No one is perfect. People make mistakes from time to time. So do countries. In the past, countries, like people, stumbled, recognized the error, picked themselves up and moved on. Don’t get me wrong; there was always a price to be paid.  When Great Britain, for example, misjudged Hitler in the 1930s and allowed him to grow too strong, it cost Britain immense losses in World War II to repair the damage. Same for Russia-Stalin also misjudged Hitler.  In turn, he was surprise-attacked, badly bruised, and eventually had to pay an enormous human and economic price to defeat Germany.  But, and this is the big “but”, both Britain and Russia were large enough and strong enough to absorb the blows. They could sustain heavy losses and still persevere on to victory.

The invention of WMDs changed all of this, beginning with the atomic bomb in 1945. All of a sudden, the Western democracies had no room for error. A nuclear miscalculation could end the world. This realization of the new reality explains why the USA and the USSR danced gingerly around each other during the 45 years of the Cold War, each careful not to step over a certain line, each careful not to provoke a war.  Both sides were aware of the consequences of launching a nuclear war. A good example is the minuet danced by Kennedy and Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

The game started to change in the second half of the 20^th century- an unleashed science, untrammeled by moral or religious considerations, produced a frightening array of chemical, biological, and other weapons of hair-raising lethality.  This game-changer has resulted in the foremost paradox of our times: the outcome of the most extensive scientific and technological century in history is that human beings now possess the ability (which they never had before) to physically destroy the world and exterminate the entire human race.

And this they call progress.

The State of Israel, in a different way, has lived under a similar sort of threat in its 67 years of existence.  Israel has always faced mass destruction but , it has fortunately not had to face Arab WMDs as part of that threat; the Arabs possessed none (partly due to Menachem Begin’s air strike over the Iraqi reactor in 1981).  The Arabs did declare their intention of wiping out Israel if they ever won a conventional war. It is a truism that the Arabs can afford to lose war after war; Israel cannot afford to lose even one. As a result, Israel has had no margin of error over the decades; Israel simply cannot afford to get it wrong.

And yet, it appears that Israel has done so in the case of the Gaza Strip. A recent article in Yediot Acharonot has described how strategic miscalculations have resulted in a security nightmare with no good end in sight.  Although Ariel Sharon and other leaders in the mid 2000s persuaded themselves that Hamas in control of the Gaza Strip would be cautious and quiescent, the facts have proved otherwise, and things are getting worse all the time. Experience has shown that the moment a terrorist group is allowed to occupy a piece of territory, it becomes impossible to dislodge them without paying an unacceptable price. Israel is indeed already paying a steep price for this miscalculation.

On a number of recent occasions, America has similarly miscalculated in its Mid-East policy with similarly negative long-term consequences.  A big one involves the Sinai Desert, which has become a haven for Al Qaeda, ISIS, and similar groups in the last four years.  These terrorist groups cannot now be dislodged. How did this happen?  The answer lies in President Obama’s miscalculations regarding Egypt and the “Arab Spring” of 2011. Obama helped push President Mubarak out of office, despite the fact that Mubarak was the leader and source of legitimacy for the Egyptian security establishment.  Admittedly, the Egyptian security establishment was a ruthless set of forces (army, police, goon-squads, etc.) who did many bad things. OTOH these forces have fought a rather successful war for decades against Islamic terror-groups, who are even worse and more ruthless than the Egyptian security-forces. What was the result of Obama’s intervention? I will let the former head of the CIA under President Obama, Michael Morrell, tell the story:

In Egypt, Mubarak was replaced by Mohamed Morsi, a prominent member of the Muslim brotherhood who quickly started granting himself extraordinary powers. Morsi turned out to be a horrible leader, making bad decisions on both political and economic matters. Whatever the benefits of having a popularly elected leader, they were more than offset by poor governance. This was all to the dismay of the many- both inside Egypt and out- who had hoped he would lead efforts to reenergize the Egyptian  economy and transition the country to democracy. One of the ways this poor governance played out was that, while the mechanisms for combating terrorism in Egypt remained largely intact, there was no political will to use them. The military, intelligence, and law enforcement communities in Egypt essentially stopped fighting al qa’ida because they felt they had no political support to continue to do their job. In a remarkably short time, al qa’ida, which had been defeated in Egypt for almost two decades, made a comeback, establishing new footholds in the Sinai and other parts of Egypt. From these locations al qa’ida could now strike Israel, energy pipelines important to Israel and Jordan, and tourist sites popular with westerners within Egypt. The Sinai went from being a prime location for scuba divers and beach goers to a war zone.

Morsi’s government was essentially doing mothering. Eventually the White House sent Counter-terrorism Czar John Brennan to tell Morsi that al qa’ida was on a rapid road to recovery in Egypt and that its overarching goal was to kill Morsi and overthrow his government. While Brennan got Morsi’s attention-Egyptian CT operations against al qa’ida partially resumed- the Egyptian military several months later decided that it had had enough and replaced Morsi after little more than a year in office.

But the damage had been done. Al Qa’ida had gained enormous ground in the largest and most important Arab country in the region. We are still paying for the Egyptians’ lack of focus today, with al qa’ida fully entrenched in the Sinai, where it regularly conducts attacks against Egyptian military and police unites, and in Egypt’s most important cities, where it still poses a threat. The Arab Spring, that flowering of self-determination and public expression, had turned into a catalyst for the worst kind of violence and oppression. From a counterterrorism perspective, the Arab Spring had turned to winter.

The above is only one example of the United States’ recent perilous miscalculations in its Mideast policy towards Islamic terrorist organizations and governments. Unfortunately, there are plenty of others: the War in Iraq and its handling of the withdrawal of troops in 2009 (after much of the unrest had stabilized), the Syrian Civil War, the 2011 Yemeni Revolution, and, most recently, the Iran Deal.  The question going forward is what unintended consequences these missteps will have on Western civilization and, specifically, on Israel?  Well, President Obama and Secretary Kerry, while granting that the Iran treaty is not without its flaws, assure Israel and its supporters that if Iran cheats, if the Mideast gets out of hand, America will provide Israel with the support necessary to face the danger.  What is left out of this “reassurance” is that America reserves the right to use its own best judgement as to how, when, and whether to help Israel, of course. So, the State of Israel is now being forced into relying on the best judgement of the Obama Administration-an Administration with an imperfect record, operating during a time when perfection is no longer a luxury.

The problem is, no one is perfect.

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