LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
July 11/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Israeli, Saudi, and Emirati Officials Privately Pushed for Trump to Strike a “Grand Bargain” with Putin
Adam Entous/The New Yorker/July 10/18
During a private meeting shortly before the November, 2016, election, Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, floated to a longtime American interlocutor what sounded, at the time, like an unlikely grand bargain. The Emirati leader told the American that Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, might be interested in resolving the conflict in Syria in exchange for the lifting of sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
Current and former U.S. officials said that bin Zayed, known as M.B.Z., was not the only leader in the region who favored rapprochement between the former Cold War adversaries. While America’s closest allies in Europe viewed with a sense of dread Trump’s interest in partnering with Putin, three countries that enjoyed unparallelled influence with the incoming Administration—Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E.—privately embraced the goal. Officials from the three countries have repeatedly encouraged their American counterparts to consider ending the Ukraine-related sanctions in return for Putin’s help in removing Iranian forces from Syria.
Experts say that such a deal would be unworkable, even if Trump were interested. They say Putin has neither the interest nor the ability to pressure Iranian forces to leave Syria. Administration officials have said that Syria and Ukraine will be among the topics that Trump and Putin will discuss at their summit in Helsinki on July 16th. White House officials did not respond to a request for comment.
The special counsel, Robert Mueller, and his F.B.I. team, tasked with probing Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, have been investigating whether the U.A.E. facilitated contacts between Trump’s team and Russian officials and sought to influence U.S. politics. Nine days before Trump’s Inauguration, Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and a confidant of Steve Bannon, met at M.B.Z.’s resort in the Seychelles with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, whom the Emiratis used as a go-between with Putin. (An April, 2017, Washington Post story that I co-wrote revealed the Indian Ocean encounter and stated that “the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would be likely to require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions.”)
Mueller’s team has also focussed on Trump transition-team meetings in December, 2016, that involved Emirati and Russian officials. One, at a New York hotel, was attended by M.B.Z., and another, at Trump Tower, was attended by Sergey Kislyak, then Russia’s Ambassador in Washington. During the December 1, 2016, meeting between Kislyak and Trump’s transition team, both sides wanted to discuss the conflict in Syria, and the Russian Ambassador proposed arranging a conversation between Michael Flynn, the incoming national-security adviser, and people he referred to as his “generals,” according to congressional testimony by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. To prevent intelligence agencies from eavesdropping on the conversation, Kislyak proposed using a “secure line,” prompting Kushner to suggest using the secure communications gear housed at the Russian Embassy in Washington.
M.B.Z. is regarded as one of the Middle East’s strategic thinkers. More than other Arab leaders of his generation, he hails from the school of Realpolitik. During the Obama Administration, M.B.Z. sought to establish closer ties between the U.A.E. and Putin, in the hope of encouraging Moscow to scale back its partnership with Iran, particularly in Syria. (Much like Israel, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia consider Iran their biggest strategic threat. They also lacked trust in President Obama.)
As an inducement for Putin to partner with Gulf states rather than Iran, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia started making billions of dollars in investments in Russia and convening high-level meetings in Moscow, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, and the Seychelles.
It is unclear whether M.B.Z.’s preëlection proposal came from Putin himself or one of his confidants, or whether the Emirati leader came up with the idea. But the comment suggested that M.B.Z. believed that turning Putin against Iran would require sanctions relief for Moscow, a concession that required the support of the American President. If Hillary Clinton had won the election, the idea of accepting Russian aggression in Ukraine would have been a nonstarter, current and former U.S. officials told me. But Trump promised a different approach.
Israeli officials lobbied for rapprochement between Washington and Moscow soon after Trump’s election victory. In a private meeting during the transition, Ron Dermer, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States and one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest confidants, said that the Israeli government was encouraging the incoming Trump Administration to coöperate more closely with Putin, starting in Syria, with the hope of convincing Moscow to push the Iranians to leave the country, an attendee told me.
Like M.B.Z., Netanyahu made courting Putin a priority, particularly after Russia’s military intervention in Syria in 2015. The Israeli leader wanted to insure that Israeli forces could continue to access Syrian airspace, which the Russians partially controlled, to prevent the deployment of advanced weapons systems by Iran and its proxies that could threaten the Jewish state. A senior Israeli official declined to comment on Dermer’s message but said that “Israel does believe it is possible to get a U.S.-Russian agreement in Syria that would push the Iranians out,” and that doing so “could be the beginning of an improvement in U.S.-Russian relations over all.”
Separately, a former U.S. official recalled having a conversation after Trump’s Inauguration with an Israeli Cabinet minister with close ties to Netanyahu in which the minister pitched the American on the idea of “trading Ukraine for Syria.” The former official told me, “You can understand why Russia’s help with Syria is a far higher priority for Israel than pushing back on Russian aggression in Ukraine. But I considered it a major stretch for Israel to try to convince the United States that U.S. interests are well served by looking the other way at Russian aggression in Ukraine. Of course, Trump may disagree for his own reasons.”
After Trump took office, the idea was raised again, by Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, and Abdullah bin Zayed, the foreign minister of the U.A.E., during a private March, 2017, dinner that included several other guests. “Their message was ‘Why don’t we lift the Ukrainian sanctions on Russia in exchange for getting the Russians to push Iran out of Syria,’ ” an attendee recalled the foreign ministers saying. A senior U.A.E. official said that he did not recall the discussion. The dinner attendee told me, “It wasn’t a trial balloon. They were trying to socialize the idea.”
The timing, however, could not have been worse politically, current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to the looming Mueller investigation, members of Congress were pushing at the time to expand sanctions against Russia, not reduce them. Trump told aides that he was frustrated that he could not make progress because of political opposition in Washington. The Americans who heard the Israeli, Emirati, and Saudi pitches in late 2016 and early 2017 assumed that the idea was dead. But ahead of the Helsinki summit, Trump started making statements that suggested he could be open to making a deal with Putin after all.
On June 8th, Trump called for Russia to be readmitted to the Group of Seven industrial nations. (Russia was expelled four years ago, after it annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region.) Then, during a dinner at the G-7 summit in Canada, Trump reportedly said that Crimea was Russian because the people who lived there spoke Russian. Several weeks later, when asked whether reports that he would drop Washington’s long-standing opposition to the annexation of Crimea were true, Trump responded, “We’re going to have to see.”
*Adam Entous is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

Counterterrorism Lecture/Taking Stock of U.S. Counterterrorism Efforts Since 9/11
Lt. Gen Michael K. Nagata, U.S. Army/The Washington Institute/July 10/18
The director of strategic operational planning at the National Counterterrorism Center discusses the general state of U.S. CT efforts, the persistence of the threat, and the need to focus on nonkinetic prevention methods.
On July 10, The Washington Institute hosted a Policy Forum with Michael Nagata as part of its long-running Counterterrorism Lecture Series. Nagata has served as director of strategic operational planning at the National Counterterrorism Center since May 2016. Previously, he was Commander, Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT), and participated in the first two years of combat operations against the Islamic State. The following are his prepared remarks.
Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting me here today to discuss U.S. counterterrorism, particularly with an eye toward how our nation looks strategically at protecting U.S. citizens and our interests around the globe from the threat of terrorism.
My goals today are to make a few remarks about the state of U.S. counterterrorism efforts, provide my perspective on what the future of contesting terrorism will require, and then move on rapidly to take your questions.
For nearly seventeen years, the United States, in conjunction with a large number of its allies and partners around the world, has exerted extraordinary effort and invested enormous treasure into contesting terrorism in its many forms. As all of you know, our principal focus has been on the kind of international threat that organizations like al-Qaida and ISIS pose.
During this time, the United States has sent some of its best and bravest to the farthest reaches of the globe to combat terrorist organizations and franchises in their sanctuaries. Along the way, we have developed an almost dizzying array of intelligence capabilities, tactical and operational innovations, and technological breakthroughs year after year. As a result, all of us can and should be very proud of all that has been accomplished, not the least of which being the prevention of another catastrophic terrorist attack on U.S. soil like what our nation experienced on 9/11. We rightly grieve those we have lost along the way, and still strive to take care of those who have been gravely injured and wounded in this longest of all America's wars.
Yet, after nearly two decades, and despite all that we should rightly be proud of, the time has come to ask ourselves some difficult but necessary questions: Despite the capabilities we have developed and the progress we have achieved, why is terrorism today more widespread and complex than when we began? Why has terrorism proven to be so resilient and adaptive despite our successes and the continuing pressure and might that we and the world bring to bear against it? Just one example of why the underlying trends of terrorism, despite our best efforts, are so troubling is a sobering statistic derived from the Global Terrorism Database compiled by the University of Maryland's START program: since 2010, terrorism-related fatalities worldwide have increased by more than 300 percent, and terrorist attacks with associated fatalities have increased by nearly 200 percent. Separately, here at home, federal law enforcement has about a thousand terrorism-related investigations open in our own communities across all fifty states.
I am not trying to suggest that our efforts have been fruitless. The plain fact that there has been no repetition of a 9/11-style attack on our own soil is a signal and important accomplishment. The fact that we have revolutionized our own abilities and practices when it comes to illuminating and attacking terrorist leaders and plots is likewise a big deal. That said, I would like to share with you some observations that, from my perspective as both an operational practitioner for several decades and today as a Washington DC–based strategist, strike me as germane toward answering these questions.
First, where have we been since 9/11?
The lion's share of our investments since 9/11 in developing new CT capability and capacity has gone primarily toward the identification, illumination, targeting and tracking, and, as we say in the counterterrorism world, "the finishing" of terrorists and terrorist plots. Our principal focus, both tactically and strategically, has been toward developing an ability to eliminate terrorist leaders and foot soldiers, while simultaneously identifying and disrupting their most dangerous attack plans. This has driven extraordinary investments in new intelligence community capabilities, a revolution in military affairs when it comes to combating irregular and insurgent forces, and the creation of entirely new federal agencies focused on hardening our infrastructure, defending our borders, and investigating and disrupting violent extremist threats in both our country and abroad.
Second, where are we now?
On the one hand, we have developed enormous proficiency and expertise in CT that continues to serve us well today. Most recently, when ISIS exploded onto the world stage in 2014, the United States was far more ready and able to grapple with and begin the military defeat of that entity than would have been possible seventeen years ago.
On the other hand, the fact that ISIS suddenly emerged as a strategic surprise for the United States only four years ago should be a sobering realization for all of us. It has compelled a large number of experts within the CT community to recognize that, for all the successes we have had, violent extremism in virtually every form continues to be resilient.
I'd like to provide three examples to emphasize this point about the size, capability, and resilience of terrorism today:
First—More than a decade ago, I commanded a task force that focused on foreign fighters who had joined al-Qaida in Iraq. I vividly remember that we were struggling to deal with fighters that totaled in the hundreds. Since the rise of ISIS in 2014, our best estimates are now that in excess of 40,000 foreign terrorist fighters have flocked to its black flag in that time.
Second—ISIS has been a strategic pioneer in at least two arenas. The first is weaponizing and effectively employing commercially available and affordable unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). As more and more capable technologies, such as cheap and affordable UAS, become more readily available to anyone with a credit card, the ability to create highly lethal effects is no longer dependent on centralized training, planning, or preparation. The other is even more dangerous, and that is the group's innovative use of online propaganda and social media platforms to recruit, radicalize, and mobilize individuals to violence. No longer is the creation of new terrorists primarily dependent on physical or face-to-face contact between a prospective recruit and a terrorist recruiter, nor do new recruits require extensive training or guidance, given ISIS's emphasis on encouraging its followers to conduct attacks in their home countries using simple tactics and easily accessible weapons. Consider that the truck driver in Nice, France, in 2016 was able to kill and maim as many people with his cargo truck as a large IED attack could have.
Third—As many of you will recall, we had a notion right after 9/11 that "we will play such an awesome away game that there will never have to be a home game." Nearly twenty years later, I've had to confront the sad reality that, despite the impressive nature and enormous effectiveness of our away-game efforts, the overall movement of terrorism and violent extremism has ultimately proven durable and resilient to our attacks. Today, we are contesting an unprecedented scale of violent extremist activities, both internationally and with homegrown violent extremists.
Assuming the foregoing is reasonably accurate, today we are confronted with the question of how to make ourselves and our allies more effective in reducing the size, capability, and resilience of terrorism. We must find a way to preserve today's impressive ability to disrupt terrorism while significantly strengthening our ability to reduce terrorism in all of its forms—internationally where it threatens U.S. interests and more effectively within our own borders.
Although we maintain our already formidable capability to attack and disrupt terrorist activities that threaten our interests, it is now necessary for the United States to shift more of its investments in people and capability toward the nonkinetic prevention of terrorism. It may seem a little unusual for a military special operator like myself to make such an argument, but like many of my colleagues, I've been forced to confront the simple reality that attacking terrorists does not, in and of itself, create lasting strategic success against terrorism. It is necessary, but it is not sufficient.
I am not suggesting that we reduce our investments in what we have so successfully done in the past seventeen years—illuminating and effectively attacking terrorists. Nor am I suggesting that we need an equivalent investment to what we have committed to kinetic CT. The organizations, both governmental and nongovernmental, that currently strive to prevent terrorism or terrorist activities have neither the absorptive capacity nor, in some cases, the proven methodologies today that could justify such a massive investment approach. Furthermore, the federal government has learned that it must be very thoughtful in how it supports or funds prevention programs and activities, especially with respect to our intent to ensure civil and constitutional rights, personal privacy, political freedoms, and free enterprise.
What I am suggesting is simply this. We need a much more vibrant dialogue—both within our own government and across our society—about the degree to which we are willing or able to increase our investments in terms of fiscal resources, manpower, and genuine policy support for at least five mission areas:
Becoming more effective in preventing terrorist travel, both internationally and domestically;
Becoming more effective in denying terrorists the resources they need to operate and propagate their ideology;
Becoming more effective in contesting terrorist use of the Internet, both as a global command-and-control system and as an increasingly powerful radicalization instrument;
Becoming more effective in contesting terrorist ideologies, particularly in the arena of offering more attractive alternatives to their poisonous ideas; and
Becoming more effective in assisting local communities and families in identifying those vulnerable to terrorist recruitment and enabling local actors to either prevent or "off-ramp" these individuals or groups by teaching them how to address their needs or grievances without resorting to violence.
It is important that I acknowledge that thousands of extraordinary, dedicated people—both within government and across civil society—are striving to succeed in all five areas today. Unfortunately, there are simply not enough of them, they universally suffer from significant resource shortfalls, and—most important—they would benefit from the constant and durable policy support that kinetic CT approaches enjoy today.
Over the past seventeen years, identifying and attacking terrorists and their plots have experienced vivid and substantial policy support. Not everything we attempted to do in locating or attacking them was successful, but we learned from every mistake. We were willing to absorb these setbacks, publicly defend them against both domestic and international criticism, and persevere because it was so important that we learn how to succeed.
If we are to become strategically successful in the five nonkinetic arenas I've outlined, I believe it will take the same kind of sustained commitment. We do not yet know all of the prescriptions, approaches, skills, capabilities, or organizational models best suited to strategically succeed nonkinetically, and it will only be through the kind of ruthless experimentation we were once willing to endure in our kinetic journey that we will learn how to be equally successful in preventing terrorism. This will ultimately determine if we are able to learn to prevent the creation of new terrorists as well as if we are able to kill or capture them today. I will stop there and would be delighted to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you.

Wars of extermination: What is the role of major powers?
Fahad Suleiman Shoqiran/Al Arabiya/July 10/18
The movie In the Land of Blood and Honey shows the extreme suffering of people in Bosnia and Herzegovina because of the ethnic war which embarrassed humanity and kept states in utter confusion for three years. Eventually, the US employed the strategy of Richard Holbrooke of using “force for achieving peace.”While narrating the details of the Dayton Agreement, Holbrooke’s assistant Vali Nasr said: “In the Balkans, (Holbrooke) had wielded the threat of US air power to compel the recalcitrant Serbian president Milosevic to agree to a deal.”
“On one occasion he walked out of a frustrated meeting with Milosevic and told his military adviser to roll B-52 bombers out onto the tarmac in an airbase in England and make sure CNN showed the footage”.
“Later, at a dinner during the Dayton peace talks that ended the Bosnia war, he asked President Clinton to sit across from Milosevic. Holbrooke said to Clinton, I want Milosevic to hear from you what I told him, that if there is no peace you will send in the bombers.”
Failures of the ‘liberal order’
Angela Merkel now defends “humanitarian principles” which she had adopted toward refugees in Germany amid intense pressure on her.
Ben Rhodes, former foreign policy adviser to President Obama, revealed in his book The World as It Is that Merkel shed tears when Trump won the elections because she views him as a threat to the “international liberal order.”
Policies of the ‘liberal system’, promoted as the guardian of humanitarian values in the world, revert many societies to a primordial state of nature
However, the bloody and scattered Syrian reality and its spilling over to the European continent was the result of failed and isolationist policies that encouraged dictatorships to commit more bloody massacres. Everything had changed, which reminds us of David Hume’s paradox.
Trump along with his allies has repeatedly bombed Assad’s and Iran’s forces in Syria while the “liberal order” could not do this. This “liberal order” has failed to manage humanitarian crises as they unfolded, and it’s now failing in resolving them no matter how successful it has been in explaining them at the theoretical level.
The democratic or revolutionary impact has had no practical influence on emerging liberalisms as the problem is also with people, their methods in dealing with sudden crises and decision-making mechanisms in saving the world.
State of nature
Observing the civil and ethnic wars around the world, takes us back to the terrifying “state of nature” before the law, state, the social contract, human support, international cooperation and specifically to the Myth of the Leviathan Monster, the title of Thomas Hobbes’ book in the 17th century.
Hobbes was a witness to the British civil wars, where people lived in the “state of nature – the society without laws.” Man then operated based on selfish individualistic considerations, sticking only to providing his livelihood and concerned about his own security.
Others were only significant to him only if they serve an interest. Man was thus like the “wolf” to his fellow brothers. In this state of nature, wars continue to rage on between one man and the other.
‘State’ versus the individual
A lot of the “liberal system” policies, which are being promoted as the guardian of humanitarian values in the world as opposed to the so-called ‘Trumpian’ values, reverted many societies to that earlier state of nature.
This is due to the withdrawal and isolationist strategies without engaging in any military intervention and carrying out necessary bombing, even if limited, against Iran’s aggression via its proxies, the Syrian Ba’ath regime and other evil entities.
All this passiveness and collusion established fragile entities in the region that affect the future of Europe, like what is happening in Libya and Syria. Isolation was adopted under the pretext of preserving institutions while the state was going extinct and eroding.
Without the state, man becomes a beast and considers everything in front of him a prey, exactly like in the myths of the Ragnar Lodbrok army, in the famous TV series Vikings.
In his book The World As Will And Representation, Schopenhauer said: “The state is the muzzle that aims to render harmless the carnivorous beast, man, and to ensure it has the appearance of a herbivore.”