Nikki Haley Is Showing The World What Leadership Means

Nikki Haley Sets UN on Fire: If You Don’t Move, Our Military Will

Nikki Haley Sets UN on Fire: If You Don't Move, Our Military Will

 

BY BEN MARQUIS 
MARCH 13, 2018 AT 11:24AM

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One of the pleasantly surprising bright spots of President Donald Trump’s administration has been the appointment of Nikki Haley as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who has taken a decidedly blunt and no-nonsense, call-it-like-we-see-it American attitude to the international organization.

Haley delivered yet another fiery speech to the U.N. Security Council on Monday, in which she placed the council on notice for its utter failure to maintain a temporary cease-fire agreement in Syria. She explicitly called out Russia and Syria, as well as Iran, for their roles in the continued fighting in violation of a recent Security Council resolution, according to TheBlaze.

Her eight-minute speech boiled down to one pointed message: If the U.N. doesn’t do anything to address the contempt with which the Security Council resolution was treated by Russia and Syria, the U.S. military will.

As Haley began, she noted all of the promises made by Russia in regard to enforcing the resolution which imposed a 30-day cease-fire in the area of Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, and pointed out how fighting and bombing was still ongoing in spite of the agreement that Russia claimed to support.

She further noted that Russia and Syria had taken advantage of a “loophole” in the agreement that allowed for military action against terrorist organizations like al-Qaida and the Islamic State group by essentially declaring all opposition groups and civilians in Ghouta to be “terrorists” and open to attack.

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“This is no cease-fire,” Haley asserted. “This is the Assad regime, Iran and Russia continuing to wage war against their political opponents.”

“If we can’t save families that haven’t seen the sun for weeks because they have been hiding underground to escape barrel bombs,” she continued, “then the Security Council is as impotent as its worst critics say it is.”

“When the international community consistently fails to act, there are times when states are compelled to take their own action,” Haley said, as she reminded the council of the U.S. missile strikes in April 2017 in response to Syrian chemical attacks on civilians.

“We warn any nation that is determined to impose its will through chemical attacks and inhuman suffering, most especially the outlaw Syrian regime, the United States remains prepared to act if we must,” she added. “It is not the path we prefer, but it is a path we have demonstrated we will take, and we are prepared to take again.”

You can watch Haley’s tough speech right here. Take note of the tone and occasional sharp side-eye toward the Russian and Syrian representatives as she calls them out for their duplicity in front of the spineless council.

UN Security Council Meeting On The Ceasefire In Syria

 

According to The Hill, Haley’s warning to the U.N. Security Council came amid reports heavy fighting and bombings in and around Ghouta — which were preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid and evacuation of sick and wounded civilians from the besieged city — as well as allegations of chemical attacks using chlorine gas in the area.

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It is worth noting that Haley was not entirely alone in her threat to the U.N. that the U.S. would take military action to enforce the cease-fire if necessary. Defense Secretary James Mattis informed the Syrian government that “it would be unwise for them to use weaponized gas” in response to the alleged chemical attacks, and added that Trump had “full political maneuver room” to take any sort of action he deemed necessary to bring peace to the war-torn region.

RELATED: Russian Military Officer Claims Scary ‘Undetected’ Action Taken Toward US

Haley was also backed up by none other than French President Emmanuel Macron, who stated recently at a news conference in India in response to the alleged chemical attacks in Ghouta that France was prepared to carry out airstrikes and other military action to halt the travesty and enforce the cease-fire.

Haley, on behalf of Trump, has made it crystal clear to the U.N. that the era of “strategic patience” and leading from behind are over and done with, and if the international community doesn’t see fit to do what must be done to obtain peace and stability, America has no problem rolling up her sleeves to do what is necessary.

Please share this on Facebook so everyone can see how Nikki Haley just put Russia, Syria, Iran and the rest of the U.N. Security Council on notice for their failure to uphold an agreed-upon temporary cease-fire in Syria.

What do you think of what Nikki Haley had to say? 

The World Is Getting Closer To Armageddon With Iran And North Korea Having Nukes

Iran and North Korea: Two Peas in a Nuclear Pod

By Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaakov AmidrorAugust 22, 2017

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Iranian Embassy in Pyongyang, via Wikipedia

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 566, August 22, 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Much separates Iran and North Korea, but the two have plenty in common when it comes to nuclear ambitions. Whenever they move to appease the West, they somehow get closer to realizing their goals, while the world fumbles to curtail them.

The world recently marked two years since Iran and the West signed a landmark nuclear agreement, and much has been said on the issue.

Those who support the deal celebrated it, saying it was the best alternative and that Iran’s compliance with the terms of the agreement, apart from several minor violations, proves its success. Those who opposed the deal (myself included) have pointed out that it has enabled Iran to be readmitted into the family of nations, and the alliance it has since formed with Russia, which I believe was forged only because of the deal, has allowed it to become a regional power. Iran’s control of the axis between Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut will one day lead to a bloody struggle, both with Israel and with the Sunni Arab states, which see Iran’s expansionist aspirations as a threat to their very existence.

Recently, ostensibly in an unrelated move, North Korea took a major step towards creating a nuclear balance of terror toward the US by testing an intercontinental ballistic missile that could potentially hit the American heartland. Pyongyang saw this move as necessary to ensure that under no circumstances would Washington pressure it to change its ways, thus ensuring the isolated nation’s complete freedom in navigating its future course.

Over the past few decades, North Korea’s leaders have assumed that the US would be wary of pressing a nuclear state capable of threatening major American cities. It was the North’s way of insuring itself against any use of force by the West.

The North Korean case is interesting because over the past 25 years, the West had held negotiations with it in various fora, and several agreements have been signed with the aim of halting the nuclear project launched by Pyongyang in the mid-1980s. North Korea’s violations of the agreements always earned condemnation, but it never suffered any real penalties. Economic sanctions proved futile, and Pyongyang forged ahead even when it was made to pay a heavy economic price (which it still pays today). UNSC resolutions against the rogue nation proved equally fruitless.

Still, there have been a few moments of optimism along the way. The North’s 2005 deal with the US, for example, was lauded as a breakthrough, and some in Israel had hoped similar efforts would lead to an effective nuclear deal with Iran. But the US and the international community’s feeble reaction to the country’s first nuclear test in 2006 made by then-leader Kim Jong Il, the father of current leader Kim Jong Un, proved that violating the deal harbored no risk. The “breakthrough agreement” turned into yet another step towards North Korea’s becoming a nuclear threshold state.

The strong correlation between the North Korean and Iranian cases is clear. It was underscored further in 2007, when Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said, “Pay attention to North Korea’s conduct. What has come of two years of negotiation with North Korea? It led to [the West’s] acceptance of North Korea’s nuclear technologies in the field of uranium enrichment. So now, they [the West] will accept ours.”

One would have to be blind not to see the astounding resemblance between the international processes opposite Iran and North Korea. Both have undergone the same stages of dialogue with the global community, led by the US.

One would also have to be incredibly naive to think that Iran, which is far more powerful than North Korea, would not exploit the weakness shown by the international community, again led by the US. It is clear Iran is biding its time and will not hesitate to break free of the restrictions imposed on it by the toothless 2015 agreement. It will continue on its nuclear path as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

That said, there are major differences between Iran and North Korea and the spheres in which they operate.

The first is the position and international standing of South Korea, the North’s wealthy neighbor, versus the position and standing of Iran’s neighbors. South Korea’s capital, Seoul, is less than 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the border with North Korea – a border along which thousands of artillery guns are deployed, ready to strike Seoul instantly. There are also massive North Korean armored forces on the border, ready to march through the huge tunnels running underneath it to take the South.

In stark contrast, Iran’s Persian Gulf neighbors and even Israel would take severe measures against the Islamic Republic, including the use of military force, though the Islamic Republic would certainly mount a forceful response.

The second difference stems from the relative power wielded by North Korea and Iran. While the former is insignificant in terms of the global economic system, the latter is a regional power with a prominent position in the international energy market, especially for China and India. This makes North Korea a country against which it is relatively easy to mobilize the international community, as opposed to the real difficulty of garnering global support to pressure Iran.

In retrospect, it is clear that one of the reasons the international community came together to pressure Iran stemmed from the shared concern that without such pressure, Israel would potentially have no choice but to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. It seems the world wanted to curb Israel, and to an extent the US, far more than it wanted to curtail Iran.

Once it became clear that under the Obama administration the military option was off the table and Israel had accepted (under protest) the American move toward a nuclear deal, global concern waned. It is clear that without this constraint, the international community will do nothing to stop Iran once it crosses the nuclear threshold. Anyone who fails to see this is ignoring the lessons learned from the North Korean precedent.

Meanwhile, Iran is promoting the development of an envelope scheme that will allow it to embark on a path towards nuclear power. Assisted by Russia, it is intensively building its air defense systems. It is cultivating a solid economy that can better withstand potential future sanctions and other means of economic pressure, which was what brought it to the negotiation table on its knees – an achievement wasted by the American negotiators as soon as they allowed the Iranians to see that Washington was as eager to strike a deal as they were. It is developing missiles that would allow it to launch nuclear weapons to any range, as well as the next generation of centrifuges, which would allow it to make the leap to enriched uranium at peak speed.

Israel must learn the lessons of the nuclear agreement with Iran as well as study how North Korea became a nuclear power that threatens the US. Iran must not be allowed to duplicate the success of its friend on the Korean peninsula.

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This article was originally published in Israel Hayom on August 7, 2017.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror is the Anne and Greg Rosshandler Senior Fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He is also a distinguished fellow at JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy. 

Israel Must Protect Itself By All Means Necessary

Are Israeli Raids on Syrian Targets Legal?

By Prof. Louis René BeresMarch 23, 2017

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Justice Gavel by Tori Rector via Flickr Creative Commons

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 432, March 23, 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Israel's recent raids against Syrian targets are lawful and law-enforcing. Facing an increasingly dangerous Hezbollah, Jerusalem correctly understands that even a failed state has legal obligations not to assist in terrorist assaults against Israel. These obligations, concerning Syria in particular, are authoritatively codified in treaty-based and customary international law. Moreover, in consequence of Syria's active and unambiguous complicity with Hezbollah, Israel has a corresponding obligation to prevent and/or mitigate such terrorist crimes. This obligation, which Israel is undertaking well within the limitations of humanitarian international law, is owed both to citizens of the Jewish State and to the broader community of nations.

Syria, a country in the midst of chaos, has launched multiple aggressions against neighboring Israel. In recent years, most of these assaults have assumed the form of heavy weapons transfers to Hezbollah, a Shiite terror group with not only genocidal views about the Jewish State but also correspondingly destructive military capacities. Moreover, the de facto army of Hezbollah – a fanatical adversary sponsored by non-Arab Iran – has become even more threatening to Israel than the regular armies of its traditional Arab state enemies.

These are not just operational or strategic matters. From the standpoint of international law, Israel has an unassailable right to launch appropriate measures of self-defense against Syria. Accordingly, the Israel Air Force has been conducting selective strikes against relevant targets inside Bashar al-Assad's fractured country.

Significantly, almost exactly one year ago, in April 2016, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed for the first time that Israel had been attacking convoys transporting advanced weapons within Syria bound for Hezbollah. Among other substantial ordnance, these weapons included SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, Russian arms that could enable Hezbollah to shoot down Israeli civilian aircraft, military jets and helicopters, and drones.

(It is plausible that at least some of the latest Israeli-targeted weapons are of North Korean origin. Until Israel's preemptive September 6, 2007 "Operation Orchard," an expression of "anticipatory self-defense" under international law, Syria had been actively working towards a nuclear weapons capacity with North Korean assistance and direction.)

Certain noteworthy operational ironies ought to be referenced here. For one, Israel's regular need to act against Hezbollah could inadvertently enlarge the power of ISIS and/or other Sunni militias now operating against Israel in the region. For another, because the Trump administration in Washington remains reluctant to criticize Russian war crimes in Syria (or anywhere else, for that matter), Jerusalem now has less reason to seek security assurances from the US.

But our concern here is law, not strategy or tactics. As a purely jurisprudential matter, Israel's measured and discriminate use of force against Hezbollah terrorists and associated targets in Syria has been conspicuously consistent with legal rules concerning distinction, proportionality, and military necessity. Although both Tehran and Damascus sanctimoniously identify Israel's defensive actions as "aggression," these actions are supported, inter alia, by Article 51 of the UN Charter. Under law, Israel, in the fashion of every other state on the planet, has a primary and incontestable prerogative to remain alive.

Legally, there is nothing complicated about the issues surrounding Israel's counter-terrorist raids within Syria. By willfully allowing its territory to be used as a source of Hezbollah terrorist weapons against Israel, and as an expanding base for anti-Israel terrorist operations in general, Assad has placed Syria in unambiguous violation of both the UN Charter and the wider body of international rules identified in Article 38 of the UN's Statute of the International Court of Justice.

There is more. Because Syria, entirely at its own insistence, maintains a formal condition of belligerency with Israel (that is, a legal "state of war"), no charge levied by Damascus or Tehran of "Israeli aggression" makes jurisprudential sense.

More practically, of course, Syria has become a failed state. In some respects, at least, with the Assad regime in full control of only limited portions of Damascus, Aleppo, and the Syrian Mediterranean coast, it makes little legal sense to speak of "Syrian responsibility" or "Syrian violations." Nonetheless, even amid the collapse of traditional boundaries between states, the Syrian president must bear full responsibility for blatantly illegal arms transfers to a surrogate Shiite militia.

For Israel, the principal legal issues here are easy to affirm. Express prohibitions against pro-terrorist behavior by any state can be found in Articles 3(f) and 3(g) of the 1974 UN General Assembly Definition of Aggression. These prohibitions are part of customary international law, and of what are identified in Article 38 of the ICJ Statute as “the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations.”

Following the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, insurgent organizations are expected to comply with humanitarian international law, sometimes called the law of armed conflict. Additionally, any documented failure to comply, such as resort to "human shields" (a common practice with Hezbollah) would be known in formal law as "perfidy."

Under international law, every use of force by states must be judged twice: once with regard to the justness of the cause, and once with regard to the justness of the means. This second standard concerns core issues of humanitarian international law. Specifically, even when it can be determined that a particular state maintains a basic right to apply force against another state, this does not automatically imply that any such use would comply with the law of war.

In defending itself against Hezbollah terror, Israel’s actions have always been consistent with humanitarian international law. In stark contrast to the Shiite terrorist militias operating in Lebanon and southern Syria, and similarly unlike the Syrian-supported Islamic Jihad Sunni forces, who intentionally target noncombatants, Israel has been meticulous about striking exclusively hard military targets in raids on Syria.

Unlike Syria, which even in its currently attenuated form opposes any peaceful settlement with Israel, Jerusalem resorts to defensive force only as a last resort. As for Syrian charges that Israel’s actions somehow raise the risk of “escalation,” this alleged risk would disappear entirely if Damascus and Tehran ceased their lawless support of Hezbollah and other criminal organizations. In this connection, it should be recalled, terrorism is always a codified crime under binding international law. It is never considered a permissible form of national liberation or self-determination.

Ultimately, the lawfulness of Israel’s use of force against Hezbollah terrorists, and against Hezbollah-bound weapons in Syria, is supported by the inherent right of “anticipatory self-defense.” Augmenting the specifically post-attack right of self-defense found in Article 51 of the UN Charter, this customary international law doctrine entitles any endangered state to use appropriate force preemptively; that is, whenever the "danger posed" is “imminent in point of time.” In the face of a prospectively endless stream of Hezbollah terrorist rocket attacks upon its innocent civilian population, Israel maintains not only the juridical right but also the clear obligation to protect its citizens.

"The safety of the people," said Cicero, the ancient Roman Stoic, "shall be the highest law." In classical political philosophy as well as in documented jurisprudence, the obligation of a sovereign to assure protection for citizens or subjects is immutably primary and utterly beyond question. Israel need make no apologies for choosing to defend itself against Syrian-sponsored Hezbollah aggression.

International law is never a suicide pact.

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Louis René Beres is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue and the author of twelve books and several hundred articles on nuclear strategy and nuclear war. His newest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel's Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).                          

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family