President Emmanuel Macron of France can end the present threat of war in Europe with just four words: J’ai dit: Non (“I have said: No”). These were the words of his great predecessor, President Charles de Gaulle, when he announced in 1963 that he had vetoed (quite rightly, as it now appears) Britain’s application to join the European Common Market. In the present context, Macron can use them to declare that he will veto, and he expects his successors to veto, any Ukrainian application to join NATO.
This would be symbolism — since nobody really thinks Ukraine can be offered NATO membership in the foreseeable future and Macron cannot dictate his successors’ actions — but it would be an immensely powerful piece of symbolism. It would signal the determination of France, the only significant military power in the European Union, not to be led into an unnecessary conflict with Russia; and it would begin to rally European publics finally to take responsibility for the security of their own continent. This in turn would lay the initial foundation of a new European security architecture including Russia, and open the way for a solution to the various unsolved disputes around the borders of NATO and the EU.
A French initiative along these lines would at last bring some honesty and clarity to a Western debate on Ukraine characterized up to now by deceit, self-deception, and hypocrisy. For not only does the West totally lack both the will and the military forces to defend Ukraine whether or not it is in NATO; following the lamentable records of the Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, and Bulgarians since joining the EU and NATO, there is also absolutely no will at all in Western Europe to make any serious moves towards bringing Ukraine into the EU.
President Macron has made a good start with his statement this week (marking the start of France’s six-month presidency of the EU) that he hoped to restart the “Normandy Format” of talks between France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine aimed at the implementation of the Minsk II agreement on a solution for the Donbas conflict in Eastern Ukraine aimed at internationally-guaranteed autonomy for that territory within Ukraine. This is indeed the only way that dispute can be solved peacefully.
“[I]t is good for there to be coordination between Europe and the US but it is vital that Europe has its own dialogue with Russia,” Macron said. This has rightfully caused flurries of anxiety in both Brussels and Washington.
Calling for “European” dialogue with Russia is however in itself pointless. The EU has demonstrated again and again that it is by nature simply incapable of formulating a common approach to Russia or indeed any other major issue of foreign policy. One core country has to take the lead; and in present circumstances that can only be France — albeit in the expectation of being able to pull a divided Germany along with it.
Shuffling responsibility off onto “Europe” is therefore a recipe for hopeless delay and confusion, and will convince no-one, least of all the Russians. One of the reasons for Moscow’s present escalation is precisely that the Russian establishment lost confidence in the Normandy Format and in the willingness of France and Germany ever to maintain a position that annoyed Washington. Only an exceptionally strong gesture by France can restore that confidence and begin a positive negotiating process with Moscow.
In the present French presidential election campaign, all the candidates from far right to center left have sought to wrap themselves in the mantle of Charles de Gaulle. They should remind themselves that de Gaulle most certainly would not have allowedFrance to be dragged into an unnecessary and disastrous conflict by the megalomaniac ambitions of Washington and the ancestral Russophobe hatreds of Poles and Swedes. De Gaulle believed in a “Europe des Patries,” not a European super-state (a project which has definitively failed), but a confederation of independent nation-states with France in a leading role.
De Gaulle, it may be recalled, in 1966 withdrew France from NATO’s military structures in protest against Washington’s refusal to allow France a share in the control of U.S. nuclear weapons on French soil. He also attempted a dialogue with the Soviet Union based on the concept of a Europe that stretched “from the Atlantic to the Urals.” His hopes were frustrated by the Cold War and the nature of Soviet communism; but they can be said to have reappeared in Mikhail Gorbachev’s vision of a “Common European Home.”
The end of the Cold War should have been a perfect moment for this Gaullist vision to re-emerge. Tragically, a whole set of factors combined to make this impossible: the descent of Russia into criminalized chaos and near state-collapse under Yeltsin, followed by its move to authoritarianism under Putin; and on the French side, the growing deference to Washington on the part of the French right and security establishment (in part because of growing reliance on the U.S. military to help maintain France’s sphere of influence in Western Africa); and the French left’s adoption of the religion of (American-led) global human rights and democratization to replace their previous infatuation with Marxism.
Now, at a time of grave European crisis, is the moment for de Gaulle’s vision to re-emerge. If Macron wishes to lay claim to de Gaulle’s legacy in the French elections, and more importantly in the eyes of history and la France eternelle, then this is the moment for him to show some of de Gaulle’s vision, courage, and patriotism.
Anatol Lieven is Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He was formerly a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and in the War Studies Department of King’s College London.
Political outsider Bassirou Diomaye Faye will be officially declared the next president of Senegal Friday after cruising to victory in this week’s elections just 10 days after being released from prison.
Faye won 54% of the vote, allowing him to avoid a second round matchup with former Prime Minister Amadou Ba, the Dakar Court of Appeals announced Wednesday. Ba has conceded defeat and congratulated Faye, as has current President Macky Sall.
Experts say the peaceful transition of power is a welcome indication of stability in Senegal and a positive sign for West Africa as a whole amid a string of coups that have rocked the region’s relations with Western countries.
Senegal’s democracy, analysts say, came under threat last month after Sall made a controversial decision to postpone elections, citing corruption allegations against the Constitutional Council that decides which candidates are eligible to run in the elections, a fact he said would question the integrity of the results.
The decision drew public outrage, as well as concern from the United States, a historically close diplomatic partner with Senegal. The U.S. State Department said last month that it was “deeply concerned” about the postponement in a statement urging Senegal’s government to “move forward with its presidential election in accordance with the Constitution and electoral laws.”
It was the first time an election has been postponed in Senegal’s history, and Sall’s actions were “a jolt and a shock to the system” due to Senegal's long-held position as a stable democracy in West Africa, said Dr. Joseph Siegle, director of research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.
Senegal has historically promoted democratic norms, free speech, opposition party participation, and security in the region, Siegle said. It’s a stark contrast to surrounding states in the region — military coups have destabilized the governments of neighboring Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Guinea in recent years. Siegle said the recent election reiterates Senegal’s role as an exemplar of democratic leadership in the region.
“Senegal provides a very important counterpoint that this is how you realize change. You do it through legal means, through constitutional means, through transparent means,” Siegle said.
The election was also a significant indication of the strength of Senegal’s democratic institutions, as the judiciary promptly interpreted the constitution and rescheduled the elections in response to the postponement, said Adele Ravidà, senior election systems advisor and country director for Senegal at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. She added that, given that these events were unforeseen, the judiciary’s actions created a precedent that increased its capabilities to respond to incidents of instability.
“This was the strength of the judiciary in Senegal, the fact that even in a situation in which there is no law, that they can find a solution to the situation,” Ravidà said.
Faye’s presidency could bring about further strengthening of Senegal’s democratic institutions. Faye has campaigned on an anti-establishment platform, stating that he plans to reduce corruption in the government and strengthen checks on presidential power.
Ravidà says it is still early to say what the potential of this new government is in fulfilling these claims. Siegle said Faye’s policies may be cause for cautious optimism that democratic norms will be further bolstered.
“That's encouraging, and given the strain to some of these norms we’ve seen in the last couple of years, that’s welcome and would be much valued across Senegal,” he said.
Ravidà added that the election demonstrates the power of civil society in mobilizing to enact change.
“[The Senegalese people] are giving the chance now to this new generation of leaders to show if they can really rule the country well. But the population is mature enough to consider that if they are not doing well, in the next five years they give the opportunity to another party or a different leader.”
President Biden congratulated Faye for his victory in a statement on Wednesday. In a press conference on Monday, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said “the commitment of the Senegalese people to the democratic process is part of the foundation of our deep friendship and strong bilateral ties.”
Faye has iterated his intention to continue to maintain Senegal’s bilateral partnerships with its diplomatic partners. The U.S. currently maintains close military ties with Senegal, Siegle told RS. The countries’ militaries are partners in peacekeeping operations in the region, with the U.S. supplying aid and deploying troops to Senegal to help counter crises in the region.
Faye will be officially declared the next president of Senegal on Friday, in the event that no complaint against the electoral process is filed by Thursday night, an event Ravidà says is not anticipated. The official transfer of power will take place on April 2, the day Sall’s presidential mandate ends.
The Army and Navy ships that have left the U.S. for a massive humanitarian aid project in Gaza are still making their way across the Atlantic, with two still at ports in Florida and Virginia. It will likely take until mid-April for the vessels to reach Gaza and begin building a temporary causeway to facilitate the entry of life-saving aid into the strip.
Looking at real-time satellite imagery tracking military vessels, it looks like the USAV Gen. Frank Besson Jr., an Army support vessel that left Fort Eustis, Virginia, on March 10, has been moored and presumably refueling at a port in the Azores, Portugal, since Friday. It is at the half-way point between the U.S. and its final destination of Cyprus (nearly 5,000 nautical miles total). At an average speed of 10 knots, its journey will take nearly two more weeks, depending on weather conditions, once it gets going again.
The rest of the vessels are behind and, as of Tuesday, halfway across the Atlantic, though they can travel at slightly higher speeds than the Besson. They include the Army support vessels Loux, Matamoros, Monterrey and Wilson Wharf, which are all traveling together and were between Bermuda and the Azores Tuesday morning.
They all left U.S. ports around March 15. They are carrying modules and equipment to build the “trident” causeway — about 800 by 1200 feet — which will be anchored at the beach in Gaza to unload humanitarian aid.
The USNV Roy Benavidez, which, once in place, will help construct the floating pier and serve as a “roll on, roll off” facility two miles off the coast of Gaza, is the fastest of all the military vessels and is now ahead of the smaller Army landing craft on their way to the Azores, even though it left Newport News, Va., on March 21. When complete, aid will be ferried from Cyprus to the floating pier and then to the causeway at Gaza.
Meanwhile, two other Navy vessels that will be assisting with the floating pier, the USNSs Lopez and Bobo, are readying and still docked in Navy ports at Jacksonville and Norfolk respectively. Once on their way these particular vessels will take at least two weeks to reach Cyprus, depending on the weather and refueling at the Azores.
All told these vessels (carrying about 500 U.S. military personnel) won’t be realistically building anything until mid-April, which appears to be in line with a May completion date for the pier and the causeway. Considering that, according to experts, Gazans will be fully in the throes of famine by then, it is still hard to contemplate why the Biden administration has backed the massive JLOTS project instead of ratcheting up pressure on Israel to let in the thousands of trucks of aid that are stopped at borders and checkpoints.
The Pentagon has not returned calls regarding whether the military has hired contractor Fogbow to engage in the logistics on the beach, as the Biden administration insists there will be no boots on the ground. The Times of Israel reported a day ago that Fogbow, which is led by recently retired U.S. Special Forces, Marines and intelligence officers, has already been hired for the job and that the Israel Defense Forces will likely handle security at the aid staging areas. This, too, has yet to be confirmed.
Some are already questioning whether the U.S. military operation will be used to assist a massive refugee camp at the beach once the fighting begins in Rafah. Israel insists the millions of people now sheltering in the city will have to evacuate. The Pentagon has not yet said where the causeway and operations will take place. Stay tuned.
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210505-N-KZ419-1186 NAVAL SUPPORT ACTIVITY BAHRAIN (May 5, 2021) Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, center, and Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, incoming commander U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT), U.S. 5th Fleet and Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) listens to remarks during a change of command ceremony onboard Naval Support Activity Bahrain, May 5. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Dawson Roth)
Despite serious concerns about possible Israeli war crimes and even “plausible” allegations of genocidal acts in its war in the Gaza Strip, the former chief of U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, has accepted a fellowship from one of Washington’s most hawkish pro-Israel organizations.
The Jewish Institute for National Security of America, or JINSA, announced last week that Gen. Frank McKenzie, who led CENTCOM from 2019 to April 2022, would become the Hertog Distinguished Fellow at JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy.
“We are thrilled and honored to have Gen [sic] McKenzie join JINSA,” said Michael Makovsky, the group’s president and CEO. “As a former CENTCOM commander and J-5, he will be an invaluable source and contributor to JINSA’s work on U.S. strategic challenges and opportunities in the Mideast, and how to bolster the U.S.-Israel security relationship.”
JINSA’s press release also highlighted McKenzie’s oversight as CENTCOM commander of the “killing of Iran’s Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani” in January 2020.
Aside from promoting pro-Israel policy positions, JINSA’s main work has consisted of conducting educational programs and exchanges between U.S. and Israeli military officers since its founding nearly 50 years ago. “JINSA believes that Israel is the most capable and critical U.S. security partner in the 21st century and that a strong America is the best guarantor of Western civilization,” according to its current mission statement.
During the current Gaza war, JINSA has produced a steady stream of webinars featuring, among others, senior Israeli retired military officers, and near-daily email updates on “Operation Swords of Iron,” virtually all of which echo the Israeli government’s version of its campaign. JINSA also defend Israel against growing charges by international human rights groups and U.N. experts that its armed forces are guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide evidence for which was deemed “plausible” in January by the International Court of Justice.
McKenzie is the first former CENTCOM commander to associate himself formally with JINSA, although the group’s roster of “experts,” includes several other former regional commanders, including Adm. James Stavridis who served as commanders of both SOUTHCOM and EUCOM, and the former AFRICOM commander, Gen. David Rodriguez. Among other experts are former deputy EUCOM commander Air Force Gen. Charles “Chuck” Wald, who has published a number of op-eds in prominent newspapers over the past dozen years urging U.S. air strikes against Iran’s nuclear program.
Aside from retired senior military officers, JINSA’s experts feature well-known neoconservatives, a number of whom served in various capacities in the George W. Bush administration and played important roles in promoting the 2003 Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation. They include Elliott Abrams, who oversaw U.S. policy in the Middle East on the National Security Council, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who served as former Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser until his indictment for perjury, John Hannah, who succeeded Libby in Cheney’s office, Eric Edelman, who served as Cheney’s deputy national security adviser and then as under secretary of defense policy under then-Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, and Robert Joseph, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.
Makovsky, JINSA’s director, moved to Israel as a young man and subsequently worked on Iraq in the Pentagon under Rumsfeld before becoming foreign policy director at the Bipartisan Policy Center where he headed a task force that produced a series of extraordinarily hawkish reports on Iran beginning in 2008. He moved most of the BPC task force staff and advisers to JINSA when he took it over in 2013.
For JINSA, McKenzie’s acceptance of a fellowship amounts to a real catch, given his recent service as chief of CENTCOM, whose domain stretches from Egypt to Pakistan and Central Asia. Under his command, Israel, which had come under EUCOM’s jurisdiction for decades (due to the hostility of most of the region’s Arab states), was integrated into CENTCOM — a major priority for both Israel and JINSA and one made possible by the 2020 Abraham Accords under which the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalized relations with Israel. As one JINSA report put it, Israel’s inclusion “will enable strategic and operational coordination among the United States, Israel and our Arab partners throughout the region against Iran and other serious shared threats.”
As noted in Makovsky’s announcement, McKenzie also oversaw the assassination of Soleimani, a particularly effective organizer and coordinator of Shi’a militias in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, in an operation reportedly aided by Israeli intelligence. And, of course, McKenzie’s direct work with the IDF and the military brass of “our Arab partners,” authoritarian regimes of the kind long favored by Israel, can only serve to enhance JINSA’s work and that of its Israeli Distinguished Fellows, such as Major Gen. Amikam Norkin, a former commander of the Israeli Air Force and member of the IDF General Staff, and Major Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror, a 36-year IDF veteran who also served as Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser and who is regularly featured on JINSA’s webinars as a commentator on the IDF’s Gaza war.
While McKenzie was always careful not to publicly question or contradict U.S. policy while CENTCOM commander, he has been more vocal during retirement. Between the outset of Israel’s Gaza war and early February, he was particularly critical of what he described as the Biden administration’s “mush” response to attacks on U.S. outposts by pro-Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq and by Houthi rebels in Yemen on shipping in the Red Sea. Recalling what he characterized as Iran’s “back[ing] down” after Soleimani’s assassination — others would question that characterization — McKenzie argued in the ultra-hawkish opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal that “[t]o reset deterrence, we must apply violence that Tehran understands. …Iranians understand steel.”
While that no doubt sounds like music to the ears of JINSA’s neoconservative funders and experts, McKenzie has also sung somewhat more dissonant notes. On CBS News’ “Face the Nation” last month, he clarified that he was “not advocating for striking Iran,” but rather not to entirely rule that out that possibility. Even more discordant with JINSA’s approach to the Gaza war, he implicitly criticized Israel’s ongoing campaign — not, notably because of the appalling civilian toll and destruction it has created — but rather for its leaders’ failure to conceive a “vision of an end-state when you begin a military campaign.”
“And I would argue that needs to be something like a two-state solution. You’re going to need help from the Arab nations in the region to go in there and …do something in Gaza. I think Israeli occupation would be the least desirable of all outcomes,” he said.
Conversely, JINSA and Abrams’ similarly hawkish Vandenberg Coalition have been hyping their recent joint plan for an “end-state.” While they agreed that Arab states, notably Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt, should indeed oversee (and fund) Gaza’s relief, reconstruction, and “deradicalization,” security, in their opinion, should be provided by “capable national forces from outside the Middle East and/or private security contractors” in close coordination with Israel which, however, would retain its “freedom of military action throughout the Strip.” Or occupation by another name.
As for a two-state solution, the report agrees that endorsement of a “long-term political horizon for two states” should be recognized by all concerned. But “rushing ahead with glossy and cosmetic quick fixes, high-level diplomatic gambits, elections, and reunification of the West Bank and Gaza will almost certainly backfire across the board,” according to the report, which envisions “an arduous and lengthy process” even before “a revived peace process.”
Meanwhile, whatever “coalition of the willing” that can be cobbled together to oversee Gaza should focus even more importantly on “strengthening shared U.S.-Israel-Arab interests in resisting Iran-led hegemony,” according to the report, an approach that clearly plays to McKenzie’s CENTCOM strengths.