(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in Warrior Maven. What Does Oppenheimer Teach About Nuclear Deterrence?)

The new movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the top scientists running the Manhattan project often credited with building the first atomic bomb, has spawned much commentary and analysis about the US current nuclear deterrent, the nuclear balance with Russia and China, and whether nuclear abolition should be seriously pursued.

One such essay (“The Long Shadow of Oppenheimer’s Trinity Test”) by Jack Detsch, the national security reporter at Foreign Policy and Anusha Rathi, also with Foreign Policy, published July 23, 2023, makes two central points. The first is that the massive use of nuclear weapons would devastate much of the world, trigger global winter and possibly killing five billion people. The second calls into question the credibility of the US deterrent to prevent nuclear war, and the need alternatively through a campaign of Global Zero to get Russia and China to join the US in “disarmament talks.”

Ironically, the current disarmament campaign actually makes the use of nuclear weapons more likely as funding cuts and delays pushed by global zero advocates often undermine the very US deterrent that for seventy-five years has avoided the Armageddon the disarmament groups fear will someday occur. And while a major nuclear war could indeed destroy much of civilization, the limited use of nuclear weapons under a strategy of “escalate to win” has been adopted by Russia and China, the leaders of which believe such a war can be waged and “won,” despite their “dezinformatsiya” to the contrary.

Detsch/Rathi contend the US spends far too much on nuclear deterrence, but then acknowledge that much of the nuclear industry that makes up the nuclear infrastructure, for example, is indeed “falling into despair,” what former CSIS/PONI Director Clark Murdock once described as “rusting to obsolescence.” Ironically, it has been the global zero advocates that for multiple decades refused to adequately fund a modernized nuclear deterrent, thus leading to the significant aging of US legacy nuclear systems and infrastructure that now costs so much to sustain.

Detsch and Rathi complain the Biden administration is unnecessarily pursuing an “arms race” with a planned more than $1 trillion nuclear modernization effort, which they blame on “Pentagon hawks” as if the Administration and Congress have no role in the current program of record now proceeding into its 14th year.

But far from starting an arms race, all of the US strategic nuclear modernization effort is entirely consistent with the 2010 New START arms control treaty, as the US will build no more than the 700 allowed SNDVs or strategic nuclear delivery vehicles, and actually achieve a reduction in sub-launched nuclear armed missiles as we move from the Ohio class submarine carrying 20 missiles to the Columbia class submarine carrying 16 missiles.

There is thus no US led arms race or “buildup” as Detsch and Rathi claim. Even the authors concede the current US arsenal is “outdated” and thus is only being replaced, and thus not a “build-up.” On the other hand, there is an arms race being pursued by Russia, where 20+ new strategic (long-range) nuclear weapons types have been pursued since the 2010 New START treaty was signed, some not within the treaty’s framework, and by China which now has deployed more ICBM launchers than the United States while projecting by 2035 to increase its strategic arsenal by at least 400 percent, all of which is arms limits.

Detsch and Rathi also appear not to understand the entirety of the US nuclear deterrent is not designed to “destroy multiple Soviet Russian cities,” but to hold at risk the military and security and leadership assets of our nuclear armed enemies, so as to prevent them from having the capability to achieve their hegemonic objectives. The US does not hold populations at risk nor target them and began not to do so beginning with the flexible response posture of the Kennedy administration.

As noted earlier, the essay repeats the narrative that the cost of nuclear modernization is $1 trillion or higher. In fact, in FY2024, the total research, development and acquisition costs of the nuclear submarine, land-based missile and bomber platforms, plus the nuclear command and control and warhead life extension, was $18 billion in the combined DOD and NNSA budgets or 2% of the defense budget and 26th/100ths of the Federal budget. Even over a 30-year period, the cost would not approach $1 trillion.

Overall, however, current nuclear expenditures are roughly one-third modernization and two-thirds sustainment. The legacy systems will be between 42, 50 and 60 years old when replaced and cannot be confidently sustained longer than now planned. Delaying modernization just escalates sustainment costs. And even a Democrat controlled House in 2022 understood this reality and slam dunked the idea of keeping the legacy Minuteman III and killing the new Sentinel ICBM program by a vote of 309-118.

In short, there is no US led arms race; there is no $1 trillion nuclear modernization budget; and there is no Congressional support for dismantling the US nuclear Triad or deterrent.

Detsch et al also believes the US nuclear arsenal vastly exceeds in numbers “any reasonable degree of [needed] security” but then fails to inform the reader that the US strategic long-range nuclear arsenal is some 90% smaller than at its height before the collapse of the Soviet Union when the deployed (in the field) US long-range strategic nuclear arsenal exceeded some 12,000 allowable nuclear weapons.

The actual deployed number of warheads now varies but according to most sources is around 1350, with the number on alert day-to-day probably slightly less than 1000. Through START I, the Moscow Treaty and New START, over 95% of the overall US nuclear arsenal is under arms agreement limits, while 55% of Russian weapons are not under arms limits, to say nothing of the entirety of the Chinese nuclear forces under no limits whatsoever.

This trend toward lower US deployed strategic warheads is hardly descriptive of a country in “pursuit of nuclear superiority” as the authors claim. And our modernized deployed strategic long-range systems when deployed will be no more than allowed by the New START counting rules and thus consistent with “arms control” and are certainly no bigger than the Russian forces. However, the Russian upload capability is vastly greater than the US, Russia’s reserve stockpile is much bigger, and Russia’s theater or short-range nuclear forces are 10-20 times greater than the US as well. While the US did seek to deter the Soviet Union during the Cold War, by the end of the Soviet buildup in the era of détente and peaceful coexistence, the US was certainly not in any kind of superior nuclear position, nor is it today. While arms control has its place, it has not resolved the dangerous current Russian nuclear strategy nor its nuclear forces now approaching 7-8000 warheads.

As usual for disarmament advocates, the essay says those seeking global zero are gentle grassroots folks for peace, but that nuclear deterrent advocates are greedy companies coercing politicians to support nuclear spending in their Congressional districts. “Big bombs bring big dollars” Detsch claims, although the bomb megatonnage of US nuclear forces has dropped some 90% since the end of the Cold War and it has been nearly 30 years since the US deployed a single new, modern nuclear platform. It may not be until 2030 when the first new nuclear-armed modernized platform is put into the field.

Detsch et al also claim the US nuclear arsenal was reduced only in the two decades after the peak in the 1960’s. In fact, US strategic nuclear forces started declining with the START I treaty of 1991 and on the theater side with the 1987 INF Treaty. All US theater nuclear forces on US Navy ships were unilaterally withdrawn under the Bush 41 administration, as were theater land based deployed systems from the Pacific.

But where the authors fall completely off the rails is their subsequent strange even bizarre declaration of the post-Cold War, post 1989 decision by the United States to, according to the authors, “rethink the use of nuclear weapons” and come up with “modernization.”

Actually, after the initial nuclear deployments on US bombers, the US first modernized its nuclear force beginning under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, then subsequently modernized again primarily in the Reagan and Bush (41) administrations. Subsequently, in the post-Cold War period, the US stopped production of the Ohio class submarine, the Peacekeeper ICBM and the B2 bomber (1992, 1995 and 1997, respectively), primarily as a result of the START I and START II arms reduction agreements first put on the table by President Reagan in his November 1981 National Press Club speech, a result of the highly creative work of the administration’s OSD and NSC staff working to produce numerous NSDD’s creating an entire peace through strength framework for joint nuclear modernization and arms control.

If anything, the post USSR collapse period was characterized at the time by USAF General Garret Harencak as a “holiday from history” where the US for decades decided not to modernize its nuclear forces or establish a viable, updated framework for deterrence, both of which the US is now putting together some three decades late. Since primarily 2006-10, the US has put together a modernization plan, which will be completed roughly in 2042, and which indeed as the authors acknowledge, has been supported by a “remarkably bipartisan” Congress, but which is coming into the force some 40 years after the fall of Communism and the USSR.

For some reason, Detsch and Rathi think the balance between the US and China is not one of good vs evil, that the CCP is not communist and not godless, and there is no reason to have a mindset against China that reflects a “Cold War” mentality. But China murders its own people to harvest their organs, exports fentanyl to the US that kills over 70,000 Americans annually, steals $600 billon annually in US intellectual property, and unleashed a virus on the world that killed one million Americans. It imprisons millions in a 21st century gulag, while unleashing its brutal security forces routinely against its own people, and against Hong Kong, Tibet, Nepal, and other of its neighbors. One discovered document revealed China had military designs on some 17 neighboring nations. With respect to attacking Taiwan, the CCP threatened to bomb Japan, a non-nuclear state, with nuclear weapons should Japan come to the assistance of Taiwan, and in the words of the CCP, “make you surrender unconditionally just as you did in WWII.”

At the end, the authors appear to question the entirety of nuclear deterrence in favor of pursuing disarmament. Even the testing of a Minuteman missile was questioned when it is well understood such tests are not part of an arms race but part of demonstrating the credibility of a deterrent. Professor Sharon Weiner is quoted as questioning whether the US investment in nuclear deterrence actually causes more problems than it solves, raising the question whether a world in which the US has no nuclear deterrent is her preference.

She complains one problem is that ICBMs can only be used “quickly” or in a rushed environment. That is not in fact true– in an environment when only a very limited number of nuclear weapons are used by our adversaries, which is what Putin’s “escalate to win” strategy implies, ICBMs would readily be available to respond. And given the multiplicity of technical means of determining whether our enemies have launched nuclear weapons at the United States, our ability to retaliate is what would give an adversary pause, including launching our ICBMs even after the US has confirmed a major missile attack has occurred against the United States.

Finally, the authors repeat the four-decade old narrative that the use of nuclear weapons would cause a nuclear winter, a drop of temperatures below freezing. When reviewed in 1983, I determined all scare stories about global freezing and nuclear winter were ultimately based on Carl Sagan’s original research on dust storms on Mars.

Sagan postulated the huge amount of soot and carbon from cities burning due to a nuclear war would blot out the sun’s rays from reaching the earth. However, the same principle was also claimed by other research to prevent the heat from the sun escaping back through the atmosphere because of the “blanket” effect of soot and carbon, and thus producing global warming and an earth with a “fever,” thus the repeatedly reference by Sagan to Mars dust storms.

Putin and now apparently Xi apparently both believe that the limited use of nuclear weapons does not imperil their survival or that of their nations. That is what matters because it is these totalitarians we must deter. Both of which are running an arms race, threatening aggression and building nuclear forces far beyond anything needed to defend their own countries. Neither has any interest in disarmament, let alone arms control.

Thankfully, there is widespread bi-partisan support for the necessary modernization of the US nuclear deterrent both for the United States and our extended deterrent for our allies in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific. Oppenheimer said late in his life he had no regrets for his bomb work, that the nuclear bomb had to be deployed as the US needed its deterrent value. Now 78 years later, that deterrent truth remains.

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

By: Isabella DeLuca, Media Associate

In recent years, China’s assertive actions and growing influence on the global stage have raised serious concerns about its hostility towards the United States. As China’s geopolitical influence begins to expand, so do our circumstances. 

FBI Director Christopher Wray said, “The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and our economic vitality, is the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China.” He’s right, yet the FBI, the DOJ, the Department of Defense, and even the President of the United States have sat back and allowed China to run the show– behavior that would have never been tolerated under President Trump. 

In recent months and years, very alarming and aggressive actions have occurred on China’s behalf. China has sent a spy balloon over our airspace– conveniently over one of the largest nuclear arsenals in the U.S. and was able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites. Thankfully, the U.S. military could shoot down the balloon after it was done spying. Despite us not having an extradition policy with China, they also have established police stations on American soil to “monitor Chinese citizens living in the United States.” Just last month, the CCP sent a Chinese warship to harass a U.S. Destroyer in the Taiwan Strait, and they have even threatened the use of nuclear weapons against the United States if we do not stay away from Taiwan. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said that over the last two years, at various points in the Ukraine crisis, when we have witnessed nuclear threats from the Russian side, we have known how to address them because we have decades of atomic risk reduction, strategic arms control and essential signaling experience with the Russians. We do not have this with China, which is unsettling and destabilizing.

Additionally, China has bought up 384,000 acres of farmland– including land in North Dakota that is just a stone’s throw away from some of our high-capability military bases; they have begun negotiations with Cuba to establish a new joint military training facility on the island– which is only eighty miles from Florida; they’ve been colonizing and continue to occupy parts of Africa and have established military bases there. China has also escalated the U.S. Tech War by banning Micron over “security and privacy concerns;” they have raided U.S. businesses in China and arrested workers; expanded their spy network in Mexico; and over the years, they have tenaciously increased their presence in Central America and the Caribbean through what is part of their Belt and Road Initiative (B.R.I.). The B.R.I. is a global infrastructure development strategy that seeks to connect China with the rest of the world– but in reality, it’s just a calculated expansion of their influence and an attempt by China to isolate Taiwan. Cuba is the most recent country to join China’s B.R.I., Jamaica and six other island nations in the Caribbean joined in 2019, and Costa Rica in 2018.

The list goes on and continues to grow exponentially. The CCP blatantly disregards and disrespects the United States and continues to mock us by violating American rules and privacy through their belligerent and aggressive behavior. 

China’s aggression is the direct consequence of electing a President whose son has done shady business dealings with them. The Hunter Biden laptop story is already criminal enough, but whatever blackmail the Chinese government has on the Biden crime family indicates that it blows the laptop story out of the water. In efforts to do damage control to prevent something that is most likely illegal and horrifying from surfacing, the Biden Administration has allowed China to do whatever it is they want. 

While some members of the Biden Administration have called for talks with China to establish peace and de-escalation, China is past the talking stage. With the amount of power and influence China has obtained in such a short time, we are at their mercy, not the other way around. 

Isabella DeLuca is a Media Associate at the Gold Institute for International Strategy.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Catástrofe total en la Cumbre UE-CELAC)

The summit of the EU and CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) held at the beginning of the week ended just as it deserved, that is, in a terrible fiasco, in a disgrace for the EU and a display of totalitarian shamelessness on the part of the representatives of some Ibero-American dictatorships.

It was foreseeable, as all the prior warnings reveal, that a meeting in Brussels to study new forms of cooperation and engagement should not have included countries under regimes that massively violate human rights, do not recognize rights for their peoples, are governed lawlessly under the absolute arbitrariness of their dictators and repressive apparatuses, and are involved in serious international crime activities such as drug trafficking. Because they do not meet the minimum conditions for that general framework of cooperation, and because it is an affront to all the democratic countries at the summit, both European and American.

But the organizers of the event, headed by the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, refused even to consider leaving the worst dictatorships out of a serious conversation, and so it happened that the serious transatlantic conversation became impossible. One may suspect that some will not regret it, because from the outset they only wanted to hold this meeting to whitewash the most ferocious dictatorships and the regimes that have set out on the path of narco-communist power and will foreseeably be similar dictatorships soon, unless some resistance or currently imponderable factor arises.

The summit was filled with images created precisely for that whitewashing of the criminal regimes, and there posed proudly Ursula von der Leyen and Pedro Sánchez with the dictator Díaz-Canel, who holds thousands of innocent Cubans under torture and has minors buried in dungeons, losing their physical and mental health, minors with prison sentences of five years for shouting freedom.

Many wondered how one was going to talk about development projects when Maduro, who did not dare come to Europe for fear of being arrested, sends as head of the delegation the internationally sanctioned drug trafficker and criminal Delcy Rodríguez. And even the multiple murderer and monstrous dictator Daniel Ortega sent a delegation that took the liberty of humiliating the European Union by imposing an amendment on a text that was already wretched in itself for its tepidness in assessing the war in Ukraine and the invasion and aggression by Russia.

The summit has therefore been a catastrophe for the credibility and the already much-battered reputation, not only of this disastrous current European Commission, but of the European Union in general. In two days it incinerated and threw overboard even the appearances of its principles and values in order to seek common denominators with criminal dictatorships allied precisely with Russia and China, most of them hostile when not saboteurs of the fight for the freedom of the sovereign countries of Central Europe, with Ukraine as the greatest exponent.

French President Emmanuel Macron had his photograph taken with genuine thugs; gangs of Spanish communists staged parallel totalitarian events with all the terrorist and drug-trafficking forces of the São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group around Brussels. Criminals who have the opposition imprisoned, such as Bolivia’s own Luis Arce, posed for photos next to framed images of dead founding fathers or living politicians. All of that will help him to tell his people to lose all hope, that Europe supports all the criminals and narco-communists who crush their peoples.

There were delirious situations in which the hitmen of these dictators blocked the passage to events of accredited staff members of the parliament in the very seat of the European Parliament. And members of the Cuban democratic resistance were assaulted by shadowy figures who had come from all the various dark warrens of Castroist and São Paulo-Forum communism on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the end, probably the only lasting effects of the EU-CELAC summit, beyond the shame and the colossal political and moral failure, and totally unrelated to any projects and agreements on commercial, industrial, social or scientific cooperation, of which not even a glimpse was seen, will be the internal European investigation that the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR), of which VOX is a member and in which I chair the ECR-EuroLat Ibero-American Political Action Group, will certainly demand in the European Parliament.

Responsibilities will have to be established and explanations given of how it could happen that the seats of the institutions of the largest community of democratic nations in the world were stormed and hijacked by the henchmen of criminal regimes whose only reason for being is the crushing of their gagged peoples and their international criminal activities.

The EU-CELAC summit has therefore been a searing disgrace for the 27 countries of the EU that were paying for the party and for the organizers, whose chief person responsible, Josep Borrell, added another reason to resign or be dismissed. No one has any hope that he will find a shred of self-respect to leave the post, so he will exhaust his disastrous stint in office when this European Parliament is dissolved before the June 2024 elections.

What was meant to be presented as a stellar act right at the start of the Spanish presidency of the EU this semester, a great event of reunion after the pandemic to study and project new ways of cooperation between Europe and Ibero-America, turned into a shameful takeover of the EU’s seats in Brussels, including the European Parliament, by dictators, their henchmen and an army of communist hitmen and thugs who took advantage of the stage and the occasion to make propaganda for the narco-communist tyrannies and mockery of their victims.

But above all it has been a display of the criminal complicity that this European Commission practices with the worst dictatorships of Ibero-America. The credibility of the European Union has been left in tatters. And that is no longer fixed merely with the necessary disappearance of the sinister and disastrous Josep Borrell and his socialist team of collaboration with the São Paulo Forum.

From next June onward, a great work of reform will have to be undertaken in the European Parliament to put an end to the network of complicities between the Commission and Parliament on one side and, on the other, the totalitarian organizations of the narco-communism of the São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group. Perhaps that way it will also be possible to clarify conduct that is hard to explain today and that so greatly facilitated this political, diplomatic and moral catastrophe that the EU-CELAC summit has been.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Maria Maalouf and appeared in Arab News. After a failed mutiny, what next for the Wagner mercenaries?)

Military analysts in the West are carefully studying the remarks by Russia’s mutinous mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin last week as he welcomed Wagner Group mercenaries to Belarus.

He told them to be respectful to their hosts, to train the Belarusian armed forces, and to be ready for new missions and a “new journey to Africa.”

The main issue with the Wagner Group is how they will operate after their failed June 23-24 mutiny: a march on Moscow that suddenly stopped after Vladimir Putin struck a deal with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko to have the Wagner troops stationed in the former Soviet republic.

The mutiny made Putin look weak and threatened. Therefore, the destiny of the Wagner Group and its 25,000 fighters will be determined by the Russian president, because he does not want to appear before the world as weak or threatened.

There are a number of strategic factors that Putin will employ to keep the Wagner Group under his authority, and a few strategic realities that could determine its future. For sure, Putin will deny the Wagner chief’s allegations. First, Prigozhin said his mutiny was not targeting Putin and that he was not trying to remove the president from power. Instead, he was aiming to settle scores with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and military chief Valery Gerasimov.

Putin is supporting the two most senior military officials in his cabinet against Prigozhin and his allegations. This will deprive the Wagner leader of much his group’s legitimacy and legal status. If Prigozhin continues to harbor animosity toward the defense ministry, the Russian leadership will curtail much of his militia’s activity outside Russia — because it would not be clear whether any military action by Wagner would be for its own advantage, or in the interests of Russian national security.

Wagner has previously served Russian foreign policy. Its forces fought with the Russian regular army in annexing Crimea in 2014. It fought Daesh in Syria, it took part in missions in the Central African Republic and Mali, and recently it captured the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

However, Putin will not allow Wagner to take any further part in the fighting in Ukraine. He wants to win the war against the West and Kyiv using only the armed forces of Russia. The military situation for Putin is not totally desperate, since this summer’s Ukrainian counter-offensive has so far largely failed to dislodge Russian troops from the positions they have occupied since the invasion began in February last year. Putin will impose as many limitations as possible to hinder and impede any military assignments for the Wagner Group, in Ukraine or elsewhere. Wagner’s presence in Belarus could be a long-term commitment to avoid their involvement in future wars in Africa and in the Middle East. As their registration with the defense ministry continues, the Russian government will be able to know exactly how many Wagner Group fighters are engaged in wars in places such as Syria and Libya.

Wagner may in fact transfer most if not all of its troops from Syria to Belarus. While they were deployed in Syria as early as 2015, the trend has been one of moving Wagner military personnel from Syria to Ukraine. This did not leave the Russian forces in Syria in any way weak or vulnerable. This is why Wagner may be forced to pull all of its military units from Syria without much strategic loss for Moscow.

Moreover, it is not clear what the future lies for the Wagner Group in Libya. They have been there since 2014. They are siding with the government of the eastern part of the country commanded by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. They supported him in his attack on Tripoli in 2019. However, Wagner’s numbers there are not that large, perhaps no more than 2,000 fighters. Putin will seek a political and military freeze in Libya to be able to control all the forces loyal to Wagner and not require any help from them in Libya. Wagner Group could pull out, or be militarily inactive.

However, the most difficult situation for Putin and the Wagner Group is in Sudan, and the conflict between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. A shadowy Russian company called M-Invest— based in St. Petersburg, Prigozhin’s home city — has an office in Khartoum, and an agreement with the Sudanese government to mine for gold. In fact, the company is a front for the Wagner Group, and was employed by the former dictator Omar Bashir to suppress protests in late 2018.

It is not clear whether Putin will allow Wagner to continue to operate in Sudan. He may order it to be inactive. He may also change the nature of its missions to one of intelligence gathering. But the situation is so unstable in Sudan that no foreign government, including Russia, will make any long-term commitment.

The Russian government has a great deal of strategic ambiguity when it comes to the Wagner Group and its operations in the Middle East. Antipathy in the Kremlin suggests that Wagner’s future in the Middle East will not exceed the scope of the missions assigned to it in the past. Russia will probably gradually phase the militia out in Syria, Libya, and Sudan. Whether they are replaced with other troops loyal to Moscow will depend on the progress of the conflicts in those countries. But Russia will strive not to lose wars there — it may institute a series of military doctrines to allow Moscow to exercise power in Syria, Libya, and Sudan without any reliance on mercenary troops.

Maria Maalouf is a Senior Media Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Maria Maalouf and appeared in Arab News. Israeli democracy faces an uncertain future)

An important question now being asked in Washington’s many political circles, as well as all over the world, is: Will the incumbent government of Israel destroy democracy in the country? This is because some of the government’s policy proposals have elicited widespread criticism and condemnation, both locally and globally. These policies have even provoked many objections inside Israel, as shown by the large protests that have taken place this year.

It is best to focus on a few of these policy undertakings to highlight the nature and scope of the political controversies dominating Israel’s political life right now. These policy debates center on the following points: judicial reform, crime and corruption, donations to elected officials, the electronic tagging of domestic violence offenders, the independence of the Israeli police, and the creation of a national guard.

To begin with, it is critical to examine the makeup of the current Israeli government. The 37th government of Israel, agreed upon on Dec. 29, 2022, was the result of the Knesset election held on Nov. 1, 2022. Six parties joined forces to create this coalition government. They are Likud, United Torah Judaism, Shas, the Religious Zionist Party, Otzma Yehudit, and Noam. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is leading a government for the sixth time.

The government’s first controversial policy was its proposed judicial reforms, which critics warned would lead to the weakening of the tradition of the separation of powers. Lawmakers from the ruling coalition are working to narrow down the authority of the Supreme Court, especially regarding its ability to side against both the legislative and executive branches. This would give the Knesset more power, allowing it to overrule certain decisions issued by the Supreme Court. In addition, the Knesset would have more say in the appointment of judges. Further, the Supreme Court would be denied the right to assess the constitutionality of Israel’s Basic Laws.

Another political quandary emerged in March, when Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant criticized the reforms “for the sake of Israel’s security.” The next day, Netanyahu announced that Gallant would be fired, but the prime minister later backed down.

Second, crime and punishment in Israel is a difficult political topic to argue about. The law in Israel permits a declaration of the incapacity of top elected officials to serve in their jobs if they are under legal investigation. Under the proposed amendments, no judicial review would be allowed. Furthermore, the authority to investigate would be shifted from the office of the attorney general to the collective authority of the government and Cabinet.

Third, the controversy surrounding donations to elected officials concerns Netanyahu personally. In March, the government introduced changes to the Public Service (Gifts) Law. This would allow Netanyahu to accept donations to finance his legal defense fund.

Minister of Justice Yariv Levin expressed his fear that allowing elected officials to receive gifts could cause a potential conflict of interest and foster an atmosphere of political corruption. And Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said this law could “create a real opportunity for governmental corruption.”

Fourth, the appointment to ministerial positions of criminals who have served a custodial sentence would be possible under a bill introduced by the government in March. This relates to the case of the leader of the Shas party, Aryeh Deri. Deri was in jail between 2000 and 2002 after being convicted of corruption. The proposed bill would broaden the pardoning of convicted criminals to the degree where they could hold the highest political offices in Israel. This bill is being rejected by the attorney general, seconded by Knesset legal adviser Sagit Afik.

Fifth is the law on the electronic tagging of domestic violence offenders. It was described as being anti-men. The increase in the murder rate of women inside Israel prompted a bill necessitating that men accused of domestic violence must wear an electronic tag. In March, the Knesset voted down the bill, citing threats to Israel’s national security.

The sixth political dilemma for Israel is the topic of the reorganization of its security establishment, in particular the level of independence that the Israeli police can be endowed with. Last December, Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir proposed that the office of the attorney general be stripped of the power to scrutinize the operations of the police. Instead, the Ministry of National Security would observe and monitor all of its activities. This still has not been settled yet. Politically, the suggested restructuring of the Israeli police touches on the question of human and civil rights in Israel.

The creation of a national guard is the seventh and last dissension in current Israeli politics. It raises the fear that Israel will have two police forces. There is the regular police, which will deal with the Jewish citizens of Israel. Then, there will be a pro-government militia that will deal with the Palestinian citizens. This will discriminate against the Arab population. Consequently, in April, Israel’s Cabinet consented to the creation of a law enforcement apparatus that would work separately from the police. Worries are mounting over the threats to the professionalism of Israel’s police. Many political observers view such an independent force as an indication of the politicization of the police.

Ultimately, the future of Israeli democracy is very difficult to judge. One crucial investigation to conduct is: Are these changes complete? Another question is what are the factors that define Israel’s democratic performance? It is often asked why the prestige of the attorney general’s office has not been employed to curb these controversial political practices. But the real question is what will be the attitude of the American Jewish community in answering the serious changes occurring in Israel today? And will the Biden administration pledge to continue maintaining Israel’s security while rejecting these laws as undemocratic?

Maria Maalouf is a Senior Media Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. La impotencia de la mentira)

Emmanuel Macron is today the perfect image of impotence as France burns, as a prelude to other foreseeable fires in many other corners of Europe.

It is the well-deserved impotence of the European politicians of the social-democratic consensus of the lie, of the irresponsibility and the criminal recklessness that is the entire immigration policy of the past decades, which had its catastrophic peak in that call for open borders that Merkel made in 2015.

The socialist sociologist Giovanni Sartori warned 25 years ago that Europe was heading for catastrophe because unassimilable immigration would blow up in its heart. It could have been avoided.

By closing the external borders, with a warning to all countries of origin that no one who arrived illegally could ever regularize their situation, and with mass, forceful and effective deportations. Sweden is now preparing measures after sinking into the terrible effects of the mistakes of the past, with cities taken over by gangs of outlaws from the Horn of Africa.

Common sense has been defeated again and again. The ideological agenda of the forces of the social-democratic consensus, which see in immigration one of the ways to dissolve the European nations and their identities in order to create a multicultural super-space, has prevailed.

Well, there you have it: the multicultural space of terror and of the impotence of the rulers. Incapable of protecting the life, security and property of the French, the pitiful President Macron begs the worst barbarians to be so kind as not to burn all of France. Meanwhile in Brussels, Macron, Scholz, Sánchez, Von der Leyen and the whole troop guilty of these subversions try to force others to fall into the same trap and betray their nations.

But they are going to have a hard time of it. Viktor Orbán and Tadeusz Morawiecki announced to their colleagues in the European Union that they refuse and will flatly refuse to accept mandatory distributions of immigrants, which would create in Poland and Hungary the conditions for the scenes of cars, shops and official buildings burning to be repeated there.

They are not going to share the fate of the Western politicians who, with their blindness, have led their countries to the brink of cultural civil war. The one that is already arriving by way of France, in view of the permanent aggression of a non-integrable immigration that never identifies with the host country, intensely criminal, always a fifth column of a hostile religion, with a radical parasitic and invasive will and an ever-greater readiness for violence.

While Paris burns, the cities of Warsaw and Budapest enjoy a life of absolute calm with maximum security; they have minimal crime, much prosperity and social cohesion, much social trust and zero African and Muslim immigration. That is how they want to keep it.

Their proposal, like that of all the national forces within the European Parliament in the group of Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), is the closing of the European Union’s external borders and the expulsion of all illegal immigrants who cannot justify a right to remain. The expulsions have to be effective and swift, with clear rules for the countries of origin, which must accept all their compatriots slated for deportation if they want to keep receiving European aid.

French cities are burning because of the explosion of violence in reaction to the death of a delinquent from gunshots by a police officer. Young people of sub-Saharan African immigrant origin, but also members of the Maghrebi communities, have thrown themselves into destruction, looting and arson across the whole of France. And all Macron can think of is to blame social networks for the fact that tens of millions of French people see their daily life interrupted and their personal and property integrity threatened by a brutal display of violence.

Macron, who in his day accused Marine Le Pen of wanting to provoke a civil war for seeking to impose law and order in French cities, finds that he has the civil war set up. And he has to see that the French authorities have lost real control, not only permanently over many neighborhoods in more and more cities, but over entire cities whenever the criminal immigrant gangs so wish. And the only thing that occurs to him is to order the arrest of the police officer who fired the shots, thereby proving the demonstrators right.

The police are fed up, and not only in France, of being the scapegoat of politicians incapable of guaranteeing the security and the life of European citizens against hordes of young immigrants of the first, second or third generation, it makes no difference, all with the same degree of readiness for violence and hatred of everything that symbolizes the country that took them in and supports them. Let us put our foot down before the dystopia of merciless racial war becomes reality across Europe.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.