Life, Liberty and Netanyahu

I'm a long time listener of Mark Levin on his radio show, and I love his books. His expose of the courts, Men in Black, is required reading for anyone who has faith in the third branch of the federal government. Looking in detail at the men who have occupied the courts in the past (or the men and women who do now) will make you shudder.

Now Levin has recently started a one hour interview program on Fox News called Life, Liberty and Levin. He states this is based on the Firing Line series on PBS, hosted by the late great William F. Buckley. His second episode was an interview with Prime Minister Benjamin "Bebe" Netanyahu.

I've been a long time admirer of Prime Minister Netanyahu, as he has been the lone voice in the wilderness over the past decade, especially in the greatest threat in the Middle East, Iran. A very vocal opponent of the Iran nuke deal, he had the audacity to accept the invitation of the U. S. House of Representatives and actually explained this (then) proposed plan was an absolute disaster. A simple case of reality, if Iran is not working on nuclear weapons, why is it working on intcrcontenantial ballistic missiles? The is no reason to build them except to put a nuke on top. I wonder why the liberals were so upset, I mean he was only preforming a job the Americans were not preforming at the time. Leader of the free world.

Levin speaks to the Prime Minister for an hour and Real Clear Politics has a good transcript of the highlights here. You can, if you sign in, get the full interview here. One part not in the extract below is a question on how Netanyahu is a strong admirer of Sir Winston Churchill, and Levin asked why. Netanyahu has a great point to ponder, "Imagine how history would be different if Churchill was prime minister in 1935. We may have avoided, what he called, the unnecessary war...we may have avoided the unnecessary Holocaust...." Well said sir, I've often believed when times are bad, men come up to meet the challenge.

If you want a great interview, well worth the hour, watch the full hour. Here is an abstract.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat down with Mark Levin for an interview on 'Life, Liberty & Levin.'

Netanyahu discusses going to high school and college in the U.S. and his four terms as Israeli Prime Minister.

Transcript courtesy of Fox News Channel:

MARK LEVIN: Welcome to Life, Liberty and Levin. It’s an honor to see you, Mr. Prime Minister.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Is that it? Life, Liberty and Levin?

LEVIN: That’s it.

NETANYAHU: I’m glad to be here.

LEVIN: Emphasis on the Levin.

NETANYAHU: I got it.

LEVIN: Well, I’ve noticed, you’ve been here several days. Your relationship with the President of the United States seems to be very personal. (INAUDIBLE) it personal and how did it get that way?

NETANYAHU: It is. And it began that way, that’s the way it began. Can’t explain it. It’s just like that.

LEVIN: You have shared values and beliefs and that sort of thing?

NETANYAHU: Yeah, I think so. But there’s also a certain chemistry. I mean, the president likes to cut through --

LEVIN: Noise.

NETANYAHU: I don’t want to call it noise. There are two initial, in English, you know. (LAUGHS) It just cuts right through it and it’s refreshing when we talk about (INAUDIBLE) it gets right to the point. And I appreciate it. Also I remember him, when I was an ambassador of Israel to the United Nations and he was a very prominent businessman in New York and we occasionally sort of bumped in the same circles, but we met years later and it’s been a direct and very positive relationship from the get go.

LEVIN: As a matter of fact, you served at the embassy here. And you’ve spent a little chunk of your life in America. In fact, you and I went to the same high school; not together, but the same high school, Chelvingham (ph) outside of Philadelphia.

NETANYAHU: Yep.

LEVIN: Tell the American people, you know, your life in America. When did it start and where did it go?

NETANYAHU: Well, I came here for the first time I think when I was eight years old for about a year. Didn’t know a word of English. My father came here to edit the -- he was a great professor, a great historian, but the way he made his living was that he edited encyclopedias, so he edited, they wanted him to edit the Great Jewish Encyclopedia, which he did for a year and then he said, it’s not good enough; I don’t want my name on it.

But during that year we lived in Manhattan and I came here, God, I didn’t know a word of English. It was bizarre and difficult for me. There was a girl they put next to me; her name was Judy. And I remember Judy, because she taught me English. She took out a book; it was a book of pictures. They had a dog. His name was Spot. See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. And Judy, believe it or not, and my dearly, well, my dear mother, they’re the ones who taught me English. So that was my first year, eight to nine.

And then I came back here from the age of 13 till the end of high school, and (INAUDIBLE). And that’s it. And then I went back to the army and came back to study at MIT.

LEVIN: You studied at MIT. You studied, what did you study?

NETANYAHU: First I studied architecture, then I went to the business school and got a, basically an MBA.

LEVIN: And you took a job in America?

NETANYAHU: Yeah, I went to work for about a year, at the Boston Consulting Group.

LEVIN: Is that where you met Romney?

NETANYAHU: Yeah. He was ahead of me. He was Star Manager, actually. You know the horrible thing about Mitt? He looks exactly the same (LAUGHTER) -- he hasn’t changed.

LEVIN: His hair hasn’t moved.

NETANYAHU: Nothing has moved. (LAUGHS) He looked the same and it was a very good place where, to be honest, I mean I thought -- that year that I spent there, in the presence of the founder of the Boston Consulting Group, was a real genius, he was a very eccentric genius. His name was Bruce Henderson. And I remember that I came in on the first day -- never been to a business (INAUDIBLE) -- you know, I spent five years in the army. I was an officer, I was a soldier and a commander in a Special Forces unit.

Went to MIT, finished my undergraduate, finished my building studies. Get into this consulting firm and the first day Bruce Henderson, who was a very imposing figure, must have been in his early 70’s, of Virginia -- he told me, "Come inside; shut the door, sit down," and he says, "You know, you’re not going to be here very long, because you’ll go back to your country. So study everything you can here, because one day it will help the state of Israel," and I thought, this guy is bonkers. What is he talking about? Well, I’m 27 years old and he tells me to pick up what I can because it will help the state of Israel.

He was absolutely right. Because I learned something about how economies grow. They grow with the firms. The firms make the economy. You have to make it profitable for the firms to grow the economy.

LEVIN: Now what do we mean by "firms"?

NETANYAHU: Companies.

LEVIN: Companies.

NETANYAHU: Entrepreneurs. Business people. That’s what makes the economy grow -- the guys who produce the added value of the private centers. The guys who consume (INAUDIBLE) is the public center. In order to have the things that the public center needs (ph) is like an air force or roads or things like that. Or other things. Okay? You need to have a robust, private center. I learned that, more than anywhere else, at the Boston Consulting Group.

LEVIN: And part of your career, in the Israeli government, has been on the financial side.

NETANYAHU: Yeah.

LEVIN: When my family and I came to Israel, the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Jerusalem, the unification of Jerusalem. I saw all these cranes. I saw all this building going on. I saw these skyscrapers with names of American technological companies on them and so forth. Have you applied those policies as prime minister and so forth in Israel?

NETANYAHU: I will eventually fight fair (ph) and I’m a great believer in free markets and one of my missions, my two missions was to free up the Israeli market, Israeli economy, so that it becomes a free market economy -- to unleash the genius that is embedded in our people. The sparks fly out the minute you open up the marketplace. You allow enterprise, innovation, risk to fail or succeed. And that’s (LAUGHS) a lot of reforms. I’ve been there. As prime minister and then subsequently a finance minister and then subsequently as prime minister again and again and again; still doing. So the Israeli economy has been growing under these reforms, consistently, at about, between four to five percent a year. And the GDP per capita will probably catch up with Japan in a couple of years, Israel.

LEVIN: Yeah, it’s a big deal.

NETANYAHU: Yeah, it’s a big deal.

LEVIN: Particularly in technology. There seems to be a huge growth in Israel. The amount of technology that is developing in your country, and yet it’s a tiny little country -- and you sell it to, you know, you work for countries, massive countries like India and so forth -- that’s obviously part of your plan. Right?

NETANYAHU: It’s very much my plan. It says (INAUDIBLE) technology by itself doesn’t do anything. You know, you want a country that has great scientists, great mathematicians, great physicists, great metallurgists -- the Soviet Union -- didn’t do anything. But if you took one of these guys, you know, smuggle them out, put them in Palo Alto, you know, within two weeks he was producing a lot of added value. He was producing wealth. So technology without free market doesn’t go anywhere.

Israel had the technology, but it didn’t have free markets. It had the technology because the military, especially military intelligence, produced a lot of capabilities that unless you opened it up, so people could start their businesses, these incredibly gifted young men and women who come out of the army or the Mossad, they want to start their startups. Well, they can’t. If you have to pay 70 percent tax, it’s not going to go anywhere. They’re going to go elsewhere.

So one of the things that I did the minute I became prime minister and then finance minister was to enact an enormous number of reforms, like several dozen reforms -- that opened up the economy, reduced the tax rates, reduce spending and cut the bureaucracy. I had to -- it was a big challenge, you know. How do you explain this to the people of Israel, you know? So I took about two weeks to format an economic plan and then I had to explain it to the public and I said this.

I described my first day in basic training in the paratroopers and the commander lines us up in a big field; the whole company and he says, "We’re now going to take, we’re going to do a special race. You," he points at me, "Netanyahu, you pick up the guy next to you, put him on your shoulders. And the next guy, you put the guy next to you on your shoulders," and so on. And I got a fairly big guy on my shoulders, about my size, and I could barely take two steps forward when he blew the whistle. The guy next to me was the smallest guy in the company and he got the biggest guy on his shoulders; he just collapsed on the spot.

And the third guy was the, was a big guy and he had a relatively small guy on his shoulders -- he took off like a rocket and won the race. And I said in the international world, all national economies are paired of a public sector, sitting on the shoulders of a private sector. In our case, the private sector was collapsing under a public sector that got too fat. So we have to put the fat man on a diet and we have to give a lot of oxygen to the thin man below. That’s called tax relief. And we have to cut all these barriers to the competition, all these regulations that prevent that guy from running forward. This became known as the Fat Man Fitting (ph) Taxi Cab Drivers couldn’t recite it; they still couldn’t recite it. And that’s essentially what we ended up doing.

What I ended up doing was to trim the public sector, help the private sector and remove the barriers to competition, which I still have to do. I fight regulation with machetes, all the time.

LEVIN: In addition to the economy, I watch these votes in the U.N. I see the president of Guatemala. I see these leaders of India. And what I notice, observing Israel over the last several decades, you obviously have a big push going on where you want to take Israel’s case all over the world, including in our hemisphere in America, in Asia, India and so forth -- is that born fruit? It appears to, at the U.N. and some other places.

NETANYAHU: Well, it’s certainly born fruit in international relations, because having, having reformed Israeli economy, we got the prowess of technological advance. Because technology with free market definitely works. And with the, you know, this amalgamation of Big Data, artificial intelligence and productivity, as well as creating industries out of thin air, literally out of thin air.

We have a car industry that’s autonomous vehicles. World leader. Between driving the (LAUGHS) world economy, cyber, you know, we’re a tiny fraction of one percent and we get 20 percent, 20 percent of the world investment in private cyber security -- huge.

On the other side we have security. We have superb intelligence. We’ve foiled dozens of terrorist attacks. Of ISIS; major terrorist attacks. Including the downing of an airliner. You can imagine what that would be.

LEVIN: And for all countries, you share that information.

NETANYAHU: We share it, we not only do it for us, we share it with dozens of countries. We’ve prevented dozens of terrorist attacks, major terrorists attacks. So when you take security interests and intelligence, the countries out to protect themselves against terrorism, and that’s pretty much all countries, and you take the needs for technological innovation that is driving the world right now, both of them are present in Israel and so everybody wants them and that gives me the third thing, which is this massive flourishing of Israel’s diplomatic relations with just about every country in the world. Not all.

We’re not big on North Korea. You know. Not too big on Iran. But just about everyone else. And so this is a triangle. It’s economic power, security power, gives you diplomatic power. That will take a few years to translate itself into the votes of this archaic body called the General Assembly of the United Nations. Or some of the other bodies. That will take a while, until they get the news.

Geopolitical Weekly: Netanyahu, Obama and the Geopolitics of Speeches, March 3, 2015

By George Friedman

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the United States this week to speak to Congress on March 3. The Obama administration is upset that Speaker of the House John Boehner invited Netanyahu without consulting with the White House and charged Boehner with political grandstanding. Netanyahu said he was coming to warn the United States of the threat of Iran. Israeli critics of Netanyahu charged that this was a play for public approval to improve his position in Israel's general election March 17. Boehner denied any political intent beyond getting to hear Netanyahu's views. The Obama administration claimed that the speech threatens the fabric of U.S.-Israeli relations.

Let us begin with the obvious. First, this is a speech, and it is unlikely that Netanyahu could say anything new on the subject of Iran, given that he never stops talking about it. Second, everyone involved is grandstanding. They are politicians, and that's what they do. Third, the idea that U.S.-Israeli relations can be shredded by a grandstanding speech is preposterous. If that's all it takes, relations are already shredded.

Speeches aside, there is no question that U.S.-Israeli relations have been changing substantially since the end of the Cold War, and that change, arrested for a while after 9/11, has created distance and tension between the countries. Netanyahu's speech is merely a symptom of the underlying reality. There are theatrics, there are personal animosities, but presidents and prime ministers come and go. What is important are the interests that bind or separate nations, and the interests of Israel and the United States have to some extent diverged. It is the divergence of interests we must focus on, particularly because there is a great deal of mythology around the U.S.-Israeli relationship created by advocates of a close relationship, opponents of the relationship, and foreign enemies of one or both countries.

Building the U.S.-Israeli Relationship

It is important to begin by understanding that the United States and Israel did not always have a close relationship. While the United States recognized Israel from the beginning, its relationship was cool until after the Six-Day War in 1967. When Israel, along with Britain and France, invaded Egypt in 1956, the United States demanded Israel's withdrawal from Sinai and Gaza, and the Israelis complied. The United States provided no aid for Israel except for food aid given through a U.N. program that served many nations. The United States was not hostile to Israel, nor did it regard its relationship as crucial.

This began to change before the 1967 conflict, after pro-Soviet coups in Syria and Iraq by Baathist parties. Responding to this threat, the United States created a belt of surface-to-air missiles stretching from Saudi Arabia to Jordan and Israel in 1965. This was the first military aid given to Israel, and it was intended to be part of a system to block Soviet power. Until 1967, Israel's weapons came primarily from France. Again, the United States had no objection to this relationship, nor was it a critical issue to Washington.

The Six-Day War changed this. After the conflict, the French, wanting to improve relations with the Arabs, cut off weapons sales to Israel. The United States saw Egypt become a Soviet naval and air base, along with Syria. This threatened the U.S. Sixth Fleet and other interests in the eastern Mediterranean. In particular, the United States was concerned about Turkey because the Bosporus in Soviet hands would open the door to a significant Soviet challenge in the Mediterranean and Southern Europe. Turkey was now threatened not only from the north but also from the south by Syria and Iraq. The Iranians, then U.S. allies, forced the Iraqis to face east rather than north. The Israelis forced the Syrians to focus south. Once the French pulled out of their relationship with Israel and the Soviets consolidated their positions in Egypt and Syria in the wake of the Six-Day War, the United States was forced into a different relationship with Israel.

It has been said that the 1967 war and later U.S. support for Israel triggered Arab anti-Americanism. It undoubtedly deepened anti-American sentiment among the Arabs, but it was not the trigger. Egypt became pro-Soviet in 1956 despite the U.S. intervention against Israel, while Syria and Iraq became pro-Soviet before the United States began sending military aid to Israel. But after 1967, the United States locked into a strategic relationship with Israel and became its primary source of military assistance. This support surged during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, with U.S. assistance rising from roughly 5 percent of Israeli gross domestic product to more than 20 percent a year later.

The United States was strategically dependent on Israel to maintain a balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean. But even during this period, the United States had competing strategic interests. For example, as part of encouraging a strategic reversal into the U.S. camp after the 1973 war, the United States negotiated an Israeli withdrawal from Sinai that the Israelis were extremely reluctant to do but could not avoid under U.S. pressure. Similarly, U.S. President Ronald Reagan opposed an Israeli invasion of Lebanon that reached Beirut, and the initial U.S. intervention in Lebanon was not against Arab elements but intended to block Israel. There was a strategic dependence on Israel, but it was never a simple relationship.

The Israelis' national security requirements have always outstripped their resources. They had to have an outside patron. First it was the Soviets via Czechoslovakia, then France, then the United States. They could not afford to alienate the United States — the essential foundation of their national security — but neither could they simply comply with American wishes. For the United States, Israel was an important asset. It was far from the only important asset. The United States had to reconcile its support of Israel with its support of Saudi Arabia, as an example. Israel and the Saudis were part of an anti-Soviet coalition, but they had competing interests, shown when the United States sold airborne warning and control systems to the Saudis. The Israelis both needed the United States and chafed under the limitations Washington placed on them.

Post-Soviet Relations

The collapse of the Soviet Union destroyed the strategic foundation for the U.S.-Israeli relationship. There was no pressing reason to end it, but it began to evolve and diverge. The fall of the Soviet Union left Syria and Iraq without a patron. Egypt's U.S.-equipped army, separated from Israel by a demilitarized Sinai and token American peacekeepers, posed no threat. Jordan was a key ally of Israel. The United States began seeing the Mediterranean and Middle East in totally different ways. Israel, for the first time since its founding, didn't face any direct threat of attack. In addition, Israel's economy surged, and U.S. aid, although it remained steady, became far less important to Israel than it was. In 2012, U.S. assistance ($2.9 billion) accounted for just more than 1 percent of Israel's GDP.

Both countries had more room to maneuver than they'd had previously. They were no longer locked into a relationship with each other, and their relationship continued as much out of habit as out of interest. The United States had no interest in Israel creating settlements in the West Bank, but it wasn't interested enough in stopping them to risk rupturing the relationship. The Israelis were no longer so dependent on the United States that they couldn't risk its disapproval.

The United States and Israel drew together initially after 9/11. From the Israeli perspective, the attacks proved that the United States and Israel had a common interest against the Islamic world. The U.S. response evolved into a much more complex form, particularly as it became apparent that U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq were not going to pacify either country. The United States needed a strategy that would prevent jihadist attacks on the homeland, and that meant intelligence cooperation not only with the Israelis but also with Islamic countries hostile to Israel. This was the old problem. Israel wanted the United States focused on Israel as its main partner, but the United States had much wider and more complex relations to deal with in the region that required a more nuanced approach.

This is the root of the divergence on Iran. From Israel's point of view, the Iranians pose an inherent threat regardless of how far along they are — or are not — with their nuclear program. Israel wants the United States aligned against Iran. Now, how close Tehran is to a nuclear weapon is an important question, but to Israel, however small the nuclear risk, it cannot be tolerated because Iran's ideology makes it an existential threat.

The Iran Problem

From the American perspective, the main question about Iran is, assuming it is a threat, can it be destroyed militarily? The Iranians are not fools. They observed the ease with which the Israelis destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. They buried theirs deep underground. It is therefore not clear, regardless of how far along it is or what its purpose is, that the United States could destroy Iran's nuclear program from the air. It would require, at the very least, special operations on the ground, and failing that, military action beyond U.S. capabilities. Aside from the use of nuclear weapons, it is unclear that an attack on multiple hardened sites would work.

The Israelis are quite aware of these difficulties. Had it been possible to attack, and had the Israelis believed what they were saying, the Israelis would have attacked. The distances are great, but there are indications that countries closer to Iran and also interested in destroying Iran's nuclear program would have allowed the use of their territories. Yet the Israelis did not attack.

The American position is that, lacking a viable military option and uncertain as to the status of Iran's program, the only option is to induce Iran to curtail the program. Simply maintaining permanent sanctions does not end whatever program there is. Only an agreement with Iran trading the program for an end of sanctions would work. From the American point of view, the lack of a military option requires a negotiation. The Israeli position is that Iran cannot be trusted. The American position is that in that case, there are no options.

Behind this is a much deeper issue. Israel of course understands the American argument. What really frightens the Israelis is an emerging American strategy. Having failed to pacify Afghanistan or Iraq, the United States has come to the conclusion that wars of occupation are beyond American capacity. It is prepared to use air power and very limited ground forces in Iraq, for example. However, the United States does not see itself as having the option of bringing decisive force to bear.

An Intricate U.S. Strategy

Therefore, the United States has a double strategy emerging. The first layer is to keep its distance from major flare-ups in the region, providing support but making clear it will not be the one to take primary responsibility. As the situation on the ground deteriorates, the United States expects these conflicts to eventually compel regional powers to take responsibility. In the case of Syria and Iraq, for example, the chaos is on the border of Turkey. Let Turkey live with it, or let Turkey send its own troops in. If that happens, the United States will use limited force to support them. A similar dynamic is playing out with Jordan and the Gulf Cooperation Council states as Saudi Arabia tries to assume responsibility for Sunni Arab interests in the face of a U.S-Iranian entente. Importantly, this rapprochement with Iran is already happening against the Islamic State, which is an enemy of both the United States and Iran. I am not sure we would call what is happening collaboration, but there is certainly parallel play between Iran and the United States.

The second layer of this strategy is creating a balance of power. The United States wants regional powers to deal with issues that threaten their interests more than American interests. At the same time, the United States does not want any one country to dominate the region. Therefore, it is in the American interest to have multiple powers balancing each other. There are four such powers: Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Some collaborate, some are hostile, and some shift over time. The United States wants to get rid of Iran's weapons, but it does not want to shatter the country. It is part of a pattern of regional responsibility and balance.

This is the heart of Israel's problem. It has always been a pawn in U.S. strategy, but a vital pawn. In this emerging strategy, with multiple players balancing each other and the United States taking the minimum possible action to maintain the equilibrium, Israel finds itself in a complex relationship with three countries that it cannot be sure of managing by itself. By including Iran in this mix, the United States includes what Israel regards as an unpredictable element not solely because of the nuclear issue but because Iran's influence stretches to Syria and Lebanon and imposes costs and threats Israel wants to avoid.

This has nothing to do with the personalities of Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu. The United States has shown it cannot pacify countries with available forces. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different outcome. If the United States is not involved on the ground in a conflict, then it becomes a problem for regional powers to handle. If the regional powers take the roles they must, they should balance against each other without a single regional hegemon emerging.

Israel does not want to be considered by the United States as one power among many. It is focused on the issue of a nuclear Iran, but it knows that there is no certainty that Iran's nuclear facilities can be destroyed or that sanctions will cause the Iranians to abandon the nuclear program. What Israel fears is an entente between the United States and Iran and a system of relations in which U.S. support will not be automatic.

So a speech will be made. Obama and Netanyahu are supposed to dislike each other. Politicians are going to be elected and jockey for power. All of this is true, and none of it matters. What does matter is that the United States, regardless of who is president, has to develop a new strategy in the region. This is the only option other than trying to occupy Syria and Iraq. Israel, regardless of who is prime minister, does not want to be left as part of this system while the United States maintains ties with all the other players along with Israel. Israel doesn't have the weight to block this strategy, and the United States has no alternative but to pursue it.

This isn't about Netanyahu and Obama, and both know it. It is about the reconfiguration of a region the United States cannot subdue and cannot leave. It is the essence of great power strategy: creating a balance of power in which the balancers are trapped into playing a role they don't want. It is not a perfect strategy, but it is the only one the United States has. Israel is not alone in not wanting this. Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia don't want it, either. But geopolitics is indifferent to wishes. It understands only imperatives and constraints.

Netanyahu, Obama and the Geopolitics of Speeches is republished with permission of Stratfor.