United States annoyed at growing Chinese investment in Israel

Reportedly, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to warn Israel against continued Chinese investments in the country's infrastructure and hi-tech industry when he meets Foreign Minister Yair Lapid in Washington on Wednesday.

"We will be candid with our Israeli friends over risks to our shared national security interests that come with close cooperation with China," a senior State Department official told reporters during a briefing ahead of the meeting.

Blinken is also expected to meet Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Wednesday.

The US has been concerned about the UAE's use of Chinese Huawei Technologies in its communication system in light of its pending sale of advanced F-35 fighter jets to the Emirates, but when speaking of China it focused only on its concern with Israel.

The highlight of the day is expected to be a trilateral meeting Blinken will host with the two foreign ministers that is designed to highlight the success of the Abraham Accords, brokered by the former administration.

The accords allowed Israel to normalize ties with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan last year, of which ties with the Emirates are the most advanced.

At the trilateral, Israel and the UAE are expected to announce two new working groups, one on religious coexistence and another that would focus on water and energy.

But the range of the topics that will be brought up in all meetings are fairly wide and include China, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Lapid, in his public comments in Washington on Tuesday focused on the strong US-Israel bilateral ties and the special relationship Israel has with America and the Biden administration.

Though, US officials echoed those same sentiments at the briefing, they also discussed topics of discord in the relationship.

Biden administration officials had spoken about China with National Security Advisor Eyal Hulata when he was in Washington earlier this month.

But State Department senior officials remained vague on Tuesday with respect to their specific concerns on China.

"The US views China as a competitor that challenges the existing international rules-based order; our relationship with China will be competitive when it should be," the official stated.

On Iran, a senior State Department official said that Washington's main objective at this time is the revival of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the Iran deal, which Israel has traditionally opposed. 

Both the US and Israel are joined in their opposition to a nuclear Iran but have differed about how best to achieve that objective.

Lapid said on Tuesday that Iran was one of the major focal points of his Washington trip.

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the senior State Department officials said that at Wednesday's meetings, Blinken will "reaffirm our belief" in the benefits of a two-state solution. He will also express his appreciation for "Minister Lapid's recent, strong statement condemning settler violence in the West Bank."

The Israeli government is split on how best to approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett opposing a two-state resolution to the conflict while Lapid has supported it.

But Lapid's visions of the borders of those two states differ from those envisioned by the Biden administration, which has not advanced a peace process. The senior State Department officials did not mention any movement on that front, except for stating that "we seek to advance it when we can, as best as we can."

An official said that the accords are not a substitute for the two-state solutions and suggested that these could be used to push for progress toward a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"We hope that normalization can be leveraged to advance progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track," the official said.

An official also spoke of the Biden administration's commitment to maintaining Israel's qualitative edge and its support for supplemental funding for the defensive Iron Dome system it provides Israel to protect Israeli citizens against Hamas rockets.

The officials repeated their opposition to Israeli settlement activity and the Palestinian Authority's monthly stipends to terrorists and their families.   

Separately, during Lapid's trip, Foreign Ministry Director-General Alon Ushpiz will meet with Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.

Challenges facing US Defense Strategy

The Pentagon has begun the process of developing a strategy to meet the congressional requirement for a National Defense Strategy (NDS) report in 2022. The defense strategy is likely to expand upon the 2018 strategy, which identified China and Russia as peer competitors and assigned highest priority to deterring adventurism on the part of both states. 

China’s increasingly aggressive stance against Taiwan — notably, its recent four-day surge of nearly 150 combat aircraft into the island’s air defense identification zone, as well as the expansion of its conventional and strategic nuclear forces — underscores the ongoing need for maintaining a credible deterrent against Beijing. Similarly, Russia’s continuing pressure on Ukraine, its ceaseless efforts to employ cyber to disrupt American political and economic activity, and its military modernization programs justify the priority that the 2022 NDS, like its immediate predecessor, is likely to assign to deterring Moscow’s aggressiveness.

China and Russia do not constitute the entirety of American security concerns, even if they represent the most demanding threats that American forces might have to confront. North Korea is a rogue nuclear power that can threaten its neighbors and the American homeland. Iran is poised to develop its own nuclear capability while continuing its disruptive efforts throughout the Middle East and its own efforts to fight the West in cyberspace. Washington may wish to ratchet down its Middle East military profile, but unless Iran terminates its nuclear program and ceases to undermine the stability of regional states, American withdrawal from the region will be easier said than done.  

While American forces may have departed from Afghanistan, there is little indication that Taliban government will do anything to prevent terrorists from once again using that country as a base for attacks on Western, and especially American, targets and persons. If dealing with these challenges were not enough, the Biden administration has added both climate change and fighting pandemics as two additional threats that the Department of Defense (DOD), like the government as a whole, must face for the foreseeable future.

Strategies represent the employment of means to stated ends. Yet the administration’s future budgets, which would provide the financial sources to acquire means for coping with the array of challenges that it has identified, are unlikely to grow much beyond that which it proposed for fiscal year 2022. That budget calls for a small decline in real terms over the previous year’s budget. Indeed, even if congressional appropriations would increase FY 2022 spending levels by some $24 billion, there is no indication that the Biden administration would maintain the trajectory of that increase over the next several budget years.

In light of the administration’s reluctance to increase defense spending to any significant degree — which itself is rather puzzling given its willingness to spend trillions of dollars on domestic progress — one might have expected it to mandate a cutback in the forces and capabilities that currently are targeted against the lower priority but still potent threats that it has identified. This does not appear to be the case. The FY 2022 budget and the proposed congressional adds-ons both continue to preserve far too many of what have come to be called “legacy programs” — that is, weapons systems whose utility was greatest over the past two decades, but whose value in confronting the challenges posed by China, in particular, is questionable at best. 

Future budget requests, and likely congressional appropriations, no doubt will incorporate many cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and systems that incorporate machine learning. Nevertheless, the expansion of these and other capabilities to meet future threats will be constrained not only by relatively flat top-line budgets but by ongoing, real-cost growth for both military personnel and operations and maintenance. The combined squeeze on defense modernization would render it highly unlikely that Washington credibly could deter China and Russia simultaneously, or indeed, any combination of the threats it might face. 

If Biden administration remains determined to put a cap on defense spending, yet wishes to pursue all of its priorities while minimizing to the degree possible the risk to meeting its security objectives, it will have to take far more seriously the need for allies and partners. With few notable exceptions such as the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan, Washington has not done enough to convince its other allies and partners that their economic interests — especially involving China and Russia — simply do not outweigh the threats that these states pose to their security.   

Part of its problem is that, in the past, Washington often did little more than pay lip service to the importance of allied contributions to the defense of common interests. The time has come to take allies and partners far more seriously, to expand its reliance on their military capabilities, to be more open to sharing technological breakthroughs, and indeed, to improve the balance of military trade that currently overwhelmingly favors the United States. Without its allies and partners, America no longer can be certain that it would prevail in a future conflict — especially if, as may well be the case, it will simultaneously have to face more than one adversary in more than one theater. 

Biden faces stiff challenges

Doubts are clouding the horizon on every topic for US President Joe Biden as he nears the anniversary of his election. On Capitol Hill, the push for the two bills at the heart of his legislative agenda is in peril. 

The economy appears broadly on a path to recovery, but optimism was shaken by another poor jobs report on last Friday. Inflation lurks in the background, too. Along with this the dangers of the winter months are looming.

A little progress was made on the nation’s debt ceiling and avoiding the financial earthquake that would have resulted had the US neared default in mid-October. The temporary fix agreed between Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell means the fight will be waged all over again in early December.

A Quinnipiac University poll released last Wednesday indicates Biden’s  fall to easily the lowest mark of his presidency, with 53% of registered voters disapproving of his job performance and only 40% approving.

An Economist-YouGov survey conducted in first week of October was not quite as bad, but it still made for discomforting reading for Democrats. 48% of respondents disapproved of Biden’s actions, and 42% approved. 

There are even worries that Democrats could suffer an embarrassing loss in Virginia’s gubernatorial race early next month. 

Democrats see the turbulent waters surrounding Biden and they look with trepidation toward next year’s midterm elections. The party that holds the White House almost always loses ground in the first midterms of a president’s tenure. Democrats are defending a tiny majority in the House and a 50-50 split in the Senate, where they hold the majority only through Vice President Harris’s deciding vote.

Republican strategist Dan Judy asserted that “the bloom is off the Joe Biden rose” after about nine months in power.

Biden got bad news on the economy on Friday, when new data from the Labor Department showed just 194,000 jobs had been added in September — the lowest monthly figure since December.

The divisions between progressives and their more conservative colleagues in the Democratic Party are on stark display. Biden faces a delicate task in trying to reconcile the ambitions of progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders and much of the rest of the party, with two skeptical Senate holdouts, Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

The rhetoric across the Democratic trenches has become angrier in recent weeks; even as most in the party admit failure to reach a deal would be a political disaster.

“It is important for the president to be able to rally his side,” said Murray. “But I also think it is important to demonstrate that government is capable of working, of delivering results. 

“I think there is a broad cynicism that exists in the American public that government doesn’t do anything,” he added. “To the extent that the Biden administration can show we are delivering results, I think that is very important.”

Any number of these events could break in Biden’s favor, reversing the slide he has endured since the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan, but right now, he faces stiff challenges.

Biden administration shows little progress with Abraham Accords on first anniversary

According to certain reports Biden administration has made little progress in advancing normalization agreements between Israel and Arab and Muslim-majority countries more than one year since they were first established under the Trump administration.

Supporters of the agreements, ‘The Abraham Accords’ say President Joe Biden is missing a key opportunity on an issue that enjoys rare bipartisan support in a polarized and hyper-partisan Congress.

They add that the President can reap tangible successes in the Middle East, including on improving conditions for Palestinians, while taking ownership of a Trump foreign policy success.

The stalled progress is likely to give ammo to Republicans ahead of the 2022 and 2024 elections, who seek to skewer the Biden administration over its policy of rapprochement with Iran and reestablishing ties with the Palestinians that were severed under Trump.

Biden administration has also come under fire for appearing to fail to defend Kurdish Iraqis who were condemned, and reportedly physically threatened, for calling to normalize ties with Israel.

“It is beyond unexplainable that the Biden administration is distancing America from this noble effort of the Iraqi people to normalize relations with Israel. We should pray for their efforts, not shun them,” former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted in response to a statement by the US-led coalition to defeat ISIS that denied knowledge of the calls for normalization.

Pompeo, one of the architects of the accords and a potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate, will be in Jerusalem next week to celebrate their one-year anniversary with Israeli officials. 

Also in attendance will be Trump's son-in-law and former special adviser Jared Kushner, who was integral in shaping the deal, along with former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who will be inaugurating the “Friedman Center for Peace through Strength” to coincide with the celebrations.

The Abraham Accords were first announced in August 2020 as a breakthrough in normalization between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, marking the first Arab country to establish relations with Israel in more than two decades, since Jordan in 1994.

Bahrain was the second country to sign on to the deals followed by pronouncements from Sudan and Morocco to deepen ties with Israel.

“I have to say that it exceeded my expectations,” Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow with the Washington Institute who served as an adviser on Palestinian negotiations between 1999 and 2001, said of the success of the accords.   

“Relations are going strong, embassies are being formally established, economic relations are just only growing … certainly we’re seeing a momentum," he added.

While the trigger for the UAE recognizing Israel was an effort to preserve Palestinian national aspirations — securing a commitment by Israel to halt plans for annexation green-lighted by the Trump administration — al-Omari said that the deepening ties with Abu Dhabi and the subsequent agreements with Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco show how far the Palestinian issue has fallen from the agenda of Arab and Muslim countries.

“In the end it’s invalidated the old paradigm that Israeli peace with the Arabs has to go first with the Palestinian track. These are all transformations,” he said.

Yet including issues related to the Palestinians with prospective Abraham Accord partners could present an opportunity for the Biden administration to secure a key signatory like Saudi Arabia, and move forward its commitments to improving the situation for Palestinians in general, said Michael Koplow, Policy Director of the Israel Policy Forum, a research and policy advocacy organization.

Saudi Arabia, which the Trump administration touted as being close to signing on to the accords, has resisted so far, insisting that normalization with Israel is contingent on Palestinian statehood.

“If countries that normalize with Israel keep this in mind,” Koplow continued. “To say to Israelis, ‘listen there are things [with the Palestinians] that make it harder for us to normalize, and if you stop some of these things, then more agreements can be had’ — that’s a model that we’ve seen work once already and I think it's likely to keep on going.”

The Israel Relations Normalization Act of 2021, sponsored by Rep. Brad Schneider in the House and Sen. Rob Portman in the Senate, calls for the State Department to assess how the Abraham Accords “advance prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”

“The Biden administration has been tepid — to be charitable — on moving forward,” Koplow said. “One challenge is that the model that the Trump administration developed is simply not wise for the United States.”

The Trump administration came under intense scrutiny by both Republicans and Democrats over the basis of the agreements reached with the UAE, Sudan and Morocco.

This included selling F-35 advanced fighter jets and other military sales to Abu Dhabi, removing Sudan from the State Sponsor of Terrorism List, and recognizing Morocco’s claim to the contested territory of Western Sahara.

While the Biden team has allowed the F-35 sale to proceed, it has done little to address the status of Western Sahara for Morocco, or Sudan’s role in the Abraham Accords, which has yet to officially sign the agreement.

While Biden has put forth the possibility of a Washington visit for Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok — raised during a call with national security adviser Jake Sullivan — a high level Sudanese diplomat said they are waiting for the official invitation.

Bonnie Glick, who served as Deputy Administrator of the US Agency for International Development during the Trump administration, called finalizing Sudan’s participation as a “low-hanging-fruit opportunity to have an impact on a Muslim country that needs our help.”

“Sudan probably took the biggest risk of any country that’s signed on to the accords. This is a brand-new government that came to power by toppling an Islamist autocracy,” she said.

“You have a military government that’s trying to transition to a civilian government, and they took a calculated risk and said, ‘We’re going to sign the Abraham Accords.’ And since the Biden administration came in, there has been silence on the Sudan component in particular.”

Biden officials say they are engaged in efforts to expand the accords by adding in new countries. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month hosted a Zoom call with his counterparts in Israel, the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco celebrating the one-year anniversary of the accords.

“This administration will continue to build on the successful efforts of the last administration to keep normalization marching forward,” Blinken said.

But al-Omari, of the Washington Institute, criticized this event as “muted.”

“It is a fact that the Biden administration has not been, very robustly, involved in building on these accords,” he said.

Despite the absence of the Biden administration, ties are deepening between Israel and Gulf states, largely an outgrowth of more than a decade of secret ties over concerns of Iran’s ambitions in the region and, following normalization, excitement over increased economic opportunities and security initiatives.

Israel is touting as a landmark achievement its pavilion in Dubai at the World Expo; direct flights and exchanges of hundreds of thousands of its citizens with the UAE; and raising the possibility that Oman could be the next country to join the accords.

“We have, I believe, created a change of dynamics and a change of attitude in the Middle East and in the region,” Eliav Benjamin, Head of the Bureau of the Middle East and Peace Process Division at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a briefing with reporters Wednesday.

This paradigm shift between Israel and its neighbors, Benjamin continued, is about “being much more pragmatic and practical on dealing with issues that we have at hand.”

Rising gas and crude oil prices not a good omen

Meteorologists are predicting a cold winter, and it could send international energy prices even higher. Record high natural gas prices have forced some utilities to switch to oil, boosting demand for crude. It is feared that oil prices may witness further rise, though not likely to stay there for long.

The spike in oil prices to the highest in years came after OPEC plus decided not to add more barrels than the initially agreed 400,000 bpd monthly. Analysts say that prices could witness further increase. Now, some forecast price may rise to US$100/barrel. The good news is that even if it happens, it won’t last. 

Goldman Sachs recently updated its oil price forecast for the final quarter, saying it now expect Brent crude to reach US$90/barrel by end December 2021. The bank believes oil demand could jump by 900,000 bpd if the winter gets harsher.

“While we have long held a bullish oil view, the current global supply-demand deficit is larger than we expected, with the recovery in global demand from the Delta impact even faster than our above-consensus forecast and with global supply remaining short of our below consensus forecasts,” the bank’s commodity analysts said in late September this year.

Then Bank of America said oil could hit US$100/barrel because of the energy crunch that has now gone global. US Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm said last week that the government may release oil from the country’s emergency reserve to lower gasoline prices.

The record-high natural gas prices have forced some utilities to switch to oil derivatives instead, boosting demand for crude and, like Goldman, noted the prospect of a cold winter as another bullish factor for oil.

“If all these factors come together, oil prices could spike and lead to a second round of inflationary pressures around the world,” BofA analysts wrote in a note. “Put differently, we may just be one storm away from the next macro hurricane.”

Yet even if Brent hits US$100/barrel, it is unlikely to stay there for long, according to John Driscoll, chief strategist at JTD Energy Services. And it would take a lot of things to happen for the benchmark to reach this price level.

“I see that as kind of a lower probability scenario. That is, if everything goes wrong, if we have Arctic weather, if we’ve got glitches, breakdowns in the deliverability, the supply chains. That is a possible scenario but I don’t see that likely to be sustainable,” Driscoll told CNBC last week.

Yet the weather is impossible to predict with any accuracy over longer periods of time, and indeed, current forecasts for the winter season differ dramatically among meteorologists, as Bloomberg reported earlier this month. 

The rational thing to do, of course, is to plan for the worst possible scenario, which would be a very cold winter. Indeed, this was what Europe and China tried to do and what became one big reason for the gas price spike. 

Yet some of that spike, at least, was the result of speculation rather than fundamentals. Gas prices dropped after Russian President Vladimir Putin said the country will supply additional gas to Europe.

Kamala comes under heavy criticism after address at George Mason University

There are moments, often quite fleeting, when the masks put on by politicians briefly fall away, revealing the true person who lies beneath the carefully cultivated layers of spin and sophistry. Kamala Harris had just such a moment last week. And it wasn’t pretty.

Speaking at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, to mark National Voter Registration Day, the vice president of the United States took a question from a student that was as fallacious as it was foolish.

 The student, who identified herself as Iranian and Yemeni, said that “just a few days ago there were funds allocated to continue backing Israel, which hurts my heart because it’s an ethnic genocide and a displacement of people, the same that happened in America, and I’m sure you’re aware of this.”

Rather than denouncing or contradicting this appalling accusation of “ethnic genocide” against America’s best friend in the Middle East, Harris chose instead to nod respectfully and then failed to counter the antisemitic libel.

Worse yet, Harris proceeded to praise the student, saying she was “glad” she had raised the subject, before adding, “this is about the fact that your voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth, should not be suppressed and it must be heard, right?”

This is what Barack Obama must have meant by the term “a teachable moment,” for we just learned a heck of a lot about Kamala Harris.

To begin with, her failure to rebut the assault on Israel’s legitimacy speaks volumes in and of itself. In carefully crafted press releases and speeches put together by her staff, Harris will, of course, mumble mantras of support for the Jewish state. But when left bare and unscripted, her instinct is not to refute the slandering of Israel but, rather, to affirm it as a form of “truth.”

It’s no wonder that the Iranian government-owned Press TV was quick to tweet out a video of Harris’s performance.

No less appalling was her suggestion that there are many truths, which is a form of moral relativism that serves only to muddy the waters and confer an air of legitimacy on outright falsehoods.

Back in January 2017, when Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to President Donald Trump, used the term “alternative facts” in a Meet the Press interview when describing the size of the crowd at the presidential inauguration, she was widely ridiculed.

Yet that is precisely what Harris did, effectively saying that to view Israel as a murderous, genocidal entity is as valid as any other opinion.

Moreover, in telling the student that her position should “not be suppressed,” she seemed to suggest that the Palestinian side of the story goes unheard.

Sherman lauds Pakistan for helping Afghan refugees over last 42 years

US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on Friday expressed appreciation for Pakistan's efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, saying that it should be "very proud of 42 years of helping Afghan refugees" and the US, as well as the world, was grateful for that. 

Sherman lauded Pakistan's role during an exclusive interview on PTV News program 'Shahrah-e-Dastoor'.

In response to a question, Sherman said she had visited a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Documentation Renewal and Information Verification Exercise centre earlier in the day, where registration cards were being issued to Afghan refugees so that they could have access to facilities such as healthcare in Pakistan.

"It is an extraordinary system," she said, commending Pakistan for persistently helping Afghan refugees over a long period of time.

Sherman was also asked about her comments about relations between the US and Pakistan during her visit to India.

"It’s for a very specific and narrow purpose, we don’t see ourselves building a broad relationship with Pakistan," she had said, according to Indian publication The Indian Express.

In response to the question, Sherman clarified that by "specific steps" she meant that the purpose of her trip to Pakistan was to predominantly focus on the aftermath of events in Afghanistan and review bilateral relationships between the US and Pakistan.

"The US and Pakistan have had longstanding relations for decades," she said.

She went on to say, "This is a time of great change in the region because of the events in Afghanistan", and the US and the world was reassessing what the future would look like and how to ensure a better future for Afghans and ensure that no country remained a safe haven for terrorists.

Sherman also assured that the US was willing to engage with Pakistan on the wide-ranging agenda we have and the aftermath of recent events in Afghanistan.

She added that the US was glad that Pakistan had called for an inclusive government in Afghanistan and progress on this front should be made so as to "create a better life for the people of Afghanistan".

"And we also agree that humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan should continue," Sherman said, sharing details of measures taken by the US for this purpose.

When asked about the Quad, a recently formed group that includes India, United States, Japan and Australia as members and perceived to be an alliance against China in the region, Sherman described it as a cooperative effort on matters such as energy and people-to-people exchange.

In this connection, she also clarified that the US didn't ask countries to choose between itself and China.

Acknowledging that China was a large economy and growing world power, she added, "What we do ask is that China plays by rules" in the international order.

"We urge countries to insist on that so that everyone has a level-playing field".

When she was asked about America's stance on the Kashmir dispute, Sherman said she realized that it was a long-standing, complex and historical issue, but "it is between India and Pakistan".

The US would urge for dialogue on the matter, she added.

Sherman also lauded initiatives taken by Prime Minister Imran Khan's government to mitigate climate change.