Netanyahu's dangerous game: on autopilot into chaos
by Paul R. Pillar

[This article posted on 8/1/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.telepolis.de/features/Netanyahus-gefaehrliches-Spiel-Auf-Autopilot-ins-Chaos-9820761.html.]

The recent Israeli assassinations have increased the risk of a regional conflagration in the Middle East

Israel's assassinations are jeopardizing stability in the region. Is Netanyahu trying to draw the US into a war with Iran? Our guest author sheds light on the current situation in the Middle East.

The assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, which almost certainly was carried out by Israel or on its behalf, will have no positive consequences – not even for Israel's own security.
Iran will feel compelled to react
Instead, it will further increase the already high potential for further wars, death and destruction in the Middle East.

The Iranian regime will feel compelled to respond, even though the victim of the assassination was not an Iranian. The assassination took place in the heart of Iran. For Tehran, the murder of a foreign visitor who was in the capital for the inauguration of the new Iranian president is a serious humiliation.

"Ping-Pong game" threatens to get out of control
Iranian decision-makers will now weigh up different, sometimes contradictory considerations for a response. Iran's response to the Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus in April is an indication of how they think: the Iranian retaliation was a missile and drone attack on Israel that was large in scale but at the same time aimed at minimizing the damage and thus depriving Israel of any reason for further escalation.

Our guest author Paul R. Pillar
(Image: Commons)

Iran's response to the latest attack will not necessarily be the same, but the regime may again seek ways to send a strong message while limiting the risk of escalation.

It has become standard practice for Israel to treat any armed action against it as unprovoked aggression rather than retaliation for Israeli actions. Therefore, regardless of how Iran responds this time, it is likely that Israel will respond with further violent action. Despite efforts by one or both sides to limit escalation, this "ping-pong game" threatens to spiral out of control.

The history of Israeli assassinations in Iran
The long history of Israeli assassinations and other acts of sabotage in Iran has in the past been focused on Iranian nuclear scientists. Unlike diplomatic measures, these attacks have not helped to slow the progress of the Iranian nuclear program. Today, Iran is on the verge of having enough fissile material to build a nuclear bomb.

Nor will the assassination of Haniyeh help to curb Hamas' violence against Israelis in the Gaza Strip or elsewhere. Haniyeh was a political figure who had been living in exile for the past few years and who apparently had little or no influence on Hamas' military activities in the Gaza Strip.
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The most immediate effect of the attack will be to hinder negotiations for a ceasefire and the release of the hostages – also because of Haniyeh's personal role in the negotiations.

This latest chapter in the long history of covert and overt Israeli attacks seems to have recently entered a macabre autopilot mode, in which targets are attacked without regard to the consequences for the security not only of foreigners but also of Israelis. This was particularly true of Hamas targets – but also of targets from the ranks of Hezbollah, given the increasing tensions along the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Israel's snap decisions
The nervousness surrounding Israel's withdrawal was again evident just a few days ago when a rocket hit a football field, killing twelve people – not Israelis in the area recognized by the world as Israel, but Druze in a village on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. The emphatic denials by Hezbollah are credible, considering that it is difficult to imagine what motive Hezbollah could have for attacking Druze in occupied Syria.

Most of the Druze on the Golan Heights are Syrian citizens, despite years of Israeli occupation. Instead of a deliberate attack by Hezbollah, the deadly missile could have been either misdirected Hezbollah ammunition or, more likely, an Israeli Iron Dome interceptor that missed its aerial target.

Despite all these doubts, Israel's response was automatic, to kill another member of Hezbollah. This time with an air strike on a densely populated neighborhood of Beirut, which also killed three civilians and injured several dozen.
Like the assassination operations against Hamas, this killing will not reduce Hezbollah's ability or willingness to harm Israelis. It will only complicate diplomatic efforts to stabilize the Israeli-Lebanese border and prevent a wider conflagration.
Calculated element?
Israel's almost automatic recourse to ineffective assassinations partly reflects a kind of national anger that has manifested itself repeatedly in the past nine months in massacres and massive suffering in the Gaza Strip.

But there may also be a calculating element at play, especially in the case of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has a personal interest in keeping some kind of war going in order to escape his political and legal problems – regardless of whether a ceasefire is ever reached in Gaza.

Despite earlier indications of Israel's inclination not to directly escalate into a full-scale war with Hezbollah or Iran, it is likely that Netanyahu is aiming to draw the United States into a war with Iran.

This would serve all the multiple purposes that Israel's ongoing promotion of hostility toward Iran has always served – including diverting attention from Israel's own actions in Gaza and elsewhere – while the U.S. would bear the heavy military burden and all the costs and risks associated with it.

Whether or not Netanyahu achieves this goal, Israel's latest action solidifies its status as one of the most active state terrorists in the Middle East (for the assassination of Hamas leader Haniyeh was an act of international terrorism by the official US definition) and as a major source of regional instability.

Paul R. Pillar is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University and a fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also an associate fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy.

This text was first published in English on our partner portal Responsible Statecraft.

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also see: The hell of Gaza: Netanyahu can wage this war as long and as hard as he wants
The Israeli government has long since lost the battle for the legitimacy of the Gaza war. That is why all court decisions and attempts by the US or other partners are ineffective […]
Events and decisions that are expected to shorten the war have the opposite effect. The force that "always wants evil and always creates good" (Goethe) has surrendered to a dialectic of fate in which "good" tends to create "evil", that is, prolong the war. In the case of Gaza, because Israel has long since lost the battle for legitimacy in its conduct of the war, its right-wing extremist government does not want to lose the war by making concessions on its war aims.

Freitag

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NATO Supreme Commander Cavoli on the big problem with Russia: It is located right on NATO's border and is very angry on top of that...
An Aspen Security Forum discussion among "Europeans"
by Petra Erler
Jul 28, 2024

[This article posted on 7/28/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://petraerler.substack.com/p/nato-oberbefehlshaber-cavioli-uber.]

The Aspen Security Forum is, by its own description, the US conference at which security and foreign policy issues are discussed. The list of sponsors is impressive and ranges from McKinsey and American Airlines to Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
After all, it is expensive to transport representatives of the military-industrial complex, politicians, selected journalists, high-ranking military officers and influential bureaucrats to picturesque Aspen.

On the other hand, an invitation to participate in the forum is not to be turned down. It is a kind of accolade. You have arrived at court, where politics is developed.
This year, the foreign and security policy advisor to the German Chancellor, Jens Plötner, was also invited.

Mr. Plötner took part in a panel on the morning of the third day of the forum, preceded by introductory remarks from the CEO of the Aspen Security Forum, Daniel Porterfield. There is not much to report about these, except that Mr. Porterfield considered global security and US security to be the same. He also demonstrated very nicely that concern about an international threat scenario and unshakable confidence in US capabilities or in the power of democracy do not have to be a contradiction.

The panel on "NATO, Europe and Ukraine" was moderated by Shashank Joshi, defense policy expert at The Economist. Also taking part were General Cavoli, the Supreme Commander of NATO and US forces in Europe, Stefano Sannino, Secretary General of the EU External Action Service, Jonatan Wsewiow, Secretary General of the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Jens Plötner.

General Cavoli was undoubtedly the star of the "splendidly cast" panel "full of Europeans", because, according to Joshi, the NATO general could also be counted among them due to his knowledge of Russian and Italian. That was a bit of a risk, since the Russians are no longer considered Europeans, but it is a very elegant way of avoiding the problem that US trust in the European NATO members does not extend so far as to allow them to take over military command. But General Cavoli does indeed have a very remarkable CV. The son of a US military officer, he was born in Germany and grew up in Italy and Germany due to his father's postings. Cavoli studied at US elite universities, initially biology, then Russian and Eastern European history. Only then did he follow his military calling and embark on a spectacular career. Listening to Cavoli is always a pleasure.

First, he explained what the two-percent NATO spending commitment was all about. Although this figure seems somewhat arbitrary, Cavoli said, it certainly is no longer. This two-percent rule is the lowest limit for NATO to successfully wage a war in Europe. When NATO only had to concentrate on extraterritorial missions, such as Kosovo, the Balkans and Afghanistan, everything was cheaper and the allies pocketed the "peace dividend". But now it has to be more expensive in view of the Russian threat, against which a "continental defense" has to be organized, and some are already spending more than just two percent.

It must be assumed that Cavoli knows full well that the two-percent spending target has been formally discussed in NATO since 2006. At that time, at the informal meeting of NATO defense ministers, the Dutch NATO Secretary General addressed the two-percent margin. The member states had set this target themselves, and he had to ask, no, insist that they fulfill it, and he had received a lot of positive feedback. There was no talk of a peace dividend at the time, nor of a Russian threat, at most (the day before) of the great disaster that would threaten NATO if things went wrong in Afghanistan.

https://www.nato.int/multi/audio/2006/a060929b.mp3 (2nd day of the press conference)
For those interested: here are the statements made by the NATO Secretary General at the end of the first day of the meeting of defense ministers. Everyone knows how Afghanistan ended. Soon we will have a Dutch NATO Secretary General again.

https://www.nato.int/multi/audio/2006/a060928c.mp3
In short, when it comes to increasing NATO spending, any justification will do, and the Russian threat is conveniently available.
But Cavoli's specialty is also to occasionally let the famous cat out of the bag, and he did not disappoint this time either. He explained:

"We can't be under any illusions: At the end of a conflict in Ukraine — however it concludes — we are going to have a very big Russia problem... We are going to have a situation where Russia is reconstituting its force, is located on the borders of NATO, is led by largely the same people as it is right now, is convinced that we're the adversary, and is very, very angry."

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3843391/nato-nations-face-challenges-to-defend-the-alliance-cavoli-says/
Translation:

We must not be under any illusions: at the end of the conflict in Ukraine – however it turns out – we will have a very big problem with Russia. We will have a situation in which Russia is reconstituting its armed forces, is on NATO's borders, is led by largely the same people as now, is convinced that we are the enemy, and is very, very angry."

Who could disagree with Cavoli on this point? The question is how one thing led to another. How, for example, did the Russians manage to creep up to the NATO border?
In other words, NATO itself has created the "very big Russia problem" that Cavoli has now identified.

But since the whole thing took place at the Aspen Security Forum, and all the other key words such as "Russian threat", "continental defense" etc. had been mentioned, nobody reacted to it, except for the Estonian panel participant.

At the end of the panel, it was Cavoli who spoke of the "European awakening". This was a different Europe, one that the US had been waiting for for three decades, with European allies who understand the burdens and are willing to bear the burdens. Now the time had finally come. This was also good for the US. Now their contributions were maximizing.

However, Cavoli avoided making a clear prediction about the outcome of the war in Ukraine. It depends on who can mobilize more potential. He was quite optimistic about this. He listed the components necessary for successful warfare and emphasized that this applies not only to Ukraine, but also to the NATO countries (equipment, people under arms, training).

In the Ukraine war, Cavoli saw a rule of thumb confirmed: if you don't win the war quickly, it will last a long time and become unpredictable. However, the "coalition of the willing" once believed that it had quickly defeated Iraq. Nevertheless, Cavoli is right: war is unpredictable. However, this is not only true in times of war. The unpredictability increases to the extent that war preparation and training replace diplomacy.
In about an hour, many questions were discussed or explanations were given. Some others seem to me to be particularly worth mentioning.

Moderator Joshi began the questioning of Stefano Sannino with almost effusive praise for the new political guidelines of the second Commission under the leadership of von der Leyen. It was a "blockbuster". The EU wanted to become a defense community and - in Joshi's words - "finance the production of artillery shells that we then give to Ukraine so that the Russians can kill them. In the past, we would have thought that was a funny short story. But now we are here...
Not that anyone on the panel was left breathless, let alone with blood running cold. There was also no objection to the effect that it was about Ukrainian defense against Russian aggressors, and that unfortunately it also cost human lives. Joshi summed up the whole essence of the proxy war and it went down well with the audience. It was a good thing that the angry Russian bear had heard something like this before. That way, his anger remains cold.
Sannino, a shrewd Italian diplomat who also knows the Commission well, praised his boss's foresight on the panel, but was keen to point out that the EU is not a military alliance. Incidentally, the old suspicions about the EU were all wrong: the EU and NATO were forged together and were certainly not competitors. The EU was much more united than it sometimes appeared, for example in the form of over 150 billion euros for Ukraine.

Mr. Plötner had a somewhat more difficult position in the discussion. First, he was practically interrogated as to whether Germany, this two-percent-wobbling candidate, would also deliver. Fortunately, according to Plötner, the SPD and the CDU are in favor of this, so it should work for the next three years, as far as anyone can tell. Then came the question of how Germany viewed the Chinese threat and whether it saw it in the same way as the USA. Mr. Plötner did his best not to scare off the US partners and still manage to deliver a small side blow. It was already agreed that China had to be integrated into new rules, for example within the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO), so that it would not outmaneuver the West economically. Remember: if the "co-competitor" or competitor or rival or even opponent has strengths, then they have to be "managed", even in the WTO, which is unpopular with the USA.
Later in the discussion, the decision was made to station American medium-range weapons and also supersonic weapons in Germany from 2026. In the past, this would have filled the German front pages for months, said Joshi, but today it was different. Mr. Plötner replied that there had been a day of excitement, but apart from a few "extremists", everything had remained calm. That was the "turning point". He politely thanked Cavoli ("Chris") and the US security advisor for helping to bring this about.

This is a way of avoiding the fact that the USA demonstrably took this decision as early as 2021, and since then the only question has been how to reconcile the child with the bath. Instead, Plötner preferred to talk about Russian Iskander weapons, which are stationed in Kaliningrad and could hit capitals. He omitted the part that the Iskander weapons (Russian designation: 9M729) had been the subject of dispute at the time under the INF Treaty, which Russia tried to resolve through inspections, or that Russia had committed itself to a moratorium on stationing any weapons banned under the INF Treaty in the European part of Russia as long as NATO did not do the same.

https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/international_safety/1445386/?TSPD_101_R0=08765fb817ab2000d1d7e89cece88be6e77aee69 31444a17e9fcf914541bdee13d2edf0d17559cd8087c0bd756143000467bbc1a1976217f57eceb 595658b49970b493af4cf72ad96711c3409de3c7c2efc40527698f7cd0359d6964068e6996

This "retrofit decision", the alleged closing of a "capability gap", is now undermining the Russian moratorium on the deployment of such weapons.

Yes, what times they were in 1986, when a German CDU-led government spoke out against strategic nuclear weapons and medium-range weapons in Europe in the middle of the Cold War (in confidential communication with the USA) and in 1987 unilaterally but publicly scrapped 72 Pershing IA missiles because of the INF Treaty. In the Cold War!

https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/avc/trty/102360.htm
Today, in times of "change", the SPD is easily overtaking everything on the right and also throwing sand in the eyes of the population, in the hope that everyone will march in step.

In fact, it is obvious that the only thing that will certainly increase as a result of this deployment decision is the level of military confrontation with Russia and the associated growing mutual threat in Europe. Germany's security will certainly become more fragile.
Does Mr. Plötner know this and just doesn't say it, or is he not even aware of it? I was undecided on this question. But Plötner is only the advisor. The decision was made by the chancellor. Moreover, Plötner is a career diplomat who made a good name for himself professionally before the "turn of the times" and is therefore occasionally attacked as a representative of an old, "naïve" Russia policy. But I don't want to speculate.
Jonatan Vseviov, the Estonian panelist with the name that doesn't sound Estonian at all, was the real surprise for me. Anyone who heard him speak would have heard the representative of a self-confident great power with centuries of democratic traditions and insights, much like the United States. Perhaps it was because Vseviov had previously served as the Estonian ambassador to the United States and had experience of what Americans like to hear. Vseviov spoke with great certainty and even more self-confidence. Yes, the Russians want to use the war in Ukraine to change the European security order, and we cannot let them get away with that. Our house is on fire, but we will put out the fire. There is also no reason for pessimism. We in Europe are 400 million people who are among the richest in the world, while Russia, and he recalled Senator Mc Cain's words, is only a "gas station with nuclear weapons". (The audience was happy to hear this.)
On the other hand, the panel agreed that this "gas station" is constantly producing new hybrid threats, such as the threat to underwater infrastructure (note: this concern arose after the attack on NordStream), the discovery of large numbers of Russian spies in the EU , or Russia is planning or carrying out murderous plots, just think of the (alleged) assassination plans against the head of Rheinmetall... (Note: Mr. Plötner was not very talkative on this subject.)

Looking at it through these glasses, I also think of one or two hybrid threats to Russia from the West. Sometimes something like that is mentioned in the New York Times or the Washington Post because of "chatterboxes". Didn't the CIA recently boast about how it was spying on Russia with the help of Ukraine, or teaching its Ukrainian colleagues how to kill people? Who would have thought that they would actually use what they had learned! But never mind.
In cases of hybrid Russian warfare, according to Vseviov, there was only one thing to do: show strength and not be afraid. Because fear makes the Russians strong. In general, you should not fall for the Russians, even if they talk about peace negotiations. It's all lies.

Estonia is, Vseviov was sure, "existentially" threatened (NB: because Putin has not given up the plan to swallow Estonia as a buffer against NATO), especially since "we Nordic peoples", according to Vseviov, do not use this term lightly.

Since the entire panel assumed that the Russian threat is great and persistent, I will limit myself here to the use of the term "existential". Like Vseviov, I also think that this term is understood differently, but in my perception this difference does not exist on a small scale in northern Europe, but rather the dividing line runs more or less along the Elbe.

East of the Elbe, all the way to the Pacific coast of Russia, the word "existential" is indeed understood to mean a life-or-death situation, whereas this intensification of meaning is not necessarily included in the use of the word west of the Elbe.

All in all, it was a very insightful discussion that I would recommend listening to and thinking about.

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In war, journalists are the most important soldiers
In war, civilization brings about its own end: people are used as mere "material". Journalists make it possible, says our columnist. A polemic. […]
The facts of war that need to be concealed are as monstrous as the achievements of civilization are beneficial. That is why the whole public space needs to be pregnant with lies in order to conceal the war or at least to record its form in such a way that the casual observer remains uncertain and perhaps moves on with an uneasy heart but without saying a word. For no citizen in his right mind would agree to the demolition of his castle and voluntarily move back into the forest.
It is always the long-term, daily repetition of lies that is needed to create the fog in which people can be declared and used as expendable material. Journalists are indispensable here.
The perpetrators of war must hear something that makes their killing seem, if not noble, then at least necessary; its victims must hear something that makes their sacrifice, if not meaningful, then at least unavoidable; and its spectators must hear something that keeps them in indecision and doubt until the official ideals have been satisfied for this time, that is, until enough money has been earned with mass killings for this time.

Source: Michael Andrick in the Berliner Zeitung

Im Krieg sind Journalisten die wichtigsten Soldaten

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/michael-andrick-im-krieg-sind-journalisten-die-wichtigsten-soldaten-li.2239619

East bashing: Der Spiegel lectures the East – and Correctiv wants to abolish unity
Der Spiegel sees the "last chance" for the East coming. Others are even calling for the separation of East and West. What does that tell us? A column. […]
The newsletter was about the upcoming state elections. The AfD is ahead in all the polls. As it has been for months. And now the alliance is catching up with Sahra Wagenknecht. The party of a woman who, according to the newsletter, "hypocritically plays the peace angel" because "that goes down particularly well in the East during an election campaign".
An analysis as sharp as a knife from a doll's kitchen. The East Germans and the elections, it must be an imposition on the West. First the PDS, then the Left, got far too many votes for years, and in the media, such as Der Spiegel, it was said that they had learned nothing in the East. Then people started voting for AfD, and now BSW. Parties that are not banned, but that doesn't mean that you can vote for them – if you don't want to be reprimanded by Der Spiegel.
I wonder who is actually gambling away their last chance with whom? And I think again about the question of the old editor-in-chief, why Der Spiegel is not read in the East. Or do the colleagues there (many of whom I actually like very much) not want that anymore?

Source: Berliner Zeitung

Ost-Bashing: Der Spiegel belehrt den Osten – und Correctiv will die Einheit abschaffen

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/kultur-vergnuegen/ost-bashing-der-spiegel-belehrt-den-osten-und-correctiv-will-die-einheit-abschaffen-li.2239954