of public perception of the very legitimacy of the existence of Israel (not that they give a shit). There is no question that Iran's Axis of Resistance has gotten the living shit beaten out of them. 

Enter (re-enter) Donald Trump, who understands on one level that his rural voters are not interested in fighting wars, but a man whose imperial vanity presumes some desire to conquer. If we were about to hand off to President-elect Harris, I think we might be optimistic that the people of Syria and Iran might see not just regime change but positive regime change. As it is, I feel it's inevitable that Trump will engage in some act of belligerent militarism. Let's take some of his words at face value:

- Re-taking the Panama Canal. If he does this, Sheinbaum opens the gate for migrants to move through Mexico to the US. An area - central America - that has beginning to see a little more stability gets thrown into more chaos. The revulsion around the world and the hemisphere would be complete. This is Putin-level shit.

- Greenland. WTF? His obsession with Greenland is really, really weird. 

- Annexing Canada. You know what? Go for it! Canadians are more liberal than Americans on a lot of issues. A Canadian/US merger would insure Democratic majorities for the next 40 years. Not going to happen, but please proceed.

- Attacking Mexico. I'm worried this is going to happen. Could it help reduce the cartels? Anything's possible. Shooting it out with gangsters rarely works, but the US military is a categorical difference. Again, the impact on world and Western hemisphere opinion would be catastrophic.

- Attack Iran. If there are sane heads in the Pentagon, and they need to attack somewhere to placate this gibbering moron, a series of strikes in Iran would appeal to a faction of military leaders (as long as there are no boots on the ground). Would the strikes extend the life of the religious regime or hasten its demise? Most likely the former. Letting Iran (or Russia) collapse under the weight of sanctions would be the best outcome. 

The thing is, there's no way to predict what's coming. The world is beginning to regain its post-Covid equilibrium, and this chimp is going to start flinging pooh everywhere. 

Violence Is Bad, Actually

 When the United Health CEO was gunned down in the street, there was a certain shrugging among many - myself included, I confess - and outright celebration in some quarters. The widespread perception that American health care is needlessly difficult and expensive is rooted in some reality, though it's simplistic to lay all the blame on insurance companies. American doctors and pharmaceutical companies are the highest compensated in the world and are very protective of that. Still, insurance companies very often suck.

The assassin turned out not to be the vanguard of the long awaited leftist revolution, but a Unabomber adjacent, right wing tech bro. His political leanings are no doubt all over the map, but like the would-be Trump assassin, he's another alienated young man who resents his lack of specialness and lashes out in a flamboyant way. 

Oddly, this links in my mind to this Yglesias piece about the "New Cold War." In it, he laments that the emerging Cold War between the US and China has dire consequences for humanitarian goals in the developing world. America's own muddled, self-centered and transactional foreign policy under Trump accelerates a complication of American policy that promotes democracy. Meanwhile, China builds infrastructure for authoritarian regimes in Africa.

What this means in general is that what used to be called "brush wars" - small, violent conflicts in developing world countries - are on the rise. 

However, we have to look at the broader context of bigger wars - notably Ukraine and whatever we want to call the ongoing conflict in the neighborhood of Israel. The legitimation of violence spirals into all sorts of unknown outcomes. 

In Ukraine, that country seems likely to have to cede large swaths of territory for peace, but meanwhile, Russia is also suffering economically and among its allies in Africa and the Middle East. The loss of Assad is a real blow to Russia. Meanwhile, in the broader war between Israel and Iranian proxies - started by Hamas - the Iranian proxies are reeling and Iran is back on its heels. Meanwhile, Israel is cementing its status as a pariah nation in some corners, even as it decimates Hamas, Hezbollah and now watches as Assad topples.

Violence - whether ostensibly revolutionary like the health care assassin or wars of choice - often unleashes forces that tear at the civic fabric within and between nations. It leads to unexpected outcomes that surprise even the most farsighted. 

Maybe we will look at recent events in 15 years and see a smaller but more prosperous Ukraine well integrated into Europe, and burgeoning democracy in Syria. 

I have my doubts. 

The Wheel

 In economics, there's a pretty solid pattern over the past 40 years. Republicans break the economy - overheating it with tax cuts and deregulation - and then Democrats come in and fix things. Trump inherited the Obama recovery and coasted on that until Covid wrecked the economy. Biden led the most successful economic response to that and now the economy is booming. Let's see what happens with tariffs, deportations and crypto bubbles.

There less of a pattern in foreign affairs, but Trump will again inherit a reasonably favorable foreign policy map. Russia is bogged down in Ukraine, with the sanctions finally taking a bite. The Russian military showed in ass in Ukraine, as NATO's JV weapons have stymied the much larger and better armed Russian army. If enough Russia hawks are in Trump's cabinet, maybe Ukraine can find a negotiated peace that allows them some long term security.

Meanwhile, if there's a country in worse shape than Russia, it's Iran. Their clients in the so-called Axis of Resistance are crumbling left and right. Hezbollah is largely beaten to dust; Hamas is a shadow of its former self and now Assad has capitulated in Syria.

This is good news, right?

The problem is that we are looking at a wounded Russia, and wounded powers are more likely to do rash things than secure ones. Syria is free from Assad's boot at its neck, but as we have seen repeatedly in the Middle East, when governments collapse, the state often collapses with them. Syria could become Lebanon in steroids with competing warlords. It could become Iraq: a fragile, flawed democracy. It could become Afghanistan as religious fanatics seize power and persecute those of insufficient faith. 

Assad was awful, but there's no guarantee that Syria benefits from his ouster and this could require more Israeli intervention which will supercharge the anti-Israeli global left. The instability on its borders will thwart efforts to oust Netanyahu.

Right before October 7th, Jake Sullivan infamously said that the Middle East was not a priority for US. Now we are seeing the devastation of Gaza, the destabilization of Lebanon and the potential collapse of Syria. In the past, the US has been the indispensable nation in brokering peace in that fraught neighborhood. That seems...unlikely with Trump's collection of foreign and security policy naïfs at the helm.

The wheel of history is always turning. The anti-incumbent mood of the advanced democracies has led to a sense of "throw the bums out" regardless of what comes next. Let the "disrupters" have a turn. 

Now, as the old structures crumble, can the disrupters, the chaos agents, find a path to stability and peace? I obviously have my doubts.

The problem with chaos agents is that they are excellent at breaking things, but building things is hard. Trump famously stopped building things because he kept losing money at it and went into branding instead. He couldn't build an apartment building, but he could slap his name on one. 

Well, the wheel is turning and he will have his name slapped on whatever is coming next.

Gaza

 I don't think Gaza led to Harris' defeat, but there will be those who feel that way.

However, news from Israel that Netanyahu has fired Yoav Gallant, his Defense Minister, suggests that Netanyahu might be ready to embrace an extreme response now that his ally, Trump, will be in the White House. Biden has been working to both support Israel and restrain Netanyahu, and I would wager that Netanyahu is feeling unconstrained at the moment.

As the piece notes, there are a number of reasons why Gallant was fired. Some of them are unique to internal Israeli politics, like exempting the Ultra Orthodox from the draft. Gallant, though, was an advocate for empowering the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. That's another red line for Netanyahu, whose primary goal is preventing the emergence of a Palestinian state.

It will be interesting to see if Netanyahu takes the leash off before or after Trump's inauguration, but it is coming. It will be tragic. It will be a dark foreshadowing of Trump's foreign policy that will countenance any oceans of blood, as long as it benefits him.

Grim Anniversary

 A year ago today some of the worst people in the world perpetrated horrors that empower some of the other worst people in the world visit brutality on civilians caught in the middle. This led other terrible people to join in and now they have dragged Lebanon into the maelstrom. 

Among the many tragedies of this new round of violence is that there would seem to be a clear path to peace: Israeli and Palestinian states living independently from one another. Sadly, as clear as that solution is, the worst set of decisions makers - from Hamas to Netanyahu/Likud to Hezbollah to Iran - want to make sure it doesn't happen.

It's similar in some ways to the Republicans who have killed the immigration bill or won't return to appropriate FEMA money in the middle of a disaster, because the politics might work to their benefit.

UPDATE: This post by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is poignant and accurate.

Hezbollah and Lebanon

 As Josh Marshall lays out here, the Israeli attack into Lebanon is simply qualitatively different than the invasion of Gaza. One thing he doesn't mention as a complication is that Hezbollah isn't really popular among many Lebanese and Syrians, as they have been part of the brutal Syrian civil war. Nasrallah's death was cheered amongst Syrian refugees.

The broader point is this:

Again, this is a hopelessly complicated issue which I’ve tried to lay out here in overview terms. The relevant point is that this is categorically different from the situation in Gaza. In Gaza, Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation. Lebanese citizens and Hezbollah do not. Hezbollah opened a new front against Israel starting on October 8th, 2023, in support of the October 7th massacres. Everybody who is expressing worry about this escalating into a broader regional war and the inevitable rising death toll of these actions is right to be worried. But it’s Hezbollah’s decision to open that northern front that gets us here.

Of course, the longer the generalized war goes on, the longer Netanyahu can cling to power. A potential crushing victory against Hezbollah would not only weaken Iran's Axis of Resistance but improve his odds of surviving the next election.