It may be redundant to write this, but Philip Klein’s recentposts on the flotilla attack are very poor. It is jarringly illogical to claim that Hamas’ refusal to allow flotilla aid into Gaza proves that “the flotilla was not a humanitarian mission to deliver aid to suffering Palestinians.” How Hamas responds to the aid provided by the flotilla after Israel seized the flotilla has nothing to do with the purpose or intent of the people participating in the flotilla. Were Klein not looking for some way to shift attention or deflect blame from the government that just killed nine civilians in international waters, he would probably see that.

The other post is worse in a way because it is more misleading. Klein sets out to debunk the “myth of a strong Israeli-Turkey friendship” by rehearsing the usual litany of complaints, as if Israel had no part in the deterioration of relations. He seems to think that Turkey is to blame when it objects to Israel engaging in excessive military action against Gaza. Being the great fan of context and accuracy that he is, it’s strange that Klein didn’t mention one of the main reasons why Erdogan was particularly offended by the Gaza operation. Just before Operation Cast Lead began, Erdogan had been using his improved relations with Syria to mediate an Israeli-Syrian peace in which the Olmert government was supposedly interested. Olmert turned around almost immediately after meeting with Erdogan and launched the operation against Gaza. Erdogan understandably felt that he had been left in the dark about Israel’s intentions and saw Olmert’s decision as sabotage of his mediation effort. In other words, the Turkish government was attempting to help Israel with a long-standing diplomatic problem, and Israel rewarded them by making Erdogan look like a fool. Add to that the damage and the deaths caused by the operation and the genuine outrage the Turkish public felt about these things, and one can understand how Erdogan has become so combative.

Since the Netanyahu government came into office, it has been actively contributing to the downward spiral of Israeli-Turkish relations. In response to an offensive Turkish television show, Israel’s Foreign Ministry deliberately and publicly insulted the Turkish ambassador, which led to the last major diplomatic row before now. To protest objectionable content produced by Turkish citizens, Israel drastically overreacted by further wrecking relations with the Turkish government. Erdogan does demagogue the Palestinian issue, but everything the Olmert and Netanyahu governments have been doing for the last year and a half have provided him with more than enough ammunition.

Four years ago, the AKP government had reasonably good relations with Israel. The “myth” of friendship Klein dismisses was quite real. Things began going wrong when Israel responded to Hizbullah’s capture of three of its soldiers by launching a full-scale war against all of Lebanon. Like most other nations, Turks were appalled by what Israel had done, and relations began souring from then on. Even if one wants to blame Erdogan for being irresponsible in demagoguing and whipping up Turkish anger, there would have been no occasions for his demagoguery if Israel had not engaged in its excessive and destructive military actions in Lebanon and Gaza.

Speaking of Lebanon, just consider what Israel did in response to the capture of three of its soldiers and then look at how mildly Turkey has responded to the deaths of several Turkish civilian citizens at the hands of Israeli armed forces. If there had not been a strong relationship between Turkey and Israel prior to the last four years, such a provocation would have led to a much more confrontational response than the one we have seen. For that matter, Erdogan has made clear that his quarrel is principally with Netanyahu’s coalition government. As Hurriyet reported yesterday:

Erdogan made it clear that Turkey has no problem with either the Israeli people or the Israeli state, calling on the country’s citizens to stand up against the Netanyahu-Lieberman government, which he said hurts the interests of the Israeli people.

That leaves open the very small possibility that Israeli-Turkish relations might be repaired at some point in the future if Netanyahu’s government falls in the near future. At the very least, it suggests that even now Erdogan does not want to rule out rebuilding the relationship. Turkey and Israel did have a constructive, mutually beneficial relationship. Thanks largely to disastrously bad leadership in Israel that has provided Erdogan with a perfect foil for demagoguery, it is now in ruins. It is ridiculous that American hawks who cheered Israel on all along cannot admit to Israel’s part in the wreckage of a valuable alliance, but it is simply false to claim that the alliance was never strong.

I’ve long had a soft spot for Turkey. I once even argued that if the European Union wouldn’t admit Turkey, we should invite Turkey to join Nafta. Why? Because I think it really matters whether Turkey is a bridge or ditch between the Judeo-Christian West and the Arab and Muslim East. Turkey’s role in balancing and interpreting East and West is one of the critical pivot points that helps keep the world stable. ~Thomas Friedman

Yes, that’s what he thinks, right up until Turkey attempts to mediate the Iranian nuclear issue and reaches an agreement on nuclear fuel with Iran. At that point, it is suddenly “as ugly as it gets” and Erdogan has somehow sold out his democratic principles and betrayed Iran’s opposition. But, hey, that was last week. This week, Friedman wants Turkey to be a bridge again.

One of the things that often escapes notice about the AKP government here in the U.S. is that it is actually very popular among Turkish business interests on account of its economic reforms and reasonably capable management over the last eight years. When one considers the political alternative, it’s not surprising that the AKP has their support. The CHP recently elected its new party leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, whose bold new leadership involves repeating a lot of socialist bromides, so right now there is not much of a serious political challenge to Erdogan coming from the Turkish left. The economic relationships Turkey has been cultivating with Syria, Iran, and Russia, among others, are a natural result of Turkish prosperity and ultimately come from the same “pro-market” impulses that made the AKP a strong proponent of EU membership for Turkey. Friedman seems confused about how bridges work. A bridge must connect both sides of a divide, which means that Turkey will have to remain as connected to the Near East and its Muslim neighbors as it is to Europe. Last week, Friedman was horrified that Turkey was actually having dealings with people on the “other side” of the bridge he thinks is so important.

The trouble that a lot of Americans seem to have with all this is that whenever Turkey deviates from Washington’s script they view Turkey’s relations with its eastern and northern neighbors as evidence of a “drift” out of the orbit of the West. Of course, we are the ones drawing the lines and defining Turkish behavior such that they cannot pursue their interests without being perceived as a competitor or worse. In many parts of the world the U.S. encourages and welcomes economic cooperation and improved relations between neighbors, but in other regions the very same behaviors that we laud in Europe are viewed with suspicion and alarm. After a while, any nation, even one with a long-standing good relationship with the U.S., would grow weary of this treatment.

Turkey sacrificed its economic interests for the sake of maintaining Iraq sanctions in the ’90s and early 2000s, and then on the heels of that the U.S. proposed turning one of the neighboring countries into a war zone with obvious security implications for Turkey. On Iran, we expect them to put their interests second to supporting our irrational obsession with Iran’s nuclear program. We insist that Turkey take positions that don’t benefit it in the least, and then find fault with them when they refuse. Instead of accepting their assistance as a credible mediator in Near Eastern affairs, we tend to treat their efforts at mediation as unwanted interference or as something actually harmful to the U.S. Steven Cook is right that it’s time to “recognize reality” about U.S.-Turkish relations, but part of that involves recognizing how unnecessary many of our disagreements are and how many are products of our own flawed policies in the region.

When the DPJ won their landslide victory last year, I was quite sure that Hatoyama’s government would make alliance-related issues a priority. At the time, there was a lot of skepticism that Hatoyama would make much of an effort to follow through on his campaign rhetoic and try to change some aspects of Japan’s relationship with the U.S. The assumption was that a new, untested government staffed by a permanent opposition party confronting broad public discontent with domestic problems would not waste its time quarreling with the U.S. over bases on Okinawa. American observers seemed to assume that the most significant transition of power from one party to another in postwar Japanese history would have little or no effect on Japanese foreign policy. Perhaps they were too accustomed to our unfortunate bipartisan consensus on foreign policy, according to which virtually nothing ever changes despite changes in party control.

As it turned out, Hatoyama not only made it a priority, but he focused on the Futenma dispute so much and he made enough outlandish promises of what he would be able to accomplish in a very short time that he accelerated the disintegration of his ministry. Hatoyama and his cabinet were already laboring under the heavy burden of absurdly high expectations and unsustainably high approval ratings early on. The public was always going to sour on the DPJ once it had to start governing and making trade-offs. Even so, Hatoyama wasn’t necessarily doomed until his handling of the basing dispute blew up in his face.

If anything, I underestimated how important the basing issue was to a significant bloc of DPJ voters and also underestimated how responsive Hatoyama would be to their concerns. Having vowed to resign if he could not deliver a new basing deal by the end of May, he now faces a total loss of confidence. The DPJ government will continue on, but Hatoyama is now out of office. That’s unfortunate for Japan to the extent that it discourages political challenges to the status quo in government there, but it is also a missed opportunity for the U.S. As I wrote last August:

For Washington, change in Tokyo provides an opportunity to reevaluate the need for a large U.S. military presence in Japan. The U.S. presence has been a persistent source of tension and public anger in Japan. But it has also siphoned U.S. forces from areas of the world where they are needed far more. Sunday’s election may be the first step in redeploying those troops or bringing some of them home.

Clearly, I was far too hopeful that anyone in Washington would have the imagination or political courage to seize this opportunity. All that Hatoyama’s failure over Futenma means is that the tensions over basing and discontent with the alliance that helped fuel the DPJ’s rise to power will go unaddressed for many more years. The U.S. will have more difficulty in the future with Japan on account of our unwillingness to accommodate Japanese complaints this time.

I guess we should all be thankful that President Bush’s “freedom agenda” failed, right? This is Turkey – a NATO ally and prospective (although increasingly less likely) candidate for EU membership. Now imagine democracy taking root in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Iran and elsewhere – would it surprise anyone if the regional atmosphere got a lot less friendly toward the U.S. and Israel?

As I said earlier, it’s very difficult to be an honest proponent of Middle East democracy and an advocate for perpetual American hegemony in the region. The emergence of true democracies is likely to reorient the geopolitics of the region in a manner that the staunchest hegemonists would sharply disapprove of. I wonder which aspiration they’ll jettison first. ~Greg Scoblete

Greg was responding to the same Continetti post I discussed yesterday. He is certainly right that hegemonists are inconsistent in their enthusiasm for democracy promotion, as I’ve mentioned many times before. In this view, Venezuelan and Bolivian democracies are blights on the earth, but Georgian democracy is wonderful and vitally important. They used to like Ukrainian democracy until the Ukrainians elected the wrong candidate, and now they’re not so sure it’s a good idea. It’s not hard to see that these reactions match up closely with the attitudes of the respective governments to U.S. influence in their parts of the world. Many democratists also work under the very misleading assumption that democratization necessarily fosters greater international stability. Many of them also believe democracies will not clash with one another because they have shared “values” and the democratic nature of their governments will reduce the chances of conflict. As far as I can tell, none of these things is true, or at least none of them can be taken for granted.

What gets lost in a lot of commentary on Turkey and the AKP is how illiberal and undemocratic the Kemalists in the army had to be for decades to keep Islamist governments from enduring for any length of time until the AKP’s “soft” or “reformed” Islamism made it difficult for the military to intervene against them. Washington’s ability to rely on Turkish support was artificially enhanced for a long time through the end of the Cold War by the unrepresentative nature of the Turkish government and the relatively limited U.S. presence in the region. All of this began changing in the ’90s as the U.S. became much more involved in Near Eastern affairs, and then in the last decade Islamists in Turkey have adapted to avoid provoking the military into defending Turkish secularism.

Let’s remember that less than ten years ago Erdogan was convicted of a crime for publicly reciting a somewhat militant poem by the CUP ideologue Ziya Gokalp, and a short time after that he had reinvented himself as a pro-European, pro-market reformer, and Erdogan then took the old Welfare coalition that had been forced out in the late ’90s on account of its Islamism and made it into the dominant ruling AKP. During the same time, the U.S. has become even more involved in the region in ways that almost all Turks find alarming and dangerous. There might have been a time in the past when a popular backlash in Turkey against U.S. policies wouldn’t have influenced whether its government cooperated with America, but it just so happened that Turkey experienced its first full taste of representative democracy at the moment when most of its people were strongly opposed to U.S. actions in the region. This popular backlash extended to Israeli policies, too, especially after 2006.

What bothers some hegemonists about Turkey is that they tend to assume that American interests, American power and American “values” as they define them all advance and retreat together, and if you define American interests as they do an independent-minded Turkey pursuing “zero problems” with Iran and Syria is a huge setback. Hegemonists seem to think that if other countries are becoming more democratic they ought to become more “like us” in their “values,” and therefore their governments should be more willing to align themselves with the U.S. As we are seeing all over the world, the more democratic other nations become the more their governments begin to pursue interests that diverge from American interests, especially as these are defined by hegemonists. A more modest, limited, rational definition of American interests would considerably reduce the number of clashes with other governments, and an administration following such a definition would actually welcome the regional leadership and gestures towards burden-sharing that some of our allies have started to offer.

It is not a question of whether we in the U.S. find this process desirable or not. It is not something that we would be able to reverse even if we thought it necessary (and I hope we don’t). Despite the failures of Hatoyama’s government, the DPJ in Japan is not going to recede back into permanent minority status, and it represents a shift in Japanese politics towards a competitive party system that will make it increasingly difficult to dictate the terms of the alliance to Tokyo in the future. Our bases in Japan are going to have to go sooner or later, so it should probably be sooner on amicable terms rather than later. Brazilian assertiveness on the world stage may wane once Lula leaves office, but the ambition to represent non-aligned and developing nations will remain, and that is inevitably going to put Brazil at odds with the U.S. from time to time, but there would likely be fewer clashes if Washington did not presume to make everything its business. Turkey may be the most dramatic case of an increasingly assertive allied democratic government challenging the American line on certain regional issues, and up to a point Turkey has been succeeding in its challenges.

All of this has happened because the governments of these countries have become significantly more democratic and representative than they had been previously. What many hegemonists find frustrating about these developments is that they have all happened without direct U.S. efforts. Hegemonists have supported democratization in the past when promoting democracy was a U.S.-led or U.S.-backed project, but when democratic politics flourishes on its own in other countries there is not much interest in it. This happens because democratic governance is itself just a frame that is filled by the political, cultural and religious values of the people who are enfranchised. Modernization and globalization result in a considerable amount of homogenization across nations, but they also facilitate the rise of new powers that have modernized and integrated themselves into the global economy in order to empower their nations. These new powers often have very different ideas concerning a host of international issues that put them at odds with the traditional major powers. Globalization also provokes religious and nationalist reactions that can make cultural and religious differences far more relevant to international politics, and democratic governments around the world are going to reflect those differences in how they relate to the rest of the world.

One way to begin adapting to this changing landscape is to acknowledge that our democratic allies and other rising powers have legitimate interests in shaping the response to a number of international issues, and then to react rationally when their governments and ours take different positions. Instead of complaining that the U.S. is “losing” this or that country, stop making our allies choose between their own national interests and support for unwise U.S. initiatives. Instead of berating independent-minded allies and democracies as traitors or sell-outs when they do things our political class doesn’t like, look on their newfound credibility with other nations as something that could be used to benefit the U.S. as well. Their interests will not always coincide with ours, but we will be pleasantly surprised how few conflicts of interest we will have with them when we understand that our national interests do not encompass the entire globe.

The trend that few have noticed is that these elements are pulling Turkey out of the Western alliance structure and toward the Middle East. The break began in 2003 when the Turks denied the U.S. Fourth Infantry the ability to invade Iraq from the north. ~Matt Continetti

This is a typically misleading way to understand what has been happening in U.S.-Turkish relations over the last seven years. The break began when Washington told Turkey to allow U.S. forces to invade Iraq from their territory, presumed that the approval would be automatically forthcoming, and then reacted with shock and anger when the Turkish government actually pursued its own security interests and reflected the views of its people. Invading Iraq had nothing to do with being part of the “Western alliance structure,” and opposing the invasion and refusing to let the U.S. use Turkish territory to launch the invasion did not represent Turkey’s move away from that structure. Pressuring Turkey to participate in the war it opposed was part of our abuse of that structure to pursue goals unrelated to the alliance with Turkey.

The Turkish alliance has suffered for the same reason that many of our alliances suffered during the Bush years: allied security interests were ignored or dismissed, obedient support of U.S. policies was expected no matter what, and any ally that resisted or preferred to pursue its national interest instead was to be regarded as treacherous. It had never occurred to the Bush administration that the Turks might say no, because it never occurred to them that some of our allies would not act like lackeys.

The larger problem is that Washington sees the alliance with Turkey very differently than Erdogan’s government sees it. If we believe FM Davutoglu, Ankara believes that it can pursue good relations with its regional neighbors without sacrificing good relations with the U.S. and EU. Turkey is pursuing a “zero problems” approach to its neighbors, including Iran and Syria, and the U.S. very much wants there to be a problem that keeps Turkey and Iran apart, namely the nuclear issue. Washington wants Turkey as a front-line state in its confrontation with Iran, and Turkey doesn’t want a confrontation. Of course, the Erdogan government is responsible for what it does, including its demagoguery and provocations, but the U.S. and Israel are making it exceedingly easy for Erdogan to play to the crowd at home and to position himself as the reasonable opponent of our unreasonable policies.

The Tehran nuclear deal was one sign that Washington’s view of the alliance has no connection with reality. Unfortunately, as Turkey has been discovering lately, it is not possible for it to have a “zero problems” policy in the Near East without antagonizing the U.S. and Israel. This is partly because the latter insist on treaing Turkey’s “zero problems” approach as unacceptable. Turkey’s major Western allies effectively insist that Turkey choose them at the expense of their own interests in cultivating good relations with their neighbors. As a result, Turkey continues to develop better relations with Iran and other states in the region and has less and less use for Western allies that mostly ignore its legitimate interests and expect it to follow their lead or remain silent when they embark on controversial policies.

This is not Israel “shooting itself in the foot.” This is Israel winning. Be for that or against it, but at least recognize it.
~Jim Henley

This reminds me of Cato’s line from the series Rome, “So, this is not a humiliating defeat at all, but rather a rare species of victory!” Count me as part of the “counterproductivity corps” if you like, but if this is what Israeli victory looks like they will not be able politically to endure many more such victories. Up to a point, Israel can keep acting with impunity regardless of what the rest of the world says as long as the U.S. continues to back it. However, at some point Israel will alienate enough other U.S. allies in sufficiently provocative ways that the U.S. will have to start choosing between keeping on good terms with those other allies or continuing to back Israel uncritically and automatically.

The forged passports connected to the Dubai assassination badly damaged Israel’s relations with a number of European and other Western governments, and this has wrecked relations with Turkey. Israel is fast running out of friends to betray. Turkish FM Davutoglu has said that his government expects America to show solidarity with Turkey. He is going to be disappointed, and Turkey’s alliance with the U.S. is going to become so unpopular that we have to start wondering how long it will last. In case anyone has missed it, U.S.-Turkish relations were already fairly poor before this, and the administration’s sorry response to this attack has only worsened matters after it had earlier slapped down the Tehran nuclear deal. The chasm widening between Washington and Ankara is temporarily useful to Israel, but ultimately it is going to start showing people in Washington that the price for automatically backing Israel is not worth it.

I appreciate Jim’s point that there are not many specific measures that Turkey or any other state can take that will directly harm Israel, but how has it reached a point that Turkish unwillingness to go to war with Israel has become proof of Israeli success? Four years ago, the Turkish public was angry with Israel over Lebanon and Erdogan’s government expressed some displeasure. A year and a half ago, the Turkish public was furious with Israel over Gaza, and the Turkish government was angry, which later prompted Erdogan’s Davos tirade. Various diplomatic slights and pointed insults have been exchanged since then. Now the Turkish public is incandescently outraged, and the Turkish government is furious. Self-defeating hyperbole aside, when the foreign minister of one of Israel’s better allies likens one of its actions to 9/11 and the Turkish PM threatens serious consequences in retaliation, this is not evidence that Israel has won anything. It is proof that in four short years Turkey and Israel have gone from being on reasonably good terms to being practically at daggers drawn. That is the result of repeated Israeli strategic failures that have had a cumulative effect over the last several years.

Oddly, it is continued uncritical, automatic U.S. backing that enables the worst instincts in Israel’s government, and it is this that allows it to persist in its self-destructive course long after it should have stopped and corrected its course. It is that very backing that will let Israel continue down this path until it will become impossible for the U.S. to balance its relationships with its other allies and its one-sided relationship with Israel.

Update: Jim Henley clarifies what he meant in a follow-up post, and I appreciate the explanation. As far as control of the West Bank is concerned, he is correct. Clearly, I took his original post to mean something very different.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations greeted news of the flotilla disaster by repeating a common “pro-Israel” talking point: that Israel only blockades Gaza to prevent Hamas from building rockets that might kill Israeli citizens. If only that were true. In reality, the embargo has a broader and more sinister purpose: to impoverish the people of Gaza, and thus turn them against Hamas. As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported, the Israeli officials in charge of the embargo adhere to what they call a policy of “no prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis.” In other words, the embargo must be tight enough to keep the people of Gaza miserable, but not so tight that they starve. ~Peter Beinart

Beinart’s emphasis on the blockade as the main issue is correct and something I did not discuss enough in my earlier post. This economic and political purpose of the blockade has never been a secret. During Operation Cast Lead, we heard all about how inflicting deprivation and misery on the Gazan population with the siege was intended to turn the population against Hamas. As Inoted at the time, sanctions and embargoes do not cause people to rise up against their rulers, but they do make them resent the people imposing the sanctions and embargoes. Now that the blockade has produced an enormous political disaster, we are supposed to forget about that and focus on arms smuggling that has nothing to do with what the flotilla was attempting to bring to Gaza.

The blockade is a policy aimed at the steady immiseration and deeper impoverishment of Gazans. This not only deflects attention from Hamas’ abuses and misrule, but it also ensures that there will not be enough prosperity in the future to foster any sort of viable political opposition against Hamas. That tells me that Israel is actually quite willing to tolerate a Hamas-run enclave on its doorstep so long as it can keep the people living there poor and dependent.

Israel had every right under international law to stop and board ships bound for the Gaza war zone late Sunday. Only knee-jerk left-wingers and the usual legion of poseurs around the world would dispute this. ~Leslie Gelb

The “usual legion of poseurs” at this point includes many of the governments currently on the Security Council, most especially Turkey, whose flag the attacked ship was flying. The Erdogan and Netanyahu governments have gone out of their way in the last year and a half to provoke and insult one another to their mutual detriment, but this is all together more serious and dangerous. If the activists on the flotilla should have expected violence, as Gelb argues, what were the Israelis expecting the activists to do when they boarded their ships? Give them a hug?

The alliance between Israel and Turkey has been weakening for years, but something like this could be enough to damage it more than anything we have seen so far. That would have negative repercussions mostly for Israel, as it already has few significant allies and no other Muslim allies, and it cannot afford to keep provoking and alienating the relatively few governments that have had good relations with it in the past. Having flouted international institutions and international law for a long time, it will not be easy for Israel to take cover behind the protections of the latter. It’s not at all clear to me that Israel had any legal right to board civilian ships in international waters, but then I don’t have much sympathy for blockading an impoverished enclave that the blockading government spent several weeks devastating with an excessive military response.

The people who should be most furious about this are Israel’s reflexive defenders. They are reduced to making excuses for the inexcusable consequences of a bungled raid carried out in support of a misguided blockade policy that has been damaging Israel’s reputation every day since it began. It ought to make them more critical of the recklessness and stupidity of the Netanyahu government, but on the whole this has not been their response.

Gelb resorts to the oldest, most tired argument in the “pro-Israel” arsenal: the double standard used against Israel. Of course, it would be ideal if Turkey were as outraged by the sinking of the Cheonan as it is about this, but we all know things don’t work that way. The Mavi Marmara was a Turkish-flagged ship, everyone knows the AKP government has taken a strong interest in Gaza and that it has some sympathy for Hamas, and Israel is supposedly Turkey’s ally. That makes this raid more politically significant for obvious reasons. It is simply present-day reality that most governments have or pretend to have more interest in the conflict in Israel and Palestine than they have in other conflicts. For that matter, North Korea’s provocative and outrageous actions are what we have come to expect from the dictatorship there. Does Gelb really want to start having Israel judged by the same standard applied to North Korea?

The North Korean sinking of the Cheonan was also outrageous and inexcusable, but there are few things that can be done in response that would not disastrously escalate the conflict. When confronted with such an aggressive outrage, it is understandable to wish to respond in kind, but one has to consider the consequences of retaliation. The attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001 and the Mumbai attacks provided India with more than enough justification to take military action against those responsible inside Pakistan, but it wisely and admirably chose restraint instead of the path of escalation that Israel seems intent on choosing repeatedly.

Indulging in outrage when there is nothing one can do and the state responsible will not respond to any penalty imposed is fairly useless. The outraged reaction to Israel’s raid suggests that most governments still regard Israel as a more or less responsible power that will attempt to correct its mistakes, or else many of them probably wouldn’t waste their energy complaining. Regardless, Gelb should regard the outrage as a good sign. It means that most governments around the world have not resigned themselves to thinking of Israel as nothing more than a dangerous pariah. It will be a far worse day for Israel when the reaction to the next blunder is the sigh of resignation, “Well, really, what can you expect?”

Perhaps most galling about the overall defense of the raid is the constant invocation of self-defense. Everything Israel does is always done in self-defense, no matter how excessive, disproportionate, unnecessary, wrong or aggressive it is. When everything becomes a matter of self-defense and the proper distinctions between actual legtimate self-defense and reckless excesses are erased, pretty soon most of the rest of the world won’t pay any attention to Israeli claims of self-defense even when they are legitimate. There was not much of a reservoir of goodwill for Israel in the world after the war in Lebanon, but successive Israeli governments have done everything they can to exhaust what little remains in that reservoir. We are not watching Israel defend itself. We are watching Israel slowly destroy itself.

But it does not change the fact that one reason liberals (especially those of a European persuasion) have fallen out of love with Israel is that it — along with the United States — was founded on and persists in maintaining a democratic and nationalist vision.

This is why the liberal critics bracket Israel and the U.S. They claim they do so because the U.S. supports Israel. Actually, they do it because they reject the worldview on which both nations are founded, the worldview that has motivated the U.S. to support Israel. For the critics, democracy and nationalism must ultimately be in conflict. ~Ted Bromund

This could apply to some liberals, but it doesn’t seem to apply to Beinart at all, and it misses the larger point rather badly. Some critics of Israel on the left may be genuinely post-Zionist and regard Israeli nationalism as a fundamental problem that perpetuates conflict, but if we are speaking of liberals, and especially American liberals, this does not seem to be true at all. Indeed, one is hard pressed to find evidence over the last twenty years that most liberals believe democracy and nationalism are necessarily in conflict. As much as anyone, liberals have sympathized with, or openly advocated on behalf of, separatist and national independence movements around the world. This often involved exaggerating the liberal and democratic credentials of those movements, but there was no question that liberals have gone out of their way to regard many nationalist separatist movements as democratic movements. If self-determination was, as Bromund says, the “essence of liberalism,” most liberals today continue to embrace the “essence” of their worldview.

Liberal support for the principle of self-determination has been undeniable since the end of the Cold War, as we saw most dramatically in Bosnia and Kosovo. Liberal criticism of Israel focuses heavily on the denial of Palestinian independence, which is to say that many of these critics find fault with Israel because it is preventing the self-determination and self-government that they believe both Israelis and Palestinians should have. Obviously, in their support for a Palestinian state American liberals were among the first in the U.S. to arrive at the conclusion that the Palestinians were a nation that should govern itself back when more hawkish “pro-Israel” figures were still denying that Palestinians existed as a distinctive group of people. There were quite a few American liberals who gushed over the “Rose” and “Orange” revolutions in 2003 and 2004. They convinced themselves along with many others that the intensely anti-Russian nationalist demagogic leaders heading those revolutions were nonetheless good democrats, “reformers” and pro-Western. They took for granted that nationalism and democracy could complement one another, at least so long as the nationalism in question included hostility to Russia.

It seems to me that ethno-nationalism and democracy in a multiethnic state are in conflict, and pretty obviously and immediately so. One can have an ethnocracy in a state where one ethno-nationalism dominates at the expense of the rights of minorities, or one will tend to end up with a largely ethnically homogenous state that can retain both its ethno-nationalism and its democracy. What is strange about Bromund’s critique is that it doesn’t apply to Beinart in the least. Beinart remains a liberal convinced of the importance of preserving both Zionism and democracy together. In other words, Beinart does not believe that democracy and Zionist nationalism must ultimately conflict, but instead wants to find a way to keep them in balance without having to accept the agenda of someone like Avigdor Lieberman. Beinart wants to preserve a Zionism strong enough to keep Israel as a predominantly Jewish state, but not a Zionism so strong that it will never allow the establishment of a Palestinian state and one that must eventually expel, transfer or de-naturalize its Arab citizens.

I don’t know how adamant the Chinese leadership is about the issue, but I suspect that it would rank rather high as a national security issue. If the price of winning over China on Korea is a pledge to withdraw U.S. forces from the Korean peninsula after Korea was made whole, would neoconservatives embrace the trade-off, or damn the administration that made such a deal as selling out America’s interests in Asia and allowing China to expand her sphere of influence? ~Greg Scoblete

Anything is possible, but it is very likely that most American hawks generally and not just neoconservatives would be appalled by the suggestion of an American “retreat” from Korea and what would inevitably be called the “sell-out” to China. That would probably be the reaction to such a trade-off, even though there is arguably already no reason for U.S. forces to be in South Korea 57 years after the ceasefire. South Korea is considerably more populous and wealthier than the North, and it is more than capable of providing for its own defense. As Haass’ op-ed makes clear, there are no realistic options for compelling changes in North Korean behavior. The sanctions route has been tried and has been shown once again to be completely useless. Military retaliation would almost certainly lead to rapid escalation and a disastrous war.

It is all very well to talk about a future unified Korea, and there is nothing wrong with discussing this with China and South Korea, but if we lack the means to bring this about it is mostly just an expression of hope for what might be. Haass’ discussion of North Korean regime change isn’t very different from Haass’ belated enthusiasm for the Green movement, which he started arguing was critical to changing the Iranian regime at the time when it became clear that the movement was in no position to do this and was in any case not all that interested in being America’s cat’s paw. As in Iran, we cannot wish away the predicament by pretending that our solution is regime change, especially when there is no readily available means to change the regime. If neoconservatives want to claim this sort of wishful thinking as their own, they’re welcome to it.

Considering how poorly Haass seems to understand Chinese self-interest in connection with the Iranian nuclear issue, it is also not a good sign for his recommendations that almost everything in his proposal hinges on correctly understanding and appealing to Chinese self-interest. Perhaps China will intervene in the succession struggle after Kim Jong Il dies, but the kind of North Korean government that will suit China is one similar to the one led by Kim Il Sung: a government that heeds Chinese recommendations and does not create problems for Beijing. Such a pliant client North Korea could be an improvement, but it isn’t necessarily going to lead to the sort of settlement Haass has in mind.

Haass’ practical recommendation that Congress pass the South Korean free trade agreement to “send a message” demonstrates how limited our options are. I am skeptical that pushing ahead with a free trade agreement would meaningfully signal U.S. solidarity with South Korea. Trying to tie a trade agreement that isn’t really connected to the relevant security issues would probably end up sending a very mixed message. There would still be strong, concerted opposition to the agreement coming from labor and other groups, and it would not be very popular with an electorate that is generally dissatisfied with the effects of previous free trade agreements. Instead of showing American solidarity, this would create the impression that the country was evenly divided over support for South Korea, when that would be a significant exaggeration of any divisions that may exist. Having framed support for the agreement as proof of U.S. support, the strong opposition the agreement would certainly encounter could unintentionally signal the opposite of what Haass intended.

South Korean President Lee may have hinted at a desire for regime change in North Korea, but it is not at all clear that Lee would be willing to risk renewed warfare to make this happen. Any sustainable policy would have to enjoy the support of a broad consensus of South Koreans, but South Korean opinion over the last two decades has generally been trending against confrontational policies and the alliance with the U.S. The sinking of the Cheonan may have temporarily changed some minds, but on the whole Haass is arguing that the U.S. should press the South Korean government to pursue a course that is increasingly unwelcome in South Korea.