Noah Millman writes that the Palestinian statehood bid will benefit Netanyahu politically:

Formally, the Netanyahu government is lobbying fiercely against such a declaration. But notwithstanding this, such a declaration is probably in the interests of the Netanyahu government, and Bibi undoubtedly knows this. Anything that heats up the conflict probably bolsters the right in Israel.

That would seem to guarantee that the “gamble” isn’t going to pay off, and any conceivable resolution of the conflict will be more remote than ever. If a maneuver is going to fail while empowering your staunchest opponents, it’s usually not an advisable thing to do. Matt Steinglass notes, “On the ground, meanwhile, the theoretical recognition of Palestinian “observer state” status at the UN will change nothing.” This is true for the most part, except that aid cut-offs and other reactions to the bid that will likely follow are going to change things for Palestinians for the worse. As Steinglass sees it, Israel could readily endorse statehood for Palestine because it doesn’t really mean very much, so that “Israeli acceptance involves no significant concrete concessions that I can see.” It’s not as if Palestine’s recognition would provide it any more protection than it has right now. Lacking defined borders, its complaints about violations of its quasi-sovereignty will be ignored, and as long as Gaza remains effectively out of its control the PA’s claims about sovereignty in Gaza will be meaningless.

Something that keeps coming up is the idea that the Palestinian Authority will be able to appeal to the International Criminal Court following recognition of statehood, but this is probably not going to lead to any accountability for Israeli excesses in the past. Colum Lynch explained earlier this month:

The Palestinians asked the prosecutor to exercise jurisdiction over major war crimes dating back to 2002, opening the door to possible investigations of Operation Cast Lead. But legal scholars remained divided over whether the prosecutor can open cases dating back that far.

As Mark Goldberg observed (via Andrew), Palestinian leaders appear interested in cooperating with the ICC, but Israel is not. There would not be any way to prosecute any officials from Israel unless Israel hands them over, and we all understand that this will never happen, so there isn’t likely to be any accountability in the future.

Millman is probably right that Palestinians in the diaspora won’t be materially harmed by recognition, but for many of them that it isn’t the point. This might remove an obstacle to a negotiated settlement, but the statehood bid is itself an acknowledgment that such a settlement is not forthcoming. In this case, it is the abandonment of an important symbolic position in exchange for nothing. Maybe somewhere down the road it “opens the path to actual, material progress,” but that must seem to be almost as much of an illusion as the “right of return” is.

Andrew asks:

Which ally violates the Non-Proliferation treaty and manages to get its super-power protector to maintain total silence on this glaring fact?

Technically, states that don’t accept the NPT can’t be in violation of it. They have not committed to reject the development of nuclear weapons, and they are under no obligation to submit to inspections. India and Pakistan also belong to the same category. The problem is not so much that Washington ignores this, but that it makes proliferation the overriding issue in its relations with other states, including states that do accept the NPT. Obviously, the double standard is that the U.S. makes no demands on the allied nuclear-weapons states regarding their nuclear materials, but then becomes furious when Iran starts up a few centrifuges. If the U.S. were as indifferent to Iran’s nuclear program as it is to Israel’s nuclear arsenal, things would be a bit more balanced.

Greg Scoblete comments on signs of an emerging Libyan insurgency:

Would countries like Chad, Niger or Sudan sustain a Gaddafi insurgency were one to take root?

Probably not, but they might not do very much to discourage an insurgency from using their territory as a base from which to launch attacks. The government that might be most sympathetic and willing to support Gaddafi loyalists more directly is Algeria. Algeria never wanted foreign intervention in Libya, it vocally opposed the bombing once it started, and it has still not recognized the TNC. Even if recognition is forthcoming, that need not rule out lending support to armed groups inside Libya. Algeria was apparently funneling military support to Gaddafi for most of the year, or at least it did not do anything to keep supplies from entering Libya, and it has since played host to exiled members of Gaddafi’s family. Virtually none of Libya’s neighbors accepted Western intervention in Libya, so it wouldn’t be surprising if one or more of them saw some advantage in sabotaging post-Gaddafi Libya.

Spencer Ackerman defends the Palestinian statehood bid, saying this (via Andrew):

If you were a Palestinian, you would push a U.N. gambit as well.

Maybe not. According to Mehdi Hasan, the majority of Palestinians living in the diaspora has good reason to oppose this move:

According to Goodwin-Gill, the PLO’s UN status would be transferred to the new state of Palestine after the vote on 20 September: a state confined to mere segments of the West Bank and perhaps Gaza; a state which most Palestinian refugees would have little or no connection to; a state which, lest we forget, does not actually exist. To have a PA-led fantasy state representing only West Bank and Gaza residents replace the PLO – representing all Palestinians – as Israel’s chief interlocutor would be a disaster.

That being the case, opposing the statehood bid need not have anything to do with endorsing the status quo or the political consensus here in the U.S. If the statehood bid is, in fact, a terrible mistake that will yield bitter fruit for all parties, but especially for those whom it is supposed to benefit, opposition to it seems the best of the available choices at present.

Andrew writes:

The petty short term problems and difficulties are not the issue here.

If the problems and difficulties were petty and short-term, he would have a point, but they are neither. “Going big” with the proposed statehood bid is guaranteed to fail, and it isn’t really “going big” at all. It is a toothless symbolic gesture that has been built up into something more meaningful than it actually is.

Rod asked for my reaction to the storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo over the weekend. First, let me belatedly welcome Rod to TAC. We have been blogging colleagues of a sort for many years, and I am very pleased to have him writing on politics and culture for the magazine. In the past, we have usually been at odds in debates concerning Israel, but in this case I think we are mostly in agreement in objecting to the attack.

Whatever else one wants to say about the current Israeli government, diplomatic missions and personnel are protected by international convention, and it is essential to the functioning of diplomatic channels that host governments guarantee the security of the diplomats stationed in their country. If host governments cannot or will not provide effective security, they are ignoring one of the most basic things that makes diplomacy and normal inter-state relations possible in the first place. Governments that ignore these responsibilities for the sake of some short-term political advantage deserve to be condemned.

Interestingly, the SCAF’s handling of this has been severely criticized at home, and most Egyptian political parties have made a point of denouncing the embassy attack. If the SCAF hoped to score points by letting the attack continue, it may have miscalculated. Something that shouldn’t be overlooked is that the military government is facing pressure at home because of its minimal response to the deaths of five of its soldiers in the Sinai last month, which was apparently one of the things that spurred the crowd to attack the embassy. As the AP reported on the destruction of the security wall in front of the embassy:

Many protesters saw the wall as a symbol of the government’s willingness to protect Israelis but not Egyptians, since it was put up to keep back protests after Israeli forces chasing militants accidentally killed five Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula.

From what I have seen, it seems that the military government in Egypt permitted the attack to go on for as long it did to send several messages. One is that the military government is willing to indulge popular hostility towards Israel, perhaps as a way of deflecting attention from its efforts to consolidate power, and it didn’t seem to care that this will undermine bilateral relations. Another message is that the SCAF will be even more independent of, or indifferent to, the U.S. than many supposed. The detail that stood out for me from the Telegraphreport Rod cited was this:

Officials in Israel, as well as a number of political activists in Cairo, have claimed that Field Marshal Tantawi turned down an opportunity to rein in the violence at the embassy in order to prove that, without a strong army, Egypt would descend into violence and anarchy.

This seems plausible, and it is consistent with the SCAF’s interest in portraying itself as the only thing standing in the way of mob rule and chaos. This incident confirms that the military government has no problem exploiting and using mob violence to whatever it thinks is its advantage. If a foreign government complains that the SCAF is bringing back emergency laws, the military government will say that it is necessary to keep crowds from going on a rampage. Egypt has a coup government, and it also suffers from destructive outbursts of popular enthusiasm, which the government can then use to strengthen its hold on power.

Andrew responds to my post on the Palestinian statehood bid

The pragmatic consequences of UN recognition may well backfire, given the radical, religious nature of Israel’s government. But the Palestinians know that the Israelis have no intention, whatever blather they give us in public, of creating a genuine two-state solution anyway. And that goes for AIPAC as well. So why is this move worse than the hopeless status quo in which Israel has all the cards?

Things can always get worse. Why is this move worse than the status quo? Ziad Asali answers the question:

For Palestinians, it could mean a return to more restrictive forms of control by Israeli occupation authorities, more checkpoints and roadblocks, as well as other forms of retaliation, including punitive economic measures.

If such measures then goad Palestinians into launching an uprising, the failure of this maneuver will be complete. Annexation might conceivably follow, but after thinking about it a bit more I doubt that any Israeli government would be quite so rash. Besides, why bother with official annexation? Why not just continue the current policy of creeping, de facto control by way of settlements that makes the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state impossible? As one commenter suggested, annexation would create a new legal and political issue that might be turned to the advantage of the Palestinians.

I suppose there is the possibility that the Netanyahu government could react so clumsily and provocatively to the statehood bid that it loses some political support in the U.S., but nothing that has happened in the last ten (or forty) years suggests that there is anything that an Israeli government can do that will significantly diminish the support it has in Washington. The Palestinian statehood bid may be an understandable expression of frustration, but it is thoroughly self-defeating. Andrew likens this to a Hail Mary pass, but at least a last-second pass offers the possibility of victory. If U.N. recognition is a victory for Palestinians, it is going to be a Pyrrhic one.

Andrew comments on Perry’s position on Social Security:

Even in a steep recession, an Obama-Perry fight is much likelier to end in an Obama victory. No one wants to return to Bushism. Very few want to abolish social security and Medicare.

I agree that very few want to abolish these programs. Other than roughly a quarter of the electorate, there are hardly any voters interested in seeing significant changes made to them. However, if the economy is in “steep recession” next year, the Republican nominee will almost certainly win. When the incumbent or his party is held responsible for poor economic performance, the electorate tends to be more willing to overlook things that might otherwise be considered a significant liability. In any case, unless he is trying to fail, Perry is not going to campaign for the abolition of Social Security or anything like it. That is what Romney wants everyone to think Perry means when he likens Social Security to a scam, and Romney is going to do his best to make voters think they can’t trust Perry to “save” Social Security. It could work, and it’s a perfectly plausible line of attack for Romney to use, but it will have to rely on an implied threat to Social Security rather than anything that Perry openly proposes during the campaign.

It is a comforting thought that no one wants a return to Bushism, but I’m not sure it’s true. On the domestic front, there still seems to be great enthusiasm for tax cuts, and Perry’s foreign policy (to the extent that there is any substance to it at all) appears to entirely consistent with Bushism, up to and including the election-year promises that his foreign policy will not involve military adventurism. A “return to Bushism” on entitlements would not involve eliminating or shrinking these programs. Actual Bushism in action entailed the massive expansion of the welfare state. The Bush administration took a program that already had huge unfunded liabilities and increased them by many trillions of dollars. The Bush administration abandoned the partial privatization of Social Security very quickly. Neither Romney nor Perry seems very interested in rejecting any Bush-era policies, and currently the two of them have the support of nearly half of their party. Perry’s potential vulnerability on Social Security is one sign that we are very likely to have a Republican nominee advocating something very much like Bushism.

Nikolas Gvosdev assesses the success of the “gratitude doctrine”:

The “gratitude doctrine,” in short, is the West’s assumption that providing assistance to those seeking to overthrow a repressive regime — especially in the form of timely military aid to counterbalance the overwhelming advantages enjoyed by the forces of the dictator — will produce a successor government that will be more receptive to U.S. and European influence and more responsive to their interests and concerns. The doctrine’s record in the past has been mixed. NATO intervention in Kosovo, for instance, produced a strongly pro-Western regime in Pristina, but expectations that a post-Saddam Iraq would embrace a variety of U.S. positions, including recognizing Israel, were often not realized. Indeed, China, which opposed the 2003 invasion that deposed Saddam Hussein, has now emerged as one of the major players in the country’s oil industry, leading some to conclude that China has reaped the most benefit from the Iraq war.

What these two examples show is that states that have minimal resources of their own and must rely heavily on the U.S. and its allies for diplomatic and political support are going to show the “appropriate” gratitude for Western intervention. Those that can afford to cut deals with other major powers will do so. In Kosovo’s case, its existence as a recognized independent state depends almost entirely on Western support, and relatively few non-Western and non-allied states have extended recognition to it. Not only is Kosovo still in what has been called the “purgatory of semi-sovereignty,” but it obviously doesn’t have the resources available to Iraq or Libya. States that want good relations with Serbia are not losing very much by refusing to recognize Kosovo, and the governments responsible for partitioning Serbia do not have much to show for their efforts apart from a corrupt government engaged in criminal activities. Yes, Kosovo is pro-Western, but it is a drain on the Western governments that support it. The clearest example of intervention yielding “gratitude” isn’t terribly encouraging.

A future Libyan government might or might not want to show its gratitude. The TNC owes its survival to outside intervention, so it might feel obliged to the intervening governments, but its current members may not be in charge of a future government. The propaganda surrounding the Libyan war makes it easier for a future Libyan government to discount the importance of Western assistance. After all, weren’t all of the intervening governments repeatedly saying that the outcome was in the hands of the Libyan people? A future Libyan government might conclude that it doesn’t owe Western governments very much at all. Then again, I’m not sure that the “gratitude doctrine” fully applies to the Libyan case. It’s not as if the previous regime was still a hostile one, and to some extent it was even cooperative. That makes it less likely that the next Libyan government will be “more receptive to U.S. and European influence and more responsive to their interests and concerns.” At best, Western governments have to hope that they have not just helped install a government that is less receptive to their influence.

Michael Gerson’s Bush loyalism is evergreen:

Iraq did illustrate the daunting difficulties of counterinsurgency and nation-building. But it did not discredit preemption.

Gerson cites the 2002 West Point speech as the core of the Bush Doctrine. The speech was part of the year-long effort to justify the forthcoming invasion of Iraq. In the speech, Bush made the following claims:

Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies.

We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign non-proliferation treaties, and then systemically break them. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long [bold mine-DL].

Bush was laying out an argument for preventive war to counter threats that did not yet exist. He made two claims that have never been vindicated: some regimes cannot be contained, and some regimes will offload WMDs to terrorists. These claims remain as dangerous and paranoid as they ever were. These were some of the principal justifications offered for invading Iraq. Of course, in Hussein’s case, there were no weapons. Nothing has happened anywhere else to support the idea that containment and deterrence are useless against various “rogue” states. The issue has never been trusting the “word of tyrants.” As ever, it is every regime’s desire for self-preservation that ensures that deterrence works. The Obama administration has continued far too many Bush-era practices, but launching drone strikes to attack and disrupt known terrorist groups is obviously quite different from large-scale preventive warfare against states that may eventually acquire unconventional weapons. It is a sign of how desperate Gerson become to defend Bush’s major policy errors that he would think this is a credible argument.

There are good reasons to question and challenge the “permanent, covert war,” as there has always been good reason to challenge the open-ended, apparently limitless definition of the “war on terror,” but that is something different from the Bush Doctrine. The terrorist threat has been and continues to be exaggerated to justify the scope and duration of the “war on terror,” but it is at least a real threat. The same could never be said of the threat from Iraq.

As for the previous administration’s “democratic idealism,” Gerson simply ignores the reality that the actual “freedom agenda” during the Bush years led to the empowerment of Islamists and sectarian parties wherever it had any impact. On its own terms, Bush’s democracy promotion efforts were a huge failure. As virtually everyone apart from pro-war dead-enders acknowledges, Iraq badly undermined the cause of political reform and opposition in Arab countries. There is an enormous and critical difference between U.S.-led and U.S.-driven democracy promotion and demands for political change from local opposition movements. Gerson throws them all together as if they were the same thing. It remains to be seen whether Tunisians and Egyptians have simply deposed individual rulers or if they have done something more significant than that, but what is clear is that the “Arab Spring,” to the extent that it changes anything for the better, has done so in spite of the poisonous legacy of the Bush administration.