(This article first appeared in the Capitol Institute: https://www.thecapitolinstitute.org/2023/10/25/remembering-the-beirut-barracks-bombing-40-years-later/)

On the morning of October 23, 1983, the world was jolted by the shocking news of a catastrophic terrorist attack that severely undermined peacekeeping efforts in the Middle East. Forty years later, the memory of the Beirut barracks bombing, which took the lives of 241 American service members and 58 French paratroopers, remains indelibly imprinted in our collective consciousness.

The attack was a calculated suicide truck bombing that targeted two barracks housing U.S. and French multinational peacekeeping troops in the heart of Beirut. The sheer magnitude of the explosion obliterated the buildings, leaving them in ruins and inflicting a severe blow to the international peacekeeping mission during the tumultuous Lebanese Civil War. Subsequent investigations attributed the attack to Hezbollah, and the calamitous aftermath resonated deeply worldwide.

This bombing marked a pivotal moment in peacekeeping endeavors in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East. In the aftermath of such profound loss, both the United States and France opted to withdraw their troops from Lebanon. The events of that fateful day emphasized the paramount importance of robust intelligence and stringent security measures in volatile regions. Furthermore, they highlighted the necessity of a swift, decisive response to any aggression against the U.S. and its allies.

On the 34th anniversary of this grievous incident, I had the privilege of hosting President Reagan’s National Security Advisor, Bud McFarlane, in my office. During our discussion, he detailed the happenings in the White House on that historic day.

Within a mere 48 hours of the attack, President Reagan had assembled his cabinet, the National Security Council principals, and presented the compelling evidence at hand. However, Secretary Weinberger sought even more definitive proof of the perpetrators. To cut a long story short, a united front comprising the U.S., the French, the Italians – all of whom had representatives in Beirut on that very day – alongside their embassies, jointly concluded with unwavering certainty that Hezbollah, with the backing of Iran, was responsible.

The delayed response was primarily attributed to internal divisions within the cabinet, particularly between the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense. Approximately 10 days post-incident, after the president had traveled to Asia and returned, a meeting was convened. At this juncture, Director Casey presented compelling evidence linking Hezbollah to the attack, detailing their preparations and the locations where they had rehearsed.

Despite this evidence, objections were raised by the Secretary of Defense over concerns of potential collateral damage. He emphasized that a retaliatory move would be unlikely to harm civilians. The Sixth Fleet, with resolute intent, was prepared to target the Beqaa Valley facility. However, the Secretary of Defense highlighted the broader implications, arguing that our actions could inadvertently strengthen the Arab world’s bargaining position, potentially leading to increased oil prices and deteriorating our diplomatic relations. He firmly advised against any retaliatory measures. Upon hearing the details, the President immediately made a decision, stating, “We cannot tolerate acts that harm Americans with impunity. We will pursue those responsible. Is everyone present clear on this directive?”

The consensus was unanimous, and the meeting was adjourned.

Close to midnight, as the Seventh Fleet, in collaboration with the French naval force that had the aircraft carrier Foch stationed in the eastern Mediterranean, was preparing to act, I received an unexpected call from the Situation Room. The attack had been aborted by the Secretary of Defense. I was taken aback by this development.

I promptly informed the President. It transpired that post the meeting, the Secretary of Defense had communicated with the President, raising concerns about the potential risks involved. He persuaded the President that a more cautious approach was warranted in responding to the situation. While there are more intricacies to this episode, the repercussions of that moment of hesitation persist even today.

As we grapple with the challenges posed by extremist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, and state actors like Iran, it is imperative to underscore the significance of swift and decisive actions, and to acknowledge the consequences of inaction. The 1983 Beirut barracks bombing stands as a solemn reminder of the sacrifices made in the pursuit of peace. As the 40th anniversary of this tragic event approaches, we pay tribute to the lives tragically taken and commit to understanding and heeding the lessons it imparted.

Eli M. Gold is the President of the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a leading Washington, DC foreign policy and national security think tank.

Motion of Member Eppink,

Tabled 12 October 2023

The Chamber,

Following the deliberations,

Considering that President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority has not distanced himself from the terrorist attacks of Hamas;

Considering the recent remarks of the Palestinian diplomatic representative in The Netherlands, only referring to ‘brutal aggression of Israel’;

Considering that the EU supports the Palestinians with 691 million euro;

Requests the government to advocate in the EU to suspend all payments to the Palestinian Authority, as soon as the Palestinian Authority expresses support for Hamas;

Requests the government to commit these funds thereafter through other channels to directly support humanitarian purposes in the Palestinian areas;

and proceeds to the order of the day,

[Derk Jan] Eppink

A Congressional Research Service report (RL30563, issued May 2, 2022) tallies the total F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter program at 2,456 aircraft. Including development costs, this works out to $2.4 trillion, the largest defense aircraft procurement ever.

From the outset, the program has faced daunting technical challenges, with different F-35 versions for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines. In seeking to build planes that encompass all missions conducted by the prior generation of fighters, the Pentagon is ignoring lessons gleaned from the 1960s Tactical Fighter Experimental (TFX) program.

The program was embraced eagerly in 1961 by Robert S. McNamara, President John F. Kennedy’s first secretary of defense. The F-111/TFX faced multiple performance shortfalls and serial cost overruns. It had an underpowered engine that could not meet the speed requirement of supersonic dash for 300 miles. The F-111 could only fly supersonic for — not a misprint — 30 miles. It was the heaviest tactical fighter, and it had the lowest thrust-to-weight ratio and the highest ratio of aircraft weight to wing area. When an upgraded engine was produced, it could only be put into 235 of the 437 F-111s; the others could not be retrofitted for the new engine.

TFX lasted until March 1968, when McNamara’s successor, Clark Clifford, cancelled the joint program. The Air Force ultimately purchased 437 aircraft in no less than eight configurations: one-third its original planned buy at four times the total program cost. The Navy F-111 fared even worse because, as a fleet-defense interceptor, it faced more complex challenges, and, as a result, only eight planes out of a planned 335 were purchased.

Despite these missteps of the past, the Department of Defense is, some 60 years later, once again in the process of procuring a multi-mission fighter to supplant existing aircraft. This brings us to the F-35 today.

Plans to equip the F-35 with multiple enhanced capabilities with the goal of meeting the needs of all the services mean that the thrust, power, and thermal management limitations of the current F135 engine will be exceeded by the end of the decade. With the F135 engine already running twice as hot as the design goal and driving maintenance costs higher, mostly due to the Honeywell-supplied power and thermal management system (PTMS), there is agreement that a propulsion upgrade is urgently needed in order to keep the aircraft mission capable. But two competing views have emerged as to the best path forward. 

The current provider of the F135 engine, Pratt & Whitney, has proposed an Engine Core Upgrade (ECU). An upgrade to the existing engine, it would improve thrust and range by more than 10 percent each along with providing a 5 percent boost in vertical lift and a 50 percent improvement in thermal management. This modernization would also be a retrofit, so it would rely on a similar supply chain, infrastructure, and sustainment network.

The Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP), meanwhile, would be a wholesale replacement of the Pratt & Whitney F135 engine. GE asserts that its XA100 engine will achieve 25 percent better fuel efficiency, resulting in a 20 percent range gain, 10 to 20 percent more thrust, and, thus, twice the engine-cooling capability (which runs off engine thrust). But there are several hurdles that call into question the viability of adding the GE engine to the F-35.

For starters, the XA100 is incompatible with the Marine Corps F-35B STOVL variant. USAF retired Maj. Gen. John L. Barry has also flagged the fact that the Navy version of the AETP would be different enough from the Air Force that it would require a separate Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase. 

Writing in Forbes, national security expert Loren Thompson cites 10 additional reasons why GE’s XA100 would not work with the F-35: (1) weak rationale; (2) excessive cost; (3) joint interoperability; (4) allied interoperability; (5) logistical commonality; (6) technical risk; (7) delayed availability; (8) engine exportability; (9) untapped potential; (10) fiscal responsibility. Most notable among these are technical risk — GE has never built an engine anything like the XA100; and untapped potential, in the form of failing to exploit the modular design of the F135 engine that was intended to facilitate upgrades.

The recent loss of an F-35 over South Carolina, and a GAO report that was released shortly after the incident, illustrates real life consequences and ongoing risks of undetected problems and program management shortfalls currently plaguing the Pentagon vis-à-vis the fighter jet. They also call into question the wisdom of adding more maintenance complexity and cost to the F-35 program at this time. 

With only 450 F-35s in service — a mere 18 percent of the total procurement — only 55 percent are mission capable, as the Pentagon is “behind schedule” in maintaining the fighter jets. Attesting to the centrality of ongoing management of the program, of the $1.7 trillion appropriated for the F-35, only $400 billion represents purchase costs, with the remaining $1.3 trillion allocated to maintenance and support. As the GAO surmises, “the preparedness of our military depends upon” charting “an affordable path forward,” and that involves streamlining, not complicating sustainment programs. 

The debate on the best way forward currently sits in Congress. Despite the fact that the Air Force has indicated it is committed to moving forward with the ECU, the House of Representatives’ version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was recently passed with $588 million in funding for the AETP. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall reacted to this move by saying, “As often happens, the Hill doesn’t want to let go.” 

The House version of the NDAA must now be reconciled with the Senate version, which fully funds the ECU and includes a specific prohibition against integrating any alternate engine, such as the AETP, on any F-35 variant. As negotiators from both chambers of Congress meet in Conference Committee to hash out differences between these two NDAA versions, we will see which pathway prevails.

Looking back, one might ask if McNamara, while CEO of Ford Motor, would have entertained a proposal to build a vehicle combining the carrying capacity of a truck, the comfort of a luxury limousine, and the speed of a racing car. Then again, one might ask why JFK selected as his defense secretary a business leader who committed the auto industry’s most famous flop — $250 million invested over a decade so as to produce 18 Edsel models, at an accumulated sunk cost that as of its 1959 public sales debut would equal $3.6 billion in 2023 dollars.

It all comes down to this: Should the Pentagon make a bet-the-company wager? A strong rule of prudence is to never bet the company. Cost estimates for the AETP range from $6 billion to $40 billion in a F-35 program already $14 billion in the red. Conversely, ECU cost estimates tally $2.4 billion, with a proven technology solution.

The TFX program presents a cautionary tale. Betting on multi-level technology innovations is a crapshoot, a wager that experience teaches is usually a bum bet. Moving forward, leaders at the Pentagon would be wise to minimize unnecessary additional investments in the F-35 program — sticking to the most cost-effective and technologically compatible upgrades — and reserve more technologically ambitious options for a 6th generation fighter.

John C. Wohlstetter, a senior fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, is author of Sleepwalking With The Bomb (2nd ed., 2014).

Travis Korson is the director of public policy at Frontiers of Freedom.

This article first appeared in the American Spectator Magazine: https://spectator.org/israel-at-war-two-essential-benchmarks/)

In assessing the impact of any war on Israel, it is essential to keep in mind two huge differences between the two countries: America’s vastly greater population and geographic area. Consider:

POPULATION: The current U.S. population of 340 million is 37 times greater than Israel’s current 9.2 million population.

AREA: Israel today is almost exactly the size of of New Jersey.

Let’s take a look at not only the current conflict, but the prospective conflict between Israel and Iran.

In a recent article, Israel’s Dilemma, I compared Iran to Israel by these measures. As Iran is the main supplier of Hamas weaponry we can start with what I recently published as to relative vulnerability, based upon population and area figures—as of July 2023 (not changed to the later figures I use above)—of the two countries:

Geography portends a vast difference for geostrategic vulnerability to a nuclear strike. Consider these projected world area, population, and population-density figures, as of July, from the U.S. Census Bureau’s U.S. and World Population Clock (for U.S. figures) and U.N. population division data (for international figures) reported by Worldometer: Israel’s 9.1 million people (it ranks 100th among all nations) are crammed into a space that is almost exactly the same size as New Jersey, which has 9.3 million. The U.S. population, ranked third behind China and India, is now 335 million, 37 times that of Israel. Iran’s population size ranks 18th worldwide, with 84 million, roughly 9 times Israel’s.

Comparative areas (in square kilometers) are 9.1 million for the U.S., 1.6 million for Iran, 22,600 for New Jersey, and 21,640 for Israel. Iran’s area is 99.4 percent of the combined areas of France, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Population densities per square kilometer are 36 per square km for the U.S., 52 per square km. for Iran, and 400 per square km for Israel; Israel’s population density is thus roughly 8 times Iran’s and 11 times America’s. Israel — far smaller and far more densely populated — is vastly more vulnerable to nuclear attack. Put into national security terms, it lacks spatial — i.e., geostrategic — depth.

Now, on to Israel’s current crisis—thankfully with no nuclear use to be factored in—as of Monday afternoon, local time (Israel is on GMT+3).

After two days, the casualty tally in a war that began 6:30 AM Saturday is 1,000 dead and 2,500 wounded. Applying the population yardstick for Israel given above and casting it in U.S. per capita terms would equate to 37,000 Americans dead, and add 92,500 wounded nationwide. This translates into 129,500 total U.S. per capita equivalent casualties—in the first 60 hours.

For the area yardstick in our comparison we use Israel’s actual losses for New Jersey, as the area overlay of Israel and New Jersey are almost exactly identical. All these numbers are bound to dramatically increase over the duration of the war, which likely will last at a minimum several months. It is even very possible that months could become years, given multiple complex military and intel challenges.

Finally, we should then ask ourselves two questions:

(1) What would an American president do if an invader inflicted 37,000 dead and 92,500 wounded in 60 hours? (2) What would the governor of New Jersey do if an invader inflicted 1,000 dead and 2,500 wounded in the Garden State, in 60 hours?

Bottom Line. We must support Israel in its retaliatory campaign to the full extent that we would use force, were America to suffer the per capita U.S. casualty equivalent losses. This must include direct, decisive action against Iran, clearly the planning architect and chief supplier of Hamas for this war.

John Wohlstetter, a senior fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, is author of Sleepwalking with the Bomb (Discovery Institute Press, 2d. ed. 2014)

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Otro muro que se hunde en Alemania)

As 34 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall are marked, another wall is collapsing resoundingly in Germany. Another wall also erected to divide the Germans, not between the free and the slaves of the communist regime like the previous one, but between good and bad. That is, between those who vote for the parties of the Single Party of the colorful hues of Agenda 2030, which are the Greens, the Reds (SPD) and the Blacks (CDU/CSU), and the bad ones who vote for, are active in and defend the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The wall is sinking, the so-called “cordon sanitaire” is cracking, which is nothing more than the device of the elites of the left so that the real right never governs. It is ever clearer that in Germany, sooner rather than later, an alliance of the right will form to combat head-on and without complexes the still-hegemonic bloc of a social democracy that holds the CDU hostage with its elites. And which, with its multicultural project and the delirious social engineering set in motion in the European Union, wants to do away with the German nation as with the rest of the European nations.

Alarm in the District Parliament of Central Saxony. The CDU, the Free Voters party and the AfD voted together to block the payment of 3.5 million euros for new refugee facilities. It is not a village. It is an entire district.

There are ever more places where local activists defy the directives of Berlin and seek alliances to defend themselves against many insane policies of the left, from education in gender ideology, the eco-climatic delirium and, above all, the immigrant invasion. And that collaboration is anathema for the chiefs in Berlin. Those who want to prevent at all costs the forces of the right from acting together have a serious problem in a Germany where the general deterioration of the quality of life and insecurity have soared.

Because the voters of the AfD, approaching now a quarter of the electorate of all Germany and more than 30% in many regions of the east, who have been fed massively by the vote to the left, from the SPD and Die Linke, have the same concerns as the voters of the CDU/CSU, and not only on the question of illegal immigration, the defense of values, family, borders and traditions.

The problem spreads like an oil slick; large and small cities, districts and hamlets that watch their social and public services collapse under the costs of the unstoppable flow of remote foreigners treated as refugees, have made a large part of the social benefits for Germans disappear and have dramatically changed the German landscape in a decade.

Many of the municipalities are directly bankrupt and have had to suspend services considered essential. Seeing that there is nothing to expect from left-wing parties like the SPD and the Greens, launched into promoting the multicultural, shrinking and impoverished society, those Germans with an attachment to the nation and above all to the security and the ways of life that their rulers are destroying for them, move toward the parties of the right.

And there are ever more members of the CDU and CSU who know that they will only be able to govern with rationality and common sense in an alliance with the AfD. And among the national leaders the first trial balloons have also arrived, although the media and left-wing packs have silenced them, but only for the moment.

The problems with the AfD undoubtedly exist, with a leadership that has not been solid, has had a lack of leadership and undoubtedly has extremist elements. But the left-wing parties that have governed and govern have no less extremist ones. And little can be said by the members of a government led by an SPD whose leadership was bought by Russia over the past twenty years and whose chancellor was, as vice-president of the Young Socialists, a courier of the Kremlin’s propaganda apparatus against NATO, an assiduous visitor of his contacts in East Berlin in the 1980s. In the local alliances, where the weight of knowing the persons is greater than that of the party labels, these alliances will multiply.

Yes, the firewall is sinking that the rulers, the intellectuals and journalists, those German social-democratic elites of all those parties, had erected under threats and that they intended to separate forever the parties they call democratic from the demonic far-right of the AfD. So that it would be asphyxiated as happened with Nazi and far-right parties in past decades. It is no longer going to happen, because society has reacted to the permanent drift toward the left of the CDU and therefore of the political center.

That the Spanish media do not talk about it is no coincidence. Embarked as they are, all of them one could say except this one, launched into a race to see who earns the most merit in their attacks, inventions, speculations, half-truths and whole lies against VOX, this evolution of events in Germany does not interest them. Even less so given the whole panorama on offer ahead of the European elections of June 2024, in which the Identity and Democracy (ID) group, in which the AfD sits in the European Parliament, is expected to grow almost as much as the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, in which VOX sits.

Together they could form, for the first time in history, a right-wing majority with the PP. Parts of the PP will undoubtedly opt for it, fed up with doing social-democratic politics. Others perhaps will opt to recognize that they are already decidedly social-democratic and will go off with the liberals of Renew or with the socialists.

Donald Tusk’s Polish EPP group could easily be integrated into the socialist group and it would not attract attention. Also Esteban González Pons, of course. The dilemma for the European People’s Party will be, in any case, existential.

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. COP28 can infuse optimism into world’s climate change battle)

The 2023 UN Climate Change Conference, known as COP28, will be held between Nov. 30 and Dec. 12 at Expo City, Dubai. The conference has been assembled every year since the first UN climate agreement in 1992. It is the diplomatic meeting of governments with the aim of reaching understandings and making accords regarding policies that aim to limit the global rise in temperature and apply measures to protect the environment from the negative consequences of human-induced climate change.

Setting the tone for COP28 is a recently released report by the UN called the “Technical dialogue of the first global stocktake.” It is a 47-page document that is intended to outline the agenda for the UN conference in Dubai. It employed very strong language. It stated: “Achieving net-zero carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions requires systems transformations across all sectors and contexts, including scaling up renewable energy while phasing out all unabated fossil fuels, ending deforestation, reducing non-carbon dioxide emissions and implementing both supply- and demand-side measures.” There was also pessimistic language in the preparatory report regarding the narrowing window humankind has left to save planet Earth.

These are not just remarks but the principles of how the whole globe can fight climate change. They are expressed through the concept and paradigm of “stocktake.” It is a very sophisticated idea.

The global stocktake is a process for nations and nongovernmental stakeholders to evaluate how much progress they are making toward meeting the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change — and the reasons if they are falling short. COP28 will adhere to the stocktake logic and will supply all the information required to determine who is responsible for the success or failure in cutting emissions of poisonous gases into the atmosphere.

The conference in Dubai also has substantial political identity to combat climate change in addition to the periodic review. In particular, it will make a general assessment of the third and final phase of the global stocktake. This stage is crucial because it will look into how politics in many countries is either boosting or hampering efforts to overcome the negative implications of climate change. In other words, COP28 will identify the deficiencies and the opportunities as the world seeks to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.

COP28 is not just a meeting to discuss the environment as a technical issue. It will attempt to harmonize politics with science for the nations of the world. This is not an easy task and the effort will extend beyond the timescale of the meeting in Dubai. Nevertheless, it will be a demonstration of the sincere efforts and of the honesty of the UAE as it attempts to positively influence how nations can overcome the harmful effects of climate change.

In this regard, COP28 reflects the closeness of the position of the Biden administration with that of the UAE as they seek to secure the success of the conference. The US government wholeheartedly endorsed the Emirati leadership appointed to preside over the conference. Presidential climate envoy John Kerry said: “I think that Dr. Sultan Al-Jaber is a terrific choice because he is the head of the company (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company). That company knows it needs to transition. He knows — and the leadership of the UAE is committed to transitioning. He made it absolutely clear we’re not moving fast enough. We have to reduce emissions. We have to begin to accelerate this transition significantly. So I have great confidence that the right issues are going to be on the table, that they’re going to respond to them and lead countries to recognize their responsibility.”

COP28 will shift the global stocktake from being just a report to a list of priorities. It will utilize the economic tool of cost-benefit analysis and will not end up being just another summary that regrets the failure to save the global environment. It will try to convince everyone present to be an earnest believer in protecting the environment. It will strive to strike an international climate diplomacy consensus. It will affirm the authority of the UN in protecting the climate. It will regulate the energy transition process. For example, there are countries that are very honest in pledging that their economies will make a sizable shift to renewable energy sources.

Saudi Arabia is seeking to be a leader in low-carbon hydrogen. This entails the production of derivatives like ammonia, methanol and sustainable aviation fuel. In addition, the Kingdom will enhance the domestic market for low-carbon industrial materials, especially more sustainable steel. Overall, Saudi Arabia’s economic plans call for net-zero carbon emissions by the year 2060. The Saudi experience will likely be carefully studied at COP28. On the other hand, nations such as Iran, Iraq and Libya have not yet declared any long-term decarbonization plans for their economies. COP28 can give these countries guidance on how to develop their renewable energy production.

The stakes are high. A genuinely global mobilization effort could be the outcome of COP28. One problem with previous UN conferences on the environment was the fact that the discourse was the same. The same traditional message to protect the environment was repeated, with little action.

COP28 will emphasize the trend toward interdependence in global environmental policies. This means that there must be unity and a logical connection between all the phases of the global environmental programs and schemes. This necessitates working to create a balance between global ambitions and national obligations. It will not be a response to environmental crises but a forum to submit initiatives to protect the environment. It will formulate roadmaps for many individuals and organizations that are eager to safeguard the public and private environments. It will facilitate the correlation of finance and funding with local technology and the activism of nongovernmental groups to coordinate their sincere environmental campaigns.

Ultimately, COP28 can infuse optimism and ensure that no one who cares about the environment will be excluded. It will make the environment better for the entire world.

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.