Former German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger says Western leaders should be making more threats and be willing to follow them through.
The West should spend less time fretting about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s red lines and set its own, says veteran German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger.
“Russia keeps saying, if you do this, if you cross this or that red line, we might escalate,” said the 78-year-old onetime chairman of the Munich Security Conference. “Why don’t we turn this thing around and say to them: ‘We have lines and if you bomb one more civilian building, then you shouldn’t be surprised if, say, we deliver Taurus cruise missiles or America allows Ukraine to strike military targets inside Russia’?”
That way the onus will be on Moscow to decide whether to cross the red lines — or face the consequences.
Meanwhile Israel
Red line: no red lines
Response: they have right to defend themself
There is a red line. The west keeps saying over and over again that they must defend themselves within international law.
The problem is that they either ignore the red line or deny that it was ever crossed.
It’s insane. Shows how much of international politics isn’t “Which country benefits from what”, but “What levers of decisionmaking are manipulated by whom”. A little lobbying and foreign PR goes a long way.
There have been some responses: https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1153656 https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/07/experts-hail-icj-declaration-illegality-israels-presence-occupied
Laws are meaningless if criminals are not held accountable. It doesn’t matter that anyone who supports Israel supports fascism — 30% of US voters support fascism. The fact is that as long as the US (and 5 eyes) supports and arms Netanyahu, the genocide will continue; everything they declare to the contrary is nothing more than a virtue signal.
The ICJ and all opposition is meaningless unless they are willing to take collective economic and military action again Israel and its supporters. They will not.
I hope you aren’t saying what I think you’re saying here.
In any case, the main reason for western support of Israel is the same as the reason for western support of Turkey. Both have obnoxious leadership but both are in key geographic locations, and the value of having them on-side against their neighbours is greater than the value in cutting them loose.
And millions in AIPAC money. The Jews control the world conspiracy theory is of course false, but you’d be extremely naive if you think the decades and dollars Usrael spent creating a government and public that’s friendly to its interests isn’t a big part of the US government’s current attitude.
Americans stop making everything about the US challenge (impossible)
You know most other western countries support Israel too, right?
That Israel has established a death grip on American politics since the 1980s?
Gonna press X to doubt. Turkiye controls one of the most vital straits in the world. Israel primarily specializes in antagonizing its neighbors, many of whom are also our close allies, damaging our international reputation, pouring money in to corrupt our domestic political processes (not that we really need help with that, but the corruption becomes more pro-Israel), while murdering American citizens and selling American secrets to our enemies.
They have that right tough. It’s just what we are all witnessing goes “a little” further than that.
hard disagree. Maybe if a foreign country wanted to create a Jewish ethnostate it should have set the borders inside its own sovereign lands instead of displacing 300k people it didn’t give a shit about and causing an immediate regional war and decades of ongoing conflict?
Maybe then we could consider Israel a real country. Seeing how it didn’t go that way? What israel deserves is to dissolve
And in your suggested dissolution of the state of Israel, what happens then? And what happens to the Jews that now live there?
I think if we’re following history and making a point we should put new israel on top of your home. No problem right?
That’s not an answer to the question though, you are advocating for the dissolution, so let’s put it on the table…
If your question wasn’t a flippant and dismissive response to my position, then neither was my answer.
No, you made a statement that required a follow up question… requiring you to elaborate. But I have the feeling that you are answering like this cause you simply refuse to say the quiet part out loud, or are to cowardly to come out and say it. But that’s OK. I think most people reading your response get what you mean.
Every accusation is a confession
The same thing that happened to the Jews that lived there for millenia before Israel was created, the become normal citizens with no special rights or mandates, and are actually subject to laws intended on keeping all people safe, not just Jews. It worked continuously for millenia through dozens of different ruling states with a half dozen ruling religions, the state of Israel and it’s fascism utilizing ng Jewish supremacy as a base ideology fucked that up.
Well, that looks like it ignores reality a bit. That the current state of Israel is doing fucked up stuff atm gets no arguement from me, but it did not happen in a vacuum.
Spouting revisionist nonsense about how equal the Jews where treated all over the world also does not help the situation either. Nor does ignoring the current situation and how if the state where to be dissolved and a new state created in its place that would give all people of the region equal rights and protections… they would magically all get along.
So again… what then? What would you suggest?