If A is born into a family which is loving, educated and wealthy then, yes, A has a fundamental advantage in life compared to B who was born to parents in poverty and without education. But is this really a moral injustice? It’s not a fault which could be laid at the feet of A when he reaches adulthood. He is a responsible free agent, he is free to choose how to conduct his life. Instead to fit the scenario of origins into a moral injustice paradigm, we subscribe to placing the fault at the feet of society. Society is not a free agent but a collection of free agents in relationships (which constitute this and that) who are individually free to choose how they might regard the posed question of social injustice.

To place this ‘moral injustice’ of B’s relative disadvantage at the feet of us all is itself an act of moral violence. We are each then implicitly accused of creating or sustaining a partial notion of injustice and asked to intervene ‘collectively’ though the state, which action is predicated on the fiction that this represents the collective will of society or the collection of free agents in a series of relationships with one another. This also disregards the autonomy of the free agent as a collective solution lacking consent then becomes the tyranny of either a minority over the majority or vice versa.

Is this notion that inequalities of birth are inherently morally objectionable actually an attempt to ennoble resentment at another’s fortune of birth? Are we attempting to use B as an excuse to pull down A to an ‘intermediate’ level and thereby satisfying our own envy of another’s fortune? These are questions which we must pose to cut through the mire of moralising resentments which have afflicted public thought in recent times.

Boris Johnson suggests sending Edward Milliband to China to destabilise their economy and boost our own. Brilliant! “the human panda”!
H/T to Benedict Brogan.

Israel will have to maintain a perimeter presence along the borders of a future Palestinian state.

Against the backdrop of a possible Palestinian bid for independence at the United Nations this September and thus far unsuccessful deliberations within the Quartet regarding terms of reference for restarting peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, the issue of defensible borders merits renewed attention.

Former foreign minister Yigal Allon was one of the clearest and most authoritative exponents of the case for Israel’s need for defensible borders. In an October 1976 article in Foreign Affairs, Allon noted that whereas Israel’s rivals seek to “isolate, strangle and erase Israel from the world’s map,” Israel’s strategic aims have been focused on its “imperative to survive.”

Thus, even if peace agreements are reached, border and security arrangements must ensure Israel’s ability to defend itself in the event that such agreements are breached. As the recent upheavals in the Middle East have clearly demonstrated, this guiding principle has not lost its salience.

Allon contended with a number of claims raised to counter Israel’s argument for defensible borders. Then, as now, technological advances such as missile technology were pointed to as obviating the need for strategic depth and topographical assets. Then, as now, international guarantees were pointed to as constituting a satisfactory substitute for physical control of defensible ground.

Then, as now, such arguments did not coincide with anecdotal experience, drawn, as noted by Allon, from historical cases such as the German air ‘blitz’ against Great Britain, or the American air-strikes against North Vietnam, which demonstrated the limitations of air-launched attacks and continuing importance of having “boots on the ground.”

Then, as now, such arguments failed to account for the resounding failure of international guarantees to ensure Israel’s security, as evidenced, for example, in UNEF’s withdrawal from Sinai in May 1967.

Yet even beyond cases such as these, today we have the benefit of quantitative research which has shed a great deal of light on numerous international relations phenomena.

Two research findings are of particular relevance in this regard: the strong correlation between extant territorial claims and violent international conflict and the positive association between conflict durability and insurgents’ access to an international boundary.

The first indicates Israel has considerable grounds to expect security threats to persist, even subsequent to an agreement, as long as substantial Palestinian territorial claims to pre-1967 Israel persist. Thus, the fundamental source of potential conflict – the willingness – will in all likelihood continue.

The second underscores the fact that access to an international border would provide Palestinian militants with the opportunity to continue – and expand – violent activities against Israel. As many scholars and observers of international relations have long understood, a conjunction of willingness and opportunity is an almost certain formula for violent international conflict.

Thus, forcing Israel into indefensible borders, such as those of June 4, 1967, is unlikely to lead to a stable regional order.

On the contrary, insofar as comparative, empirical research can serve as a guide, relinquishing an Israeli presence along some of the borders of a Palestinian state will severely diminish the chances of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and will probably exacerbate it. A cursory glance at developments in Gaza since Israel relinquished control of the Gaza-Sinai border in 2005 provides a rather stark confirmation of this basic observation.

Territorial claims and conflict Over the past several decades, a very large, empirical literature has emerged which demonstrates the key role of territorial claims as a source of international conflict. Numerous studies, employing different research designs, varied spatial and temporal domains and independently conceived theoretical frameworks, have produced robust findings pointing in essentially the same direction, permitting a very decisive conclusion: territorial revisionism leads to violent international conflict.

The particular value of this body of research is that the above conclusion has retained its validity, notwithstanding the numerous controls that have been imposed in different studies over the years.

Irrespective of whether or not rivals sign treaties or commence their relations violently or peacefully, notwithstanding the variance in rivals’ cultural and historical background, or configuration of relative power, regardless of the rivals’ institutional structure (democratic or not) and level of economic development and taking into account the numerous other caveats that have been explored in the literature, the basic finding remains intact.

While different factors have been shown to exert a mitigating effect on conflict, none appears capable of entirely vitiating the basic association between territorial revisionism and war.

While it may appear trivial in some sense, the finding actually bears non-trivial policy implications. What it says, in effect, is that in instances where territorial claims cannot realistically be resolved, either through a negotiated or non-negotiated redistribution of land, violent conflict is likely to persist. This remains true, in particular, whether or not a formal treaty is signed between rivals. Indeed, empirical work on treaties has largely shown that while they are not mere “scraps of paper,” in the words of one of the prominent scholars in this field, they don’t generally appear to be capable of resolving disputed issues. At best, they may be able to manage them, primarily by affecting the incentives and degree of uncertainty facing potential rivals.

The ramifications in the Israeli- Palestinian context should be clear, with regard to what can be realistically expected from a political settlement, at least at the present time. There can be no doubt that political forces such as Hamas and numerous fundamentalist affiliates would continue to harbor territorial claims regarding the pre-1967 territory of Israel, even were a peace treaty to be signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The problem is further underscored by the positions of the Palestinian Authority.

Its refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, its objections to formulas such as “two states for two peoples” and its continuing commitment to the idea of having descendants of Palestinian refugees settle in Israel with the explicit goal of gaining demographic, and eventually political, control within it, reflect an ongoing nurturing of ultimately territorial demands for pre-1967 Israel. The extent to which Palestinian schools and popular culture venerate the idea of a “right of return,” and the consistency with which Palestinian leaders affirm support of it, reflect a firm commitment within a broad Palestinian constituency to these ethnically-based territorial claims.

Might the Palestinian Authority disclaim these positions in the context of future negotiations? Perhaps, though it has revealed no indication of willingness to do so in eighteen years of talks. Recent revelations of internal, classified documents pertaining to Palestinian negotiating positions during the past decade, including on the question of refugees, have been extremely edifying in this regard, illustrating the very tangible, concrete nature of the Palestinian Authority’s ambitions with regard to the refugee question.

Commissioning classified demographic studies that explored alternative scenarios for the influx of hundreds of thousands and potentially millions of Palestinians into Israel over a number of years, while contemplating the open-ended negotiation of additional migrations, presumably into perpetuity, these documents reveal a calculated, remarkably matter-of-fact vision for using the refugee issue as a means of acquiring demographic (and ultimately political) control of Israel.

Yet, even if the Palestinian leadership were to renounce their call for “return,” would such a renunciation resonate with popular sentiments among Palestinians, sentiments that have been meticulously cultivated over decades? It seems unlikely.

Would it reflect the views of millions of Palestinians kept in “refugee” status in neighboring states since 1948? It seems rather whimsical to suppose that it might.

A sober analysis cannot but lead to the conclusion that very significant followings within Palestinian public opinion will continue to harbor territorial claims with respect to pre-1967 Israel, even subsequent to a possible Israeli-Palestinian agreement.

The empirical literature on territorial claims – particularly those with an ethnic component – presents us, in turn, with the unfortunate conclusion that such claims can be expected to continue fueling violent conflict.

Such conclusions are sometimes erroneously taken to imply a sense of determinism or inevitability as to the likely trajectory of the conflict. This is not, however, the case. Territorial claims to pre- 1967 Israel and tolerance for violence can be expected to persist in Palestinian society at least partly because they have been, and continue to be, deliberately cultivated by Palestinian elites, as has been extensively documented by organizations that monitor Palestinian society and media.

Just as such motifs have been promoted over the years, so too can others, including those which may ultimately assist in fostering a culture of tolerance, territorial compromise and rejection of violence.

The continuing salience of borders as a component of security As argued above, there is little reason to doubt that significant Palestinian territorial revisionism will persist, with its attendant potential for violence, whatever political arrangement emerges between Israel and the Palestinian leadership. A question may nevertheless be posed as to whether the location and topographical features of Israel’s borders will play a significant role in determining its security in such a context.

Here too, as in the case of territorial claims, the theoretical and empirical literature is able to shed some light. It has long been argued by globalization theorists that geographical boundaries have been losing significance in the international arena. This trend is typically noted to be related to processes of transnational economic integration, alongside tremendous advances in communication and transportation technologies.

The value of territory as a military asset has also been argued to be diminishing, inter alia, due to advances in missile and intelligence-gathering technologies. The significant decline in large-scale inter-state war in recent decades appears to corroborate this view.

Yet, as noted by some scholars, borders do not generally seem to be losing in importance so much as changing their role.

As Peter Andreas phrased it in his 2003 article in International Security: “In many cases, more intensive border law enforcement is accompanying the demilitarization and economic liberalization of borders.”

The struggle against ‘clandestine transnational actors’ (CTAs), whether they come in the guise of organized crime or terrorist organizations, is becoming a growing concern for states concerned with safeguarding their borders against the infiltration of narcotics, weapons or illegal migrants. The post-9/11 focus on homeland security is symptomatic of this general trend.

It is, therefore, not surprising that in recent empirical work on the subject of geography and rebel capability, covering civil conflict duration across the globe for much of the post-WWII period, it has been shown that “conflicts where rebels have access to an international border are twice as durable as other conflicts” (Halvard Buhaug, Scott Gates and Päivi Lujala [August 2009] “Geography, Rebel Capability, and the Duration of Civil Conflict.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53(4): 544-569).

The reasons are clear: such access serves as a life-line for the supply of weapons, funds, personnel, training, and, if need be, a safe haven, all of which can significantly enhance the relative capabilities of the insurgents and thus underpin protracted conflict.

COUPLED WITH the inherent instability of the Middle East, vividly underscored in recent months, a realistic appraisal of Israel’s geopolitical situation behooves caution. In such circumstances, the importance of maintaining defensible borders is all the more plain, notwithstanding the general global trend towards a reduction in large-scale interstate war. Once again, empirical research is instructive in this regard: where territorial revisionism persists, so too does war.

Some have argued that international guarantees and UN peacekeeping troops can serve as a substitute for direct border control by a concerned state. While findings have been reported revealing such measures to be capable of mitigating conflict, it has yet to be shown that they can decisively end it, where significant territorial claims persist.

Tellingly, “identity” conflicts – those involving religious and ethnic aspects – prove significantly less susceptible to the irenic effects which treaties and international involvement may otherwise display. Also, multi-national troop deployments prove especially ineffective against groups determined to funnel illicit goods across a poorly secured boundary.

This general observation gains very clear, specific expression in the Israeli-Arab arena.

Hezbollah, with unhindered access to the Lebanese-Syrian border, has for years enjoyed a massive influx of missiles and other weaponry, supplied by Iran and Syria.

Notwithstanding the efforts of an enhanced UNIFIL since 2006, Hezbollah has succeeded in increasing its arsenal to over 40,000 rockets, distributed throughout some 270 south Lebanese villages. The threat thereby posed to Israel, demonstrated as recently as 2006, when over 4,000 rockets were fired on densely populated areas in Israel, can scarcely be questioned.

Hamas has similarly benefited from the fact that Israel no longer controls the border between Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula, transferring many thousands of rockets, mortars and other weaponry through tunnels burrowed under the border.

Whereas the IDF presence on the Philadelphi Route in the 1967-2005 period could not prevent all weapons-smuggling efforts, the sheer magnitude of the weapons-smuggling operations since 2005, in terms of both quantity and quality of the armaments, belies any notion that control of the boundary has no military significance. The more than 9000 rockets and mortars that have struck Israeli territory since 2000 similarly illustrate the very tangible security threat thereby presented.

Moreover, the pattern of rocket and mortar fire serves to illustrate the key role of border control. As documented in a March 2011 study by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Center, in the five years subsequent to the Israeli withdrawal, the number of rockets and mortars that struck Israel increased by more than 150% to 6,535 compared with the 2,535 in the five year period prior to the withdrawal.

Tellingly, whereas rockets, which are relatively sophisticated and effective, made up only 26% of fired projectiles in the earlier period, they accounted for 73% in the later period, reflecting the enhanced smuggling capacity of Hamas following the Israeli withdrawal.

THUS, TO prevent the emergence of a heavily armed, hostile Palestinian state dominating Israel’s 15 kilometer wide heartland – precisely as has transpired pursuant to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and relinquishing of control over Gaza’s southern boundary – Israel will have to maintain a perimeter presence along the borders of a Palestinian state. This implies a continuing Israeli presence on the eastern boundary, that is, along the Jordan Valley.

The viability of a Palestinian state Contrary to certain claims, maintaining an Israeli presence along the Jordan Valley is entirely compatible with the establishment of a contiguous, viable Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria.

According to Palestinian statistics, based on a 2007 census, approximately 10,000 Palestinians reside in those parts of the Jordan Valley that were not already passed over to Palestinian civilian control under the Oslo Accords. This amounts to less than a half of a percent of the Palestinian population of Judea and Samaria, as documented by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Moreover, the area lies exclusively to the east of the main Palestinian population centers, such that its omission would not interfere with the contiguity of a Palestinian state. Thus, excluding the Jordan Valley from the territory of a Palestinian state would have negligible demographic implications. By contrast, as argued above, the security implications would be weighty indeed, and probably critical with respect to the durability of a two-state arrangement.

The stated Palestinian position is clearly incompatible with such a territorial division. Palestinian claims to the Jordan Valley form part of their claims to Judea and Samaria in its entirety, claims which compete with those of Israel to the same territory. Reflecting an appreciation for these conflicting claims, the terms of reference of the peace process, as expressed in the Oslo Accords as well as relevant United Nations resolutions, from Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) through to Security Council Resolution 1850 (2008), have consistently required that the borders, along with other disputed issues, be agreed upon between the parties. A priori rejection of the possibility that Israel will retain a presence in the Jordan Valley in a final status settlement is flatly inconsistent with the principle of mutual agreement and negotiations, which has underpinned every peace breakthrough thus far achieved between Israel and its neighbors.

Thus, Palestinian opposition to a territorial division that would leave an Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley should not be confused with a claim as to its inherent infeasibility. Not only is such a division consistent with the implementation of a two-state solution, there are strong grounds, based on an analysis of the security reality which can be expected to emerge, suggesting the necessity of such a solution.

THIS ANALYSIS does not imply that a stable, two-state solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict cannot be achieved. It simply underscores what such a solution would have to look like if it were to be genuinely stable. Contrary to views which regard the 1967 boundary as a sine-quanon for such a solution, empirical research suggests that a relinquishment by Israel of perimeter control of Judea and Samaria would be highly destabilizing.

Such findings belie the idea that the mere presence of a signed agreement, or peacekeeping deployment, would obviate the need for Israel to retain tangible strategic assets as a component of its national security. Whereas this is a conclusion many observers of the conflict have intuitively understood for some time, today we have the benefit of quantitative empirical findings which serve to corroborate it.

The writer serves as policy adviser to the minister of foreign affairs and lectures on game theory and territorial conflict at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center.

The first is to note that the parallels between Iraq and Libya are less resonant than a parallel between the fall of the Taliban regime and the (near) defeat of the Gaddafi regime in Libya. The methods used by Western intervening forces have been similar in so far as the use of special forces and air power to suppress the military capacity of loyalist forces. However, it is worth observing the relative size of the operation, which even with tepid US military support has strained the capacities of European militaries operating on constrained peace time budgets.

The second point focuses on the claim that the Arab Spring owes its origins to the Iraq War. This is a claim that I feel lacks merit and is instead sourced in a continued defensiveness around the overthrow of Saddam. There are a number of problems facing this explanation.

The history of this claim cannot be justified. While it is true that Libya disarmed in the sense of abandoning its NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) weapons programme, this was a move prompted by fear of further US aggression against hostile regimes where the presence of NBC weapons or programmes had become a cassus belli. The Libyan government move cannot be linked to democratisation in Iraq because the active elements in the dialogue are focused on regime survival and a diplomatic shift in alliances and priorities.

The Arab Spring is recognised as beginning in Tunisia, paradoxically one of the more liberal of the Arab autocracies. What marks each transition from autocracy to something else is the unwillingness of the armies of each nation to use lethal force on a mass scale to suppress unrest, protest or open revolt. There cannot be a clear link drawn between this assemblage of events and the course of events in 2003-2008 in Iraq. On the one hand, popular unrest rooted very much in a combination of political resentment and economic stagnation resulted in a wave of protests, a counter-wave of repression by police and security forces, an escalation of protests as repression proves ineffective and finally a combination of political manoeuvrings by factions in government and a refusal of the armed forces to massacre protesters to keep the regime’s grip on power.

This is the pattern which applies to Tunisia and Egypt. However it does not apply to Libya or Syria. In the former, the existing weaknesses in the regime simply resulted in a civil war anticipated by the regime. There it was the intervention of NATO air-power which prevented the regime’s swift military reaction from succeeding in re-imposing control. In the latter, the armed forces are much more centrally controlled and the course of events has been very different, not least because of the stubbornness of the popular unrest.

We should acknowledge that the realities on the ground in Libya in terms of tribal structures,  the strength of the central government and its own radical history cannot tie the causes and outcomes of the civil war to Iraq. The Gaddafi tribe has been the dominant political group but its power has rested on a combination of tribal alliances, repression and radical Arab nationalist and Islamic rhetoric to unify the polity. This is an excellent example of the Huntingdon thesis on Arab polities in which the cultural identity is U-shaped: a strong tribal and clan identity, a weak to non-existent national identity and a strong identity as Arab or Muslim. The Gaddafi regime held Libya together by a sharing out of political honours and wealth between tribes, while ensuring his own was pre-eminent and swiftly repressing political discontent or dissent. All the while, the rhetoric of nationhood was using the language of Arab Nationalism. Here we have an excellent example of the contradictions which make up most Arab polities: a political language which is pan-national but is used to bind a nationality to a leader or ruling faction.

Another factor not be ignored is the presence of non-Arab peoples. In Iraq, the Kurds are the strongest non-Arab population and consequently the politics of Iraq has always had to take into account a political presence which is separatist in sentiment and which does not respond to pan-Arabist rhetoric or sentiment. Libya is an admixture of Arab/Arab-Berber peoples and black African tribes. Tunisia is much more homogeneous and consequently a more stable polity – paradoxically, Tunisia was the state least expected to suffer popular unrest in recent years. Each different polity has different internal strains. A excellent example is Lebanon and I would urge readers to seek out Barry Rubin’s book on Lebanon for a better précis than I can provide.

In essence, as foreign policy analysts, we cannot impose a simple causal model over the events in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria. The unifying factor is a popular discontent but the expression of that discontent has differed from place to place. Neoconservatives urged intervention in Libya because it was possible to do so and crucially the coalition opposing the regime was not noticeably influenced by Islamist parties. Compare this to Egypt where neoconservatives were much more sceptical about the prospect of an Egyptian Spring because we noted that the Egyptian polity was dominated by Islamist politics and was hostile to Western civilisation.

Yet, when we examine Syria, the cultural situation is ripe for intervention. The Islamists have little influence, hence the fluctuating interest of (Islamist) Turkey and its occasional threats to intervene. The Syrian government is founded around the Alawites but appeals to Arab Nationalism in its Baathist form as a unifying factor. Together with a higher degree of urbanisation and a higher degree of civilisation, the Syrian polity is both more and less fragile than Gaddafi’s Libya.

The reasons for this are not hard to find with a little analysis. The first is that the Syrian security services and armed forces are much more politically radicalised and more tightly controlled in a manner which fits a Soviet style regime. Desertion is thought to be a problem with ex-regime soldiers organising some armed resistance but not enough to slow down the regime’s repressive measures. The depth of opposition to the regime is stronger in certain respects than in Libya where the opposition was on the verge of collapse when international intervention halted the regime’s armed columns on the outskirts of Benghazi. By contrast, the massive popular unrest has not ceased, despite as Julie points out an estimated 2,200 killed by the regime.

It is also worth noting that the regime has a prior history of using massacre as a political tool to put down rebellion or subjugate manifestations of political discontent. The knowledge and experience of this past in the present Syrian regime and forces is an enabling tool to further violence. The alliance with Iran and Hezbollah must be noted as a separate factor as Hezbollah and Iranian agents have been used and have instructed Syrian regime forces in methods of suppressing popular unrest, while Iran has been funding the Syrian regime to keep it afloat until it is able to crush the opposition movement. Additionally, the role of Russia in supporting the regime must be taken into consideration. Finally, any attempt to intervene in Syria with a view to replacing the regime will have to tackle the problem of Lebanon, which would require another decade long campaign with heavy costs in treasure and blood.

These factors make intervention both more risky and less likely to occur in Syria. Add to this the observation that the European powers are generally too weak to mount even a limited intervention without US military support and that all these nations are experiencing economic and political troubles at home. Defence cutbacks have occurred in Britain, which remains fighting a counter-insurgency campaign in Helmand and Kandahar, while France has found power projection to be near impossible, especially considering the decrepit state of the Charles de Gaulle. The US military are in a political process of withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and has borne the weight of an active foreign and military policy since 2001, while the military are now planning for what are likely to be deep cuts in military expenditure.

This condition points to a deep flaw in the assumptions which underlay humanitarian interventionism and separate this tradition from the neoconservative one. This flaw is the core concept of necessary intervention, which presupposes that the conditions for intervention on behalf of oppressed populations (especially where conditions of genocide or near-genocide are concerned) either will always be present or must be created. These conditions are: political will, popular support, a benign or supportive international environment and economic and military strength.

Political will is not always present. Where a party is in government, whether as a single party or as a coalition which has a pacifistic or isolationist stance, there is little chance of moving a government to military and economic mobilisation. If this government is one of the great powers, this is a problem for humanitarian interventionists which cannot be resolved. This is even more so if this government is the United States. At present, I cannot foresee any European state possessing the will to intervene in Syria for reasons of national interest, political focus, economic distress and above all the present focus on the future of the European Single Currency and consequently the European Union.

As for the USA, that great nation is at present relatively leaderless and having to tackle economic and fiscal difficulties which preclude it from intervening. Libya was seen as internationally isolated and any campaign was though to be relatively cheap compared to a full scale military intervention. These conditions do not exist in Syria. Finally, there is a widespread delusion in Western diplomatic and political circles that the Assad regime is a key component of any peace agreement with Israel, which in turn is supposed to be the key to a pacified Middle East. These delusions are decades old. I highly recommend Barry Rubin’s book, The Truth About Syria for a comprehensive overview on Baathist Syria.

Popular support is lacking for a war (which is the essential outcome of intervention) to rescue the Syrian polity from its regime. In the USA there is a no popular appetite for a war when the economy is foundering with all the social stress this brings in its wake. Despite well documented links to terrorism from Hezbollah to al Qaida terrorism in Iraq against Iraqis and US forces, there is lacking a popular conception of Syria as an vital enemy of the USA. In part this is the legacy of Hafez al-Assad who was careful to avoid overt provocation or regional ambitions in contrast to the more flamboyant but reckless Saddam Hussein.

In Europe again, the mood is inwards looking and not concerned with foreign policy. The pacifistic tradition is stronger and broader in Europe than in the USA and military intervention is much more strongly opposed, especially in the intelligentsia, media and politics. With the economies foundering and deep monetary dysfunction within the EU, there is no likelihood of populations being supportive of intervention. Britain on the surface is an exception to this but with British politics focused on debt reduction and social disorder and the legacy of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a lack of support for an intervention outside of a narrow section of the political elite and intelligentsia.

The international environment is anything but benign towards the prospect of intervention in Syria. Those who are well briefed on foreign affairs would understand that Russia views the Assad regime as a regional ally and was not inclined towards intervention in Libya. Here is worth pointing out that the NATO coalition which conducted the Libyan air war had basically disregarded the international brief for which it was assembled, namely to protect civilian life – not to conduct an air war on behalf of the National Transitional Council. Morally, this was the right decision but it will strike a blow against notions of international law, which humanitarian interventionists at least purport to uphold. It should be made clear at this stage that this writer regards international law as a series of fictions with no real hold over the actions of a state. But for many in the Western world, international law has become a series of secular sacraments.

Certainly, China will veto any aggressive UN action towards Syria (and its master, Iran) for simple reasons of great power politics. This is an essential flaw in the universalism of humanitarian interventionism that it presents a narrowly Western narrative on human rights etc as one which other nations with different political and cultural interests and expressions should adopt. Likewise, Russia which shares none of the assumptions underlaying humanitarian interventionist thinking is not going to be receptive to their arguments.

Furthermore, the Arab League is not a reliable body for gathering the will for an international intervention. There are two quick explanations for this; the first is that expressions of united Arab political sentiment reflect internal, not external politics. The second is that since the fall of Mubarak and what is perceived as the betrayal of an ally by the West, the Arab faction around Saudi Arabia has become much cooler to the West. Here we must note the intervention by the Saudis in Bahrain in defence of a collective Sunni Arab interest and in defence of the principle of autocracy. The Arab League will not support an intervention against Syria because it sets a precedent for intervention against a fellow regime in the circumstances of an internal rebellion.

Paradoxically, the best candidate for military intervention is Israel. Israeli neoconservatives and like-thinkers have noted the absence of anti-semitism in the Syrian opposition. Yet Israel cannot intervene, partly because it is Israel but critically from two other factors. The first is Egypt, which has the largest and best armed military in the Arab world. As the Egyptian polity is becoming ever more hysterically anti-semitic and anti-Israeli (the two go hand in hand), Israel is in a quandry about its need for a Sinai policy.

Caroline Glick has argued that the IDF needs at least one or two extra divisions in the south and needs to prepare for desert warfare (the first occasion in 30 years) but this is a perspective which is unlikely to prevail until Egypt threatens Israel or attacks. The second is a point critical to modern Israeli identity. Israel does not launch wars of aggression and a war launched against Syria would fit the same mould as the Iraq War in terms of intent. Nevermind that Israel and Syria are already at war, Israel would be heavily criticised and has an unfriendly US government. The consequences could be unpleasant at best until the government changes in Washington, while any attack on Syria would require a regional war with Lebanon which remains controlled by Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.

This would be the largest war in the Middle East since 1973 and as emphasised earlier there is now a considerable danger of Egyptian military intervention in such a contest. But for me the decisive factor remains the cultural identity of Israel and the institutional identity of the IDF. Israel does not launch aggressive wars, not does it intervene in its neighbours affairs except to prop up an ally (such as Jordan in 1970). It would be a very dangerous step for Israel to take and it has too many problems to track at present. An intervention into Syria would be like poking one’s finger into a hornets nest for Israel.

I have covered economic strength (or weaknesses) but I feel the point must be held together with that of military strength. Since 1945, Europe has become increasingly militarily impotent. One of the consequences of the EU and welfare-state policies has been the introversion of European state politics. This is also a consequence of the retreat from empire with the absence of elite or popular contact with parts of the world resulting in an absence of interest. Military impotence means that the capacity for intervention is limited or lacking altogether.

Take a serious study of the European military capability and the student will swiftly discern a very high percentage of equipment being US in origin and more vital logistic support being US in origin as well.

This points to a truth regarding the pretence of European military strength: it is and has been since 1945 underwritten by US military and economic muscle. We are entering a period of indiscernible length of US weakness and withdrawal. Yet, humanitarian interventionism is impossible on the scale and frequency for which its advocates would wish without a US military capability larger than currently exists. To have their kind of active foreign and military policy means that they must face down spending choices (and not easy or small ones), yet the liberal disposition which impels many of them to their stance would likely clash with these choices and present a dilemma between social conservatism and foreign policy militarism or welfare-statism and a limited to inactive foreign policy.

Iraq may yet prove to be the triumph for which Jacksonians, neoconservatives and humanitarian interventionists still hope (and the signs remain favourable) but this dramatic change was achieved almost entirely by US arms and treasure. Indeed, the US had planned for the possibility that the plan would have to go ahead without significant international support or contingents. It is the great empire of the United States which has underwritten dreams of intervention. If European humanitarian interventionists wish to see a more interventionist policy, then they must look to Europe for the future strength to do so and this requires an attack on pacifism, internationalism and welfarism.

There is a further development which must be faced if those who dream of a polity with the strength to intervene abroad, whether to end genocide or remove oppressive regimes. They must become imperialists.

Imperare is the Latin “to command”. We also have the word imperitas, but imperialism is not necessarily occupation and subjugation as mythologically derived from the 19th Century. It is a relationship existing between great and small powers. In order to have an interventionist policy, European states must work towards becoming imperial powers with economic and military strength to impel maleficent regimes to change or be removed by force. There will have to be either conscription or large conventional standing forces equipped with the most modern weapons, together with a strong naval presence.

This could only happen realistically in Britain and France, unless a defensive and offensive alliance were agreed between militaries which can fight together. These two nations have a tradition to draw upon, whereas Germany does not and indeed still has the shadow of its own imperialistic history affecting any such debate. German geopolitical thinking though has always tended towards domination of central Europe, rather than extra-European vistas.

Finally as a part of this brief digression into the logics of necessary imperialism, European states wishing such a policy would have to disregard a core assumption present since 1919: the concept that international law is binding upon a state in the same way that civil law is binding upon the individual. This means a return to part of the Westphalian settlement of state sovereignty, which rejected the notion of extra-territorial sovereignty.

Today, the West obeys or pretends to obey the notion that the UN is the sovereign of the nation state, yet it it lacks the strength or identity to act out such a role. I have argued before that this is due to the imposition of an ideological impulsion on the UN which it was never designed to bear, namely, international sovereignty. The UN was designed as a means by which the great powers could avoid being put in a situation which would lead to another industrial war, chiefly by an international forum which preserved a useful fiction of legitimacy for state actions but which since has merely resulted in constrained wars and the promotion of terrorism by antagonistic states.

The neoconservative perspective would have no problem, indeed has no problems with disregarding legal fictions which have become harmful to the nation state and the ability of great powers to act as government sees fit. Yet I foresee terrible problems for humanitarian interventionists in that some wish to preserve and enforce international law to protect values (democracy and human rights) which are not shared beyond a pretence at the international institutions which possess theoretical sovereignty over the nation state. Samantha Power is a chief proponent of the doctrine of responsibility to protect, yet she and her fellow liberal thinkers are attempting to act out a Gordian Knot in ignoring a dilemma of implications in this doctrine.

The dilemma lies in the divergent outcomes of a state adopting such a doctrine. It first must cede its own military agency to a disparate body of non-governmental organisations, international bureaucracies and media campaigns, while developing the tools but not the benefits of an imperial power. In making this an international obligation, r2p, as it is referred, places an unbearable strain upon the international institutions which are incapable of enforcing such an obligation and places a disproportionate burden upon the United States in particular to act as the sword of the international church of liberal human rights activists.

Such an agenda is fraught with danger for the West and does not take into account the autocratic powers in the world.

At its best, humanitarian interventionism is a noble cause. But it cannot become a replacement for national policy and interests because as an ideology it would require an open-ended commitment in the form of a disinterested imperialism. When this happens, humanitarian interventionism becomes a shadow of itself, reducing people and states to cyphers of moral ethics.

However the methods of manoeuvring under Newtonian physics are not favourable to the defender, as in the time required to change direction whilst under attack, the craft is horribly vulnerable, manoeuvring in a near straight-line, while changing facing and applying thrust to counteract the kinetic energy built-up in the craft.

This is where “ethereal rudders” can change the nature of combat and restore the balance between attacker and defender. The principles appear to be that the ER creates negative velocity in the direction into which movement is desired, probably through the simulation of “mass”. A craft flying at 100 units per second will fly in a straight line as the velocity is equally applied; if 20 units of movement are deducted from the port side of the craft (assuming that there are two ER units either side of the craft), then with one fifth of the thrust removed, the craft will tip in the direction of the lower velocity at a rate of turn, proportionate to the difference in velocity.

It is obvious that bi-directional rudders will only produce lateral turns, so we must have two or more pairs or a single unit capable of compensating for velocity in any direction. This is not going to produce motion similar to that of aerodynamic craft, where the effect of “lift” is being used, and slight changes in direction merely redirecting the flow of air over the body of the craft. Instead, movement is going to be freer than aerodynamic craft but with the downside that there is no “free” energy as from diving. All movement off “0” is going to cost energy, not just to recover speed level but to actually effect the turn.

Consequently energy, or rather energy generation is going to be the key factor here. A craft will find a turn harder to achieve the higher the speed and weight of the craft. Engines need only be used to create additional thrust, so the energy generated on board the craft will be divided between the following system areas:

1. 1. Engines.
2. Ethereal Rudders (including the “braking” principle).
3. Weapons.
4. Sensors.
5. Life support (includes G-compensation).

As an addendum, craft being carried upon other ships (the carrier-fighter principle) will need to either approach at low speed in order to be recovered, enter a resistance field to induce loss of kinetic energy or be captured in a tractor beam and brought into the docking bay.

The speed unit is the MGLT which corresponds to 100 metres per second. The Fw190a8 flies at a maximum speed of 656km per hour, or about 182 metres per second. As the X-Wing and TIE/In fighters both have MGLT maximum ratings of 100, this means that an FW190 can outrun both these fighters in a straight comparison, while the Sopwith F.1 Camel can do 49 metres per second. The F-15C could pull 739 metres per second, while the F.4 could make 658 metres per second.

These aircraft adapted to space combat would outrun the canon fighters so badly that we need to rethink the basis of these speeds in order to pin down the starfighters for comparative purposes.

Edmund Standing, July 26th 2011, 11:23 am

Since the atrocious attacks carried out Anders Breivik, a position seems to be emerging in various left-wing quarters that basically claims that because Breivik held extreme forms of some broadly speaking conservative positions, any kind of conservative position is now intrinsically invalid and irredeemably tainted, and can be held to be somehow ‘linked’ to terrorism.

This kind of argument essentially constitutes yet another logical fallacy – the ‘argument from terrorism’ it might be called. It goes something like this: Breivik was obsessed with Muslims, believed in a Marxist conspiracy, and was radically opposed to immigration, consequently anyone who opposes Islamist groups, left-wing intellectual positions, or unfettered immigration is intrinsically tied to Breivik and to terrorism. It’s an easy way to dispose of conservative thinking in one fell swoop, but it’s also logically incoherent and grossly exploitative of a terrorist outrage. Essentially, this argument uses dead children to score political points, which is pretty sick.

I, for example, argue that leftist hegemony in post-war Western intellectual life has been a bad thing. The fact that Breivik believed that there is some kind of Marxist conspiracy in the West doesn’t invalidate my position.

My view is that the answer to leftist intellectual hegemony is to create a conservative intellectual counter-culture, and this is being done. Standpoint magazine, for example, offers a forum for views contrary to the left-liberal consensus, as do websites such as ConservativeHome, as do various think-tanks such as Policy Exchange, the Centre for Policy Studies, the Institute of Economic Affairs, and the Social Affairs Unit.

The key difference between this view and that of Breivik is that it is not underpinned by a belief in an evil conspiracy to be battled through violence, but rather is based on the idea that bad ideas should be confronted democratically and in a civilised manner through a battle of ideas. That is how normal, well adjusted people deal with differences of opinion. What normal, well adjusted people don’t do is go out and massacre people. To claim that because Breivik apparently held an extreme version of a perfectly legitimate political and intellectual position means that this position is automatically invalidated or is somehow linked to terrorism is absurd and disingenuous.

Certainly, there are arguments from the Right that lend themselves all too easily to adoption by extremists and to a growth in hatred, and in my view the relentless promotion of paranoia about ‘Islamisation’ is one of those, as is the kind of immigrant-bashing promoted by groups such as the BNP. But that doesn’t mean that criticism of Islamist groups (which is in fact not a left or right-wing position, but a position held by sensible people across the political spectrum, as Harry’s Place shows) or promotion of immigration controls are somehow ideas that should now be beyond the pale simply because a terrorist had an obsession with Muslims and immigration. To claim, as some are, that because Breivik promoted conspiracy theories about Muslims anyone who opposes Islamism can be placed in the same bracket as him is frankly outrageous.

Those who promote such a view from the far-left apparently have very short memories indeed, as their own ideology could be linked to numerous terrorist outrages.

The fact that anti-Capitalism and Socialism have spawned numerous violent, terroristic movements, including the Red Army Faction, the Red Brigades, Front Line, and 17N doesn’t mean that everyone who opposes Capitalism or promotes Socialism is a potential terrorist, or that their ideas can be discounted because some people who shared versions of them have gone on to carry out bombings and killings. However, the ‘Breivik believed something similar to some conservative positions and therefore conservatism can be linked to terrorism’ line, or ‘Breivik was obsessed with Islamists, therefore anyone concerned about Islamist groups can be connected to a terrorist hate ideology’ line does exactly that.

The irony is that the kind of hysterical anti-Capitalist rhetoric that emanates from some left-wing quarters arguably actually does border on, or constitute, outright incitement. Consider the writings of Roobin at the SWP-supporting Lenin’s tomb blog, for example. In ‘The just-about-Gramscian theory of successful rioting’, he writes:

The good news is, given preparation (the opportunity for which, of course, is normally denied), the average citizen can match a police officer blow for blow. A police officer has access to hand arms, in particular clubs, but the ordinary citizen can get and/or easily improvise these. The same is true of body armour and self-defence. The police have roadblocks, the people barricades. The police can use sturdy, powerful vehicles, so can the public. The police can use tools such as water cannons to disperse a crowd but a resourceful crowd can use similar devices to reverse effect. The police can use small firearms. Even in Britain it is not impossible for a member of the public to get hold of some. Any weapons won from the police in battle can immediately be used against them.

[...]

Current mass movements should be organized, their experience generalized so their achievements are not lost so when the big break happens we are not starting from zero again.

Or consider the kind of slogans regularly spouted by the far-left, with dehumanising cries about ‘Tory scum’. Here’s what happened at one anti-cuts protest last year:

More than 80 activists took part in the demonstration at Speaker’s Corner – in which they burned a two-faced effigy of David Cameron and George Osborne to demonstrate their anger at the cuts…

At the end of the protest – organised by the group Mad Pride – the effigy of Cameron and Osborne, which had been hanging from a tree, was lowered to the ground, disembowelled and set on fire.

This kind of thing doesn’t make protesting against the policies of the Conservatives and the cuts intrinsically violent or hateful, and I wouldn’t tar all protesters with the same brush because of incidents like this. However, when leftists point to legitimate conservative positions and then claim that ‘Breivik believed something like that too’ so therefore those positions can be inevitably linked to terrorism and extremism, this disgracefully exploits a tragedy for political purposes and is frankly sinister.

***

You know the story of the scorpion who wanted to cross the Suez Canal. He asked a camel if he could ride on his back.

The camel said, “If I do and you sting me, I will be dead.”

The scorpion said, “I will drown also, so you have every guarantee.”

So the camel took the scorpion on his back and they started across. In the middle of the Canal the scorpion stung the camel and as they drowned the camel asked, “what did you do this for?”

The scorpion said, “you forgot this is the Middle East.”

There is a story about an Arab lying in his tent trying to take an afternoon sleep.

There were a lot of children making a lot of noise. So he told the children, “In the village they are giving away free grapes and you should go there.”

So the children went away to the village.

It got very quiet. Just as he was falling asleep he said to himself, “You idiot, what are you doing here if they are giving away free grapes?”

So he went to the village.

(From the great Moshe Dayan)

The other day the Egyptians asked the U.N. forces to move a little out of the way so they could fire on us.

The U.N. forces wouldn’t, so the Egyptians moved a little away.

By Daniel Hannan
9:03PM BST 20 Jul 2011

While Britain was chuckling about custard pies this week, the debt cancer was metastasising across the Mediterranean. Bond yields in Spain and Italy have surged, leading to doubts over whether those countries can meet their existing liabilities. For the first time since the euro turmoil began, EU leaders are panicking. While Greece takes up just 1.9 per cent of the EU’s economy, Spain and Italy account between them for 24 per cent. A default in Athens might be a controlled explosion, but Rome and Madrid cannot repudiate their debts without blowing the entire European banking system to smithereens. The effects of such a blast would be felt far beyond the eurozone. The Bank of England, dispensing with its normally staid vocabulary, describes the turbulence as a “serious and immediate risk” to the United Kingdom. The IMF frets that, if EU leaders carry on with hand-to-mouth bailouts, the resulting crash might trigger a global recession.

The markets are starting to anticipate a euro break-up. The reason that borrowing costs in Spain and Italy have shot up is not that those countries are inherently destitute, but that investors are demanding a premium to compensate for the possibility that they might revert to devalued and inflationary currencies. Such fears have a way of becoming self-fulfilling. Italy must roll over €69 billion in August and September; it needs €500 billion by the end of 2013. If it cannot borrow at lower rates, it will struggle to remain solvent, and the entire European monetary system might become unsustainable. This is the tempest long foretold, slow to make head, but sure to hold.

EU leaders are meeting in emergency session today, groping for a way to prevent an unplanned collapse of EMU. They have two options: one is to oversee an orderly unbundling of the euro into more manageable units; the other is to establish what José Manuel Barroso calls “fiscal federalism”. Economic logic points to the first option. The reason Europe is in this mess is that it turned out to be ruinous to apply uniform monetary policies to widely divergent economies. The low interest rates dictated by the needs of the core economies were calamitous for the periphery, encouraging an artificial boom and a crash. Now, as the wheel turns, those countries are getting high interest rates just when they need low ones.

Sundering the single currency would allow Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Greece to export their way back to growth. One idea doing the rounds in Brussels is that, rather than expelling the southern countries, Germany and its satellites might withdraw and establish a new, hard currency, bequeathing the legal carcase of the euro to the Mediterranean states (and possibly also to Ireland, though a currency link with sterling would almost certainly suit Dublin better).

Monetary union, however, was never about economic logic. Rather than admit that the euro was a mistake, EU leaders are preparing the mother of all bailouts. One-off grants are no longer enough. What Euro-federalists now plan – what, indeed, they have been demanding for years – is a single eurozone bond market. Holders of junk national bonds will be invited to exchange their debt for new EU-backed bonds. The European Central Bank, or perhaps some new legal entity, will assume the bad debts of some of the stricken governments.

Such a scheme will be expensive: it’s hard to see it costing less than a trillion euros. It will also be colossally unpopular: taxpayers in the donor countries will resent being made to pay for more profligate governments, while voters in the recipient countries are already protesting about the loss of economic sovereignty. Most serious of all, it will be illegal. Article 125 of the European Treaty could hardly be clearer: “The Union shall not be liable for or assume the commitments of central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of any Member State.”

No one even pretends that such bonds are permitted under the existing rules. As Angela Merkel put it last year: “We have a treaty under which there is no possibility of paying to bail out states.” Now, though, she is taking a different line. “Europe,” Mrs Merkel declared on Tuesday, “is unthinkable without the euro.” One wonders what existed at the western tip of the Eurasian landmass before 1999, but leave that to one side. The Chancellor’s point is clear. The survival of the single currency is a political goal for which she is prepared to pay any economic price – or, rather, to make her people to pay.

Some analysts believe that Germany has an interest in keeping the euro going, so that its exporters continue to benefit from an artificially cheap exchange rate. What suits Germany, they argue, is for the euro to struggle on, battered and cheapened. This underestimates the reverence that politicians of Mrs Merkel’s generation have for the European ideal. They are so used to citing the EU as the antidote to fascism and war that they cannot bring themselves to re-examine the premise. Younger Germans don’t fall for it, but their constitution was more or less explicitly designed after 1945 to be immune to public opinion.

Many EU leaders see economic integration, not as an emergency response, but as a desirable goal in itself. As J M Keynes put it: “Who controls the currency controls the government.” Where, though, do such plans leave Britain? While keeping the pound saved us from Ireland’s fate, we risk being drawn into the maelstrom. Our EU budget contributions rose by 74 per cent in 2010, and we have additionally taken on liabilities of £12.5 billion – some £500 for every family in the land – to bail out Greece, Portugal and Ireland.

The Government’s first objective must be to end this exposure. While some British banks are vulnerable to sovereign defaults in Europe (just as Brazilian, Canadian and Taiwanese banks are), there is no need for our taxpayers to prop up a currency that we declined to join. More than this, we ought to establish ourselves as a haven for those fleeing the uncertainty of the euro – a position which, despite our advantages of size, geography, language and global commerce, we currently cede to the Swiss.

We need to withdraw from EU regulations that inhibit our recovery: burdensome employment laws, rules on mutual access to social security which inhibit welfare reform, the Common Agricultural Policy, the 48-hour week. We should, in short, aim for a form of associate membership, an amplified free trade deal as enjoyed by Norway and Switzerland. And we should make our agreement to the legal changes which the eurozone leaders want contingent on securing such a deal.

The trouble is that we have no list of demands. In the run-up to the general election, politicians in all three parties convinced themselves that even to talk about renegotiating our membership was extreme, swivel-eyed, blah blah. That, of course, was before the crisis hit; but they are now trapped by their decision not to quarrel with the EU in any circumstances. Our officials encourage this attitude, having confused their personal stature in Brussels with the national interest.

The events of the past week ought to have jerked us from our torpor. The calculations made before the election have been overtaken by events. A perfect opportunity is presenting itself; yet we remain convulsed in a row about events which took place under the last government. It is our besetting national vice to ignore what is happening on the Continent until almost too late. We shall pay a price for our complacency.

Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP for South East England