Atlantic Sentinel

Author: Boris Ryvkin

  • The West Must Not Lose Greece the Way It Lost Russia

    Alexis Tsipras Martin Schulz
    Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras and European Parliament president Martin Schulz answer questions from reporters in Brussels, February 4 (European Parliament)

    Belying the official line of Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras that a “no” vote in Sunday’s referendum about the latest bailout offer from the nation’s creditors was not a vote on whether or not to stay in the euro, political and economic realities now point inexorably toward a “Grexit”.

    Although a conciliatory tone was struck by the eurozone’s laggards Italy and Spain, the main anchors of the currency bloc are losing patience.

    In Germany, the rhetoric of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat grassroots has hardened substantially. One leading member of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria openly stated that Athens “chose a path of isolation” by rejecting what Merkel effectively presented as the final offer on the table. Even her Social Democratic partners admit they cannot see a path forward from here and that Greece must show greater flexibility than it has up to this point.

    Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte echoed the language of Berlin’s hardliners after the referendum results were announced, saying if Tsipras arrived at an emergency summit with proposals not closely resembling those its creditors put forward a week ago, the eurozone would be at an impasse. “There is no other choice,” he maintained. Greece “must be ready to accept deep reforms.”

    Finally, French president François Hollande, terrified of strengthening Marine Le Pen’s Euroskeptic forces but simultaneously concerned about giving a resurgent Nicolas Sarkozy too much political ammunition, abandoned his media-constructed role as a sympathetic go-between and issued a joint statement with Merkel demanding that Greece put out its own proposals to stay in the euro within two days. (more…)

  • American-Israeli Relations Need Historical Context

    And where is the great artist who will paint Ben Gurion’s face as he gave the order, and the face of Yitzchak Sadeh and the face of Galili and the face of the man who fired the artillery and the faces of the Palmach men and women who danced and sang in the cars returning from the slaughter, as they drove down to Ben Yehuda and Allenby streets in Tel Aviv.

    These words, written by Dr Israel Eldad in The First Tithe (2008), reflect on a particularly dark episode in the history of the State of Israel — one about which many Jews are ignorant and others have tried hard to forget. It happened on June 22, 1948 off the coast of Tel Aviv. Fighters of the Irgun, the Jewish underground in Mandate Palestine then led by future premier Menachem Begin, had beached a cargo ship, the Altalena, on a sandbar. The Atlalena had left France with desperately needed weapons and equipment for use in Israel’s month-old War of Independence — some 5,000 rifles, 300 light machine guns and millions of rounds of ammunition.

    As chronicled by Thomas G. Mitchell in Likud Leaders: the Lives and Careers of Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon (2015), as Begin and his aides reached the beach and sought to help volunteers unload the cargo, he was ordered to surrender and turn all weapons over to the authority of the Palmach under the ultimate control of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. After a brief standoff and with its surrender demand rebuffed, a Palmach detachment under the command of future prime minister Yitzhak Rabin opened fire and killed sixteen Irgun members.

    Many decades later, and a few years before his assassination, Rabin called a fellow member of the Israeli parliament a fascist. That member, and others, would stoically respond that, names aside, at least they never killed Jews. Although not conclusively proven, circumstantial evidence exists to link Ben-Gurion’s cabinet decision to sink the Altalena with a desire to eliminate Begin himself were he on board.

    Far from the idyllic image of a united people fighting for survival that has come down through the generations, the history of modern Israel has more often than not been one of betrayal and division. (more…)

  • Between Switzerland and Salazar: Rethinking American Foreign Policy

    If American foreign policy lacks anything, it is imagination. When 2016 presidential contenders speak about the rest of the world, their rhetoric is often superficial and predictable. It seems the country’s strategic thinking is succumbing to a creeping “Russification” — an obsession with neo-imperial greatness and jingoistic patriotism.

    Irrespective of party label, America’s political elites and resident media experts have framed the country’s position in the world as a straightforward choice between strength and weakness: Unless America retains a permanent and dominating presence in every significant region of the world, a dystopian “war of all against all” will reign. Into this inevitable vacuum will leap “bad actors,” such as China, Iran and Russia. The delicate stability that supports the global economy will be upended and the American homeland will be under relentless threat. The assumption is that America’s role in the world is fateful and irreversible rather than a matter of choice or an accident of history — what America’s often globally unaware public thinks of this is beside the point.

    America’s political values, and founding principles have become intertwined by consensus with its supposed role as the guardian of international peace and security. Those who pose the counterfactual, question the assumption of America’s inevitable internationalism or propose an alternative path for the nation’s foreign policy have been diagnosed as malicious, anti-American retrogrades whose weakness would see the country prostrate before vacuous evil forces that must be fought “there” to avoid having to confront them “here at home.”

    In this way, American liberty has been exchanged for the authoritarian tribalism of, among others, Vladimir Putin’s Russia. (more…)

  • South Africa and the Perils of Forced Union in the Middle East

    On May 31, 1902, Lord Kitchener, second-in-command of British forces operating in South Africa, met with Boer delegates to negotiate terms for an end to the Second Boer War. The Boers were represented by some of their most talented field commanders, including Koos de la Rey, the “Lion of West Transvaal,” and Christiaan de Wet, who fought at Majuba Hill — the 1881 battle that forced London to recognize Boer independence for a further twenty years.

    De la Rey and De Wet passionately argued over the necessity of surrender. According to an interpretation by Joyce Kotze in her novel, The Runaway Horses, De Wet maintained that the religious honor and dignity of the Boers would be destroyed and Boer commandos should fight to the bitter end. De la Rey, emotional, retorted, “Fight to the bitter end? Is what you are saying? But has the bitter end not come?”

    Whereas Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox in order to avoid sending his shattered army off to fight as guerrillas, that was exactly what De la Rey had done so successfully for the better part of a year. His admission of the futility of continued resistance resonated; the alternative to surrender was, perhaps, to subject the Boers to the fate of the Jews after the Second Revolt: complete destruction and forced exile.

    The Second Boer War completed Britain’s domination of Southern Africa. The Boers had tried to get away from British rule since the Great Trek of the early nineteenth century and staved off Her Majesty’s government for many a decade. In the end, having absorbed the defeat of 1881 and crushed the Zulu in Natal, the British deployed half a million men to finish off the heavily outnumbered and internationally ignored Boers. The Boer delegation, functionally led by Louis Botha, acceded to the end of their people’s independence and swore loyalty to the British crown in exchange for the preservation of Afrikaans, a promise of future self-government and the avoidance of punitive economic measures in connection with the War.

    Perversely, Kitchener excluded from the de facto amnesty provisions of the Treaty of Vereeniging those Boers who engaged in “certain acts contrary to the usage of war.” This was the same Kitchener who supervised the wholesale destruction of Boer farming communities and herded thousands of women and children into concentration camps to die of starvation. Now, the Boers smashed, Britain wanted a quick settlement and to consolidate control of the gold and diamond assets which served as primary drivers of the conflict.

    Viewing the terms of Vereeniging in context, one could almost believe Britain had an on-off switch to prosecuting its colonial wars. To achieve victory, it was prepared to do almost anything, no matter how mendacious. Once secured, priority was given to a rapid exit. (more…)