Some Outside-Our-Borders Tidbits

#Ian Bremmer, "Trump's Middle East plan..." TIME, February 10, 2020.
"This new deal aims to contain, rather than reduce, Israeli settlements, giving Palestinians a smaller plot of land for their state, about 70% of the West Bank." "To entice the Palestinians, the Trump administration has pledged to  drum up investments of $28 billion over 10 years to support Palestine, with $22 billion of additional funding going to Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon."

"The Trump administration's Israel-Palestinian peace plan tears up the playbook of prior U.S.policy. Rather than fairness, it is built upon the recognition of Israel's power on the ground and shifts in the region's geopolitics."

#Joshua Seifer, "A Tense Relationship," The Nation, February 24, 2020.
"Victory in the Six-Day War, as Amos Oz later recalled, unleashed 'a mood of nationalistic intoxication, of infatuation with the tools of statehood,with the rituals of militarism. Rather than subsiding, this mood became part of the general attitude of a country engaged in perpetual occupation and war.' "

"Cloaking false equivalences and ideology in the language of realism has long been a hallmark of liberal Zionist argument. Liberal Zionists often insist that one cannot condemn Israeli militarism and occupation without an equivalent condemnation of Palestinian separatism and irredentism, and they generally maintain that the two-state solution is the only realistic and desirable outcome for Israel-Palestine." "The emergence of a Jewish state, however, marked the failure of the early Zionist's very proposition; instead of solving the Jewish question once and for all, Israel [enclosed] it in the realm of geopolitics."

"Writing shortly after the 1967 war,[I.F.] Stone lamented the rising militarism and 'Lilliputian nationalism' of Israel's culture,which he believed were at odds with his universalist Jewish leftism."

#Robin Wright, "Consequences," The New Yorker,  January 20, 2020.
The Trump administration's top goal in Iran has been undermined: Iran is much closer to building a nuclear weapon. "For decades, successive presidents have sought to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon. By 2013,the regime was within weeks to being able to build a bomb -- the so-called breakout time." "Iran's breakout time has begun to tick down, and 'maximum pressure' from sanctions and isolation hasn't worked."

#"We are historic interlopers. We come and go," Robert Malley, the president of the International Crisis-Group, said. "The notion that we could sustain our forces in an unpredictable struggle in the Middle East --given the politics in this country, and the fact that most Americans don't think this is a  vital interest -- is illusory." "The  United States has figured out how to react to a militia or kill a commander, it still hasn't figured out,creatively or proactively, to deal with the nation of Iran."

#Michael T. Clare, "Twin Threats," TIME, January 27, 2020.
"One particularly worrisome scenario is if extreme drought and abnormal monsoon rains devastated agriculture and unleashed social chaos in Pakistan, potentially creating a opening for radical Islamists aligned with elements of the armed forces to seize some of the country's 150 or so nuclear weapons." "A potential US military incursion in nuclear-armed Pakistan is just one example of a crucial but little-discussed aspect of climate change and nuclear war planning may make those threats to human survival harder to defuse."

"Although Obama initiated the nuclearization of the nuclear triad,the Trump administration has sought funds to proceed with their full-scale production, at an estimated initial installment of $500 billion over 10 years," "Trump's decision to acquire a whole new suite of ICBMs, nuclear-armed submarines,and bombers has added  momentum to these efforts."

#Colin Jones, "After the Uprising," The Nation, March 16/23, 2020.
"Today, it is really only in Okinawa that the U.S. military in Japan is contested. American bases take about 15 percent of the island, and although Okinawa accounts for just one-third of 1 percent of Japan's total territory, it houses roughly half of the 50,000 U.S. personnel in the country."

"Under the terms of the treaty, the United States could deploy its forces in Japan to anywhere in Asia without consulting the Japanese government."

#David Petreus and Vance Serchuk,"Don't trust the Taliban's promises," The Week, August 30, 2019.
"If President Trump pulls all U.S. troops from Afghanistan as he says he wants to, the Taliban will seek to overthrow the Afghan government and impose medieval rule."