krauthammer
A staunch conservative, Charles Krauthammer is best known for his nationally syndicated and Pulitzer Prize-winning column in The Washington Post. He is one of the country’s most prominent foreign policy thinkers. Moment Magazine Editor Nadine Epstein spoke with Krauthammer about rumors of a planned U.S. military strike against Iran, turmoil in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and why he is pessimistic about the prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
For decades Americans lived in fear of the Soviet threat. Two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, what national security threats does the United States face?
Islamic radicalism and, over the horizon, China. I doubt that China will pose the kind of existential threat that the Soviet Union did because it’s a geopolitical rival but not a particularly ideological one. Unlike the Soviet threat, Islamic radicalism doesn’t have formal colonies or tank armies, but because of possible acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and because of its apocalyptic intentions, it has the potential of becoming an existential threat.
Is democratization a useful weapon against Islamic radicalism?
In theory, it is probably the best avenue to a safe world for free peoples. The problem is that democracy requires deep roots and certain social prerequisites that are lacking in much of the world, so it cannot be created instantly. But in certain strategic locations, democratization can be helpful. The way to defend ourselves against Islamic radicalism is to resist it through financial means, sanctions, surveillance, counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. But for the long run it is also by trying to support moderate elements in the Muslim world, for example, trying to keep the Pakistani state alive. And, ultimately, by some measure of democratization, which would take power out of the hands of failed dictatorships that turn the fury of their people against the West and particularly against America.
How are we doing in the fight against Islamic radicalism?
Well, we haven’t had a significant attack since 9/11, which nobody would have predicted. So we’re doing something right, but we’re doing it at a very high cost. To sustain the fight we have to find a way to do it at a lower cost because it will be a very long haul.
How would you define success in Iraq? In Afghanistan?
In Iraq, success would be leaving behind a functioning, reasonably democratic system, which may be near. That would be success considering that the current government is a successor to a genocidal, unpredictable, aggressive, dangerous dictatorship. Afghanistan is much more problematic. It’s not developed enough in its political culture, economy or even in its sense of nationhood to get where Iraq is. In Afghanistan, success will be measured in a defensive way: What have we prevented? Total Taliban takeover.
It has been long known that elements within the Inter–Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s intelligence agency, have been helping the Taliban. What can we do about that?
Nothing. What leverage do we have? Practically zero. Abandon the Pakistanis to their own devices? Pakistan is a country of 170 million people, a nuclear-armed Islamic state, with very powerful Islamist elements. We want to make sure that the army and the government remain in control of the pro-Western elements, and we will try to exert pressure to tame the rogue, pro-Taliban elements in the ISI as best we can.
How would you compare Barack Obama’s Pakistan policy with that of George W. Bush?
Since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Bush and Obama have navigated a very difficult time in Pakistan. Obama is doing reasonably well. We’ve accelerated the use of drones, for example. But we are not going to change very much, and it’s an illusion to think we could do so with a few hundred million dollars of aid spread throughout a country of this size.
You argue that the “extended hand” approach of diplomatically encouraging Iran to stop its nuclear program is a failure. What strategy do you think will work?
The extended hand was worse than a failure; it was a humiliation. We’ve lost a year and a half getting slapped around, making offers that any 12-year-old could have told you would go nowhere. Now we have a new set of very weak United Nations sanctions, but the U.S./European/Canadian/Australian unilateral sanctions are applying some pressure. The most important element, though, is the private—and now somewhat public—pressure friendly Arab states are putting on the United States to do something militarily. Leaks and rumblings from the administration indicate that they might be contemplating that course of action. I doubt whether that is true, but the very fact that these rumblings are out there is only to the good. The more the Iranians think they might actually be on the receiving end of an American strike, which would be far more powerful and effective than an Israeli strike, the more chance there is that they might reconsider their nuclear operations.
What’s necessary for a strike to be successful?
For a strike to work, we need good intelligence as to where this stuff is and bunker-busting munitions to reach these targets. We have accuracy, but accuracy isn’t enough. You have to know what and where your target is and then you have to be able to reach it, mostly underground. Whether we have that, I don’t know.
Does Israel have what it takes to strike?
It doesn’t have a huge supply of cruise missiles, offshore ships or aircraft carriers; it doesn’t have anywhere near the resources that the U.S. military would. The Israelis might be able to strike once or twice. The U.S. would be capable of raising the kind of large-scale airstrike campaign for days like the one we did in the opening days of the Iraq war. But the Israelis have a much higher level of sensitivity to the danger because it’s an existential threat to them, and they might attack even if they have less capacity than the U.S.
What do you see as the root of the Arab-Israeli conflict?
It’s very simple. The root of the Arab-Israeli conflict is that the Arabs have not accepted the presence of a Jewish state. That’s why every time they have been offered a compromise, they have turned it down: ’47, ’67, ’78, ’93. And although people don’t even talk about it, as if it never happened, there was also Camp David in 2000, an unbelievably generous self-sacrificial offer by Israel, which included the division of Jerusalem. And what was Arafat’s response? Not only did he say no, he didn’t make a counter-offer. Six weeks later, he started a terror war. There are a lot of nuances in the Arab-Israeli dispute, but the central fact is indisputable: If the Arabs truly accept a Jewish state and an end to the conflict, the issue could be solved in a month. Border disputes are soluble. As long as they don’t accept a Jewish state there will be never be an end to the conflict, and all peace processes are worthless. Existential disputes are not soluble. And it was proved by Anwar Sadat. He said, “We accept you” in the Knesset and from there it was only a matter of time until they worked out the border dispute, and it was done.
What do you say to those who believe that there’s a limited window for peace with the Palestinians and that Israel must act now?
I’ve heard that for 30 years. We’ve had 30 years of one-year windows. There is no window unless the Palestinians and the Arabs accept a Jewish state. Has even Fatah accepted it? Well, Fatah’s leaders say so occasionally in English. But you make them an offer, and they always walk away or impose a condition, like the right of return, which is obviously designed to eliminate the Jewish state. Jews have been waiting 100 years for the acceptance of their historic right for a state in the region, and when they get it, there will be peace. Until then, they will have to fight to keep themselves from being destroyed.
Do you view Jewish settlements in the West Bank as an obstacle to peace?
No. Everyone knows that in any final peace agreement, they’ll be gone. Not a single Jew will remain living in the new Palestine, just as no single Jew was left in Gaza. I was in a meeting with Avigdor Lieberman during which he said publicly that he and his family were quite willing to give up and leave their home in a West Bank settlement if there is a peace treaty. Everybody knows that this is going to happen. It is a complete red herring. When the final border line is drawn, there will be no settlements east of the line.
Lieberman is a very secular Jew from Moldova who may be thinking about this strategically, but what about the settlers who see themselves on a mission from God?
The Gaza Jews were also there on a mission from God, and they got ripped from the roofs of their synagogues. So we’ve been there. Everybody knows what happens. The religious will cling to the roofs of their synagogues, and Jewish soldiers will rip them from the roofs, just as they did in Gaza—and just as they did in Yamit, the Jewish settlement in Sinai, in 1982.
You have written that the world is tired of Jews. What do you mean?
The title of the column was “Those Troublesome Jews,” and it was a reaction to the world condemning Israel for the Gaza flotilla incident before any evidence was available. The Gaza incident was yet the next stop on the road to the delegitimization of Israel—and its devastating corollary, namely, the denial to Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. Israel withdraws from land—South Lebanon, Gaza—on the promise of land for peace. It instead gets war, border raids and rocket attacks. It then adopts a forward defense of counterattacking the attackers—the Second Lebanon War, the Gaza incursion—and is condemned by the world for that kind of self-defense. Then it adopts the most passive of all defenses—blockade—and is condemned for exercising that kind of self-defense. If Israel heeds this international chorus, its only option will be national suicide. The world is indeed tired of these Jews who obstinately refuse that offer. Most disgraceful is that Europe is part of this chorus. After a 50-year hiatus during which Holocaust shame made unfashionable open and virulent hostility to the world’s only Jewish state, a new generation has arisen that does not remember the Shoah. Hostility is now open. The world is tired of these troublesome Jews hanging onto that little beachhead in Israel. Tired of defending it, tired of considering its case. If it weren’t for the United States, Israel would be alone.
What can be done about that?
Nothing. Americans are not going to change a thousand-year-old ingrained European sentiment which after a half-century pause has now returned with a vengeance. Here in America, those who believe that peace ultimately and fundamentally depends on a change of heart among the Arabs—accepting a Jewish state—and that the Jews are deserving of a state, need to keep making that case. It is the foundation of the American people’s visceral and extraordinarily unchanging support for Israel.
