The Islamic State terror group has a “strong desire” to attack the U.S. and other foreign powers, the former head of U.S. Central Command warned on Sunday, calling it a threat that is only growing.

“We should believe them when they say that. They’re going to try to do it,” retired Gen. Frank McKenzie told ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz.

“I think the threat is growing,” McKenzie continued, pointing to the dangers from affiliates like ISIS-K after the broader group took responsibility for a deadly attack in Moscow earlier this month. The group also said it was behind a mass bombing in Iran in January.

“It begun to grow as soon as we left Afghanistan, it took pressure off ISIS-K. So I think we should expect further attempts of this nature against the United States as well as our partners and other nations abroad,” McKenzie said. “I think this is inevitable.”

McKenzie, who is also the author of the upcoming “The Melting Point,” a book about leadership and his time commanding U.S. forces in the Middle East, which included the exit from Afghanistan, said that the U.S. maintains a large enough military presence in Iraq and Syria to counter extremists there.

But he still believes the U.S. should have kept a small troop presence in Afghanistan rather than withdrawing completely in August 2021, bringing an end to America’s longest war.

Though President Joe Biden has previously maintained there would be an “over-the-horizon capability” to “act quickly and decisively” in Afghanistan, even from afar, McKenzie disputed that.

“In Afghanistan, we have almost no ability to see into that country and almost no ability to strike into that country,” he said of the conditions on the ground now.

That is a boon to the Islamic State and similar such militants, he said.

“If you can keep pressure on them … in their homeland and their base, it makes it hard for them to conduct these types of attacks,” he said. “Unfortunately, we no longer place that pressure on them, so they’re free to gain strength, they’re free to plan, they’re free to coordinate.”

Had the U.S. and its allies kept some forces in Afghanistan, prolonging military involvement there, “I have to believe, Martha, that things would be different. … I think we might actually be safer than we are,” McKenzie said.

Originally published in ABC News.

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Almost by definition all NATO Summits are deemed “successful” since there is a political premium on demonstrating alliance solidarity, overcoming differences through carefully negotiated communique language, and touting compromise agreements as steps forward in the alliance’s main missions of deterrence and defense, crisis prevention and management, and collective security.

There are rare exceptions, of course, and in today’s context, the exception that seems to prove the rule is the Bucharest Summit of 2008 which foundered on President George W. Bush’s desire to provide a Membership Action Plan (MAP, traditionally the penultimate step to NATO membership) for Georgia and Ukraine, colliding with French and German reticence. The resulting compromise, whereby NATO did not offer a MAP to Georgia and Ukraine but asserted that both would someday become members of NATO, created the worst of all possible worlds: a strategic gray zone which left the two countries at the mercy of Vladimir Putin who ultimately invaded both and, in the case of Ukraine, did it twice. This created today’s enormous crisis in European security occasioned by Russia’s “illegal, unjustifiable and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine.”

The Vilnius NATO Summit held on July 11-12, 2023 offered an enormous opportunity for Joe Biden to make good on his pledges to renew US leadership of its premier multilateral military alliance. How does one assess his performance?

NATO faced three main challenges going into the Vilnius meeting: overcoming Turkey’s ongoing blockade of Swedish accession to NATO, concluding new regional defense plans to respond to the increased threat of Russian aggression, and working out Ukraine’s future relationship to NATO. The third challenge, which would prove to be the most difficult, involved eliminating the gray zone created by the Bucharest decision and creating a stable security equilibrium in Europe that precludes a third round of Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Biden and his team deserve high marks for managing the question of Swedish accession. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s authoritarian leader has perfected a form of transactional diplomacy with NATO and the European Union that rests on his ability to blackmail allies and partners into providing him with benefits that solidify his political standing at home. The Biden team understood from the beginning that although Sweden’s alleged coddling of Kurdish terrorists was the pretext for Erdogan’s ongoing blockage of Sweden’s candidacy, in reality he was also looking for psychic and material payoffs from the United States, notably a bilateral meeting at Vilnius with Biden and assurances that the Biden administration would proceed with plans to sell modern F-16 fighters to Turkey over strong congressional objections to the proposed sale. At the end of the day, despite (or perhaps because of) some last-minute theatrics by Erdoğan, the issue was resolved.

Erdoğan got a meeting with Biden, whose only other advertised bilateral engagement was with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy, and secured an announcement of the US intent to proceed with the F-16 sale with some side accommodations to manage congressional objections. He also obtained promises of Swedish and US support for an expanded Turkish-EU customs agreement. In return, Erdogan lifted his objections to allow for a happy ending – although the Turkish Grand National Assembly will not actually vote to ratify Sweden’s accession until October, which leaves plenty of time for more mischief-making by either Erdoğan or Hungary’s Viktor Orban who has used Turkish objections to try and extract his own concessions from Sweden and the EU.

On the second challenge, NATO had what seems to be a partial success. It agreed to new defense plans and promised to “regularly exercise the Alliance’s ability to rapidly reinforce any Ally that comes under threat.” But it is important to note that the plans are in many ways aspirational, will likely take years to implement, and in any event depend on NATO’s success in addressing the distressing state of the European defense industrial base. The Vilnius Communique implicitly recognized this reality by acknowledging that NATO needs “a robust and resilient defense industry able to sustainably meet the need of significantly strengthened collective defense.” But whether the European allies will be capable of meeting this demand remains, at best, an open question.

The war in Ukraine, and particularly the steady demand for munitions and other weapons systems to support Kyiv’s efforts to resist Russian aggression, has thrown into sharp relief the parlous state of the defense industrial base in both the US and Europe.

In 2018, the congressionally-mandated National Defense Strategy Commission (full disclosure: I co-chaired the Commission) drew attention to the fact that during the counter-ISIL campaign in 2015 the US Air Force almost ran out of precision-guided munitions, that the US defense industrial base faced difficulty in making up such short falls and that the supply chains for the defense industrial base were anything but resilient. Today, the Department of Defense and the Congress are taking steps to shore it up (although much more needs to be done).

Europe is, if anything, in even worse shape. As Michael Schoellhorn, the CEO of Airbus Defense and Space, noted in the days after the Vilnius Summit, “the US has definitely kick-started their industrial base as part of their defense system,” but in Europe “by and large it has taken too long, it’s not decisive enough and there’s too much fragmentation.”

There is irony in all this. Despite Biden’s pledge to lead the Alliance, it has largely been the Europeans who have forced the pace when it comes to providing Ukraine with military assistance – including on key items like tanks, long-range strike systems and provision of F-16 fighter aircraft.

The US administration, crippled by an overwhelming fear of escalation dynamics (despite repeated indications that Russia’s so-called “red lines” have repeatedly disappeared in the face of NATO members provision of material support to Ukraine’s armed forces) has repeatedly been in the position of playing catch-up on its qualitative support for Kyiv even as it provides the lion’s share of the military assistance to Ukraine. The recent decision to provide Ukraine with the Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munition, a cluster munition that will provide Ukraine with an important, if hugely controversial capability, may be an indication that Washington is ready to move a bit more aggressively to ensure that Ukraine wins the war. And Biden’s statements that he is considering supplying Ukraine with ATACMS ballistic missiles (enabling it to strike Russian logistics and supply lines that have moved out of range of the earlier supplied HIMARS systems) are a hopeful sign that some of Biden’s reticence is yielding to reality. But the fear of provoking “World War III” remains deeply ingrained in the psyche of Biden’s team.

The third challenge – Ukraine’s future relationship with NATO – provoked most of the drama at Vilnius and it is here that Biden and his team performed most poorly. Ukraine’s military performance has earned it enormous respect in European capitals. Considering Ukraine’s growing reliance on Western systems and training, as well as its successes on the battlefield, it is clear that the country is developing an advanced military that will be increasingly capable of meeting any criterion for interoperability. Its reforms at home (despite continuing problems with corruption and rule of law) compare favorably with some of the states recently welcomed into NATO – Montenegro comes to mind.

Nonetheless, amidst growing sentiment in Europe that a clear path to NATO membership was the only way to guarantee the security and stability of the continent in the long run, Washington (and Berlin) remained stubbornly resistant. Biden’s statements ahead of the Vilnius Summit that Ukraine wasn’t ready for NATO membership and that he wasn’t going to make it easy for them were nothing less than insulting. Moreover, as the communique deliberations in Vilnius proceeded, the insular or even solipsistic quality of the Biden team was sadly on display.

The Americans were reportedly stunned that the support for Ukraine’s path to membership was broader than they had assessed. When draft language leaked which suggested that Ukraine could only become a member when Allies agreed that unspecified conditions had been met, Zelenskyy understandably reacted harshly, tweeting that the reasoning was absurd.

The American response to Zelenskyy was to suggest that all the Ukraine language in the communique should be deleted. It was an unserious response that reflected a curious lack of strategic empathy. Although the Biden team spends much of its time worrying about what might provoke Vladimir Putin, it seems to have much less understanding or time for a heroic national leader who is fighting valiantly for the survival of his country against a rapacious enemy. This is an enemy who has committed countless war crimes and whose leaders routinely indulge in eliminationist, genocidal rhetoric and totally irresponsible and dangerous, if empty, nuclear threats throughout the course of this terrible war. Combined with Biden’s conspicuous failure to attend the summit’s final dinner for heads of state, it was not a good look.

Biden’s speech in Vilnius after the meetings had concluded and his subsequent stop in Helsinki allowed him to take a victory lap and proclaim the summit’s success and NATO’s solidarity. In truth, the language in the communique on Ukraine’s future association with NATO was not as strong as it should have been but, in combination with some of the undertakings to provide long-term bilateral assistance to Ukraine that Washington spearheaded, it was not as bad as Ukrainians might have feared.

There will be future opportunities for NATO foreign and defense ministers to provide additional assistance and clear the path to eventual NATO membership for Ukraine, perhaps leading to a formal offer at next year’s 75^th anniversary summit in Washington. But Biden’s performance, despite some real achievements, was much less than his promised return of America to the head of the table. Sadly there was much more followership than leadership on display in Vilnius.

Amb. Eric Edelman serves as Counselor to JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense & Strategy and Co-Chair of its Iran Policy Project and Eastern Mediterranean Policy Project. He served as U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy from 2005 to 2009. 

Originally published in Jerusalem Strategic Tribune.

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The war in Ukraine is an opportunity for countries that are liable to face similar scenarios to study and prepare for such eventualities. For Israel, this is a unique opportunity: with Iran considered its greatest threat, Tehran’s involvement in a conflict in Europe allows an in-depth examination of one aspect of Iranian capabilities and weaknesses.

Iranian involvement in the conflict emerges from in its special relations with Russia, and translates into Iran’s supply to Russia of various military technologies, particularly armed UAVs, as well as operational knowledge and the assistance of experts, some of whom work from Russian territory. Meanwhile, in recent months Russian industries have made use of Iranian suicide UAVs (the Shahed 136 model), which operate relatively autonomously and are capable of cruising to a coordinate via GPS system and striking it with 40 kg of explosive material.

These are relatively primitive means, low cost, and simple to operate; some were even downgraded intended to allow their export from Iran disassembled, with assembly on the ground. Despite the low level of accuracy of these UAVs in comparison to their Western counterparts, for the Russians they are an adequate solution to their need to attempt to erode Ukraine’s resilience by damaging electrical and water infrastructure, as well as inflicting intentional injury and death on civilians. To date, the widespread use of these systems has not led to Russia’s desired strategic achievement. Nonetheless, the campaign in Ukraine demonstrates ways of waging war that Israel is liable to face that include various UAVs, an (inferior) alternative to an air force for nations that are subject to sanctions or that lack in resources. Their use is relevant to multiple threat levels: terror, limited conflict, and inter-state conflict. From Israel’s perspective, Ukraine offers a demonstration of the limited technological capabilities of exported Iranian weapons on the one hand, and implications for the battlefield on the other, including the ability to damage civil infrastructure, military forces, and civilians.

Israel should be concerned by the strength and pace of production demonstrated by the Iranians, despite the international sanctions against Iran. Compounding this is information about Iran’s export capacity and the future effects of the knowledge it continues to gain and the partnerships it forges. Indeed, with the Russian use of Iranian weapons, the Iranians are acquiring operational knowledge regarding the limitations and advantages of their technologies. For Israel, the primary concern is the fact that it will be targeted by these systems; indeed, some are already operational in various ways, whether directly from Iran or by its proxies in various locations in the Middle East and along Israel’s borders, including by Hamas and Hezbollah. What is of even greater concern is the assumption that suicide UAVs are a step on the path to cruise missiles – which have greater accuracy and capacity to inflict damage.

The fighting in Ukraine also shows how non-Western powers tend to use unmanned weapons – in a total inversion of how Western democracies use similar technologies, largely with the intention of minimizing damage and harm to civilians by means of improving the accuracy of their systems. The way that Russia uses these technologies does not respect international law in particular or human life in general, as proven by the deadly and indiscriminate attacks on the Ukrainian home front. While the weapons have not scored strategic gains, the future of hundreds of such UAVs in combination with heavy barrages of rockets in the early days of fighting are liable to pose difficult problems for the Israeli defense systems.

In the context of the events in Ukraine, a number of issues require Israel’s urgent attention, particularly the need to upgrade detection, interception, and defense capabilities, and the need to seize emerging opportunities. The IDF, for example, must continue to prevent the transfer of Iranian technologies in Israel’s environs in the framework of the campaign between wars. Furthermore, the knowledge that it is not possible to completely prevent armament of the other side requires Israel to upgrade its interception capabilities significantly in relation to UAVs and drones as a new layer requiring targeted handling within the totality of Israel’s air defenses. Hence the importance of creating a reliable “view of the airs[pace” via use of all existing detection resources. In addition, Israel must change the approach that has prevailed until now of coping with a lone target: the defense system must prepare to cope with the threat of large masses (perhaps even swarms) of UAVs or drones launched at Israel simultaneously with rockets and additional means, primarily during the first days of fighting.

Given the difficulty of supplying resources for developing systems for each separate threat, there is a need for an interception system that can deal with all the threats simultaneously and possesses the flexibility and rapid adaptation to meet the nature of the changing objectives. To this end, the Ministry of Defense must increase its purchasing budget and the speed at which it acquires new systems and integrates them into existing systems. Attention must also be paid to integration between systems and the implementation of artificial intelligence capabilities, which will assist with early detection and decision making as regards interception. This change of approach and integration stand to yield innovative added value.

Israel must also continue studying the paces of Iranian production and adapt its interception capability as much as possible, including via future laser systems, as well as its ability to replenish its stock of interceptors. This aspect is urgent given recently disclosed intelligence indicating Russian and Iranian intentions to build a joint factory in Russia that will enable production of some 6000 UAVs a year. With the need for rapid response in routine and in emergencies, Israel must also include the decision making ranks that authorize opening fire or interception.

Israel is required to adapt its home front alert systems to the nature of the threat. Given that the situation on the home front is expected to be different and more challenging than in the previous combat rounds with Hamas, Israel must clarify to the relevant parties and primarily to citizens themselves the future implications of differential interception policies (whereby not all targets will be intercepted due to cost savings or a lack of ammunition), in addition to the inability to intercept completely heavy barrages launched simultaneously, in the case of a widespread conflict (e.g., fighting on the northern front). In tandem, the security establishment and civil systems are in urgent need of improved ability to defend and reconstruct the home front, as well as critical infrastructures. The security establishment must also expand research enabling detection of future threats in order to reduce the reaction times to them.

Joining these numerous and demanding requirements are opportunities for Israel. These include a unique opportunity to improve Israeli preparedness based not a specific inquiry or investigative commission, but rather on conclusions drawn from actual fighting by others against technological capabilities used by Israel’s enemies. Israel also has the opportunity to highlight internationally that Iran is not just a potential nuclear problem and an actual cause of regional instability, but also an exporter of dangerous weapons that affects global proliferation of dangerous advanced technologies that are likely to reach countries and terrorist organizations. Emphasizing this aspect of the Iranian threat is liable to strengthen the demand to intensify the sanctions against Iran that would inhibit its actions even a little. This is especially important in light of the expiration of the UN Security Council arms embargo.

Given the emerging international recognition of the threat of UAVs in general and Iranian UAVs in particular, and as a threat that is not confined to the Middle East, Israel is likely to find opportunities to collaborate with additional countries and create new destinations for Israeli industry exports. For example, one unsolved challenge for Israel and other Western nations is the need to create systems and doctrines for defending maneuvering ground forces from UAVs and drones. This is an opportunity to collaborate with allies, as well as to enlist force buildup measures in general to form partnerships. Overall, the demonstration of the Iranian threat in Ukraine underlines the importance of strengthening regional cooperation, which is critical not only to Israel, given the need for intelligence cooperation. This concerns the challenge implicit in early detection of UAVs and drones, primarily for the purposes of preparing to handle threats during routine times and not only during periods of fighting.

In conclusion, the fighting in Ukraine, which saw widespread use of Iranian UAVs, exemplifies the strengthening of the existing threat. We are witnessing a change in scope and intensity, as well as use of these technologies, at times indiscriminate and lethal, by parties that do not respect international law. This substantial challenge requires an in-depth understanding of the change and rapid, efficient adaptation of Israeli preparations for any future threat situation.

Originally published in The Institute for National Security Studies.

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Some use it as a substitute for free societies; others, to imply the white Christian world; others, to imply civilizational excellence. Depending on who you are, it’s an endorsement or a criticism. If you are a member of the Chinese Communist Party or the American far left, the West is a bad thing. In 1987, Jesse Jackson led a march on the Stanford University campus. Demanding the removal of a Western civilization course from the core curriculum, they chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, Western civ has got to go.” The marchers couldn’t find a distinction between the West and white supremacy.

For others, it’s the source of human flourishing. Even when the West is good, though, definitions vary. The main pillar of the West could be its Christianity or its classical liberalism. To many American liberals on the right and left, especially in foreign policy discussions, the West just means the world America has made. Everybody has strong opinions about the West, yet nobody can come up with a common definition of it.

***

We know the origin of the term “the West,” but we can’t tell for sure how its meaning evolved over the past two millennia. Diocletian was the Roman emperor who created the tetrarchic system in the 280s to split the empire between West and East, each to be autonomous, but for the empire to be run by co-emperors. This system created the West-East divide and predated the Christianization of the empire decades later under Emperor Constantine. Over the next two centuries, the split would become concrete through a series of civil wars. In the meantime, Rome had become Christian, so the split of the empire broke the church into the Western and the Eastern churches. The West and the East were terms to define these two different Roman worlds and Christianities.

During the medieval era, another line was added to the divide. The Holy Roman Empire became the West, and the Byzantine Empire the East. Better yet, after the Muslim Ottomans succeeded the Byzantines, that dichotomy became clearer, since the distinctions were not simply between two churches but two entirely separate religions. So the Eastern Church moved northward to Russia to establish the “Third Rome” as the legitimate heir to Byzantium. Russia was the East now.

In early modernity, French Catholic integralists would denounce the West as, in the late sociologist Peter Berger’s words, “wherever Protestantism had done its corroding work.” For their European contemporaries, good or bad, the West was the rootless, individualistic culture that we today associate with capitalism and the bourgeoisie. It was the West because it existed in Protestant Northwestern Europe. Ironically, the West and St. Peter’s Church, once symbiotic, were now mutually exclusive.

The Cold War brought the phrase “the West” back into common use. Again, Europe was at the epicenter of a fight over the right way of life. Christianity, formerly divided between the two churches in the Roman era and between Catholics and Protestants in early modernity, was this time not divided against itself, but rather arrayed against the atheism of the communist world. The geography worked too. NATO and Warsaw Pact countries were, with the exception of Turkey, separated by a vertical line on a map. The Cold War was ideological. Liberalism and totalitarianism were at odds. And that’s how the West came to be associated with liberalism, even though, in its origin, the idea of “the West” predated both Christian Europe and modern liberalism. Russia’s successor, the Soviet Union, was again the center of the East. The irony is that Russia’s claim to the East was based partly on the very church the Soviet Union had cracked down on.

The inconsistencies of the East-West dichotomy exist not only in geopolitical history, but intellectual history as well. The ideas of the West hardly come from the West—i.e., from the parts of continental Western Europe once under the control of the Holy Roman Empire. The Englishman Thomas Hobbes invented the philosophical tradition of modern liberalism in the 1600s, conceiving the modern notion of rights by declaring the right to life, or survival, as unalienable, but elements of this idea were already in practice, and his liberal conception of a right to life was the fruit of a seed planted by Socrates in Athens. Or take John Locke, who expanded Hobbes’ liberal theory. Locke’s sources of reference, to a great degree, were the Hebrew and especially the Christian Bibles, both written in Jerusalem. Athens and Jerusalem would eventually become parts of the Roman Empire, but only after Socrates died and the Hebrew Bible was written. The Christian Bible, too, though written in Romanized Jerusalem, predates the East-West divide. Moreover, both cities belonged to the Eastern Romans and Byzantium. They were never part of the West.

For those who equate the West with liberalism, it is important to remember that the early success of liberalism was not due to the West, but rather to isolation from the West. Continental Europe, the most accurate geographic expression of the West, was not a friend of liberalism, but its enemy. So liberalism’s first political success appeared in Britain, an island separated from Europe, less threatened by it and thus less in need of a strong standing army. The absence of such an army also made the British monarch weaker than his or her European counterparts. The summoning of the medieval British noble councils that would later evolve into a democratic parliament, the enactment of the Assize of Clarendon, the adoption of the Magna Carta and the passage of the Habeas Corpus Act are the results of several revolutions and civil wars on the island. They partially owe their existences to a weak English king without a large standing army who could be bullied and even overthrown. And finally, a liberal democracy would be born in the New World. Simply put, modern liberalism owes its birth to the separation of Britain and the United States from the rest of the Western world.

***

While visiting Warsaw in March, President Joe Biden praised how “the West” had responded to Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine and added, “The West had moved jointly with sanctions to damage Russia’s economy.” Did the President mean to exclude from his praise such Asian and Oceanic allies and partners as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand? No. Like most American liberals on the center-right and center-left, the president was probably using the term as a substitute for the American Extended Universe.

Today, unlike the dawn of the Cold War, freedom is not delineated by a geographic line. Take the cases of Taiwan and Hungary. One is in the East and free, and one is in the West and unfree. To make matters personal, I am an immigrant from Iran with no Christian heritage. While not religious, I treat the U.S. Constitution nearly like the Bible, and the Federalist and the Anti-Federalist Papers like the Talmud. Steve Bannon, the white, alt-right leader seeking to form a Catholic nationalist network, has a better claim to be from the West, but not to be more liberal.

It is a feature of liberalism that it argues against such geographic and ethnic divisions. If liberal ideals are universal (as indeed they are) because human nature is transnational and transhistorical (which it certainly is), then good and evil, freedom and unfreedom, and virtue and vice cannot be separated by a geographic line. They can and do exist everywhere because they exist within every human.

But using the term is counterproductive in realizing the universal truth of liberalism. Anti-European sentiments due to grievances from the colonial and imperial era endure in the developing world—not dominant, but alive. Thus has China, lumping the United States together with Europe, exploited these resentments to separate developing countries from the U.S. orbit of influence and bring them into its own. Their votes with China and against the United States in international organizations are just one way this problem manifests itself. Another is the openness of countries in Africa and Latin America to Chinese development aid and investment. Emphasizing that America is Western—a regional term that the developing world is neither a part of nor has good memories of—simply proves that China is correct. Of course, intellectuals are free to try explaining the subtle nuances of what “the West” actually means, but it is doubtful they can convey these nuances in Swahili or Arabic. Instead, all the term accomplishes is to separate the United States, contrary to its interests, from parts of the world China is gaining influence in.

Many Americans are also hostile to the term. They, their parents or grandparents immigrated from Latin America, the Greater Middle East or Africa, and many of them share these anti-European sentiments. They don’t consider themselves to be Westerners. When they hear “Westerners,” they perceive the subtext to be “not you.”

Similarly, the term’s close association with Christianity makes it less appealing to the large and growing non-Christian population in the United States. If you or your parents are immigrants from India, you are, in all likelihood, a highly educated, upper-middle-class American with a bourgeois life. Setting aside the debate over the potential offensiveness of the term “The West,” it is simply political malpractice to exclude growing demographics from any liberal coalition—left or right.

Marketing matters, so what some call “the West” still requires a name. An easy alternative is “the free world.” It’s a good term, but insufficiently explanatory. We are a free people, but we are more than that: We are liberals, meaning that we aren’t just free and have rights; we recognize that we ought to be virtuous in exercising those rights. So perhaps we of the world’s liberal countries should claim to be what we share: a liberal civilization.

Of course, some will object to the use of the term “liberal.” Somewhere along the way, at least in the United States, the phrase “liberal” became associated exclusively with the left. And now many on the right, which is too often in haste to be anti-left, are in haste to be anti-liberal. So now that the illiberal left and the illiberal right are rejecting liberalism—both the term and the practice—perhaps it is good for us to embrace the term again and remind ourselves that our virtues include both freedom and responsibility. “The free world” is a good substitute for the West because it is an easy one. But “liberal civilization” is more rewarding because it is a heavier lift.

I am an immigrant from Iran. I am a free man. More than that, I am a conservative liberal living in the liberal United States. But I am not Western, for I have never been a European Christian.

Shay Khatiri is a senior policy analyst at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. An immigrant from Iran, he writes on Europe and the Middle East for the Russia–Iran File Substack.

Originally published in The Unpopulist.

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For over a decade, Iraqi politicians have abused their easy access to U.S. dollars to steal from their people on a historical scale. Even more threatening, successive Iraqi governments have colluded with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, to circumvent U.S. sanctions and funnel billions to finance Iran’s nuclear program, terrorism, and regional aggression. Until Iraq cracks down on these activities, Washington should refuse any further complicity in what may be the world’s largest money laundering scheme — one that endangers the U.S. financial system and American lives.

The dinar crisis started last November after the U.S. imposed stricter due diligence on foreign transactions serviced by Iraqi banks. Since then, up to 80% of transactions reviewed by the U.S. Federal Reserve have been rejected for fears of diversion to Iran, dramatically restricting Iraq’s access to dollars and prompting a steady decline in the dinar’s value. At the heart of the fraud is a mechanism run by Iraq’s central bank known as the “dollar auction.” The auction is a process instituted by the U.S. in 2004 to allow Iraqi banks to access dollars at preferred rates to finance badly needed imports. The dollars come from an Iraqi account at the New York Fed through which Iraq’s substantial oil revenues are routed.

But it didn’t take long for Iraqi politicians, Iran, and other bad actors to corrupt the process. Using their control of Iraqi banks and border authorities, a network of front companies, and forged documents, they quickly made massive fake dollar transactions the norm. Import costs were outrageously inflated. Often, transactions existed only on paper — no goods ever arrived in Iraq, while millions of dollars were wired to shadowy foreign accounts.

Sadly, the U.S. government has long known of these abuses. As far back as 2012, a special Pentagon inspector general noted that up to 80% of the auction’s dollar sales were tied to illegal transactions being diverted abroad. In 2015, Washington even temporarily restricted the flow of dollars to stop the diversions, but relented when Baghdad protested and agreed to cosmetic reforms. In 2020, reporter Robert Worth wrote the definitive account of how the Iraqi state was still operating as one giant money laundering concern, with the dollar auction at its core.

Constantly worried about Iraq’s stability, U.S. officials generally looked the other way rather than risk throwing Iraq into crisis by limiting access to its enormous dollar reserves. But the price has been high. Iraq is today one of the world’s most corrupt countries, its people impoverished. And tens of billions of dollars have flowed to Iran, financing the malign behaviors of one of America’s most dangerous adversaries.

It’s impossible to know the full extent of the damage, but the raw numbers are staggering. Over the past decade, dollar auction sales seem to have averaged around $200 million a day, or $1 billion per week. Evidence from the Pentagon in 2012 and the Fed today agree that the vast majority of it has persistently been diverted for illicit purposes, with the IRGC a major beneficiary. In Worth’s 2020 expose, expert estimates suggested the total funds absconded abroad might reach $300 billion. Whatever the exact amount, the Iraqi people have likely had more of their national wealth stolen than any country in history.

With Iran bearing down on becoming a nuclear power and its lethal drones killing innocents in Ukraine, the Biden administration — to its credit — has gone further than its predecessors in finally demanding an end to the hemorrhaging of Iraqi dollars to Iran. The question now is whether it can sustain that stance in the face of Baghdad’s squeals for relief.

One point worth highlighting: Iraq’s new central bank governor, Ali Al Allaq, will join this week’s delegation visiting Washington. Allaq is no stranger to the job, having held it from 2014 to 2020 during the worst days of the auction’s abuse. It was Allaq who in 2015 convinced U.S. officials to reverse course and resume the massive flow of dollars by promising reforms that had zero impact on the diversion of money to the IRGC. Allaq returned to the job last month in the hope of staging an encore performance. He’s again promising tougher anti-money laundering efforts if the Fed turns the tap of unrestricted dollars back on.

As the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. This time when Allaq comes calling, Washington should hold the line until it knows for certain the IRGC’s Iraqi lifeline has been cut for good.

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It did not start off that way. Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine threatened to wipe a democracy off the map. The core of Putinist ideology is that open societies are inherently weak because they lack harmony. But it wasn’t the supposed Ukrainian weakness that drove Putin to act. As several Russia experts have noted, the Russian leader escalated his eight-year war against Ukraine because Ukraine was becoming freer. Ukraine was growing more culturally liberal, had adopted anti-corruption laws, and was integrating further into the free world. Since the end of the Cold War, no president of Ukraine has been re-elected, proving the success of ballot box accountability. In 2021, Ukraine enacted an anti-oligarch policy that would have set the country on a better course if not for the war. Putin feared that the success of the world’s second-largest Slavic country would give the Russians across the border the “wrong” idea, threatening his rule.

After almost a year of fighting, Russia’s superior economy and military expenditure, as well as extreme cruelty, have failed to force the Ukrainian people into subjugation. Polls consistently show that Ukrainians support their government’s policy of defending Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Ukrainians had the option of a life under tyranny, but their choice has been to live free or die.

Iranians provided another encouraging sign. The Islamic Republic has spent two decades seeking to forcefully reassert its orthodox vision at a time when Iranian society has rapidly become more secular and liberal. The reform movement’s return to power in the 2010s and its subsequent failure to bring change left Iranians disillusioned about incremental evolution, sparking the first mass protests in the Islamic Republic’s history that called not for reform but for regime change. Those protests five years ago started a revolution that is now reaching its climax.

Like in Ukraine, death, torture, rape, and terror have not broken the will of the Iranian people. Quite the opposite. Those horrors have only strengthened Iranians’ will to reject dictatorship. Their chant, marg bar dictator, or “death to dictator,” is targeted not only at Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. It is a statement of principle, better translated as “death to all dictators,” a phrase akin to sic semper tyrannis. Their aspirations, collected in the song “Baraye,” which has become the revolutionaries’ anthem, include ecological conservation, an embrace of the free market, and LGBT and women’s rights. We don’t know how many have already been killed, but their resolve lives on in protesters continuing to take to the streets despite the terrors they face.

China’s supposedly cowed population caught up in the waning months of the year. Protests against COVID lockdowns took on an anti-Communist Party character in some instances. Demonstrators in Shanghai, for example, called for Xi Jinping to step down. And while demonstrations were more often than not focused on the narrow question of “zero COVID,” they were nationwide, included participants from an array of socioeconomic classes and a variety of ages, and featured implicit, but undeniable, protests against the state’s human rights violations. Holding up blank pieces of white paper in lieu of protest signs, participants said nothing and everything all at once. Their rulers had failed them, so they stood up to shape their own destiny. In doing so, Chinese citizens contradicted Communist Party claims that its rule was not only no less legitimate than that of elected governments, but that it offered a superior way to organize society and address societal needs.

For all the talk about autocracy’s march, the world’s worst tyrants had the foundations of their regimes shaken last year, while the worst of election deniers in America lost—and all but one conceded their losses. The liberal world’s resolute and sustained support of Ukraine—despite the costs—is another encouraging sign. That democracies are choosing the righteous, but more difficult, path belies the notion that liberalism’s best days are in the past.

Back in 1989, Francis Fukuyama argued in his essay “The End of History?” that people were “witnessing not just the end of the Cold War,” but also “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” Critics often called into question or even ridiculed his thesis in recent decades as Vladimir Putin grabbed power more tightly, China grew richer even as the Communist Party maintained an iron grip on power, and many democracies saw domestic challenges to freedom. But 2022 proved Fukuyama right yet again. All things being equal, ultimate liberal triumph is as certain as anything in life could be.

Of course, all things aren’t equal, and the fates of societies depend on the decisions of political actors. As historian Robert Kagan notes, “The better idea doesn’t have to win just because it is a better idea. It requires great powers to champion it.” Liberals made a crucial mistake in the post-Cold War era: leaving democracy on autopilot, losing sight of how the enemies of freedom had been promoting autocracy. Due to the unsatisfying outcomes of the Afghanistan and the Iraq wars, not to mention the sacrifice of lives and treasure, many Americans came to believe that promoting democracy was either futile or, worse, counterproductive. Rather than questioning its methods, they came to question the entire project. Three administrations in a row have made little investment in democracy promotion. Meanwhile, autocrats haven’t stood idle.

Liberals had been losing what President Joe Biden calls “the battle between democracy and autocracies” because they were playing neither offense nor defense. The 2016 Russian (dis)information operation is well-known to Americans. But such operations have been commonplace throughout Europe and much of the developing world for much longer. Far worse is Russia’s financing of anti-liberal parties, some of which have formed governments in Europe. Iran has excelled in suppressing democratic movements and reversing progress in its region. It helped Hezbollah to transform Lebanon from a democracy into a party-state, funded militias to prevent functioning democratic governance in Iraq, and helped suppress Syria’s democratic revolution. Whether in Beijing’s backyard or further afield, China has worked to shore up autocrats, entrench corruption, interfere in local politics, and undermine the functioning of and faith in democratic institutions. In all cases, even when the United States recognized the problem—and it often hasn’t—Washington was outmatched in investment, monetary and otherwise.

And at home, democracies also got too comfortable. The election of Donald Trump, the rise of illiberal populists in Europe, the decline of political and religious freedoms in India, and endemic corruption in South Korea all demonstrate that even where liberalism has triumphed, it is not self-perpetuating. Americans, at least, may be experiencing what George Frisbie Hoar called “the sober second thought of the people.” That sober second thought provides an opportunity for democratic renewal at home—imperative not just for Americans’ own sake, but so that the city on a hill may dust itself off and shine once more.

Despite its many challenges, 2022 has perhaps been the best year for liberalism in a young century marked by setbacks. Events have yet again proven that the human heart’s desire for freedom is greater than for security and order—especially when it is the unelected and the dictatorial that define what it is to be secure. The dead and wounded in Ukraine and Iran, and the Chinese who risked their lives to challenge their oppressors, are our witnesses.

As the only creedal nation conceived in liberty, despite its many internal challenges, America is the last, best hope and foremost example from which freedom-loving peoples can draw inspiration. It is little surprise that it is to the United States that the oppressed first turn for assistance. They will take any help, but they carry English banners because that is what Americans speak.

America’s task in sustaining liberalism at home and advancing its reach abroad is never over, nor are the two separable. The first victims of America’s enemies are their own subjects who yearn for the blessings of citizenship—who yearn to live free and determine their own fates and the fates of their nations. And for that, they are the United States’ best allies against mutual adversaries. Taking their hands is not simply a moral imperative, but an American national interest.

Shay Khatiri is a senior policy analyst at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. A political asylee from Iran, he writes the Substack newsletter The Russia-Iran File. Michael Mazza is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the Global Taiwan Institute, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

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While these individuals may be well-qualified for their posts, it’s curious that the administration announced these appointments right before a provision in the FY2022 National Defense Authorization Act kicks into effect on Jan. 3, requiring special envoys reporting to the Secretary of State to be confirmed by the Senate…

Morgan Lorraine Viña is vice president, government affairs, for the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA). Gabriel Noronha is a fellow with JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy and previously served as the Special Advisor for Iran at the Department of State.

Originally published in The Hill.

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The Grateful Nation Award, established in 2003, renamed the MG Sidney Shachnow Grateful Nation Award in 2019, is presented annually to six young heroes recognized for having distinguished themselves through superior conduct in the War on Terrorism. Honorees are nominated and selected by their respective service. The honorees come from the enlisted, noncommissioned officer and junior officer ranks. Honorees represent each of the five branches of the U.S. military and the U.S. Special Operations Command.

Major Kyle Peatfield, USA representing U.S. Army	First Lieutenant Robert Lamb III, USMC Representing U.S. Marine Corps	Lieutenant Robert Baxter, USN Representing U.S. Navy

Master Sergeant Samuel McCalister II, USAF Representing U.S. Air Force	Master Sergeant William Cook, USA Representing U.S. Special Operations Command

Past Grateful Nation Award Recipients

2021
USA: Sergeant First Class James S. Suong
USMC: First Sergeant Victor M. Martinez
USN: Chief Petty Officer Emily A. Grove
USCG: Chief Warrant Officer Paul Bostwick
USAF: Master Sergeant Ryan D. Otero
USSOCOM: Captain Christopher C. Calderone, USAF

2020
USA: CPT Jared D. Friedman
USMC: GySgt Jamal L. Harris
USN: CTR1 Andrew J. McCloat
USCG: MKCS Kenneth G. Kimball
USAF: SMSgt Manuel J. Herrera
USSOCOM: TSgt Zachery W. Sherwood, USAF

2019
USA: CW4 Christopher E. Moore
USMC: Sgt. Ryan A. Keith
USN: LCDR Alexa F. Jenkins
USCG: LTJG James R. Rizzo
USAF: TSgt. Michael C. O’Connor
USSOCOM: CW3 Joel C. Prather, USA

2018
USA: Master Sergeant Michael L. Settles
USMC: Staff Sergeant Jason T. Pacheco
USN: Lieutenant Commander Jacob W. Romelhardt
USCG: Lieutenant Emily H. Brockway
USAF: Master Sergeant Daniel P. McKnight
USSOCOM: Major Cade A. Reedy, USAF

2017
USA: Master Sergeant Michael B. Woodman
USMC: Gunnery Sergeant Patricia L. Reynolds
USN: Lieutenant Andrew J. Lang
USCG: Maritime Enforcement Specialist Chief Robert M. Freeman
USAF: Senior Master Sergeant Howard T. Loughran
USSOCOM: Staff Sergeant Alan A. Gonzales, USAF

2016
USA: Staff Sergeant Jared W. Gabriel
USMC: Gunnery Sergeant Craig J. Wilcox
USN: Senior Chief Petty Officer Benny M. Flores
USCG: Lieutenant Commander Jonathan I. Schafler
USAF: Senior Master Sergeant Michael G. Becker
USSOCOM: Captain Randy S. Buckley, USAF

2015
USA: Major Lee Spencer Wallace
USMC: Sergeant Amanda J. Eason
USN: Petty Officer First Class John P. Palomares
USCG: Chief Machinery Technician William Haynes
USAF: Technical Sergeant James P. Fitzgerald
USSOCOM: Captain Eric D. Barger, USA

2014
USA: Captain James A. Boston
USMC: Staff Sergeant Adel M. Abudayeh
USN: Lieutenant Commander Andrew W. Boyden
USCG: Chief Boatswain’s Mate Douglas H. Schneider
USAF: Captain Daniel J. Beirne
USSOCOM: Major Timothy J. Rott, USAF

2013
USA: First Lieutenant Robert A. Heber, Jr.
USMC: Sergeant Anthony A. Arriaga
USN: Chief Petty Officer Brian P. High
USCG: Petty Officer Third Class Michael R. Brooks
USAF: Technical Sergeant Michael T. Blout
USSOCOM: Captain William R. Wright, USA

2012
USA: Sergeant First Class James T. Osaer
USMC: Sergeant Brian A. Riddle
USN: Petty Officer Eric J. Strauss
USCG: Boatswains Mate First Class Jonathan Tatroe
USAF: Technical Sergeant Clint T. Campbell (AFSOC)
USSOCOM: Master Sergeant Paul L. Wiseman, USA

2011
USA: Master Sergeant Brendan O’Connor
USMC: Sergeant Joseph M. Perez
USN: Lieutenant Junior Grade Tyler Haught
USCG: Petty Officer Second Class Timothy Webb
USAF: Technical Sergeant Theodor V. Hofknecht
USSOCOM: Staff Sergeant Graham H. Jacobs, USMC

2010
USA: Staff Sergeant Christopher B. Waiters
USMC: Corporal Daniel F. Hickey
USN: Chief Petty Officer (SEAL) Adam L. Brown (posthumous)
USCG: Petty Officer Second Class Brandon Ramos
USAF: Staff Sergeant Christopher N. Freeman
USSOCOM: Petty Officer First Class (SEAL) Corey S. Novotny, USN

2009
USA: Sergeant Gregory S. Ruske
USMC: Corporal Richard S. Weinmaster
USN: Senior Chief (SEAL) John W. Marcum
USCG: Lieutenant Commander Thomas L. Boyles
USAF: Major Austin A. Moore
USSOCOM: Technical Sergeant Christopher B. Grove, USAF

MG Sidney Shachnow Grateful Nation Award Advisory Board

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The Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) is dedicated to educating Congressional, military and civilian national security decision-makers on American defense and strategic interests, primarily in the Middle East, the cornerstone of which is a robust U.S.-Israeli security cooperation. JINSA believes that a strong American military and national security posture is the best guarantor of peace and the survival of our values and civilization.

The post Watch Webinar: FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act: Implications for U.S. Engagement in Middle East appeared first on JINSA.

Arming Ukraine enjoys overwhelming bipartisan support in Washington. But the United States should not stop there. Instead, President Biden and Congress should transform their Ukraine policy into a global strategy — America should become an armory against aggression.

Last Thursday, President Biden proposed $33 billion in military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. That same day, the House of Representatives joined the Senate in updating a World War II-era law to enable quickly arming Ukraine. The original legislation — the Lend-Lease Act — was inspired by President Franklin Roosevelt’s vision of America as an arsenal of democracy…

Michael Makovsky, a former Pentagon official, is the President and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) and the author of Churchill’s Promised Land.

Read Full Article in The Hill.

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