Articles

It’s not often that I feel ashamed to be an American. But I was ashamed this week when the Senate refused to support a supplemental spending bill that would provide about $61 billion in urgently needed aid for Ukraine (along with $14 billion for Israel and $20 billion for border security). All of the Senate Republicans, even those who have previously supported Ukraine funding, voted to filibuster the bill. Their stated position: They won’t provide a penny for Ukraine unless Democrats agree to a sweeping, draconian overhaul of the United States’ immigration laws.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s career as a conqueror lasted a mere 22 years. It began in 1793, when, as a junior artillery officer, he masterminded the successful French attack on the British garrison holding the port of Toulon. After this initial victory, he was promoted, at age 24, to brigadier general. Only six years later, he became, as first consul, ruler of France — and soon of much of Europe. His career ended in 1815 when he met, well, his Waterloo and went into exile on the remote island of St. Helena before dying in 1821, still only 51 years old. But the debate over his legacy has now lasted more than 200 years and shows no sign of abating.

Israel’s forces have moved to control the northern Gaza Strip but face challenges in tracking Hamas fighters into tunnels. Meanwhile, the costs for Palestinian civilians are intensifying pressure on Israeli leaders.

It has been more than six weeks since the barbaric Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 — Israel’s 9/11 — and more than three weeks since the Israel Defense Forces began ground operations in the Gaza Strip. How is this war going? From my vantage point, it can be summed up as follows: Israel is winning the ground war while losing the battle for international public opinion — and failing to formulate a plan for what comes after the guns fall silent.

Predicting the decline of U.S. power has always been fashionable. Only the identity of the country that was supposedly going to overtake us has changed: Once, it was the Soviet Union, then it was Japan, and now it’s China. But despite years of costly fiascoes — from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the 2008 financial market crash to the mishandling of the covid-19 pandemic to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — the United States still stands as the world’s sole superpower.

In warfare, attacking has always been harder than defending. The war in Ukraine demonstrates that it has become harder still in the digital age. The prevalence of drones makes it almost impossible to advance undetected, and the pervasiveness of precision-guided munitions — including attack drones — makes it easy to hit troops and tanks on the move.

Ever since the horrific Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, there has been a Jesuitical — or is it Talmudic? — debate over Iran’s degree of responsibility. U.S. and Israeli officials have said they have no evidence that Iran planned or authorized the attack, but there is no doubt that Iran was, at the very least, morally culpable for the massacre of 1,400 Israeli civilians — which Iranian leaders praised.

With Israel relentlessly bombing the Gaza Strip and preparing for a ground offensive, a lot of well-meaning people in the West are calling for a cease-fire or suggesting that Israel should limit its response to precision airstrikes and commando raids to take out high-level Hamas operatives and to free hostages. That advice is well-intended — it is designed to limit civilian loss of life in Gaza — but ultimately misguided and futile. At this point, an Israeli ground offensive appears inevitable. The question is: Will Israel be smart enough to mount a peace offensive, too?

A major ground campaign in the Gaza Strip will display Israel’s overwhelming military force, but the country faces a steep challenge in its goal of eradicating Hamas, as well as in finding a workable post-combat plan for the territory.

In their compelling new book, “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare From 1945 to Ukraine,” retired Gen. David Petraeus and historian Andrew Roberts write: “There are currently five widely recognized dominions of warfare — land, sea, air, cyber and space — but it appears that a sixth should be added, namely information, which is more important now than ever before.” Indeed it is, and nothing better illustrates their point than the current Israel-Hamas war — and in particular, the controversy over the explosion at a hospital in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.

The horrific attack carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7 (“Black Sabbath,” Israelis are calling it) resulted in 1,400 dead Israelis, 3,900 wounded and 199 taken hostage. Such mass-casualty attacks were once rare in the history of terrorism. Since Sept. 11, 2001, however, they have become disturbingly commonplace.

Tyrants and terrorists often underestimate the fighting capacity of liberal democracies, mistaking the pursuit of commerce for a lack of martial virtues and political divisions for lack of unity. Napoleon derided England as a “nation of shopkeepers” before losing to the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. Hitler thought the United States was “a decayed country,” “half Judaized and half Negrified,” before U.S. bombers reduced his cities to rubble and U.S. armies defeated his legions on D-Day and at the Battle of the Bulge. Osama bin Laden thought America was a “weak horse” before SEAL Team Six finished him off. So, too, Hamas has now made a grave miscalculation with its horrific and barbaric assault on Israel, which resulted in the worst one-day loss of life for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Hezbollah will be making a similar mistake if it enters the war now.

Saturday’s surprise attack by Hamas fighters into Israel is a grim reminder that, in the Middle East, war-fighting usually takes precedence over peacemaking. It is hard to imagine the Saudi-Israeli peace talks making much progress as Israel reels from the worst surprise attack it has suffered since the 1973 Yom Kippur War — and as it mobilizes for what is likely to be its largest ground assault into the Gaza Strip since Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009. Indeed, though we don’t know for sure why Hamas chose to strike exactly now, this could well be part of a larger attempt by Iran and its proxies — including Hamas — to prevent a historic reconciliation between Jerusalem and Riyadh.

In a statement released to CNN, John Kelly, a retired Marine general who lost his own son in combat in Afghanistan, not only wrote of Trump’s disdain for wounded and fallen veterans but also described Trump as “a person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. … A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”

The good news is that Congress, at the last minute, averted a government shutdown, at least for now. The bad news is that billions of dollars of funding for Ukraine were stripped from the continuing resolution as a sop to House Republicans who want to cut off the embattled democracy altogether.

Trying to understand MAGA foreign policy is a lot like banging your head against a wall: The pain only goes away when you stop.


The MAGA wing of the Republican Party increasingly wants to cut off aid to Ukraine (nearly half of House Republicans voted on Wednesday to do just that). They claim that we will be drawn into the Ukraine war ourselves, even though not a single U.S. soldier has been put in harm’s way. Yet many of the very same politicians appear eager to draw the United States into a bloody war with our southern neighbor — thus sending into battle the same armed forces that they routinely denigrate as a bunch of “woke” “losers.”

If Western allies fail to send Ukraine the weapons it needs, the odds increase of the war dragging on indefinitely, at a terrible cost to both Ukraine and Russia and a growing risk to the wider world.

I fear for America’s future and hence the world’s — more so now than ever. I had relaxed a bit after the last two national elections, which had seemed to signal a return to normalcy. Donald Trump was decisively defeated in 2020 and, in 2022, most of his fellow election deniers also lost in their bids to take over the election machinery of swing states.

The war in Ukraine — Europe’s biggest conflict since 1945 — features a bewildering combination of old and new technologies and tactics. The artillery duels, minefields and trench warfare are straight out of World War I, and yet much of the Ukrainian artillery fire is now being spotted by drones and adjusted on tablet computers linked via satellite to the internet. It sometimes feels like a mash-up of “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “Blade Runner.”

President Biden’s first visit to Vietnam on Sunday will mark another significant advance for U.S. national security interests in the Indo-Pacific region. Already, the administration has signed a deal to help Australia produce nuclear submarines, expanded U.S. military access in the Philippines, deepened U.S. relations with India, and brought South Korea and Japan together in a new trilateral relationship. Now, following his attendance at the Group of 20 summit in New Delhi, Biden is unveiling a “comprehensive strategic partnership” that will expand economic and security cooperation with Hanoi. That’s a remarkable achievement given Vietnam’s long-standing ties to Moscow and Beijing, and one that will help counter China’s worrisome influence in the region.