(This article first appeared in Newsweek https://www.newsweek.com/israel-joins-arab-club-us-sponsorship-opinion-1628991)

By: Simone Ledeene, senior fellow and Victoria Coates

Last week, a laconic statement from the Department of Defense marked a tectonic shift in Middle East security cooperation, as the United States formally designated that Israel would now be part of the U.S Central Command (CENTCOM). President Donald Trump announced the proposed change on January 15, 2021, and while the escalation of violence in Gaza this spring seemed to put the designation in some jeopardy, it went into effect on September 1, 2021. The initiative to move Israel into CENTCOM is a direct result of the Trump administration-led Abraham Accords normalization agreements between the United States, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, signed one year ago today on the South Lawn of the White House.

CENTCOM got its name because the Middle East is literally located in the middle of everything. Israel is the most central point in that centrally located region, sharing as it does a maritime boundary with a European country (Cyprus) and a border with an African country (Egypt), as well as boasting Asian neighbors such as Jordan. In the wake of the Abraham Accords and the resultant burgeoning economic and cultural ties among the signatories, the timing is now ideal to develop a similar regional security relationship. This relationship would expand cooperation and improve Israel Defense Forces (IDF) integration with U.S. and partner forces throughout the region. It would also help CENTCOM promote a more holistic and inclusive regional security framework. There would be opportunities to conduct joint military exercises that include the IDF, which would indirectly provide Israel the occasion to communicate with countries that have yet to sign normalization agreements. Additionally, Israel would now be able to assign IDF liaison officers to CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa—and, hopefully in the future, to subordinate headquarters across the region.

As events in the Middle East crashed into the American consciousness due to the Iran and Afghanistan crises in 1979, President Jimmy Carter established the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (JTF) as a response mechanism for rapidly unfolding events. In 1983, under President Reagan, that JTF became CENTCOM. Its area of operation runs from the Pakistani border with India to Egypt’s border with Libya. U.S. military regional combatant commands, including CENTCOM, are responsible for the deployment, support and operational employment of U.S. forces in their areas of responsibility, as well as for developing military relationships with allies and partners in their respective regions.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump, Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani, and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan pose from the Truman Balcony at the White House after they participated in the signing of the Abraham Accords where the countries of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates recognize Israel, in Washington, DC, September 15, 2020.

In the course of the 1983 reorganization, Israel, Syria and Lebanon remained part of the European Command (EUCOM), which was established after World War II. At the time, placing Israel under EUCOM made some sense. Israel had existed for just 35 years and had formal diplomatic relations—chilly ones, at that—with only one Arab country: Egypt. All the others refused to recognize or maintain formal ties with the Jewish state. Memories of oil embargoes and the 1970s-era Arab boycott were still fresh, and it seemed only prudent to consider “diplomatic sensitivities” by making CENTCOM the U.S. military’s interface with the Arab world. EUCOM provided assistance to the IDF and conducted joint exercises and contingency operations with the IDF and America’s NATO allies.

In 2004, however, President George W. Bush moved Syria and Lebanon to CENTCOM, and Israel alone among the countries of the region remained in EUCOM. This encouraged the unfortunate perception that Israel is somehow separate, or different, from the rest of the Middle East. Major threats to Israel were, and are, within CENTCOM’s boundaries—specifically, those from Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. Israel’s airspace is also under CENTCOM’s area of operations, including assets involved in detection, suppression and prevention of missile threats in the broader Middle East. The situation has become increasingly awkward, as the European Union is now significantly more anti-Israel than the Arab world; during the 2014 escalation of violence in Gaza, for example, EU complaints about Israel and advocacy for the Palestinians complicated an already-thorny situation. Given that Israel now has full relations with four Arab countries and is developing additional relationships in the region, the Trump administration concluded it was no longer necessary to maintain the fiction that Israel is somehow in Europe. It therefore initiated the process that came to fulfillment on September 1, 2021.

The consequences of President Joe Biden‘s recent chaotic and catastrophic surrender in Afghanistan, which is also part of CENTCOM’s area of operations, may take a generation to fully comprehend. But even in this bleak context, the restructuring of CENTCOM to incorporate Israel stands out as a beacon of hope that, thanks to the Abraham Accords, American national security interests in the Middle East may yet be salvaged—and, if properly supported and encouraged, even strengthened in the future.

Victoria Coates is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and a former deputy national security advisor for the Middle East and North Africa on the National Security Council staff.

Simone Ledeen is a senior fellow at the Gold Institute for International Policy and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.

(The article first appeared in the Tennessee Star: https://tennesseestar.com/2021/08/15/exclusive-erik-prince-blames-afghanistan-debacle-on-cosplay-national-security-apparatus-that-believes-their-own-bs/)

By: Neil W. McCabe, Media Fellow

The Founder of the Blackwater private security firm and the author of a comprehensive plan to save Afghanistan by shifting the country’s security to private contractors and away from the American military told The Star News Network on Sunday he warned U.S. diplomats the government of President Ashraf Ghani would fall before Labor Day.

“I told a number of ambassadors in the region there; they should expect a collapse of Kabul by Labor Day, and I said that back in April, based on when the U.S. air pressure, when the Air Force really stopped bombing, when that threat largely disappears, then the Taliban would be able to group and mass as they have done, and then they start blowing up cities,” said Erik Prince, the Navy SEAL veteran and national security entrepreneur.

“It’s a very predictable outcome that all these smart people in the military didn’t pass that kind of information off the chain of command so that the president even last month makes as dumb a statement as he does,” Prince said.

“We have a cosplay national security apparatus that sits and talks to itself into believing their own B.S., and sadly, the Taliban are feeding into us at the end of the bayonet right now,” he said. The term “cosplay” is defined by dictionary.com as “the art or practice of wearing costumes to portray characters from fiction, especially manga, animation, and science fiction.”

“This is not rocket science, but it’s a failure of imagination,” he said.

“It’s a failure to look at history to see what’s worked by our conventional military leadership and utter an abysmal failure,” he said. “The Afghan army has lasted a couple of weeks. The government built by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan lasted four years after the Russians pulled their forces out, four years not two weeks.”

Prince said once Taliban forces started rolling up provincial capitals, they could not be stopped by the Afghanistan government.

“The continued Taliban victories have certainly given them a very key element in the military success, and that’s momentum,” he said. “It certainly caused a lot of paralysis. When that momentum causes fear amongst the defending population and a few links in their chain suddenly disappear, they lack the resiliency, and so it all goes apart quickly.”

Kabul falling as it did will have a long-term negative impact on America’s reputation, he said.

“It will have second and third-order effects because everyone that thinks that they’re an ally of the United States is going to look at us today,” he said. “The United States walked out of there, like a bad one-night stand, and: ‘They just left us hanging.’”

In 2017, Prince presented a comprehensive plan to senior military and diplomatic leaders in Washington, which would have private military contractor personnel take over the Pentagon’s advise and assist mission with Afghanistan’s security forces.

The plan was rejected in favor of a mini-surge of 8,400 additional troops to Afghanistan proposed by National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Harold R. “H.R.” McMaster and backed by Vice President Michael R. Pence approved by President Donald J. Trump in August 2017.

According to Politico, McMaster rehearsed his presentation with Pence while blocking Prince from meeting Trump to make his pitch.

The purpose of the McMaster plan was to create a permissive environment for U.S. forces to leave the country in the hands of Afghanistan’s security forces as Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters continued to resist the U.S.-backed regime.

Despite the machinations of McMaster, Prince said he was able to get his plan to Trump and others, but he could not overcome the national security bureaucracy’s inertia.

“What I recommended in very clear written terms to President Trump, to H.R. McMaster, to Mattis, to the CIA, was a specific plan to give a, call it a skeletal structure support, to the Afghan forces to give them some resiliency they could depend on at a very cheap price compared to the cost of all the U.S. active-duty presence and very, very expensive logistics,” he said.

The three elements of the Prince Plan: Mentors, Air Power and Logistics

Prince said the first part of his plan was to break the cycle of constantly changing U.S. military partners assigned to work with Afghanistan’s military units with teams of military veteran contractor personnel attached to each Afghanistan battalion for three to four years.

The Hillsdale College graduate said he based his plan on the lessons learned from the successful long-term mentorship of U.S. special operations personnel provided to Afghanistan’s commandos.

“The only part of the Afghan army that’s demonstrated a willingness and ability to fight is the Afghan commandos because they were trained by the U.S. special operations counterparts, and that worked,” he said.

“All I was doing in taking the mentor model to the Afghan army is replicating what’s worked with the Afghan commandos, that being attaching, would have been 36 men mentor teams so that they had enough so that whenever that Afghan battalion was deployed somewhere, there would be enough,” Prince said.

“These mentors would make sure the key enablers were provided leadership, intelligence, communications, medical, and logistics expertise,” he said.

Because of the constant nine-month rotation of U.S. military units and personnel, he said there is no follow-up over time and no time for proper bonding between the mentors and their charges.

In effect, he said that each rotation had become its own new war with new people and new tactics.

“We’ve had 33 rotations at least,” said the former SEAL officer, who left the service upon the 1995 passing of his father Edgar D. Prince, an engineer and industrialist, whose businesses included die-cast machines and auto parts.

“I would have contracted guys that would have gone and stayed in the same area for three and four years,” he said. “They go in for 90 days, come home for 30. Back in for 60, home for 30.”

The goal is to create tactical stability, said the author of “Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror” about his groundbreaking creation of the private security industry.

“Always rotating to the same unit in the same terrain, so they get to know the area, Prince said. “They know who’s good, who’s bad, but the Afghan unit members see them, trust them, brothers in arms,” and that would have, I say with 100 percent assurance, the mentors, in place, attached, living with, training with, and fighting alongside that entire Afghan conventional army, would have greatly enhanced their willingness to fight, especially when the second part is provided and that being air power.”

Prince: Airpower means tactical support, medical support to fighters on the ground

“I would have provided 90 aircraft. I used to have 50 of my own aircraft in Afghanistan doing support for the U.S. forces,” said the native of Holland, Michigan. “Doing food, and fuel, and movement, and medevac, surveillance, et cetera, providing those aircraft that show up reliably with no excuse.”

Prince said as a private company with a no-fail contract; he could have provided air support for the entire country.

“We would have provided close air support on 30-minute notice from anywhere, from the bases we would have staged, to anywhere in the country, so from a maximum of 30 minutes lag time between someone calling for help, having aircraft with the ordinance, overhead and ready to go,” he said.

Prince said he would train each of the private contractor military mentors as joint terminal attack controllers, or JTAC, technicians capable of talking to aircrews with targeting information and other data from the ground.

One of the reasons the regular Afghanistan soldier was under-motivated to fight was the lack of battlefield casualty care, he said.

“To one year, three years, 10 years ago, you were seven times as likely to die if you’re an Afghan that got wounded,” Prince said.

“Afghan soldiers just lost confidence in the whole system because their supply wasn’t coming, their pay wouldn’t show up, they wouldn’t have food, and worst of all, they wouldn’t get the ammunition,” he said.

A tragic example of this was the Taliban’s June 16 ambush and massacre of 24 Afghanistan commandos and five local police officers in Farah Province. No aircraft were sent to help, rescue, resupply or medevac the men as the insurgents pinned them down.

“They were slaughtered after running out of ammunition,” he said. “They begged and pleaded, calling for help, calling Kabul news media, T.V. stations, begging for someone to help them, and no one came. That’s how you destroy the morale of an army, and that’s why it collapsed so quickly. This is really basic stuff.”

Prince Plan would have professionalized military logistics in Afghanistan

“The third part of the deal is combat logistics support,” he said.

He said that part of that would be using modern bookkeeping to find the ghost soldiers and take them off the books.

“You heard rumblings about the massive theft of pay, with the ghost soldiers, like a 100,000-plus, completely named, listed on the employment rolls, but not really people showing there, because the senior officers were skimming the pay, all the way up to Ghani,” he said.

“The third part of this is a combat logistics element to keep the food, fuel, parts, ammunition flowing reliably, and as low a corruption loss as possible, certainly different than what’s been done over the last 20 years,” he said.

“The great error of the U.S. is thinking that they were going to empower Afghans and dropping these many resources into a 90 percent illiterate country with endemic corruption,” he said.

Prince said American bureaucrats failed to set up left and right flanks to corral the corruption; then, the American officials gave up on corruption altogether.

“I guess the laziness caused people to say: ‘Oh yeah, they can handle the whole thing. Just turn it over to them, give them the checkbook,’” he said. “The reality would have said: No, we’re going to be very, very limited, defined things, and we can reevaluate that, and we can do this on a cheap, small footprint approach and not the very big, expensive, DOD approach that we had the last 20 years.”

Prince Plan based on the East India Company model

Prince said he modeled his plan on England’s East India Company’s success and its stewardship of India. It developed its commercial interests in India with a concession from the crown.

“Everything I laid out in this plan is based on 250 years of successful security operations by the East India Company in the South Asian continent, building local units with a few expats attached, like a 5 percent expat ratio,” he said.

Most Americans only know the East India Company as the company which owned the ship full of tea attacked by the Sons of Liberty in the 1773 Boston Tea Party. Yet, despite this chapter of the American Revolution, many colonial leaders supported a proposal to the British Parliament to give the American colonies the same independence inside the British imperial system the East India Company enjoyed.

In fact, the American flag is a direct lift from the flag of the East India Company.

Prince Plan would have fostered the development of natural resources

Prince said the linchpin of his plan was the development of Afghanistan’s natural resources made possible because of his plan’s security.

According to a 2011 U.S. Geological Survey report, Afghanistan’s natural resources include gold and strategic metals, such as copper, chromium, lead, zinc, and cobalt.

The Navy SEAL veteran said there is also oil.

“All the fuel, diesel fuel that the U.S. burned in Afghanistan, largely came from Greece on a big DLA, Defense Logistics Agency contract,” he said.

“It came down the Suez by boat, through the Red Sea, all the way around to Karachi, and then it got on a truck and trucked all the way up into Afghanistan with a massive tolling regime in place,” he said.

“There’s definitely an investigation that should be done there, as to all the people that got paid for moving that fuel. That’s why the fully-loaded costs per gallon of fuel for U.S. forces in Afghanistan were $250 per gallon,” he said.

“The disgusting thing is the Russians actually drilled oil fields in the north of Afghanistan,” he said.

“They explored, they drilled, they proved, and then they properly cemented the wells when they left,” Prince said. “All those wells are still sitting there and the U.S. military, or a private operator, could have drilled it, put it in production, slapped a $100 million refinery there and provided all the hydrocarbons needed for the entire country, including the U.S. military, for a tiny fraction. That thing would have paid for itself in probably four months, 20 years ago, and would have provided significant employment and other secondary electrical applications.”

The businessman said he knew a local Afghani who tried to reboot the old Russian wells.

“An Afghan friend of mine was the local partner, and he was exasperated because he could never get the right people to engage on it,” he said. “Ghani and Karzai were so damn corrupt that the other subsequent licensing was always held up because it was always asking for a greater bribe.”

Afghanistan’s oil resources are not widely known. Still, its copper deposits are both well-known and readily exploited—and the mining jobs would have pulled Taliban fighters off the battlefield, he said.

“Another example is Mes Aynak that is basically a mountain of copper; it’s about 50 kilometers south of Kabul,” he said.

“They have been mining copper there for more than a thousand years, and you could have put that in production and employed 10,000 Taliban because the Taliban was paying around $10 a day,” he said.

“You could have paid them $12 a day, given them picks and shovels, mined copper profitably, and sucked an entire infantry division’s worth of Taliban manpower away from them.”

– – –

Neil W. McCabe is a Media Fellow at the Washington D.C. based Gold Institute for International Strategy, a foriegn policy and national security think-tank. He is a Washington-based national political reporter for The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. In addition to the Star Newspaper, he has covered the White House, Capitol Hill and national politics for One America News, Breitbart, Human Events and Townhall. Before coming to Washington, he was a staff reporter for Boston’s Catholic paper, The Pilot, and the editor of two Boston-area community papers, The Somerville News and The Alewife. McCabe is a public affairs NCO in the Army Reserve and he deployed for 15 months to Iraq as a combat historian.
Photo “Erik Prince” by Miller Center CC2.0

The Gold Institute for International Strategy deplores the actions of the PYD (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat – Democratic Union Party) on June 20th, in closing the offices of Kurdistan 24, the premiere source of information from all regions of Greater Kurdistan.

The measure, taken without notice or explanation, casts doubts on the commitment of the administration of Rojava to elemental freedoms, the very freedoms the Kurdish people have fought tirelessly for decades to obtain.

Indeed, this is the second time the offices of Kurdistan24 have been closed, despite the PYD’s assurances that it seeks a “democratic solution that includes the recognition of cultural, national and political rights, and develops and enhances their peaceful struggle to be able to govern themselves in a multicultural, democratic society” for Rojava. Censorship of the press and persecution of ideas does not seem the proper vehicle to reach those lofty goals.

Around the world, many look to Kurdistan 24 to obtain first hand, unbiased reporting of events in all four Kurdistan regions in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey, and we view its censorship as a troubling development, made more serious by the subsequent closing of the Semalka border crossing.

We hope that these ominous events do not herald a new era of authoritarianism returning to the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and look forward to the free society Syrian Kurds have fought so valiantly to obtain.

PR Contact: Shana Forta
Email: Sforta@Goldiis.org

Washington, DC — June 16, 2021 — The Gold Institute for International Strategy is pleased to welcome Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East Simone Ledeen and retired NYPD Detective Investigator Mark Black as senior fellows. Ms. Ledeen’s extensive experience in the Middle East, at DoD and Treasury and Marc Black’s long-time focus in counter-terrorism, intelligence division and computer crimes will undoubtedly add greatly to the Institute’s impressive roster of fellows as well as our work and influence globally.

Simone Ledeen is a strategic influencer of complex, long-term initiatives and plans with global impact. Through her work, Ms. Ledeen has shaped the thinking of the nation’s senior-most leaders, including Members of Congress, other U.S. government officials, and partners abroad, on matters of defense, finance, telecom, and transportation. She is a trusted collaborator leveraging vast networks and superb communication skills to achieve multi-phased program development and implementation across industries.

Ms. Ledeen has served in various U.S. Government and business leadership positions, most recently as the presidentially-appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for Middle East Policy where her leadership of U.S. defense policy spanned Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Her experience on multiple oversees deployments influenced key counterterrorism activities, intelligence collection and analysis, as well as military information support operations involving cyber and disinformation, irregular warfare, direct action, sensitive special operations, and personnel recovery/hostage issues.

Ms. Ledeen’s work has also been shaped by her 20 years of experience prior to appointment with the Department of Defense. She draws on her work as Executive Director at Standard Chartered Bank managing multi-national financial crime compliance; Senior U.S. Treasury Representative to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force; Advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Finance; and as a member of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

She is also a Visiting Fellow at the National Security Institute of George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law where she advocates to foster global security and facilitate international business. Ms. Ledeen has an MBA from the Bocconi University School of Management and a Bachelor of Arts degree with from Brandeis University. With a strong intercultural competency having lived several years abroad, she is fluent in Italian and conversational in French, Arabic, Polish, and Hebrew.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Marc Black served 20 years with the New York Police Department (NYPD), retiring June 2020 at the rank of Detective Investigator. His assignments included:

Counterterrorism Division

Responsible for conducting security and vulnerability assessments (SAVA) and threat assessments on critical infrastructure in New York City. Areas of concentration include houses of worship, utilities, and sports/entertainment venues. Liaison with the Fire Department of New York City Explosives Unit to establish secure logistic routes and venue security of locations which utilize energetic materials. Intermediary with Federal agencies which are working with foreign-friendly nations to establish counterterrorism programs for local law enforcement. Evaluator for the federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP) in New York City.

Arson & Explosion Squad

Investigated major post blast and arson crimes associated with fire and blast fatalities in conjunction with the New York City Fire Department and federal and state law enforcement agencies to determine origin and cause. Examined post blast incidents caused by improvised explosive devices as well as explosive materials illegally obtained by individuals and criminal organizations. Investigated arsons and incendiary incidents to determine origin and cause.

Computer Crimes Squad

Investigated computer crimes and analyzed computer forensic information using accepted law enforcement techniques and technologies. Investigations: Computer intrusions/DOS/computer trespass, identity fraud, child exploitation, Internet scams, and financial crimes.

Intelligence Division

Synchronized communications of international terrorist incidents with New York City Police investigators Overseas Liaison Units. Coordinated crisis management programs through the Fusion Center with the New York City Police Department and federal law enforcement agencies, FEMA, U.S. Military, and Office of Emergency Management (New York City).

Education:

B.S. Business Management, Keene State College

Attended University of Haifa, Haifa Israel

M.S. Transportation Management, NY State University Maritime College

M.S. Security Protection, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

By: Matthew R.J. Brodsky, Senior Fellow

Originally appeared in the NYPost: https://nypost.com/2021/05/18/no-the-gaza-flare-up-didnt-kill-trumps-wildly-successful-abraham-accords/

America’s foreign-policy establishment and peace-process industry are having a field day: The latest round of fighting between Israel and the terror group Hamas, they insist, has sounded the death knell for the Abraham Accords, the Trump-brokered peace treaties between the Jewish state and several Muslim nations.

Leading the Schadenfreude Brigade was White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who on Tuesday declared from her podium: “We don’t think [the accords] did anything constructive, really, to bring an end to the longstanding conflict in the Middle East.” The peace-processors failed for decades to make Mideast progress, and the Gaza flare-up gives them and their DC mouthpieces (like Psaki) a cheap chance to crow, “I told you so.”

Reality disagrees, however.

The monumental agreements signed last year will continue to flourish, because their foundations remain solid — whereas doing things the peace-processors’ way will return America to the failures of the past.

The peace-process industry (or syndicate) represents the elite’s thinking on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the wider Middle East. It is composed of former diplomats, left-leaning think tanks, nearly all of corporate media and academia and the wealthy donor class that underwrites their work.

The maverick Trump administration’s Mideast breakthroughs in the final months of 2020 gravely threatened the interests of this group. After all, the Abraham Accords challenged several key assumptions of the peace-processors: above all, the notion that Arab reconciliation with Israel could only be achieved after resolving the Palestinian question.

This belief springs from the false notion that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the central drama of the region, linking it to all other problems, which will finally find their panacea only in a “two-state” solution.

Equally destructive is the peace-processors’ belief that a solution can be found by leveling the playing field between America’s regional allies and bad actors like the Palestinians. Put simply, they believe that for negotiations to succeed, Israel must be weakened, while Palestinian leaders must be empowered. There is no evidence for why this should be the case, but that hasn’t stopped peace-processors from summiting the commanding heights of American foreign policy for decades.

It’s easy to see how President Donald Trump and his advisers wounded the egos of these processors with the Abraham Accords. The accords started from diametrically opposed assumptions: that the Palestinian drama isn’t central to the region and that diplomacy requires bolstering, rather than weakening, allies. And they succeeded brilliantly.

The accords won’t soon die, because all of the structural reasons that made them possible remain intact. For starters, the Iranian threat that impelled Arab leaders to embrace their former archenemy, Israel, is still there.

Plus, the economic benefits of the rapprochement are too tangible to ignore, including opportunities in tourism, civil aviation, science, technology and innovation, energy, water, environment and agriculture, food security and more.

Then, too, the Arab elite increasingly views Jews as indigenous to the region. Both the UAE and Bahrain correctly pride themselves as nations of tolerance, and they take pride in extending that tolerance to the region’s Jews. Communications technology is also fostering more dialogue and relationships beyond the control of diplomats or the state.

While Arab leaders sympathize with the Palestinian people, the accords showed that Mideast states have wearied of a corrupt and intransigent Palestinian leadership. For four years leading up to the accords, the unmistakable message to Palestinians and their leaders was that the proverbial train was leaving the station, and it was in their interest to get on board, rather than cling to the slogans of the past; the Palestinians didn’t get the message.

These fundamental dynamics remain beyond the grasp of the dangerously deluded peace-process industry, which remains bent on pulling the region backward, all to fit its disproved theories. There is plenty of more work to be done to expand the peace and normalization framework. This work will continue, regardless of predictable regional forces that periodically lash out and in spite of those who gleefully mistake this beginning for the end.

Matthew RJ Brodsky, a former adviser to the Trump administration’s Middle East peace team, is a senior fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy.

In a Newsweek essay published Thursday, Matthew Brodsky, former adviser to the Trump administration’s Middle East peace team, blasted the left, claiming it seeks to banish all dissent, and specifically criticized recent calls for the canceling of Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

The essay, titled “When Everything is Racist There’s No Room for Reason,” begins by describing today’s progressives as demanding a “profound remaking of the country.”
TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

By: Matthew R.J. Brodsky, Senior Fellow

Progressives today demand a profound remaking of the country. In their regressive Orwellian worldview, anti-Americanism is the new patriotism. In their version of American democracy, big tech thought police substitute for the real police now being defunded in communities across America. A free corporate media, presenting multiple sides of an issue and allowing for an open exchange of ideas on opinion pages, has given way to mob- and media-approved narratives and calls to silence and banish all dissent to the outer rim.

One result of these patterns is the Left’s distortion of any discussion about the relationship between the issues of border security, immigration and voter integrity.

“Demographic change is the key to the Democratic Party‘s political ambitions,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson observed during his show on Monday, April 12. “In order to win and maintain power, Democrats plan to change the population of the country.”

The crux of Carlson’s argument, backed up by evidence he cited, is that Democrats want open borders, no caps on immigrations and blanket amnesty for illegal aliens, thereby “importing a brand-new electorate” that they count on to vote Democratic. In the process, these policies dilute the vote of American citizens.

Democrats’ own words have made Carlson’s point obvious for some time. The commentator pointed to articles in The New York Times and quoted Democratic politicians, including Julian Castro and then-candidate Kamala Harris, who managed to say the typically quiet part out loud.

There are other clear examples of Democrats demanding policies that benefit them electorally. Last year in the height of the presidential campaign, many Democrats called for D.C. and Puerto Rico to be recognized as states. Apparently, when they dug a little deeper, they discovered that Puerto Rico might be too competitive as a state in elections, unlike D.C. which would be a solid blue state. While the House recently passed legislation for D.C. statehood, Democratic talk of Puerto Rican statehood has all but vanished.

Nevertheless, Carlson’s comments set off the precise firestorm the Fox News host had anticipated, along with another round of hysterical calls to cancel his show. As is the new norm, the force of these calls can only gain purchase if they cast the issue as one of racism, rather than “a voting rights question,” as Carlson explained.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson discusses ‘Populism and the Right’ during the National Review Institute’s Ideas Summit at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel March 29, 2019 in Washington, DC.CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

This is the unfortunate place our country is in today. For the Left, the connective tissue that runs through every issue is the noxious claim of “systemic racism.” It takes on many forms, such as critical race theory, intersectionality and the accusation that everything is a relic of the Jim Crow era. There is no debate or defense because the accusation is designed to skip the trial and move straight to sentencing. If it’s a symbol it is torn down. If it’s a person they are deplatformed, silenced, fired and doxed by the Twitterati. If it’s a business or corporation it will be listed in The New York Times.

It’s no surprise that calls for Carlson’s firing came from the usual woke mob. But even the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization that should have a solid handle on what racism is, decided to insert itself in the middle of a legitimate debate about immigration. It forcefully came down in favor of cancel culture by sending a letter of condemnation to Fox News demanding Carlson’s termination.

The letter referred to Carlson’s monologue as a “full-on embrace” and “open-ended endorsement of white supremacist ideology.” Despite writing, “we believe in dialogue and giving people a chance to redeem themselves,” the ADL concluded that “this is not legitimate political discourse.” This letter marks the ADL’s unfortunate transformation into just another arm of the ever-expanding progressive Left. After all, the ADL and the progressive wing it parrots aren’t merely trying to cancel Tucker Carlson. Their goal is to quash the debate on immigration entirely.

Despite these efforts, the relationship between the issues of border security, immigration and voting integrity is plain for all to see. There is nothing anti-Semitic or racist about pointing out how Democrats have focused on welcoming legal or illegal immigrants from countries that they believe will be ideological allies, and not from countries that tend to be more conservative. And despite the progressive attempt to label all points of disagreement as racist, a much stronger example of racism comes from those who refuse to see people as individuals and instead only as members of racial, ethnic and religious voting blocs.

Anti-Semitism is a real and growing threat. But the elected officials who most consistently attempt to brandish their anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism through legislation and as a part of their political platform are Democrats, who are being led by their progressive wing. At the same time, dramatic changes being forced on the American people today by Democratic policies touch all parts of everyday life. Paranoia, instability and fear is the well from which racism springs. In this context, we need more dialogue, not less.

The harnessing of individual grievances and woke ideologies for the Left’s perpetual expansion of political power constitutes a poison pill for the American political body. A real debate over immigration and voting rights is necessary. Panning everything as racist and silencing dissenting voices, at a time when too few politicians demonstrate courage, seems about as far away as one can get from what America’s Founders intended.

Matthew RJ Brodsky is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, former adviser to the Trump administration’s Middle East peace team, and former Director of Policy at the Jewish Policy Center in Washington, DC.

By: Neil W. McCabe, Media Fellow

The founder and president of the Washington-based Gold Institute for International Strategies told the Star News Network that President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s foreign policy is doomed to fail, because unlike President Donald J. Trump, Biden treats the world as an extension of Washington’s Swamp.

“What President Trump realized is that Washington and the way Washington works is really only acceptable – I didn’t say good – I said it is acceptable – is on domestic matters,” said Eli Gold, who worked for worked in Washington’s think tank world for more than 10 years, before launching the Gold Institute May 2019.

“Trump realized that when you leave our shores and our borders, the rest of the world does not work in the same way Washington works,” Gold said. “By the way, Washington is broken domestically, too, but we can try to figure that out on our own because it doesn’t involve other people. We can decide if we can have Medicare-for-All or private insurance, that doesn’t impact, say Israel, but what Trump realized is that when it comes to foreign policy, you can’t work in a Washingtonian fashion.”

Biden’s foreign policy and methods are a throwback to failure

In this way, Biden differs from Trump in terms of both style and substance, he said.

“President Biden is reverting back to that Washingtonian method,” Gold said.

Before Trump, U.S. foreign policy objectives were stalled and failing because the American foreign policy establishment treats other countries like they are politicians negotiating legislation on Capitol Hill, he said.

“In addition, Biden is bringing back the leftwing policies, such as the ones that established or normalized relations with Iran, rather than holding people accountable and government accountable – a government who calls for ‘Death to America,’ – he would rather normalizing relations with them.”

It is a cliché to say that Biden’s foreign policy is Obama redux, but there is a similar dynamic at play in regards of Biden’s reconnecting with Iran – while paying for it by weakening America’s connection with Saudi Arabia and Israel, the Baltimore native said.

“Biden understands that he cannot normalize relations with Iran and hold Saudi Arabia and Israel in equally high esteem – it would negatively impact his ability to negotiate with Iran,” he said.

“Joe Biden’s policies in regard to the Israelis and the Saudis are going to be interesting at best, strained at worst,” he said.

Trump’s succeeded at foreign policy with a personal approach

Gold said Trump evolved into his own very personal way of working with people and institutions as a New York City developer outside of politics. “He, therefore, had a one-on-one foreign policy, which really offended and ticked off what we will call the establishment.”

The other reason Trump upset the establishment is he reclaimed presidential authority to run foreign policy, he said.

“What people fail to realize is the role of the president, and the role of the president is to run the country,” he said.

“He is our senior foreign policy guy and in my opinion in 2021, you do not even need a U.S. Secretary of State,” he said. “Why do we have a U.S. Secretary of State? Because when we founded this country, it would take you two months to have a conversation with the French.”

Trump spoke to his secretaries of defense and state, but he took personal responsibility for his policy, Gold said.

“This was the key to his running a one-on-one foreign policy,” he said. “Somehow between 1789 and 2016, the lines got blurred and it became the norm that the president must work by committee, run the country by committee, well, Iran doesn’t run its country by a committee – and this is what Washington fails to realize.”

Trump knew he had to engage other leaders, but there were lines he could not cross, he said.

“For example, he began negotiating and potentially normalizing with North Korea,” he said. “That all ended, when it was understood those lines that could not be crossed would have had to be crossed in order to pursue it – and it was the same thing with China, as well, in particular in the last year of his presidency because of COVID.”

It was fortunate that Trump got personally involved in the process and that led to the Abraham Accords, he said.

The Abraham Accords is a collection of agreements between Israel and Islamic countries, brokered by the United States, that plays on the fact that Christianity, Judaism and Islam all trace their beginnings to the Bible’s Abraham. Before the end of Trump’s first term, he facilitated a normalization of relations between Israel and Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Bahrain.

Of the four, Bahrain is the most significant geopolitically, because the archipelago kingdom is a client-state of Saudi Arabia, which led to speculation that the Saudis would be next up if Trump remained in office for a second consecutive term.

“I don’t know if it was as easy as just signing a paper for the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords,” he said. “Saudi is the ultimate prize. In my estimation, in order for the Saudis to formally normalize relations with Israel, there would have to be certain goals and certain metrics met. It would also depend on what happens with Qatar and what happens with the Houthis in Yemen.”

The Saudis back the Yemeni government against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

Gold Institute fellows discuss ‘Iran and Their Proxies: The Current Situation’

Gold Institute senior fellows held a February 28 online seminar “Iran and Its Allies” that dealt with how following Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, Iran and its proxies have taken an aggressive approach within the region and U.S. interests, Gold said.

“Most recently setting a hard line with their commitment to restart or continue their unfettered nuclear program, and missile attacks against U.S. interests in Erbil, Kurdistan and in Baghdad,” he said.

Joining Gold, who moderated the seminar, were retired Army Brig. Gen. Ernie Audino, who is now a senior advisor to the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria, and Matthew R.J. Brodsky, who is a Middle East expert, geopolitical analyst.

Gold Institute fellows are practitioners

Gold said he started his institute to bridge what he saw as a gap between policy and action that he witnessed in the meandering that took place before Trump intervened in the discussions that led to the Abraham Accords.

“What I noticed was that Washington think tanks often create policy, but lacked the ability to put forward a blueprint to implement that said policy,” he said.

Gold said a typical example of how Washington handles foreign affairs is the way the State Department tried to line up Middle East countries into an American-led alliance.

“I was talking to an ambassador from a Middle Eastern country – it was actually at a Washington hotel – and we talking about MESA, what President Trump was trying to set up as an Arab NATO,” Gold said.

“It started out at the Riyadh Summit and MESA, which is the Middle East Strategic Alliance, later became the Abraham Accords, but at the time I asked the ambassador to tell me: ‘Where does this stand?’ it was about two years ago, and he said they had yet to give him a blueprint for the proposed MESA.”

The ambassador told him that as a meeting at the State Department, he was pressured to sign up his country for MESA and the State official said: “Afterwards, we’ll sit down and figure it out,” he said. “It was just like Nancy Pelosi saying we have to pass Obamacare in order to find out what is in Obamacare – and the ambassador and his government said: ‘No, we are out, unless you can tell us what you want from us and what our role is, we’re done.’”

MESA was a great idea, but until Trump got hands-on and recognized the opportunity was achieve what became the Abraham Accords, nobody knew how to make it a reality, he said.

Gold said he sought the advice of colleagues and other thought-leaders, such as retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, and these conversations convinced him that there was no pro-Western think tank in Washington that had the practical know-how to convert concepts into action.

“We have 25 fellows and each one represents a different area of expertise,” he said.

“The institute is not an ‘American’ think tank,” Gold said. “It is a Western think tank – I am not a globalist by any stretch of the imagination or any definition of the word – we focus on Western civilization and Western values, so three of our distinguished fellows are sitting members of the European Parliament and a former British member of the European Parliament, who is a Commander of the British Empire.”

Other fellows live in Israel, the Kurdish region of Iraq, he said. “We have former members of Congress and former members of the National Security Council.”