IS THERE STILL TIME TO CHANGE COURSE?

We are certainly living a watershed epoch; a balancing

point of history. If it isnt a mass casualty terrorist attack, its
a financial crisis or a stare down between two nuclear powers.
Thats not even mentioning the bacteria that have breached
the antibiotic wall, and the borderless flow of viruses without
vaccine.
Humanity has stepped outside of the limits imposed on our
species by nature. We not only rose to the pinnacle of the
pyramid, we bent the planets bounty to our ever-increasing
needs until the planet vomits our waste, poisoned fatally.
Seven point something billion people are expected to rise to
eight billion by 2024. Computer-generated models calculate
the earths inability to feed those future mouths, and a lot of
todays mouths as well.

The Himalayan glaciers that feed Asias rivers are shrinking.

The shallowing rivers flowing into China, India, Pakistan,
Vietnam, and Laos must irrigate crops needed for half the
worlds population. The first three countries are nuclear
powers that have gone to war with each other four times in
the 20th Century. And there was lots of water back then.
It goes on. It is becoming obvious that few of the political
leaders in this world have answers. Half of them havent even
figured out the questions. Confused and frightened populaces
will clamor for a black soul on a white horse.
My single goal in this chat is to mark a road map that gets us
organized toward directing our energy and genius at common
problems. Specifically, to describe a simple model of internation relationships that diminishes power competition. We
have to reform our institutions because bursting populations
in poor parts of the world clamor for equitable resources. We
have to do it before the existential threat of climate change
becomes irreversible. We have to do it as newer, faster
intercontinental ballistic missiles come on line, mated with
miniaturized independently-guided reentry nuclear warheads.
When we are able to diminish the struggle for power, it will
give our species the time and space and resources to
concentrate the incredible talents available. Whether we use
the time wisely is moot, but we need to get there. Lets
assault these common problems; population overload, food
sustainability, robot work force, life extension technology,
artificial intelligence and all the upheavals and dislocations of
this upcoming perfect storm of technology, scarcity, and
contamination. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are
War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death. If we neutralize war, we
obtain the financial resources to put into the research to
defeat or at least diminish the agonies of Pestilence and
Famine. Nobody can conquer Death, but an extended fruitful
life unaffected by the first three Dark Knights can take the
sting out of it.

After describing a model to rebalance power in the nations, I

hope the reader will indulge me while I describe solutions to
the four most dangerous situations that we face in this second
decade of the twenty-first century. These are:
1. The renewed USA-Russia Great Power hostility
2. East Asian dilemmas; the increasing maritime tensions in
the South and East China Seas.
3. Southwest Asian quagmires; Kashmir, Pakistan,
Afghanistan.
4. Middle East heat; Israel-Palestine, Syria, Iraq, etc.
The answers are relatively easy. I cant understand why the
wizards in charge of our lives and safety have their hands in
their pockets scratching their balls. The real challenge for me
is squeezing a lot of current and historical information into a
few pages, making the story clear for the average reader, and
making it as enjoyable as possible. Fifty pagesor so, with
illustrations? Lets start.
REBALANCING POWER IN THE WORLD.
1. USA
2. European Union
3. Britain/Canada/Australia/New Zealand
4. Russia and associated nations (Belarus, Mongolia)
5. Latin America and Caribbean
6. Sub-Sahara Africa
7. Arab North Africa and the Arab Middle East
8. Central Asia (Turkey, Iran, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan,
all the Stans, Bangladesh)
9. India
10. China

11. Pacific Rim (Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos,

Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Japan) called ASEA.
These eleven nations/nation groups should conform the New
United Nations. They can break down into a General
Assembly and act individually as they wish, in a lower
chamber, but when votes that affect the world need to be
taken, this is the line-up. The happy news is that the six
groupings already exist in one form or another; the British
Commonwealth, the Organization of American States, the
African Union, the Arab League, and ASEAN. Central Asia has
a political skeleton in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
China and Russia formed and dominate the SCO, but they
need to withdraw just like the USA and Canada need to
withdraw from the OAS. These regional cooperation leagues
are functional but at best they play no more than an advisory
role at the UN because the UN is an anachronism of a PostWW2 world that began in 1945. If you didnt have power
then, you dont have it now. That Post-war line-up restored
two bankrupt empires to glory for which they remain indebted
to the USA. Japan never had the political power in the UN
Security Council that France held, even if their economy was
several times larger. To maintain the illusion, Japan was
allowed unfettered access to the US consumer market, which
caused economic upheaval in the late-20th century USA. The
Post-war world lasted until 1991 when the USSR collapsed.
We are twenty-five years overdue for the reconfiguration of
the UN to reflect the power structures in todays new world.
Why hasnt it been reconfigured? Are we stupid, or what?
Somewhat. But as is, it serves the USAs overarching
ambition to continue shaping (controlling) world events as if
it still generates fifty percent of world output instead of just
fifteen percent. What the good people of the USA need to
understand is that a fair realignment is inevitable, and if the
USA does not promote such a shift, it will happen anyway.
Maybe violently. There already exists a growing infrastructure
of anti-American institutions; Development Banks, Trade Pacts,

Defensive Military Alliances. The good news is that a phasedin pivot toward an equitable world needs the US as a catalyst.
No other nation is in the position.
Consultations among equals generally function far better
than the imposition of policies that serve a decided minority of
the planets population, and which breeds the heightened
tension that is a feature of our world.
So, eleven nation grouping as ethnically/racially/culturally
balanced as possible; they work out their internal
parliamentary procedures and rotation, and at the Round
Table of Eleven, a two-thirds majority or better carries the day.
Two nations or nation groups in conflict do not vote. The other
nine need six votes to rule on the conflict and it is binding.
Ten against one requires seven votes. All eleven chairs
wrestling with an overpopulation or pandemic problem
requires eight votes to pass. How much easier can it get?
Parallel with realignment, we badly need to wet the four fuses
of the powder keg we are sitting on. It wasnt that long ago
that we thought the nightmare of nuclear war was receding
into the twilight. It is back as big and bad as ever, and new
actors are on stage; North Korea, terrorist groups, failed states
etc. China now has enormous financial and military power.
Erase your stereotypes of coolies on bicycles and substitute
business tycoons in chauffeured BMWs.
Every day in every country, men and women of powerful
intelligence sit around conference tables breaking down
security threats, weighing permutations, and arguing the
nuances of the latest policy papers pumped out of their Think
Tank system. Meanwhile, we all continue to slide deeper into
a shit pit. What the hell is wrong with those people?
Lets do their job for them, shall we? They can continue to
collect their paychecks and remain important and powerful.
Those four enigmas that are true flash points, I list in the
order that they need to be tackled. The order is important

because the resolution of one quandary opens a sliver of a

pathway to fix the next perplexity. So once again:
1. USA-Russia
2. East Asia
3. Southwest Asia
4. Middle East
There is so much information out there on all the above,
naturally enough. Ninety percent of it is propaganda spit out
by paid shills, i.e. fellows in phony foundations, or
academics with a book or a theory to sell, given exposure by
corporate media that follow the party line so that they dont
piss off the Circle of Power thereby losing contracts and
access for their parent companies like GE, Westinghouse,
Disney, Comcast and god knows who else. Basically, if you
are living in the USA, you are being spoon fed your news and
analysis by the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex. Ike
omitted the Congressional part on the advice of counsel.
Shame he didnt spit it out.
So in each hot spot I am going to compress the relevant
history to keep it moving. I do encourage your research on
any points which you have doubts, but my plan is to make this
as easy to read as a comic book, not a phone book. When in
doubt, trust AND verify.
Ready, Set, Go.
1. USA-Russia. Round Two of the worlds most deadly rivalry
ever.
Desired outcome: An alliance between the Euro Bloc, the
Anglo Bloc, the USA, and Russia.
Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland.
Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island.
Who rules the World-Island commands the world.

Nice little three-line ditty, eh? Its called the Heartland

Theory, put forth in the early 20th Century by a Brit named
Mackinder. It is also known as the Geographical Pivot of
History theory. The World-Island is the combination of Eurasia
and Africa. Outside the dominating World Island is the NearOffshore (Britain/Japan/Indonesia) and the Far-Offshore;
North/South America and Australia. The only flaw with Mac is
that the domination of East Europe doesnt actually control
the central Eurasian land mass, the Heartland. East Europe
is a GATEWAY to the Heartland and so Mackinders limerick
should read Who rules East Europe controls the jump-off
point to command the Heartland. Without trying to upset
Mackinders applecart, geography most definitely is history.
Some countries like the USA have defensible borders, nice
neighbors, and wide oceans which keep the riffraff invaders at
bay and allow a country to develop at its pace. Other
countries like Germany (formerly Prussia) hum the tune
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the righthere I am, stuck
in the middle with you and so you might understand why
their historical survival had been based on snarling militarism
and coalitions. So, back to the USA-Russia problem, you can
see how Russia might feel after being deep-raped three times
in the last three hundred years from European nations
jumping off through East Europe. A bit sensitive, lets say,
to anyone but themselves controlling that pivot point, which
is, coincidentally, the Ukraine.
Let us leave musty history and get closer to today. When the
USSR collapsed suddenly in 1991 from imperial overreach (no
no, not Star Wars, thank you please) it could have gone really
bad, like, end-of-the-world bad. The US had a top-notch team
in power back then; Emperor Bush the Elder, featuring James
Baker as Foreign Wizard. They negotiated an incredibly soft
landing, and the key proviso that clinched the deal was the
solemn promise that NATO would not move one inch toward
the east, leaving the former Warsaw Pact countries as a huge
demilitarized zone. See the East Europe connection? All that

commanding this and ruling that? That sealed it. The

Soviets spun off about fifteen countries, and core Russia had
no cause to be alarmed by a NATO that was way away. Well,
in a not very long span of time NATO did move east, gobbling
up all the former Warsaw Pact countries including even three
small nations that were a part of the ex-USSR. Oh the shame!
The DMZ became MZd in a hurry. NATO continued its wicked
ways in the face of all kinds of Russian complaints like
bombing their traditional Slav friends in Serbia, and ripping
away Kosovo. The Russian people, who didnt need Mackinder
to lecture them on geography, elected Vladimir Putin to put a
halt to what had to look like naked aggression and an eventual
invasion. Pure action-reaction. Then NATO wooed Georgia, a
former Soviet Trans-Caucasus Republic definitely nowhere
near the North Atlantic. Maybe even, geographically
speaking, the soft underbelly of Russia. No harm intended,
right? Let freedom ring! Vlad the Bad said nyet in 2008. The
Russians busted into Georgia on provocations by Shaakashvili,
and still occupy the north Ossetian districts to this day. Clever
move because NATO cant take in any member that has a
territory problem with a third party. Putin must have read the
fine print. Damn his eyes! That halted the doorstep
expansions for the moment. Furious, the lunatics that had
tried to surround Russia now came up with a plan to rip Russia
apart internally. The West (USA really) created and financed a
whole series of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) inside
Russia; Democracy Now, Democracy in Action, Democracy
Funded by a Hostile Foreign Power. You get the idea. It was
nothing less than a Trojan horse which shocked and angered
the Kremlin during and after the 2011 senate and 2012
presidential elections.
Now we move to the Ukraine (Uke), late 2013. It is winter, the
national economy is in a mess, corruption is rampant, the
treasury is empty and bankruptcy looms. Whats new its
the Uke. Putin and his Intel apparatus are monitoring the
West (USA) using the same NGO tactics in the Uke that caused

civil disturbances in Russia, passing out cash to the tune of

five billion US dollars. Putin, trying to counter Euro economic
dominance (seeing the shadow of NATO) offers a bunch of
billions in loan to get the Uke through the winter. Yanukovych
takes the offer and the West goes to work, berserk.
Coordinated by those well-funded NGOs, the people protest
because they want to embrace Europe, then they get shot,
many shoot back, and all hell breaks loose. Yanukovych flees
the Uke for Russia in Feb 2014. Putin sees the hand of the
USA from the beginning, not very hidden with Senator John
McCain (we are all Ukrainians now!or Georgians!or
Iranians?) and EU Ambassador fuck the EU Victoria Nuland
publicly passing out cookies to the demonstrators. How the
hell is that not illegal interference in the internal affairs of a
nation? How about Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Lavrov
serving lemonade at a Black Lives Matter march in Gary,
Indiana? Putin even recorded Victoria Nuland on her
telephone picking out the next Uke president. It was a
shamefully staged play for theater-goers that pay attention to
such things. So, not waiting for the other shoe to drop, Russia
executed a lightning take-over of the Crimean Peninsula for
two reasons. 1. There are a ton of Russian nationals and
Russian heritage there, since it was a part of Russia until
General Secretary of the Communist Party Krazy Krushchev, a
Yukie to the core, wrote it over to his homeland in the 1950s
before he was summarily executed for harebrained
schemes. Everyone shrugged back then, unconcerned. Eh,
its all the Soviet Union, they figured. What could go wrong?
And 2. The Russian Black Sea Fleet was stationed in
Sevastopol, in the Russian Navys only year-round warm water
port. No way NATO gets its hands on a major Russian Fleet.
Checkmate-slash-game over if that happens. So see, the
stakes were so high that there is no doubt that Russia would
have gone to war against the USA and NATO and anyone else
that wanted a piece. Apparently the people that spend all
their time planning world domination and creating problems
never thought that Russia would move in and annex the

Crimea, judging by their bellowing and bellyaching and

screaming not fair! and Hitler! and Munich! etc. We are
pretty lucky that the conditions for a major European war did
not coalesce, but not from lack of trying.
OK, up to speed. The Crimea is annexed at the same time
that culturally and ethnically Russian people in the eastern
Ukraine, right up along Russias border, decided they wanted
nothing to do with the new pro-Europe government in Kiev,
surprisingly considering it to be a puppet of the West. So
there is a civil war going on. The annexation of Crimea and
complete support for the breakaway east makes Russia the
villain in this narrative. Putin as Doctor No to Baraks James
Bond. Economic sanctions are imposed on bad guys, in spite
of provocations and justifications. Europe wanted nothing to
do with sanctions on Russia, because meaningful sanctions
would surely force Russia to cut off their gas supply, and god
almighty, you really think Putin is the worse they got? Holy
cow, lets collapse their economy and gamble with a failedstate Russia holding a couple thousand upgraded nukes! For
real brah? So the Europeans talked the Americans down off
the ledge, fine tuning the sanctions, shall we say. Europe
would have told the US to simply piss off except they are in an
economic deflationary vortex, their currency and their unity is
heading down the toilet, and the US has this big stick known
as the almighty dollar. Putin and Russia have not buckled, not
even close. Was there a mistaken assumption they were
pussies? Putins popularity soared to over 80 percent
approval even in the teeth of the economic difficulties taking
effect. Its called defense of vital national security interests.
You hear the words barked by American politicians,
particularly when nothing vital, nor national, are involved. As
time marches on, the EU members feel the pain of interrupted
commerce; Hungary, Bulgaria and Greece being among the
biggest grumblers. Germanys Merkel, the USAs whip in
Europe, has worked to keep the sanctions on but the wheels
are coming off. Hollande in France is demanding an end to

the madness and a return to business as usual and soon,

before they go into a recession which is just around the
corner. The German Foreign Minister, F.W. Steinmeier,
recently warned his own country and NATO that the saberrattling had gone on long enough. Instead of a united stand in
heroic resistance to Russian aggression, as is being pedaled
by US politicians and US media, the Europeans themselves are
at the point of mutiny against crazy US policy. Now that
Britain (the poodle) is out of the EU, the USA is finding itself
isolated within the very EU-NATO structure that it spent
decades and trillions to put together. It really doesnt get any
stupider than this unfortunate series of events, except that
now the USA has installed a defensive missile system in
Romania and is breaking ground in Poland for another. If you
dont understand the implications here, just understand that
you can switch out a defensive missile for an offensive nuclear
one in probably two hours, and that such a missile can reach
the Black Sea fleet from Romania in about six minutes, and hit
the Kremlin in about fifteen. That means that the Russians
are being forced to modify their own (updated) missile system
to launch on a cough. Not kidding and not funny. They are
surely monitoring the site by radar-and-satellite and the
slightest unusual sign of combustion (dumpster fire?) puts
their armament in the air.
Thats how East Europe stands today. A civil war in eastern
Ukraine, a US missile system designed as a decapitation
weapon, and Russia on 24/7 alert. Oh, and NATO is sending a
tank brigade to the Baltic Republics as a show of strength and
resolve. Ohhh, so manly. What it is, is a tripwire force not big
enough to do anything except get slaughtered and get the
folks back home riled up enough to demand war. Remember
Pearl Harbor and Talinin! Christ how did we get here? Let
us fix this.
It really is a piece of cake. Russia wants to fix this. They have
much better things to do than be continually threatened on
their western border. They want to get to selling oil and

buying BMWs. Nobody is getting Crimea back, so that is the

first condition, and my sense is that Europe has figured that
out a long time ago. So what can we do in the way of
compensation? Well, there are two sort of non-countries in
Europe. One is a Russian enclave called Kaliningrad,
wedged in between Poland and Lithuania. The other is a
former Soviet Republic called Moldova, situated between
Romania and the Ukraine.

Gee, Moldova almost looks like it should be a part of the

Ukraine, doesnt it? Lets compare its size with the foreverlost Crimean Peninsula
Moldova-13,000 square miles
Crimea-10,425 square miles
Well, well. Moldova is BIGGER than the Crimea by a quarter.
Population?

Moldova- 3 million
Crimea-2.3 million
This is getting interesting. So you mean to say that this
isolated country Moldova, the poorest in Europe with a median
income of about $5,000 is bigger AND more populated than
the Crimea, and sits right on the Ukes southwest flank?
Guys, I smell a swap. That swap is easy because the EU has
the membership carrot in hand, and Russia has no problem
with EU membership, just with NATO membership. Russia
covets an EU card themselves.
Lets take a quick look at this Kaliningrad. Yeah, nice piece of
work by Russia. This is Russian territory with Russian nuclear
weapons a lob away from Polish territory. UGGGLYY! Lets get
this included in the package.

Kaliningrad stays Russian territory but disarmed. An eastern

Lichtenstein-lite would be a noble goal.
Russia gets the US missiles out of Romania and never built in
Poland. Disarm for Disarm.
Moldova replaces the Crimea for the Ukraine. Maybe not in its
heart of hearts, but certainly its 13,000 square miles. The
incentive for Moldova is that the Ukraine is going to be fasttracked, like tomorrow, into the EU, and they can all

immediately clear out with Euro visas and do plumbing work

in Germany for $30K per annum. If they dont merge, they
stay at their miserable $5,000 median income, visa-less.
Hows those options? How soon can we get that referendum
going?
For EU membership and the Moldova merger, the Uke formally
accepts the transfer of the Crimea incorporated into Russia.
International law just needs two satisfied parties. Done. Kiev
rewrites their constitution to a minimal army and no foreign
military treaties. They also write in cultural and political
autonomy for eastern Ukraine and Moldova as the price for
their cooperation. That takes care of those crazy eastern
Slavs. They get EU visas, keep their pensions, talk Russian,
elect all their own politicos, make vodka their official
beverage, and they can legally fistfight all day and night.
Paradise regained.
See, the Ukraine isnt so much a country as a buffer zone. Let
us therefore configure it as such, assure our security, assure
Russias security, and pay the people of the buffer state a
handsome price; EU status. Hell, get the US to kick in
mightily. The cost is more than offset by the reduction in
forces needed to garrison Europe.
What does everyone get out of this arrangement?
Russia gets the Crimea legitimized, an end to sanctions, a
pull-back of NATO, US missiles off their front porch, all the
western technology to upgrade their energy development, a
stable, long-term market for their gas and petroleum.
Europe gets a disarmed, defanged Kaliningrad, a return to
secure energy supplies, and a Russian consumer market.
Basically status quo antes, but better. They wrap the New
Ukraine into their system, even as Britain works its way out.
All parties obtain a rare relaxation of tension. My hope would
be that Europe somewhat decouples from the American
Empire, diminishes NATO to a Ceremonial Guard Force in

conjunction with a Russian drawdown. I know all this is tough

on the merchants of death, but we need a new baseline.
The USA, if it can find its brains deep in its anus, takes the
opportunity to initiate a four-way alliance called the Northern
Tier Quartet, which includes the USA, the EU, the Anglo Bloc,
and Russia. Thats the entire northern half of the planet. Free
trade and visa-free travel? Hope so. I like the idea that
American parents will be able to send their kids to school in
Finland where they might learn something. Energy supplies
should last a few centuries, coupled to the most advanced
industrial capacity on the globe, and a treaty population the
size of China. In this new harmonious configuration between
natural partners, the NTQ has four of the eleven seats at the
World Council of the New United Nations, and balances rising
Chinese power very comfortably. Like a thousand power-mad
neocons involved in a head-on train wreck, its a great start.
Under the above circumstances, Russia can pull away from
the Chinese orbit as the junior partner. They never wanted to
be there, but there was nowhere else to go, considering the
pressures being put on them. The USA does not have to face
the prospect of a mutual defense treaty between those Asian
giants, with twice the number of nukes as the west. Good
grief.
We have a big one down, but it was a softy. On to solve
problem 2.
2. East Asia. No place for old men or white people.
Desired outcome: Retract US presence in exchange for a
reconfiguration of the political and security paradigm to
ensure stability, trade and commerce. Eliminate the ninedash line of PRC territorial and maritime claims through
PRC/RC reunification as well as reunification of the Korean
Peninsula. Integrate Tibetan political/cultural aspirations in
order to facilitate conundrum number three in Southwest Asia.

Quick tour around the neighborhood:

A generation ago, when I mustered out of naval service, the
USN, with close to six hundred warships, with its bases in
Subic Bay, Guam, and Japan was THE power in the western
Pacific. Nothing else came close. We still have a presence,
even after getting shown the door by the Filipinos, but that
presence is in the shadow of a fifteen-hundred-mile Chinese
hypersonic missile cone that can reach Japan in minutes from
the PRC coastline. Guams naval installations in Apra Harbor
start blowing up twenty minutes from launch time, and no
navy can scramble and fight their warships in anywhere near
that amount of time. Those at sea that are positioned to
defend themselves will do it with the Aegis system, a
combination of radars, missiles, computers and
telecommunications that has never been tested under live
conditions. In fact, to my knowledge it has never effectively
been tested under any conditions. See, you have to have
hypersonic ballistic missiles and sea-skimmers flying at a
manned ship to test whether that ship can blow the missiles
out of the sky. Even using dummy warheads, try to find a
crew for that drill. Putting it gently, our naval assets, many
billions of dollars worth, are under a whole lot of pressure. It
would be my semi-informed opinion, that if you and I could get
a Top Secret-Sensitive Compartmented Information --National
Command Authorities Only-- briefing on the most hush-hush
plans to counter the expected onslaught by PRC air assets, we
would emerge from that briefing pale, stressed, and puzzled.
Because the truth is, until a rail gun, or the electromagnetic
pulse pistol, or a laser beam that blows up missiles on their
launch pads is manufactured, installed, and tested godalmighty soon, our magnificent assets are ducks in a barrel.
Our battalions and seamen are a sacrifice.
You might ask yourself, wellwhy dont wejust to make
sure, ya knowwhy dont we, um, keep our stuff outside of
that cone of death??

Hell, that wouldnt be the American Way! The cheerleaders

for the military domination of American diplomacy and US
society will rage at the retreat, the appeasement, the
downright (sputter) cowardice (!!) of whatever spineless,
gutless, worthless mistake of a president abandoned our allies
and humiliated us in front of the world. There would be
shrieks about American leadership failure, emboldening
enemies, power vacuums, and those magic fairy dust words
that have cost so many untold trillions of dollars, American
Exceptionalism. You know what the result of retraction and
reconfiguration would be? A stable East Asia in its natural
political and geographic order. The reunification between
mainland China and Taiwan is the final restoration of China,
ending nearly two hundred years of partition and humiliation.
You might be surprised to know that the Chinese also think of
themselves as exceptional especially after double-digit
growth for twenty years to reach economic par with the USA.
They are the natural hegemon of Southeast Asia. If we assist
the reunification of the Peoples Republic with the
diplomatically isolated, I dare say illegitimate, legacy of
Chiang Kai-Shek, i.e., the Republic of China on the island of
Taiwan, then we take the air pressure out of the narrative that
the USA is the last of the barbaric Western Great Powers, the
Imperial successor to the European carvers; British, French,
and Germans. And being the true ally and instigator of the
cruelest nation, the Empire of Japan, is the bitter cherry on a
poison cake.
Kool-Aid question: Arent we putting our allies in that region in
jeopardy by this disgusting idea of retreat?
Well first I would ask What allies? The Japan and South
Korea that made themselves rich in our open markets? The
Japan and South Korea that we subsidized militarily in the
hundreds of billions whilst the American economy hollowed
out under lower cost import pressure from our allies? Or
the Philippines? Trusted brethren? They threw us out of our
best bases in the early 1990s; Subic Bay Naval Base, Cubi

Point NAS, and Clarke AFB. Any other allies you can think of?
Communist Vietnam? Only in the mind of crazed neocon
imperialists would Vietnam ever even remotely be considered
our ally, and trying to use them as a strategic chip because
they have a border with south China would probably be even
more stupid than having our tripwire forces in South Korea.
Vietnam is in a hot dispute with China over the Spratly and
Paracel reefs and island groupings. Yeah, lets jump into that
briar patch on the side of our former enemies, who are
dwarfed militarily by China. Yeah, and lets make public visits
to Vietnam from the Secretary of Defense to the President
himself, who, incidentally, declared the USA all in in one of
the most tense regions on earth. Good to see someone is
using their noggin.
Have any of you ever wondered what the deal is with Korea?
What are we doing there in 2016, when the ROK Army is huge,
bristling with American weapons? 630,000 active duty
military and basically the entire country in a tough welltrained reserve, perfectly able to defend itself without those
28,000 US troops stationed right up close to the North
Koreans, engaged within the first few minutes of a general
attack. Make any sense? Hell, I spent lots of time there.
THEY DONT EVEN LIKE US. We smell like sour milk. Our boys
and girls are a tripwire, just like NATO/US troops deployed to
Estonia for all intents and purposes in the suburbs of St
Petersburg, Russia. When the North Koreans do attack, the
stunned reports of massive American casualties are
programmed to whip up the fury of a wronged American
public. Cant we make a sensible defensive plan in Europe or
Asia without sacrificing tens of thousands of young
Americans?
Quote from Sun Tzu: Keep your goddam troops where the
enemy cant get them!

Down in Okinawa, we have about 18,000 Marines that hate

life on that isolated island, and are hated in turn by the
Okinawans. Every so often like clockwork, a few marines get
drunk and rape some little Okinawan schoolgirl, or kill her, or
both, which causes rage and demonstrations demanding
blood and expulsion. The 3d MarDiv jarheads are only a short
distance from the Senkaku Island which are three rocks that
are claimed by both Japan and mainland China, and in case a
Japanese Coast Guard vessel bumps a Chinese Coast Guard
vessel and those two countries go to war for the most foolish
of reasons, the US government has already pronounced its
willingness to join that conflagration on the side of Japan as
per our defense treaty signed in 1961. That US Memo of
Understanding, made public in 2012 when the Chinese
communists heard it stated clearly, puts those Marines in the
position of being incinerated by hundreds of medium-range
missiles.
Guam? A poor substitute for Subic Bay. If you are navy
enlisted, dont let your ass get caught out alone at night by
the local Chamorro boys or say goodbye to your anal virginity.
In Guam, every lowly, lonely E-4 is to blame for anything that
went wrong on an island that will never be independent. The
misery comes with living as servants on a rock in a big ocean
that you can jog across in an hour.
The Philippines. Lets see Oops, right; nothing to see. I hear
were going back though. Something to do with China taking
over reefs right off their coast and needing the US military
muscle to go take them back. And we signed that deal.
Tour of the neighborhood finished.
Yeah, youre right. Why the hell are we there? Those
countries have large, wealthy populations and massive armies
and armaments, and we have just enough lives and
equipment 9,000 miles from Honolulu to take a savage
beating. I bet there are all kinds of contingency plans to fly in
tons of Divisions from wherever, but I bet no brilliant military

mind has ever calculated the revulsion and the rage and the
condemnation on the part of the American people toward the
imbeciles who put our people and our assets in situations
where they could only ever be overwhelmed. Just for
example, as I asked myself in Okinawa that generation ago
What the fug is a Division of jarheads supposed to do, and
where are they supposed to do it? Invade China? Intercept
and repulse the Peoples Liberation Army from crossing the
Taiwan Strait to crush the phony Republic of China? Honestly!
Maybe go reinforce the 7th Division in Korea awash in their
own blood?
Anyway, lets step into todays underwear.
Major moves are being made in these last years by the USA
and by China to outmaneuver each other in a containment
strategy by the former, and counter-containment by the latter.
The Chinese are building a New Silk Road to the west through
Central Asia, including highways, bullet trains, pipelines, ports
and airports to facilitate trade and energy deals between
neighbors. The idea is to diminish the ability of the American
Fleet to blockade China by sea. In the Pacific, the PRC has
actively reclaimed reefs and rocks and atolls throughout the
South China Sea. Their claims stem from historical records of
Chinese admirals and traders setting up provisioning stations,
but even China never put much effort into their claims until
Barak Obama announced an American PIVOT to Asia in 2012.
By 2014 the PRC was dredging and filling the entire South
China Sea; their own pivot, maybe. From Chinas standpoint,
the PIVOT is a thinly disguised containment of Chinas rising
power, and they are activating plans that they probably had
for just such a contingency for years, of which apparently,
American Strategic Planners had no idea? What! caught
flat-footedagain?
In a response not very well thought through, more reflex than
reflection, the USA has made fly-overs and sail-bys using
aircraft and ships near those fill projects in what the Chinese

consider to be sovereign waters. That further provokes the

China hard-liners, the nationalists, and all those that want to
thump the USA a mighty blow. So now the PRC is installing
anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles on effectively unsinkable
aircraft carriers that will rocket toward our ships from every
angle even if they are in Australia.
Maybe it was part of THE CHICOM G.O.O.K PLAN all along.
Certainly it is theoretical that the Communist Party of China
wants to dominate the world even though they have never
shown the slightest inclination. But if that is the case, who
allowed US companies to build factories in China, taught them
everything they know about manufacturing techniques,
transfered huge quantities of cutting-edge technology, and
granted Most Favored Nation status so they can export
tonnage and value into the US never before experienced in
history? While we shipped trillions of dollars overseas, glib
politicians hammered away at the widespread benefits to
American consumers (cheap stuff!) and intrinsic patriotism of
Free Trade (let freedom ring!) which is actually a concept
anethema to any advanced country. Did our leaders really
believe their own rhetoric that overseas markets which can
produce at half the cost were going to buy overpriced
American products? I would allow access into my country for
your raw materials and energy products, but never allow your
country unrestricted access to my internal consumer markets.
You had to be one of fifty states for that privilege. Otherwise,
what is the benefit of being a state? So American cash bought
China a lot of missiles like this.

(D-21 Carrier Killers)

They look ballistic. Oh, they ARE ballistic. Conventional
explosive warheads thoughare they not? They sit on launch
pads up and down the PRC coast, and shortly on freshly
painted islands. They get shot up into the stratosphere on a
satellite-guided GPS trajectory and then come straight down
onto our carrier decks using independent terminal guidance
systems at some ungodly four thousand miles per hour.
Those big fat warheads blow away big chunks of the CV deck
until the respective president is on its way to the ocean floor
with all hands.
Let us put up a representation of the PRCs territorial claims in
the South China Sea, known as the nine-dash line.

Its like a big tongue down the throat of the entire ASEAN
archipelago. The main chokepoint of blockading China would
have been west of Singapore in the Molucca Straits. Not
anymore under these new conditions. The Philippines just
won a major victory in the International Court at The Hague
regarding Scarborough Shoals, a little more than a hundred
miles from their Luzon coast. The Chinese couldnt care less.
The new Filipino president, Rodrigo Duterte is going to try to

do a deal for a Chinese evacuation in exchange for his ripping

up the new base contracts. Thats a big blow to the Pivot.
Lets see what happens.
The only major world power that backs Chinas claim is Russia,
because we have driven Russia into the Sino-corner. Lately
they are doing naval exercises together. Ugh. If our strategic
advance toward Russia described above were to become
reality, she would sail away from taking a position in the South
China Sea scramble that doesnt concern her. It is a huge
advantage for the west to decouple Russian foreign policy
from Chinese foreign policy but I have mentioned that already.
In any case, someone is going to have to throw the PRC out of
their positions or (gasp) negotiate them out.
Hmmm.negotiate.
Now lets hang another map showing the other flash point; the
Daioyu Islands to the Chinese and Senkaku to the Japanese.
You can make up your own mind who has the better
geographical claim, and you can research the history if you
want a greater understanding, but I do hope you will ALL be
wondering what the USA has to do with these rocks and how it
might find itself in a terrible conflict because of its publicly
stated position of defending Japans claim, thereby infuriating
China gratuitously.

Now guys and gals, our alliance with Japan was made when
Japan could be considered an unsinkable aircraft carrier and
troop staging area, right off the coast of Asia (Near-Offshore,
remember?), which was critical geography in the Cold War for
blocking the Soviet Pacific Fleet from a breakout, and also
keeping an eye on Revolutionary China. It made less sense in
the 1980s when Japan was getting rich from easy access to
the American consumer market. It makes zero sense today.
BUT, it is part of the militarized US society, AKA the POST-WAR
everything, and it is really HARD to abandon that fossilized
strategy, even when it seems suicidal to reasonable
observers. Now that I have dragged you all through the
threats and problems, lets put the solution on a platter and
serve it up. We can call it the POST Post-War strategy just to

keep a piece of that precious connection to an all-powerful

USA.
Here are the bargaining chips on the table;
a. A reunified Peoples Republic of China (PRC) with Taiwan
(soon-to-be formerly known as the Republic of China (ROC))
by way of a mutually-negotiated political and economic phasein.
b. The reunification and demilitarization of the Korean
Peninsula under the aegis of the Republic of Korea (ROK) AKA
South Korea.
c. PRC renouncement of all claims to islands, reefs and atolls
in the South China Sea and adherence to a neutral legal
arbitration commission that will set sovereignty and maritime
boundary issues between all claimants. No renouncement in
the conflict with Japan over the Daioyu/Senkakus, but strict
pre-recognition and adherence from both China and Japan to
an arbitration decision as above.
d. The recognition of the historic bond between the Dalai
Lama and the Province of Tibet. As such, we assist in the reestablishment of the Dalai Lama as the Spiritual Authority of
the Buddhist Religion, a Living Museum recognized by the
government of the Peoples Republic as one of the major
wellsprings of Han culture. The Dalai Lamas signature in a
historic treaty recognizes the sovereignty of the Peoples
Republic over Tibet, as the successor to the Qing Dynasty.
e. The border between Tibetan China and India to be fixed by
treaty and demilitarized.
I am not sure if the sequence of the above events are
important. Surely a good faith and common-sense approach
can be cobbled together byhe USA, ASEA, China, and Russia.
If we had not healed the rift with Russia, it is less than certain
that these arrangements could come about. If you think of a
Russia steadfastly in that Sino-corner, the four essential

participants would remain in a two-on-two stare-down; The

USA and ASEA on one side, China and Russia on the other.
The US makes overtures to India to go up 3 to 2. We have
every artillery shell in Asia loaded into the breech at that
point. China masses a hundred Divisions on the border of
can you guess, junior strategists? Aha! Kashmir! And who
else mobilizes their entire armed forces and nukes in support
of their ally China and is just itching for another crack at those
pagan Hindus? Why, hello Pakistan. It is always going to have
this ending if we keep coming at it from the same angle.
As it turns out happily, the five bargaining chips are perfect
for the participating foursome.
ASEA recovers national resources and sets fixed boundaries
amongst all, costing them nothing.
China gets their final territory back (Taiwan), stability on ALL
its borders including India, and a reunified, demilitarized,
peaceful and commercial trading partner Korea with no US
troops and no crazy Stalinist dictator on their northeast
border. All it cost the PRC was a letting go of a big conflict of
island sovereignty and angry neighbors. The China-India
border has been fixed de facto for years. A de jure recognition
is inches away.
Russia gets stability in the Korean Peninsula, expanding their
energy resources into Korea, now that reunification has
brought the dynamic ROK to their Siberian border, and sure to
grow more dynamic with millions of new citizens offering lowcost labor.
The USA gets a reordered and long-term stable East Asia
Juggernaut in the US financial and monetary tent. It gets
incredible defense savings, bringing home and possibly
demobilizing tens of thousands of energetic young people. It
gets a human rights breakthrough with the return of the Dalai
Lama to Tibet, and spiritual autonomy for that World Heritage
plateau. It gets lasting congratulations and thanks from ASEA,

from Russia, and even grudgingly from China. It gets zero

bitter enemies in the New United Nations.
If anyone has any ideas on advantageous sequencing, please
make them known. I see an initial opening with the US
making the ROC (Republic of China) understand that the USA
desires reunification as essential to a tension-free 21 st century
Asia because we have all passed the point in which the ROC
might be capable of repulsing an invasion, and so we should
get a favorable political settlement instead of many lives lost
and infrastructure devastated. Thus there will not even be the
customary ambiguity regarding possible US assistance to the
ROC in a cross-strait invasion. In that framework, the US can
help mediate the PRC-ROC negotiations regarding the
conditions of merger. Favor for favor, China then makes it
clear to Kim Jong FatBoy that resistance to a South Korea
(ROK) takeoverem, reunification will not be tolerated. That if
the north put a missile on the launch pad, China may actually
be the first country to strike. There will be some Golden
Parachutes negotiated for the Kim Dynasty, even a facesaving referendum. But most knowledgeable scholars believe
that China has always held the Korea key in hand until the
Taiwan situation was settled along the lines that the PRC
considers in its vital interests. Of the five bargaining chips,
the two reunifications are the Buffalo Chips. The China
concessions, i.e. island disputes, Kashmir border recognition,
and Tibet status, are slam-dunks in comparison. I guess those
three negotiations run parallel with the PRC-ROC negotiations,
and then the Korean Peninsula reunification solely and
immediately on the heels of that multi-layer success?
The East China Challenge is in the books. Off we go, trudging
up to Trouble Mountain in the Himalayas to the intersection of
three religions; a whopper of a Buddhist/Hindu/Moslem Standoff. Oyyy!

3. The mess that is Kashmir: also featuring --Ethnic chaos in

Pakistan and Afghanistan over arbitrary imperial borders.
Desired outcome; a permanent border solution that will
disengage three nuclear powers, promote political stability,
economic growth, religious tolerance.
China fought India in 1962 and India fought Pakistan in 1947,
1965, and 1971. Kashmir was a major factor in every war.
Pretty good map below. The thick red line is the original
Princely State ruled by a Hindu Majaraja, populated by a Hindu
landowner minority and a Moslem peon class. It was fought
over in the Religious Civil War that was unleashed when the
Union Jack made its last trip down the flagpole of the

Subcontinent in 1947.

The Pakis invaded to liberate the Moslem population and

annex the territory. The Hindu nation pushed them out of the
populous Alpine valley but could not root them out of their
trenches in the mountains to the north and west. The Paki

troops remain dug in to this day even after several all-out

wars and a number of major incidents. India can only see the
Pakistani efforts to liberate their Moslem brothers as
unacceptable interference in their sovereign affairs of state.
Pakistans infamous Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) uses
Taliban-connected networks to infiltrate Hindu-controlled
Kashmir to conduct terror tactics against police and army
units. India has physical possession of the Siachin Glacier
whose spring and summer runoff replenishes Pakistans major
rivers. Nobody knows how long this can continue before one
of the two countries attacks the other to start War Number 4.
Both countries have hundreds of nuclear warheads, and
Pakistan has an out-of-control insurgency problem. In a
nutshell these people are psychos.
Lets review Chinas involvement. Tibet is the eastern border
of Kashmir. The original Princely State bulged eastward into
Tibet. The Brits again drawing lines wherever they felt the
imperial need. Forward into 1962. Mao wasnt happy that
India had recently allowed the fleeing Dalai Lama to cross the
border and be granted asylum. His Red Army units rolled over
the Indian military and came to an abrupt halt when they felt
that their Qing writs were under their feet. India has never
dislodged the Chinese from what they call Aksai Chin district
of Tibet Province.
So the strategist in us looks to the PRC as the rational actor in
this three-way quagmire. The India-China border is ripe for a
formal treaty, and this is why we included the ratification of a
Sino-India border treaty in the solution to the East Asia
hullabaloo. China is largely satisfied with the status quo, and
India is not going to get eastern Kashmir back, which was
really only ever just a line on a map drawn by an English
diplomat, McMahon. So we depend on the two countries to
get that done. China will be within her final borders, with no
other territorial claims. That is not to say no further territorial
ambitions, but the world now has the final shape of a defined
China. All further territorial events reference their legality

back to signed pledges by the governing authorities of the

PRC.
One overwhelming, but as yet unexplained, impetus for China
is that a major part of their planned One Belt, One Road, the
so-called New Silk Road is designed to run through Xinjiang
Province, China to the Pakistani port city of Gwadar on the
Arabian Sea near the Pakistan-Iran border. The Chinese are
pouring money into the port facilities and Special Economic
Zone, all of which and more will be included in the proposed
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, CPEC. And to connect
China and Pakistan in this mammoth endeavor, both countries
need a rail and highway system to pass right through the
Pakistani-occupied Northern Areas of Kashmir, marked in
green on the previous map. This project might be the one
opportunity to finally solve Kashmir. Since China will no
longer be a disputant, we have Chinese participation as an
intermediary. If we can get Indian troops off the Sianchen
Glacier, which feeds the major Pakistani rivers, and withdraw
them to Indian-occupied Kashmir, then Pakistan has enough
incentive to terminate their interference, which is the entire
conflict. India would have to recognize Pakistan sovereignty
over the Northern Areas, and Pakistan recognizes Indian
sovereignty over the rest of the state. Sure, things can get
bogged down in the details. Russia and the USA must enter
the tent and offer anything they can reasonably offer to keep
the momentum going forward. The USA has a final fat carrot
reward for Pakistan, and that is a large chunk of territory from
the artificial nation of Afghanistan which is about to be broken
up as described below.
Breaking up Afghanistan. This enclave for Neanderthals is
more a suppurating ulcer than a country. The US should have
scattered the pieces after the 2001 invasion, but they were in
Part 1 of a two-part Empire-building Project at that moment. It
was originally slapped together by the Brits (them again?) as

a buffer state between their south Asia empire and the

Russian Empire. In that context it succeeded. In all else it
failed, and has continued to fail, currently being propped up
by the USA for the last fifteen years of tears to the tune of
unknown billions. The Afghans broke the Soviet Empire and
they will surely do the same to the American version. If a
country is known as the Graveyard of Empires, is it really a
good idea to say oh, now that we are here anyway, why dont
we see if we can introduce gay rights, and women in jeans,
while banning child marriage and the sex trafficking of boys.
Yeah, that ought to keep us busy for the next couple of
centuries, and happy coincidence! It should suck up all our
extra cash in case we were thinking of doing something useful
with it.

You can see how all the Stans hover around Afghanistan like
vultures. I would treat Afghanistans territory like a

merchants bazaar. What am I bid for this twenty thousand

square miles will stunning views of the Hindu Kush?
Seriously, this country has to go before it bleeds the USA
white. All the hinterlands will get gobbled by the closest
neighbor which means that tribes and clans and ethnic
grouping is a natural outcome. The center nation would be for
the Hazaras, Mongol descendants. And so if the USA kept a
small central area including the city of Kabul to Bagram AFB,
coupled to the Hazara nation, our good and grateful friends,
and the rest of the country is to be broken apart and annexed
to ethnically-related neighboring countries by order of a UN
Resolution, we could be rid of that blight forever. The US
would maintain military presence in the city-state to keep all
the other neighbors honest. Otherwise the flare ups may
continue. Turn Kabul-Bagram into an education/empowerment
center for women, the LGBT community, and whatever
forward-looking knowledge-seeking persons such as they exist
in that part of the world, but the nation-building would be
reduced to a city-building project and the people are there
because they want to be there. Otherwise piss off to a mud
hut in the mountains. I would hope that the US is clever
enough to leave no group stateless and persecuted. The
Balochi minority, culturally oppressed in Pakistan, should have
their sanctuary established around the southwestern-most
provinces. Any ethnic homeland that willingly tolerates
Islamic fundamentalism and jihadi mindset gets busted up
and scattered.

(future Hazara nation in yellow)

Once Pakistan makes peace with India they should receive a
logical, digestible, defensible slice of the Pashtun tribal areas
which are ethnically matched to their Paki clansmen across
the Durant Line. Then the US and Pakistan will pacify the
Taliban together, giving them some autonomy in their caves,
but dont set a foot outside their writ. The plan needs
unanimity from the Security Council to be legal if this event
takes place before the new model is in place. Otherwise only
the new UN Central Asia Group (can we call it the Steppeups?) needs to be involved. US Troop levels and armament
will be the points to negotiate. Maybe multinational
participation is the key but China wants stability to its west
and should be prepared to tolerate a diminished long-term
American presence.

We come to the conclusion of Conundrum 3. Our last flash

point is the Israeli-Palestine conflict, the granddaddy of the
conflicts on this planet. Grab a drink. You may need it.
4. Palestinians, Israelis and an ever-widening arc of failure.
Desired outcome: A final and satisfactory settlement of all
peoples in the Holy Land. A stable set of Arab nations that
can take their place in the highest councils without suicide
vests.
I would truly love to write five hundred pages of not just the
blow by blow of the Israelis and the Palestinians but also
include the three thousand years of history in that little
crossroad of mankind. Cant do it. Must keep the readers
digested. But if anyone wants the long version, just let me
know so I can get started. So we work with a couple of
ancient flashes, fast-forwards, sepia tone nineteenth-century
photos, and snippets of highly nuanced yet epic events of a
monumental religious-historical conflict. These days its all
about attention span.
Id love to skim through the Israelites and Canaanites,
Jebusites, David the King, Samaria, Solomon and the First
Temple, the Exile, Babylon captivity, Maccabean Revolt, and
Pompeys conquest of Jerusalem, but its not in the cards. We
pick it up in the reign of Herod the Great just before Jesus was
born only because Herod expanded the Second Temple into
the realm of magnificent by all accounts, and it was the
destruction of that Temple in 70 AD by the Romans, a
generation after the death of Jesus, that was the seminal and
cataclysmic event in Judaism. Although massive numbers of
Judean Jews were put to the sword or banished from the cities
that rose up in the revolt against Roman oppression, that was
the lesser evil of the day. Without a Temple nobody knew how
to worship God, or pray to God or sacrifice to God. All had
been spelled out in Jewish law since Moses with the Ark of the

Covenant at the center. Eventually Rabbinical Judaism

evolved, but the bitterness of the Jew toward the polytheist
pagan pricks from Italy knew no bounds. The Jews of both the
Center and the hundreds of thousands in the diaspora rose up
twice in the next seventy years, and although they gave the
Romans tremendous drubbings, sheer weight of numbers won
out and so when the last rebels of the bar Kokhba revolt were
slain around 136 AD, the Romans scattered the remaining
Jews to the four winds. And that is the origin of the people
without a land for nearly two millennia.
In that two millennia, Roman rule changed to Byzantine rule
until the Persians occupied Jerusalem and surrounding hills for
a short spell in the seventh century, and the eastern Romans
and Persians exhausted themselves in a tug of war which was
very convenient for the Arabs sweeping up from the Arabian
Peninsula just about that time after the death of the Prophet
of their newly minted religion, Islam. They settled in for the
long haul, even throughout the Crusades of the Middle Ages,
until the Turks picked up the pieces of the devastation
wrought by the Mongol invasions.
Scoot up to nineteenth century Europe. The Jewish race was
scattered over the globe, but mostly concentrated in central
and Eastern Europe. The western Enlightenment generated
an enthusiasm to liberate them from medieval ghettoes,
especially in Western Europe. Not so much the further east
one moved. This was a great thing in general. It eased travel
restrictions, work limitations etc. and with trains and
telegraph, widely separated communities connected. Ideas
were jotted down in Jewish newspapers and books. One of the
most far reaching ideas was, hey, what are the chances we
can find a homeland for ourselves? which was right in line
with rising nationalism throughout Europe.
Intellectuals argued over the merits of assimilation versus
separation. There was strong antipathy in many influential
minds to this nascent Zionism. A preponderance of Jews

considered themselves to be quite happy in whichever

country they lived, most particularly in Germany. Zionists
may have been a minority but they were an impassioned
minority, galvanized by Cossacks chasing them down with
whips. The eastern Jews formed clubs, decided that their
destination would be Palestine and started heading that way
from Kharkov, Odessa, Lvov, Bucharest and other Black Sea
ports from about the 1870s.
This was no Mosaic Exodus. It was a trickle of eastern
European Jews with little funding, entering the Ottoman
Empire as undesired immigrants, and clinging to whatever
small amounts of land they could afford from the local Arab
landowners. They didnt speak the language, they dressed
outrageously and they sure werent Moslem. There was a
snowballs chance in hell of success except for an
extraordinary confluence of Great Power dynamics and
Ottoman weakness at that exact moment in time. For an
excellent description, I highly recommend the few pages of a
work called
The Ottoman Empire, Zionism and the question of Palestine
(1880-1908) by Mim Kemal Oke. Cambridge Press
Enter Theo Herzl, Zionist Extraordinaire. My last couple of
paragraphs were inserted to wash away the legend that Theo
single-handedly conceived of Zionism and brought it to
fruition. He is important to the story but Zionism was coming
into its own from many sources, like raindrops collected into
rivulets eventually forming a powerful river. Theo organized
the political structure, yearly congresses in Switzerland from
the late 1890s, with himself as president. He established a
bank and the land-purchasing Jewish National Fund which
exists to this day. He was energetic and outrageous surely,
offering the Ottoman Sultan twenty million British pounds in
gold for a Jewish State. I bet the Sultan could have used the
cash, since the bankruptcy of his Empire was causing a
downward tailspin in its destiny. But as Caliph of the Moslem

religion, it wasnt even a close call. Like he told Theo, he

wouldnt be Caliph very long if he allowed his province of
Palestine to be turned into a Jewish State.
Although the Ottoman Empire remained hostile to Jewish
immigration, they kept coming. Theo died in 1904, probably
from overwork, just before the great upheaval in the Russian
Empire known as the 1905 Revolution. There was no love lost
between the Romanov Dynasty and its Jewish subjects and
they participated in the leadership of the Revolution which
marked them for special treatment once the revolt crested
and waned. 40,000 Jews hightailed it south from 1905 onward
but only about half managed to make a go of it. By 1914
there were roughly 60,000 Jewish immigrants living in
Palestine of a population of roughly 800,000. The popular
slogan of the Zionists at the time was A land without a people
for a people without a land. Touching, just not true. The fatal
flaw of the Zionist enterprise was just this; there was a people.
There still is. Even the heroism and tenacity of the Jewish
immigrants could never change that. And that Arabic people
didnt want to be colonized, and they didnt want to be
second-class citizens. In the enthusiasm and rationale of
establishing a secure homeland for an insecure people it was
this inescapable fact that was overlooked or ignored or
shelved, but never went away. By 1914 the project was on
the rocks. Arab resistance hardened. Land became
unavailable. More Jews were packing up and leaving. The
exodus blunted enthusiasm and the pessimism dried up
funding. Jewish nationalism was failing. Some were
suggesting a change of venue; Argentina maybe. Cyprus,
even.
Then came World War One.
The Ottoman Empire joined the German Empire and the
Austrian Empire a few months after the August carnage in
Europe. Now, think of this; there are 60,000 recent
immigrants, non-Moslem, never welcomed, and mostly from

different parts of the same Russian Empire that was at war

with Ottoman Turkey who were now cut off from any option
other than to stay put. How precarious was their situation?
Turks arent known as the most kind-hearted of people. When
they felt that Christian Armenians were sympathetic to fellow
Christian Russian soldiers they didnt hesitate to massacre at
least a million Armenians during the war. They could easily
have decided to do the same to a much smaller group of Jews
who could have been considered a fifth column. Whew, it
didnt happen. There is no literature that I know of on this,
but I bet the immigrants walked in very soft shoes during
those four years.
Geo-strategically, the region was a swirl of intrigue. The
British lifeline to their provisions and reinforcements from
India, Australia, and New Zealand was the Suez Canal at the
southwest border of the Ottomans. Britain engaged in
negotiating the possibilities of supporting an attempt at Arab
independence under the leadership of Sharif Husayn ibn Ali,
the guardian of Mecca and Medina. The Sharif had nothing
less in mind than the political union of all Arabs with himself
as Caliph. His megalomania dovetailed with Britains need for
a counterweight to the Ottoman Sultan/Caliphs declaration of
a Holy War against Britains interests everywhere, most
particularly in the subcontinent with its hundred million
Moslems. So in 1915, high British authorities in Egypt
promised independence to the Arabs in return for a vigorous
uprising behind the Turkish lines. Then, while the Arabs and TE
Lawrence galloped out of Arabia to shoot Turks, the Brits
crayoned post-war spheres of interest with their French allies
in 1916 that kind of overlapped what they had just recently
promised Sharif Husayn. Then in 1917, those same Brits
promised the Jewish people a homeland in Palestine which
was in direct contradiction to the previous contradictions they
guaranteed to France and the Arabs. You wonder why the
Middle East is a mess.

The official war ended in November 1918 as everyone knows,

but the brushfires werent really put out until well into the
1920s. There was the Russian Civil War between Reds and
Whites with interventions by the Japanese and Americans in
eastern Siberia for years. There was the Czech Legion in their
amazing fighting breakout all along the Trans-Siberian
Railroad, reaching Vladivostok for evacuation back to Europe.
There were British troops in Archangel, German troops in
Poland. Greek, French and British troops fought a surrounded
and outmanned Mustafa Kemal who whipped them all in
Anatolia. Pilsudski outfought Trotsky at the gates of Warsaw
to gain Polish independence. In the center of the swirl was
the drawn-out Versailles Peace Conference in which the
American president was ardently advocating selfdetermination for all ethnic minorities at the same time his
partners were slicing up the world for their own empires.
Even that peace process didnt end until the middle of 1920
when the French and English massed troops on the Rhine to
invade Germany who balked at the severe terms. Throughout,
the British maintained their wartime blockade to keep
Germans starving in Germany while future US president
Herbert Hoover was desperately trying to get food and fuel to
those same Germans.
In the post-war maelstrom, few people paid attention to
Palestine. Faisal, son of Husayn tried to collect his due for
leading the Arab army. He was proclaimed by a Pan-Arab
congress as King of Damascus. He was promptly deposed by
the outraged French. The abashed Brits gave him a puppet
throne in Iraq, and put his brother Abdullah on a newly-minted
throne in Transjordan, east of the river. The British High
Commissioner whistled Dixie when asked what about
Palestine? by a red-faced, white-bearded smoldering Husayn
ibn Ali. See, the Anglos had kept the Balfour Declaration, their
1917 commitment to a Jewish homeland, largely to
themselves and a few well-placed Zionist leaders like Chaim
Weizmann. When it was included in their Mandate for

Palestine approved by the League of Nations and couldnt be

hidden anymore, the Palestinians rioted, killing dozens of
Jews. From that point on, events in Jerusalem and Palestine
took on the aspect of a tragi-farce. The Brits opened the
country to large-scale Jewish immigration as promised. Tens
of thousands of Jews entered, most fleeing the Bolshevik
chaos in Russia. This infuriated the Arabs who were supposed
to establish representative institutions as a precursor to
independence as spelled out in the Mandate. But if they were
given any say in running the government, the first law they
would have passed would be a ban on Jewish immigration. In
the event, no Arab that dealt with the Brits under those terms
would have credibility with their own people, so they
boycotted the institutions that were set up for them, in which
they would have had no power anyway. So the loyal, stable
Jewish state on the eastern flank of the Suez Canal that slick
Chaim Weizmann had described to Lloyd George, Winston
Churchill, and Arthur Balfour, was turning into an incoherent
mess. And it wasnt just the Arabs that were incensed. Jews
were being killed under the supposed protection of the British
Empire. Some protection! They formed self-defense militias
for their communities. A new kind of Zionist was coming on
the scene. In the first generation the leaders of the movement
used their education and negotiating skills to further the
cause, none better than Chaim Weizmann, the Hungarian
chemist refugee to England that invented a process to make
acetone from the cellulose of chestnuts, enabling England to
make the millions of tons of explosives needed for their
artillery and naval guns. What good is a navy if you cant
shoot? But in the 1920s, chalk talks, maps, and enchanting
bible stories took a back seat to who could site down the
barrel of a rifle and pull the trigger on armed men coming to
kill your family in the night. In the new milieu, men like Zeev
Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor came to the forefront. Both
had served in one of those quirky units that wartime
emergencies and personal initiative form from the ether; the
Zion Mule Corps. I can never say those words just once; the

Zion Mule Corps. Sorry. These two had approached the

British Army in Egypt at the start of the war to offer their
services. Trumpeldor had already served with distinction in
the Czars army, wounded in Port Arthur, China during the
Russo-Japanese War of 1904. 600 men were recruited and
played a vital role in the Gallipoli campaign, getting water,
supplies and ammunition to the Australians in the trenches.
They were disbanded a year later, but their volunteers were
wrapped into the Jewish Legion, whose 2,000 trained
volunteers became the core of the self-defense Haganah,
which became the core of the Israeli Defense Force. So, what
is the Primordial Soup of the Israeli Defense Forces? Thats
right; the Zion Mule Corps. Now you know.
They ushered in a new philosophy; Revisionist Zionism. RZ
believed that negotiations with the local people are futile.
They know they are being colonized. When a race of people
are being colonized by another, no amount of money or
goodwill or promises are going to succeed in convincing them
to accept that fact. They are as committed to the same land
as the colonizers.
The Iron Wall written by Jabotinsky is the recognized
manifesto of Revisionist Zionism. Worth the few minutes to
read, especially since it won the argument.
So as the twenties stretched into the thirties, riots and attacks
increased on both sides. The British authorities tried to
maintain some sense of impartiality in their arrests and raids,
which only made both sides hate them. Two things kept the
Brits in this expensive hell hole; The Suez Canal and oil.
Millions of barrels of oil, from the endless wells around Kirkuk
in northern Iraq through a pipeline that passed through the
Jordanian desert to Haifa in northern Palestine where it was

refined and shipped to all points in the British Empire.

At long last, the preeminent Empire in the world had its own
secure source of petroleum energy, putting them in the
energy major leagues with the Americans. The Americans had
Texas, the Bolsheviks had Baku, and the British had Kirkuk.
They had so much oil they shared it with their French buddies
in the Syrian mandate, branching off at Hadith, western Iraq,
which terminated at the French refinery in Beirut, Lebanon.
Life was good if you had an empire! Maybe not so good if you
were an Iraqi having your natural resources sucked dry.
So the Brits played at Great Power politics, divide and rule,
even if the price was a few dozen Anglo constables and
soldiers being sent home to Old Blighty in boxes every year.
Protecting the all-important pipeline across that great expanse
of desert to the Mediterranean made plain for all to see that

there was no Palestinian independence on the horizon. Huh?

Put the energy fate of your empire in the hands of those who
had grown to hate you? Iraq was given an independence that
guaranteed the right of Britain to base troops in the country,
and also to land and transport troops through to other
destinations; in other words, invade at will. Transjordan was a
British protectorate whos Army, the Arab Legion, was staffed
by British officers and commanded by an English general.
Palestine? Youre kidding. The first thing they would do is kill
all the Jews. And starting in 1936 that is exactly what they
started doing in earnest.
When Izz ad-din al Qassam, an itinerant Islamic preacher
turned guerrilla leader was cornered in a cave by British
soldiers and killed in November, 1935 his martyrdom and
funeral set off the next three years of anarchy called the Arab
Revolt of 1936-39. The country was economically paralyzed
by a general strike that lasted six months. The oil pipeline,
police, soldiers and Jewish kibbutzim were the principal
targets of attack. Into this hurricane of hate stepped one of
the oddest ducks in Britains long military history of quackers;
Orde Wingate. Just a captain in 1936 Palestine, he became a
general officer during World War Two before dying in a plane
crash in India in 1944. He was responsible for the formation
of the Chindits, a mixed British-Indian commando group that
harassed the Japanese Army in Burma. Famous in the army
for wearing the same nasty clothes and remaining unwashed
for weeks at a time, he became a committed Zionist before
ever setting foot in Palestine. Like some key Zionist
supporters in government during the Great War, he held
strong End Time beliefs that the Return of the Israelites to the
Holy Land was the first signal of the Rapture, the Tribulation,
the Return of Jesus and the End of this Wicked World.
Upon arrival, Orde made immediate contact with the
prohibited Hebrew militias. Once they trusted him, he taught
them his peculiar form of irregular, psychological terror
warfare. Many of the fighting legends of Israel were trained

by Wingate. Since warriors like Moshe Dayan and Yigel Allon

became the highest ranking generals, you can make the case
that Orde touched every soldier. Once Wingate convinced his
top boss, General Archie Wavell to use his Hebrews to guard
the pipeline against saboteurs, they became the Special Night
Squads and there was no going back to a vague neutrality.
Britain chose sides, and the fight increased in bitterness.
I would like to take a second here to point out a pivot point of
destiny that is unknown to the world.
If the Jewish oppression in Germany had been as much on the
minds of the English ruling class as their petroleum resources,
they had the ability to:
1. Reestablish their Mandate only in northern Palestine (Haifa,
west to south of Galilee, north to Lebanese border), giving
Arabs their independent state starting 25 miles south of the
pipeline, well out of artillery range of that time.
2. Migrate the Jewish population to the truncated Mandate,
which already had near-majorities therein.
3. Form Jewish military units under British officers to protect
the pipeline and refinery.
4. Allow unlimited Jewish immigration to the Mandate sector.
Those four steps would have
a. deflated the explosive pressure for Arab independence.
b. removed the Arab rage over Jewish
immigration/colonization, permitting as much immigration as
the physical Mandate/Homeland space could contain.
Six million?
c. set up the structure of a Jewish Army for a future State of
Israel upon final British withdrawal.

This plan would have required vacating Jerusalem, leaving the

city of David and Solomon as Arab and Moslem, probably with
negotiated religious rights and pilgrimage protections for
Christians and Jews. But under the impending circumstances
it was a price that was payable. We will never know because
it never happened. We do know that Hitler was searching for
a mass deportation solution to the Jewish Question before he
decided on the barbaric alternative. What did happen was
years of futile investigations and negotiations which resulted
in the 1939 MacDonald Commission report, a White Paper
which repudiated the concept of a Jewish Homeland and
whose recommendation to limit Jewish immigration to 75,000
over a five-year period doomed millions, but established an
uneasy restoration of civil peace in 1939. And the oil flowed.
Once again it looked like the Zionist project was moribund.
15,000 new bodies a year was like pedaling a stationary bike.

Then the War came and changed everything.

The massive influx of Empire troops into the Middle East in
general and Palestine in particular brought the calm of martial
law. The Brits authorized the formation of an elite strike force
from the best of the Haganah, called the Palmach. Their forte
was language, scouting, guile and local knowledge. They
helped the Australian assault against the Vichy French in
Lebanon, where Moshe Dayan lost an eye to a French sniper.
And month after fearful month the entire Yishuv gazed west
toward Egypt and the tanks of Rommel. If the Desert Fox had
pushed aside the British Army in their 1942 stand at El
Alamein, the Zionist project would be a small part of the
Holocaust.
It was of course the Holocaust that galvanized Zionists and
non-Zionists. Organizations sprung up to collect and ship
Jewish survivors toward Palestine. The British were financially
exhausted by the war, but their naval ships in the Med still
intercepted those vessels, interning the refugees in camps in
Cyprus. Many ships that successfully ran the blockade did so
at full speed while being chased, grounding on the beaches
and dispersed the passengers into the waiting reception
committees, disappearing into the night. In their outrage over
continued British interference, Jewish paramilitary groups
trained their weapons on Anglo soldiers and police with more
frequency. The Haganah remained restrained under orders
from David ben Gurion, the president of the Jewish Agency.
But the underground and banned groups like Menachim
Begins Irgun and Avraham Sterns LEHI ambushed the Anglos
when they werent busy blowing up Arab markets or the King
David hotel. The Jewish terror brought Anglo-Zionists relations
to such a low point that ben-Gurion was forced to spill Hebrew
blood for a time called the Hunting Season.
Bankrupt Britain by 1947 had no choice but to withdraw from
their imperial possessions including the Asian subcontinent
and the Middle East. They scheduled the flag ceremony in

Palestine for May 1948, leaving behind an unworkable

partition plan that the UN accepted under major duress from
Harry Trumans USA who himself was under major duress
trying to get elected for the first time. He calculated that his
unreserved enthusiasm for a Jewish nation in Palestine would
bring him just enough Jewish votes and campaign funds and
favorable media, and he was right. Ben-Gurion accepted the
partition of Palestine as a beginning for a Jewish State. The
Arabs clearly werent interested in partition. Imagine, a
European-based Empire muscles their way into another
country, stays unwelcome for 28 year then volunteers that
country to be ripped apart by the United Nations, located in
New York City, voted on by countries in Asia, Africa, etc. who
knew nothing of Palestine culture and history. The only ones
in the world without a say in the future of Palestine were the
Palestinians. Also imagine one side, Zionists in this instance,
owned six percent of national territory but given fifty-five
percent in the partition plan. Maybe the strangest slice of all
was the Negev desert in the south, populated entirely by
Bedouins, assigned to the Zionist state.

The Partition Plan had no defensible borders for either side

, made no equitable distribution of resources like water, an
d separated the country into two Arab sections and two Je
wish sections with no real plan as to feasible communication
. Basically it was a Rorschach inkblot and every count
ry that was involved in its conception and approval should
be ashamed of themselves, including the Truman administrat
ion in spite of vociferous opposition from Great American and t
en-Secretary of State George C. Marshall. Marshall corr
ectly saw that supporting the Partition of Palestine and th
en recognizing the State of Israel would poison the U.S.-Arab rel
ationship as far as the minds eye could see, and it has. A
s before in the thirties, there was an opportunity for a les
s destabilizing State of Israel in the Sea of Galilee region, i
ncluding Haifa through the Jezreel Valley, annexing the Gol
an Heights from French Mandate Syria. The Lebanon could have
annexed the very north of Palestine to an agreed border with
the new Jewish State. Both the Christian State of Lebanon and
the Jewish State of Israel would each have had a substantial
Arab population guaranteed full citizenship and a subsidiz
ed option to emigrate. There would be water and agricultural
sufficiency for several million Zionists and more defensi
ble borders. Same for Arabs. Certainly there wou
ld have been emotions whipped up by die-hard nationalists
and opportunistic politicians. But an energetic people wit
h commercial talent, a worldwide financial support syst
em and gifted diplomats would have made sure to encompass the
surrounding Moslem regions to the economic benefit of bot
h. So many times when we
So we come to the birth of Israel, May 14, 1948, which, not
coincidentally, was also the commencement date of the first
Arab-Israeli War. The details of all Arab-Israeli conflicts can be
found everywhere, so I wont take up space here, except for a
few personal observations.
The legend that six Arab nations attacked Israel in its crib is a
distorted founding-myth. Remember, this was a couple years

after the most brutal war in history. The newly liberated

Middle East was broke. Arabs had no armies during WW2.
They were all under British or French rule and prone to
opportunistic pro-German uprisings. The withdrawing,
bankrupt empires left behind impoverished entities fighting
amongst ethnic and religious sects for predominant power
positions. No small thing in the Middle East where the loser is
generally erased. The nicest word anyone might describe
Arab military units of that time is irregulars. These semiequipped militias did enter the fight in Palestine in varying
degrees of organization and motivation. For example, Syrian,
Lebanese and Iraqi troops were sent by sympathetic
governments who then realized that they had left themselves
exposed to their domestic enemies and hustled them back.
The only real effective militaries were the Arab Legion of
Jordan and the Egyptian Army. The Egyptians had next to no
combat experience, having been judged by their British
overlords to not have even the aspect of efficient gate guards.
The Arab Legion was the best trained, but very small, unable
and unwilling to extend themselves beyond a limited incursion
with the political desire to reach Jerusalem, expulse the Jews,
and then feel out the possibilities of annexing Palestinian land.
The Zionists on the other hand, had been trained by the
British, had extensive combat experience during the war, and
were receiving massive arms shipments from Czechoslovakia
with ample international funding and sympathy, including the
US, Europe, and the USSRs Josef Stalin himself, who saw the
new state, populated overwhelmingly by Russian and eastern
European socialist Jews, as a natural ally against the capitalist
west.
The war went on in fits and starts for nearly a year. The UN
imposed cease fires several times. You know how those go.
Each side stocked up for resumption of hostilities and then
jumped the gun. Arab military units were completely
disorganized from their own internal power struggles while the
Zionists were united and disciplined. The only war zone that

went bad for them was Jerusalem where the Arab Legion of
Jordan was dug into the foothills of the Jaffa-Jerusalem road,
blockading the attempts to supply their fighting units and
civilians. By March 1949, Israel had expanded to almost
eighty percent of the now-defunct Palestine, but lost the Old
City of Jerusalem. King Abdullah of Jordan annexed that, and
what was left of the Arab territory assigned by the UN, except
for Gaza on the Egyptian border where the Egyptian Army had
been cornered. So Gaza became Egypt and Jordan gobbled up
what they had their eye on from the beginning. Hundreds of
thousands of Arabs fled or were expelled from the State of
Israel. Many of their descendants continue to live in festering
refugee camps in the Israeli-occupied territories as well as the
surrounding Arab states. The young ones grew to adulthood
with revenge in their hearts, became Fedayeen, those that
sacrifice themselves, crossing into Israel bent on destruction.
They enlisted en masse in Arafats secular PLO after it was
formed by the Arab League in 1964 as the sole representative
of the Palestinian people. They swelled in numbers after
hundreds of thousands more Palestinians fled or were
expulsed by Israel during and after the lightning war of 1967
in which Jordanian forces were pushed back to their 1948
border of the Jordan River, Egypt lost the Sinai Peninsula, and
the Golan Heights overlooking the Galilee was seized from
Syria.
Border attacks from all angles never ceased on the Jewish
State after 67. So many Fedayeen camps were established in
Jordan that Arafats PLO became a state within a state. They
set up checkpoints, battled Jordanian police, and collected
taxes. The Hashemite Kingdom, now ruled by Hussein,
perceived the existential threat. This was no small thing.
Palestinians had arrived in the hundreds of thousands, greatly
outnumbering the native Jordanians. The PLO was openly
planning to take over the country, commandeer the armed
forces and have another go at Israel. Both Iraq and Syria,
unstable secular-nationalist governments, aligned their

sympathy with the PLO which was the popular thing to do.
Monarchies, like Jordans, were seen as an anachronism of
imperialism. So, to attack the PLO, Hussein was inviting the
possibility of attack from not-too-friendly neighbors.
Nevertheless in Black September 1970, after assassination
attempts on King Hussein, after PLO hijackings of several
airliners were flown into Jordan and blown up on the runways,
the Jordanian Army struck first, going after PLO camps
everywhere. They cleared the cities and drove al Fatah and
the other factions into the hills. Syria did invade and they
pushed back the Jordanians. The USA sent their Med and
Atlantic aircraft carriers steaming into Israeli waters. The
USSR moved twenty surface combatants and submarines just
north of the American positions, off the Syrian coast. The 82 nd
Airborne Division was alerted in Fort Bragg, N.C. and deployed
on C-141s in full combat gear to jump into Jordan and secure
the main airport for further combat offload. Both superpowers
went to war footing while Syrian tanks punched it out with
Jordanian tanks along their common border. The Jordanian Air
Force won the day and the 82nd was recalled in mid-flight. A
Cuban Missile Crisis-level event had flashed across the screen
while the world went about its business. Yowza
The events of September 1970 had major reverberations in
the Middle East, where an unsettling in one part sets off
unknowable chain reactions in other parts. The birth of Israel
led to the expulsion of such a large number of Palestinians
that they destabilized the neighboring country of Jordan who
then expelled so many Palestinians into southern Lebanon
that it radically changed the ethnic and religious balance of
that country which was always delicate with its
Christian/Sunni/Shia power sharing. The anti-Israel south
Lebanese Shia, forerunners to todays Hezbollah, gained an
overwhelming quantity of like-minded Sunni PLO. So much so
that they felt sure that together they could toss out the
Maronite Christians who had too damn much power as the

favored pets of the ejected French pansies, with who the

Christians still did much business, growing rich at the expense
of less favored but pious Moslems. Israel, alarmed at the shift,
armed and trained the Maronite Christians into a dominating
army, the Phalangists, as Lebanese society gradually
descended into chaos. Mountain Druze villagers formed
defensive militias with whichever side could help prevent their
massacre. Syria, as a neighbor and protector of the Alawite
minority couldnt help but get involved with support, arms,
and training. The fighting Shia groups sought and received
major help from Iran, which interested the United States
greatly, which then brought the Soviets into this witches brew
in the interest of their ally, Syria. Civil war lasted fifteen years,
until Hezbollah established itself as the premiere power, but
agreed to the cosmetics of a civil political puppet theater and
a secular Armed Forces which will forever stay inferior to
Hezbollahs might. All this social fragmentation of a oncebeautiful nation is now being inflamed again by the Sunni
Islamist Civil War next door in Syria which has forced massive
numbers of Syrian refugees into shithole camps in Lebanon,
Jordan, and Turkey, begging for food and taking work from
locals. Hezbollah is full in, fighting against incursions of
Lebanese space and deployed in Syria to fight the Sunni Jihad,
knowing that if Assad goes down, they will be exterminated
and Lebanon will be part of the Caliphate.
Sigh.
So, the math lesson for today, children, is that when you expel
hundreds of thousands of Arabs to establish a non-Arab state
in a sea of Arabians, they remain undigested, unwanted,
starting calamities everywhere they go, and you end up with a
hundred thousand missiles pointed at you that in the fullness
of time can reach your major population centers.
Sigh.

And we havent even touched on what a fuck-bucket the USA

made out of Iraq, next door to all this blood and agony, and
indeed, a major reason for its genesis.
None of the above in any way says that there should not be a
Jewish state because there should be. What is says is that
everything we do, we do as separate nations, tribes, or
religions. The idea that one people win and another people
lose never seems to work. Why do we keep trying the same
formula?
Excuse the interruption of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian
clash beyond 1970. The 1973 close-run thing in the Yom
Kippur war so frightened the Israeli citizenry that the political
landscape seismically changed from the historic dominance of
the socialist-secular Zionism of David ben-Gurion to the
Revisonist Zionism of the Likud Party, founded by hardcore
members of Menachem Begins Irgun and Yitzak Shamirs LEHI
of the Jewish Terror. Happy days are here again. Basically,
under this forty-year right-wing domination, negotiations for a
separate Palestinian State get lip service to pacify the
international crybabies, while the Israeli government
continues forward with Jewish settlements on the UNdesignated Arab-Palestine State until nothing remains of that
theoretical state. The project is called Greater Israel and its
borders are the Mediterranean to the Jordan, the sea to the
river. The occupied territories where millions of angry,
stateless Palestinians live are actually the ancient nations of
Judea and Samaria.
Because Likud itself doesnt have the votes for a
parliamentary majority, their natural political allies are the
Settler Parties and the religious parties that claim land deeds
from biblical stories and divine promises. Since these fringe
parties are the razor margin between real power and useless
Knesset debate, they get important government portfolios and
get to implement their goals. Their policies further dispossess

Arab non-citizens, inflaming passion to the point where life

holds no great reward and a martyrs death becomes
attractive which produces more scare votes electing nononsense men and women who further tighten the screws
which raises the hate level and produces more martyrs,
which...
If you could make those three million Arabs go away, Israel
might have a shot at pulling off the program, or pogram.
Palestinians? Sheesh, they left a long time ago. Nope, didnt
say where. Justdisappeared.
So thats one possible solution. Lets start the problemsolving phase with options for making the Arabs go away and
keeping all the land.
Option a. Round up the three million of them into
concentration camps, work them to death as slave labor,
gassing those that dont cut the mustard. Use the ashes for
olive trees.
Anybody want to touch this one?
Option b. Round them up, transport them to the borders, and
push them over, shooting any that try to reenter.
This might work once all the border nations become
completely failed states without border security personnel,
which might be soon. In which case the warlords on the other
side will arm and train the young males, enslave the young
females, kill off the rest, and send large marauding units back
into Israel to loot and pillage. Certainly the influx will give
great numerical superiority to the lucky warlord, who will
subdue and incorporate other fiefdoms, maybe obtain a
nuclear weapon or two. Eventually the most psycho
Palestinian will kill the old weasel, put on the Warlord helmet
and redirect all units toward eternal war with the Jews.
Alright, we might be wasting our time here. Lets try another
game plan out there; the Palistan theory, in which some real

shit real estate inside Greater Israel is assigned to warehouse

these people; an open-air concentration camp, lets say. We
can even use Gaza as a model.
This idea is based on the Bantustan policy of the White
Supremacist government of South Africa which no longer
exists because it was shunned and sanctioned to its death
largely because it devised this horrendous policy in which
some real shit real estate was assigned to warehouse millions
of black Africans, places like Soweto. Just like that synonym
for racism and despair, I would bet that the rest of the world is
just waiting to learn the name of the mythical Palistan.
Lets not spend any more time on crazy. Let us discuss the
legendary two-state (TS) solution briefly. TS is still bandied
about because nobody at this point really has any other ideas.
The Israelis never seriously considered TS as viable because
armored vehicles from a hostile Palestinian state are a

half-hour drive to the sea. Jerusalem could suffer devastating

surprise artillery and missile attacks. There have been offers
by Israel within the negotiation framework to cede the
security of the eastern border with Jordan to the Israeli
military, but then what would be sovereign about that?

Sharing a city as dual capital cities. How would that be

workable? This damn non-solution has been around for too
long and it was unworkable then and continues to be so. The
Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 was willing to swap the
implementation of the TS for diplomatic relations between
Israel and all Arab nations. It was rolled out in the middle of
the second Palestinian uprising; Intifada II to deafening
silence. Maybe we can still get that diplomatic bonanza with a
different plan.
So we come to my Hail Mary. Ha, just a joke. Seemed funny
at the moment. Lets summarize our truths and conjectures:
1. The Jewish faith was born in Israel more than 3,000 years
ago.
2. The Christian faith was born in Israel roughly 2,000 years
ago.
3. Islam was born a couple of hundred miles to the south of
Israel roughly 1,400 years ago.
4. The center of Judaism was Jerusalem from about a
thousand years before Christ was born.
5. The first and second Temples in Jerusalem were the
absolute cornerstone of ancient Judaism. The Second Temple
has deep significance to Christianity.
6. Judaism ceased to exist beyond clandestine groups for all
practical purposes after the year 135. Rome governed the
region as pagan until Constantine became emperor two
hundred years later, converting the idolatrous temples into
churches. They held it Christian for three hundred years,
essentially uninterrupted.
7. The Arabs conquered Jerusalem in 635 of the modern era
and never left.
8. For those keeping score, so far we have Jews-1300,
Christians-300, and Moslems-1300. Gentlemen, we have a tie.

Christians can walk for now. We will have the third place
ceremony after we finish here.
OK, that was a long way to say that the land claim is about
even. I bet the Jews and the Arab Palestinians have a great
deal of love for the same dirt.
Let us take a sec to dispel some really ignorant propaganda:
A. Those two have been at each others throat since time
began. Nothing will ever change.
In fact, Jews and Arab Palestinians have only been in largescale contact with each other for about one hundred years.
Not even close to forever, except to four-year olds.
B. Arabs suck anti-Semitism from their mothers milk.
First, Arabs are themselves Semites. Two, when medieval
European countries violently expelled Jews and kept all their
possessions, most of those refugees found shelter in Arab and
other Moslem countries, rising from the ashes to enjoy
prosperity and renown. What is true is that after the birth of
Israel, Jews in the Moslem arc from Morocco to Pakistan were
expelled or fled for their safety. Can we not agree that it was
the forced creation of Israel that stoked hatred and upset the
delicate ethnic and religious balances throughout that Islamic
Sea? Can we go a step further and say that the conditions of
the Palestinian people keeps those fires burning?
C. Palestinians are a made-up people.
What then would you call the 600,000 to 700,000 Arabs living
in the Palestine province of the Ottoman Empire in all the preWW1 census taking? Jerusalem was 2 percent Jewish in the
1850s. Who dat other 98 percent?
We finally get to mine. We had to drag ourselves through
the others because all of them are out there in one form or
another. Not a single one is feasible. Not in todays political

climate, not in tomorrows. But a real peace deal between

these two races is the only way we can work our way into a
cessation of hostilities of the Middle Easts current spasmodic
psychosis before it bleeds itself white.
Right. Lace up your boots, gulp down your coffee and lets
get it done.
Years of studying every angle leads me to the conclusion that
we must try something that has never been thought of before.
Because Israel-Palestine IS the Holy Land we must incorporate
spirituality into any solution that has a chance of holding its
own against the earthly forces of greed, arrogance,
demagoguery, opportunism, bitterness and division that have
characterized any attempt to move one inch forward toward
equanimity.
We need to meld Zion and Babylon; unite Caesar with the
Kingdom of Heaven; Fuse Allah with Yahweh.
We need to build the Third Temple. We need to build it in its
original site on the Temple Mount AKA the Noble Sanctuary
AKA third holiest Moslem site.

And we need to do it with the acceptance and permission of

the Islamic world.

Granted, it is a giant step. I admit that. But all that comes

afterwards rolls downhill.
You see that wall in the photo below? That is the proposed
entryway. See the clump of trees above it? Plenty of room in
there for the upper structure.

The Al-Kas fountain (looking toward the southeast). Al Aqsa

Mosque in the distance (right corner). The rear wall of the
Temple would almost come into the photo on the right edge

(west).

Aerial shot from the south. Al Kas is right between the two
domes, hidden by trees. The trees bottom left is the Temple
space. A major portion of the

Temple is going to be INSIDE the Mount. Anyway, I am not the

architect. That person will be selected by the Sanhedrin.
Forgot to mention the Sanhedrin. Big part of the story.
Talking here to gentiles; the Sanhedrin, last constituted during
the Second Temple period, is a body of twenty-one wise men
assembled to guide the faithful, especially in the great issues
of the day. Whats a bigger issue than the one we are
discussing?
Here is the chronology:
1. Jews worldwide select the greatest among them. A
generation ago that might have been daunting. Today its
your smartphone.
2. The Sanhedrin decides everything, starting with whether or
not the concept of the Temple falls within Judaism as they
know it. Remember, there is millennia-old belief that the
Messiah must assemble the Sanhedrin rebuild the Temple. We
are already in unchartered territory.
3. Assuming it goes forward and in the location suggested,
the Sanhedrin, with the help of all religious leaders of good
faith and heads of state of the major world powers, ask for an
assembly (Shura) of the greatest living Islamic scholars
(Ulama).
4. The question before the Shura is can the Temple be built in
the manner approved by the Sanhedrin, using a small portion
of the Noble Mount, without touching off a religious war.
5. The reward, the quid pro quo, is the integration of the
Palestinian people into a One-State peace plan with full
citizenship rights.
Now, most people dont think a One-State solution will ever be
in the cards, but we are so far outside the box already, lets
give it a shot anyway.
Here are the vital signs of a country called Israel-Palestine:

1. All Palestinians in Israel are given citizenship, under a new

constitution; one people, two religions.
2. The east-west borders indeed become the River to the Sea.
3. Jerusalem becomes the undivided capital of Israel-Palestine
(IP), recognized throughout the world.
4. IP, under the new constitution, becomes the Jewish
Homeland. Under the same constitution, it becomes the
Palestinian Homeland. As such, all Jews and all Palestinians
have the Right of Return.
5. With the Right of Return comes voting rights for both
Diasporas. Since there are more Jews in the world, the great
Jewish fear of being demographically swamped by returning
Palestinians just disappeared.
6. To make up for that numerical advantage, the political
structure of the country needs unusual decentralization; an
equal distribution of financial resources to Arab and Jewish
sectors.
7. It is essential that the constitution be secular.
8. It is essential that public schools are mixed Jewish-Moslem
from the earliest moment. Private schools not allowed unless
equal integration in effect. Failure to comply should bring
weighty penalties.
9. All programs that bring Jews and Arabs together;
employment, community activities, sports, adoptions, family
swaps etc. should be amply rewarded through tax incentives.
10. Military forces require a gradual integration to build
essential trust.
Right. Enough. I dont do constitutions. The framework is
there. Israelis are perfectly capable of knowing how to go
about it.
So there are a million details. Financially, the USA can stop
putting five billion a year into Israels military, and instead put

two billion a year into infrastructure projects and small

business loans to get the Palestinians on their feet. We save
billions and the money could not be spent for a more
worthwhile cause.
Europe (and hopefully The Northern Tier Quartet) does a Free
Trade deal with IP.
All Moslem countries recognize IP.
BDS is a forgotten blur.
Here is a last important note. Some people might say the
Temple is being constructed in the wrong place; that the
correct site is under the Dome of the Rock.
Well, give this some thought. The Hebrew bible says that the
First Temple was built by David over a threshing floor that he
bought from a Jebusite. The Dome of the Rock containsa
rock. A craggy outcropping that may be connected with the
rock that Abraham laid a bound-up Isaac on, preparing to
sacrifice that son. It has a good chance of being the rock that
Jesus was standing on when questioned by Pilate inside the
Roman fortress Antonia. But David was a shrewd fellow by all
accounts, so there was no chance he was going to by an
outcropping and try to turn it into a threshing floor. More and
more the consensus is building that the site of at least the
Second Temple was right where I propose to build the Third.
The entryway to the Second Temple was from the south gates,
but that is not in the cards because it would mean excavating
directly under the Al Aqsa Mosque.
On a side note, I am excited about the possibility of restoring
the ancient aqueduct that carried fresh spring water from
Solomons Pools south of Bethlehem to the Second Temple.
That will give the Israeli Antiquities Authority (soon to be
renamed Israel-Palestine Antiquities Authority) a magnificent
project. I am also excited to see what the inside of the
Western Wall looks like. There have been some clandestine
explorations in the 19th century and more recently, but there is

great indignation on the part of the Islamic Keepers to poke

around their cellar.
And more than anything I think we can wrap this by saying the
whole world should be excited about finding a way to peace
through our common spirituality. It is a great risk, a great leap
into the unknown but without that leap, the situation
stagnates, hope perishes, and death is the final victor over us
all. We were not worthy. How great if the Jewish Messiah
ends up being the courage and wisdom of the Jewish Race, as
it should be, and because they fulfilled gods command to
lead the other nations of the world into his presence the
rebuilding of their Temple, they brought the universe back into
balance.
Last item is redrawing the map of the Middle East. From the
Med eastward to the Persian Gulf;
--Lebanon becomes a part of Syria. It simply cannot make it
as a sovereign nation because of its delicate balance among
its people. Incorporating it into Syria gives it a parent, and a
parent with the same DNA.
---Israel (or Israel-Palestine) annexes the Golan Heights.
--The eastern desert of Syria is ceded to help form a Sunni
nation which also incorporates Anbar Province of Iraq. Syria
picks up beautiful, coastal Lebanon, lose some sand and
disgruntled citizens. Yeah, not tough that one.
--Northwest corner of Syria joins with the Kurdistan territory of
the soon-to-be former Iraq to form the first internationally
recognized Nation of the Assyrians since 700 years before the
birth of Christ. This has always been a splinter in the eye of
Turkey because of the restlessness of their own Kurd
population which is quite extensive, but we think the solution
is to incorporate the new nation into the United Nations
grouping of Central Asia, in which Turkey and Iran are

members. That puts them in close diplomatic contact

because of the regional cooperation council that is required
for the voting chair. It just never will be the problem that Iran
and Turkey think it will be. Maybe some of their citizens will
immigrate to the new country, but the ones that do are surely
the ones that most keenly identify with their ethnicity, and
therefore the very same ones that are most likely to take up
arms or otherwise agitate for autonomy or independence.
Doesnt it make sense to show them the door?
--The south of present Iraq from Basra to Baghdad will form an
Arab-Shiite nation. They are a natural bridge between the
Arab bloc in the new UN and the Central Asia bloc, with Iran as
their eastern neighbor. Lets let them get on with their future
without playing Great Power politics. If they come under
Irans influence, well thats the way the world works.
Remember it was Great Power politics that got us into the
awful mess of the Middle East to begin with; the carve-up and
the conflicting promises of World War One. Maybe the US
invasion of Iraq in 2003, the greatest strategic blunder of an
America that prides itself on international ignorance and
strategic blunders, can be put to some good. If we can say we
are now mature enough as a species to pick up the smashed
pieces of a vulgar artifact and turn it into an astonishing work
of art, well then, what cant we do? Certainly it should give us
confidence to continue to find ways to solve our past errors
and get ready for some unbelievable future assaults on our
continued existence.
I thank you for taking all this in. I will create a Facebook page
under the title IS THERE STILL TIME TO CHANGE COURSE? In
case anyone has a comment or contribution.