(This article was written by Maria Maalouf and appeared in Arab News. Positive Chinese-American relations can promote global stability)

US President Joe Biden’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in San Francisco last week was a good opportunity to stabilize and fix American-Chinese relations, and score a few measurable achievements. Yet, America’s foreign policy toward China will be constantly dominated by a sense of rivalry.

Historically, great strategic importance is attached to the US-China relationship. When a US administration tries to adopt a new approach on foreign policy, it is often said that critical decisions will be made regarding the course of American-Chinese relations. Nevertheless, the relationship between the US and China cannot be based solely on a state of confrontation between Washington and Beijing. It is a complex relationship that entails many areas of competition and the potential for cooperation on many issues. For instance, despite former President Donald Trump’s fiery rhetoric against China during the global pandemic, the two governments coordinated many policies to stop the spread of the virus and save lives.

The essence of Chinese-American politics is the need for a successful management of that relationship, and how to deal with pressing challenges that the two governments must handle at the present moment and in the near future.

As an example, on Nov. 21, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi welcomed foreign ministers visiting his nation from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, and Indonesia, as well as the head of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. This was a mission to follow up the recommendations of the Riyadh Arab-Islamic summit seeking to end the war in Gaza. Wang told the visiting ministers that “the international community must act urgently, taking effective measures to prevent this tragedy from spreading. China firmly stands with justice and fairness in this conflict.” This Chinese diplomatic attitude contrasts with the endorsement of the Biden administration and the US Congress of Israel’s war against the Palestinians in Gaza.

Moreover, there is a totally different view between the US and China in reference to the character and the political standing of a number of major countries in East Asia. The US considers Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan as allies and friendly states.

China’s leaders, however, view these nations as countries that have had long historical strife with China, and as front-line states whose foreign policies and national security priorities pose a threat to Chinese sovereignty. For instance, there are disputes between China and Japan over the ownership of several small islands in the South China Sea. In addition, there are long-held claims by the Chinese government that Taiwan is part of a “one-China policy,” and that the island belongs to the People’s Republic of China.

These four Asian countries deserve credit for achieving huge economic growth and becoming viable nations on the world stage. However, their foreign policies frequently rely on seeking help from Washington to defend against an ascendant China.

The best course for the US is to adhere to the old treaties that were signed with these countries and honor its commitments to them, but also to explain to them and to the Chinese that things in world politics are changing, and such a change could allow for America’s bonds with these big countries in East Asia to evolve in a friendly direction. For instance, the US, China, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan could cooperate to break the isolation of North Korea, and convince Pyongyang to stop its nuclear tests and the firing of ballistic missiles.

The US also must be more responsible in its foreign policy toward China. Washington’s announcements of weapons sales to India and Vietnam will be viewed by China’s leaders as an encirclement strategy designed to undermine their nation.

It is also becoming more common and convenient for many American politicians to blame China for everything wrong in the US, especially alleged technology thefts and the big trade deficit between the two countries. According to a report by the US Department of Commerce, “in 2022, both US exports to China and imports from China continued to grow for a third year in a row. US exports totaled $153.8 billion, an increase of 1.6 percent ($2.4 billion) from 2021; US imports from China totaled $536.8 billion, an increase of 6.3 percent ($31.8 billion); and the trade deficit with China was $382.9 billion, an increase of 8.3 percent of ($29.4 billion.)”

There is a tacit understanding that both countries have to find a mutually beneficial formula. The US must give China choices to help them reach good outcomes in world politics. The two nations could conduct serious talks on how to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. COP28 meetings in a few days in the UAE might be a good opportunity to promote bilateral cooperation in fighting climate change. There are many avenues of mutual interests that can bring about benefits to both China and the US. Ultimately, defining Chinese-American interdependence in positive ways will lead to more regional and global stability, and make the world more integrated.

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. De la resistencia al enemigo)

Millions of Spaniards are traumatized by what is happening in Spain. To a great extent the tragedy, the worst of the possible developments of our crisis that could be foreseen, has already been consummated.

I see Spaniards of all ages weeping. And not only when they demonstrate, hear the national anthem or chant cheers to a homeland that some malefactors are destroying and selling off at bargain prices. Many weep for no other reason. On greeting you. On seeing you in the street. Or they tell you that they have wept in solitude or together with relatives, elderly Spanish couples who still cannot believe what they see, what they hear and are told, and who despair in the anguish and the incredulity before so much obscenity in the lie and so much contempt for everything they value, love and believe.

And they no longer weep only out of fear of an immediate future full of insecurity and threats, out of the certainty of being in the hands of a man without scruples capable of anything, however brutal and wicked. Who has surrounded himself with a troop of hitmen who have adopted all the worst characteristics of the fellow. And who has not hesitated to seek the complicity of the worst political criminals there have been in Spain in half a century in order to forge his alliance for a change of regime in Spain that assures all of them the power that includes their indefinite impunity.

They weep also for the immense humiliation of seeing Spain shaken about, vilified, plundered and scorned by beings of a baseness that was supposed to be widespread only in the underworld, the dark netherworld of corruption and the sordid channels of business and the monetization of the worst instincts. It is no wonder that so many Spaniards suffer.

One of the oldest nations in the world, along with the Roman Empire, perhaps the most decisive in the shaping of the modern world and of humanity, finds itself governed by those who seem more suited to running brothels and sauna bordellos. By those who have intimate relations with the worst bosses of organized crime, drug trafficking and human trafficking in America. But above all, by those who despise everything about the Spanish nation and plunder it and mistreat it and abuse it like squatters newly arrived in someone else’s house in which they see and suddenly enjoy goods they would never have known through merit.

How difficult it is to explain abroad, for example in the European Parliament, the monstrosity of the events that have taken place in Spain since the “pockmarked one,” as they would call him in the dens of the underworld, arrived once again. Europe does not know of the misdeeds and the political crimes that the Spanish government under Sánchez is committing, because those of us who have been recounting it for four years fight against a wall of silence from the media. And because those who would have had the greatest chance of a wider echo in the denunciation, had they joined VOX, the European People’s Party, have preferred to keep voting with Sánchez’s party in Europe on all the reforms and laws proper to Agenda 2030, the Green Deal and all the other ideological monstrosities, as if he were led by an impeccable gentleman respectful of all the rules. It is difficult to denounce someone with whom, in the end, one is so much in agreement on the important European questions.

An individual whom his party expelled from the leadership as a falsifier and a danger to democracy, and who has hijacked Spanish democracy in order to dismantle it, after having hijacked his party and turned it into an organization of cadres for falsification and the cover-up of continuous crimes. And after having held hostage for five years, of abuses, lies and unheard-of misdeeds, the entirety of the State, the treasury and practically all published opinion. The only thing that is true in him is his ambition and bad faith. All the virtues he attributes to himself since coming to power are a lie, as are all his assertions in general. Only everything he denies and covers up is true. He has no moral brakes. He has no limits. Not the slightest trace of a scruple. He cannot bear contradiction, as tends to happen with the psychopath. That is why it is easy to predict that, after reasserting himself in power by means of the open violation of the Spanish Constitution, whatever the Constitutional Court says, a court which, thanks by the way to the Partido Popular, is now merely his servant, he will soon do much harm to many people in the face of the growing resistance to his policy of repression, plunder and abuse.

Let no one say it was not foreseen. Because from the moment he arrived it was clear that he was the man who fit to carry out what his socialist predecessor and later much more than political adviser, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, had left set on course. Which was precisely the change of regime toward a system of alliances between leftist forces and separatist ones for a broad front, today we can call it the Criminal Alliance, that makes impossible the coming to power of centrist forces, let alone truly conservative forces. The end of alternation, the end of democracy.

Some of us warned at the top of our lungs that with Zapatero the bases had been laid to do away with the regime of 1978, I with two books, “Libelo contra la secta” and “Días de ira.” But the Partido Popular spent seven years in power without abolishing a single one of Zapatero’s leftist laws, in large part come out of Ibero-American Chavist workshops, which now serve, with a further turn of the screw, to keep closing the cage and doing away with freedom of expression and so many others. These mechanisms of coercion which, like serpent’s eggs, Zapatero sowed, have served Sánchez to impose legislation ever more ripe for the first regime in Europe similar to that of Nicolás Maduro.

With his methods. And we are already seeing these weeks that the police they do not have guarding our borders they already have well conditioned to the idea that they will have to devote themselves to repressing those whom the police have always protected. Because the police have come to be under the command of those who, by the needs of Sánchez’s script, must obey those who staged a coup in 2017, harassed the police, were always their declared enemies, expelled the Civil Guard from regions of Spain and murdered police and civil guards until very recently.

The repression is going to come because Sánchez has neither legitimacy nor legality, however much all his media lie, which are almost all there are. And he will have to compensate for it with the use of force, as do the other members of the São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group, who are the political leaders most akin to Sánchez.

Because in Europe there are many lamentable politicians of that social-democratic majority that systematically steals conservative votes and whose greatest exponent is Ursula von der Leyen. But those are vegan left compared to the carnivorous left that Sánchez has been, and to the cannibal left of which Sánchez now becomes a part, with the Ortegas, Petro, Maduro and of course Lula, that secular saint of the EU who already has more than a thousand political prisoners. We will soon have them too. And this time genuine ones.

There is still a possibility of preventing the total destruction of Spanish democracy and of preventing the State in Spain, conveniently fragmented, from being left totally at the mercy of people who are closer to international organized crime than to the traditional political parties. But the resistance begins with not shaking the hand of the boss of the criminal organization that is destroying the homeland for strictly lucrative motives in the broadest sense. The resistance against a mortal enemy must be total. But absolute.

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. US is the big loser in Gaza)

The war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas represents a serious challenge to the US. It is a difficult test for the network of contacts Washington has been building throughout previous decades to ensure a balance in its interests between Arab countries and Israel.

Obviously the US is failing to achieve this strategic equilibrium in its relationship between the Arabs and the Israelis. There are many accusations by most of the nations of the world, especially Arab and Muslim states, that Washington is endorsing Israel’s attacks against civilians in Gaza. They point to the US supplying Israel with the weapons being used to kill Palestinians in Gaza. They also charge the US with giving $14 billion to Israel to carry on the war, and say that the sending of two aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean shields Israel from any armed assault by any power.

Arab media outlets view the US as culpable in the Oct. 7 attack. They also perceive the US as responsible for the military conflagration that the Middle East is undergoing at present. Arab media platforms refuse to believe the US is serious about making peace in the Middle East, and say it is doing nothing to end the fighting between Israel and Hamas. Accordingly, Washington is not an honest broker for peace in the Middle East. Shamefully, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s shuttle diplomacy in the region has been unable to convince the Israeli government to accept a limited cease-fire to deliver urgent humanitarian assistance.

There is also the increase in the number of attacks against US military bases in both Syria and Iraq. The potential is high that there will be more targeting of US military facilities in both countries if the war in Gaza continues. All Arab nations are worried that the Gaza war could escalate into a wider regional crisis. Arabs are hearing the voices coming from the US that perceive the war against Hamas as a war against Iran. The strategic rationale for the Arab nations is that extending the war by attacking Iran could push the whole Middle East into a state of turbulence and chaos, causing a great deal of instability. This will force many people to label the US as the real enemy of the Arabs and Muslims.

Arab countries believe that Israel is acting in a brutal way and that the US is doing nothing to stop it. The Middle East is about to explode. The West is unethical in its attitudes toward the Middle East. It endorses Israel’s savagery against the Palestinians, while pretending it defends human rights and democracy. The Arabs assert that Western hypocrisy about freedom and liberty paved the way for their complicity in Israel’s barbarity toward the Palestinians.

Against the backdrop of Arabs’ loss of faith in the US, Russia is gaining influence in the region. Moscow can tell the peoples of the Middle East that it renounces Israel’s killing of innocent Palestinians and, therefore, is a friend of Arabs and Muslims. Other countries, such as China, can also gain prestige in the Middle East as the US is denounced by the region’s Arab population.

The war in Gaza may revive the two-state solution. However, Arab nations doubt Washington’s sincerity in creating a Palestinian state. They were dismayed by the refusal of the US Congress to give aid to the Palestinians on the grounds that it would go to Hamas. This, of course, was not true.

On the other hand, war is an uncertain development. No war in history has an assured outcome. Hence, any substantial political outcomes must take into account not only US strategic objectives, which include the defense of Israel, but also the local conditions in which the strategy for achieving those objectives must play out. Considering the US failed to effectively define its goals separate from Israel, any analyst must focus on several strategic trends operating now in the Middle East.

First, Turkiye will try to make its role more significant. Ankara and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will express greater solidarity with Hamas. This will strain US-Turkish relations further. Second, the continuation of the Saudi-Iranian detente will be inevitable. The two countries will focus on Gaza and not on their regional rivalry. Third, the role of Qatar most likely will be enhanced. Washington so far has been unable to persuade Qatar to cease its relationship with at least the political wing of Hamas. Qatar will pressure the US to force Israel to stop the war in Gaza in return for its changing relations with the leaders of Hamas.

Fourth, a fair question is how successful and decisive will the Israeli ground offensive be? Israel has not declared victory. It pulled out of previous wars, including conflicts with Lebanese Hezbollah in 1996 and 2006, before finishing its military purposes, due to political and diplomatic factors. Hamas could be hoping for the same outcome. This suggests that the group could still be operating underground and maintaining parts of its military infrastructure when the war ends.

Fifth, how much damage could be caused by several statements by Israeli officials, such as the one attributed to Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu, who said dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza was “a possibility”? This could quickly invite Moscow to affirm nuclear deterrence similar to what happened on Oct. 22-23, 1973 when the US and the Soviet Union raised their nuclear preparedness during the Ramadan War.

Certainly, Arab countries will endorse such a potential nuclear strategic move by the Kremlin. Sixth, how much dispute will occur if Israel takes actions to reoccupy and govern Gaza? This could cause friction between the US and Israel. Blinken played down these prospects. Yet, it seems that Israel is determined to remain in Gaza for a long time. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ABC News that “for an indefinite period, Israel will have the overall security responsibility” for the enclave.

The war in Gaza has seriously undermined US credibility and deterrence. Washington cannot prevail on Israel to hold off the fight in Gaza even for a few hours. In conclusion, the US will not gain any political or strategic advantage from the Gaza war. It could even lose economically if the conflict goes on for a long time and the price of oil rises to a record high.

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. No hay normalidad bajo el crimen)

There are people who like to cause upsets. Even gratuitous ones. That is not my case. I like to avoid them. That is why I regret that the Spanish ambassador to Costa Rica, Eva Martínez, who had very kindly invited me on Thursday to dine with a large group of Costa Rican parliamentarians, had to suffer an unexpected disruption at the splendid residence of our embassy in San José. The first thing I did was to thank the ambassador for her invitation, which, with the impeccable professionalism of a career diplomat like her, she maintained even though the other two Spanish MEPs invited, from the PP, Antonio López-Istúriz, and from the PSOE, Ignacio Sánchez Amor, who are without doubt more akin to her than this one from VOX, had returned to Spain earlier. And they left me as the only Spanish parliamentarian with the Costa Ricans she had called to her table for this occasion.

But after the personal gratitude, I had to explain that my conscience, my responsibility and my duty as a Spaniard obliged me to leave the dinner at the residence without beginning it. Because they prevent me from any hint of institutional normality in view of the gravity of the events in Spain. There is no normality when one is witnessing a crime. And pretending normality while the affronts, abuses and crimes of this socialist power are being committed has been one of the most effective mechanisms of this government, as of Zapatero’s, to lull the whole of society with informational fodder, lies and base passions while they took, one after another, the steps toward destruction and plunder.

Pedro Sánchez’s “amnesty for criminal friends” is a crime in itself and a coup d’état that delegitimizes the democratic regime, its justice system, its security forces, its forty years of legality and even King Felipe VI. In the strict sense it also delegitimizes Pedro Sánchez, his coming to power and the elections before and after. Although he no longer needs any delegitimization, since as soon as he approves the amnesty he will be as criminal as Puigdemont and a genuine usurper of a power that will be illegal.

Given this nightmarish situation, with our Spanish institutions in the hands of individuals with the same democratic scruples as Hamas, the upset of the ambassador, who like it or not was appointed and is under the orders of the unworthy usurper who is the current caretaker head of government, was absolutely necessary. However impeccable, I insist, the ambassador’s attitude and conduct were, and they were. I had thought of simply excusing myself by telephone. But out of deference to the magnificent and dedicated Costa Rican parliamentarians I decided that I would attend in order to give them the explanation they deserved. And the explanation was necessary because not even the members of the foreign affairs committee present there, among them its chairman, know of the gravity of the Spanish evolution, or degradation.

And at the residence, as soon as I arrived, I told the parliamentarians that normality cannot be simulated when in Spain the government is destroying all the foundations of legality, security and coexistence. I explained to them there, in the presence of the ambassador, that the Professional Association of the Magistracy, the largest association of judges in Spain, holds that the amnesty for Catalan criminals is the end of the rule of law in Spain. And that eight members of the General Council of the Judiciary, what remains of the members of the justice apparatus not bought, intimidated or blackmailed by the power of the Sánchez government, have said the same. Because the delegitimization of the democratic regime and the legitimization of criminal and unconstitutional coup-plotting constitutes the greatest attack on the Spanish nation and its democracy. I said that a democratic and patriotic Spaniard cannot today accept normality in anything related to the government, already as illegitimate as it is illegal, of Pedro Sánchez.

If the ambassador experienced as an upset that I turned the embassy residence for a few long minutes into a rostrum for many truths about a criminal government, she can console herself with the fact that deep dismay, anguish, rage and fear are today the sentiments that predominate among the Spaniards who find themselves in the hands of fugitive criminals in Waterloo and others well ensconced in La Moncloa. I encourage all Spaniards not to give a single day of the appearance of normality to this usurping government if it comes to be constituted. We must all play our part, large or small, our labor and our duty, to restore legality, unity, constitutionality and democracy in Spain.

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 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.