Diplomat Jim Patterson on What's Next for America and Israel?

Talking defense with Israeli hero at Friends of Israeli Defense Forces gala in California 2015.

What's Next, for America and Israel? Challenges and Opportunities in an Uncertain World
Kenney Auditorium, Nitze Building
John Hopkins University
School of Advanced International Studies
Washington DC

I attended this 90-minute conversation with Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer on November 28. Israel and Russia were the first two countries to send congratulations to GOP President-elect Donald J. Trump after his defeat of Democrat candidate former secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Derman explained three reasons for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's congratulations. First, the troublesome Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between Iran and the P5+1 and the EU. (US, UK, Russia, France, and China + Germany and the European Union.)  UN Ambassador Samantha Power represented President Obama's deal negotiated and written at the White House rather than at the US Department of State. President Obama pushed the so-called Iran deal without official approval of Congress. Israel also did not agree to the deal as it guarantees Iran will develop nuclear weapons within a short time period. Obama's position that Iranian Islamic society will change to a peaceful State during this period has, according to many, no basis in reality. Hillary Clinton and Democrats supported the deal and Donald Trump promised to destroy it. Ergo, Israel's early congratulations to President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

Secondly, Obama has ceded Syria, which borders Israel, to a potential Iranian terror base.

Third, the mistaken idea by Obama's administration that if the Israel-Palestinian issues were  settled the Middle East would become stable, peaceful and orderly. Dermer realistically sees Iran gaining power in the region as the US has largely withdrawn. In short, Obama fundamentally does not have a Middle East policy.

As Dermer spoke, Israel was fighting Palestinian fire intifada, an ISIS engagement from Syria, and a call in The New York Times by former Democratic President Jimmy Carter for President Obama to officially recognize the State of Palestine before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Though Carter explained how Obama could do this, it is an "off the map" idea by Carter that, to a large degree, explains why Donald Trump and Mike Pence were elected

Palestinian terrorists have become bolder during the Obama administration without any official administration response. This has created tensions between the US and Israel during the past 8 years.

While Prime Minister Netanyahu said, prior US presidential election, that whether Clinton or Trump were elected president Israel would have a friend in the White House. Dermer was clearly very optimistic about working with Trump's administration based on his conversations with the Trump transition team.

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Jim Patterson is a life member of the American Foreign Service Association, contributor to the Foreign Service Journal, Member State Societies of California, Alabama, Indiana, New York, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana. Member Friends of Israeli Defense Forces. Member US Philippines Society. Associate Member Korean War Veterans Association. Life Member Associates of Vietnam Veterans of America. Member DACOR, Ambassador Club of Washington DC, Life Member Republican National Committee, Member California, Alabama, Indiana and Washington DC Republican Parties.

Diplomat Jim Patterson with November 30 Highlights in American Foreign Relations

"History is a vast early warning system." Norman Cousins. 

The United States and Britain signed preliminary peace articles in Paris for ending the Revolutionary War; the Treaty of Paris was signed in Sept. 1783.

1835, Samuel Langhorne Clemens - better known as Mark Twain - was born in Florida, Missouri.

1874, British statesman Sir Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace.

1900, Irish writer Oscar Wilde died in Paris at age 46.

1908 The US Secretary of State and Japan's ambassador to the US exchange notes in what becomes known as the Root-Takahira Agreement: they affirm support for an independent China with an 'open door' policy and for the status quo in the Pacific

1908  photo facsimile transmitted across Atlantic by radio (London-NYC)

1947 Day after UN decree for Israel, Jewish settlements attacked

1950 US President Harry Truman threatens China with atom bomb

1962 U Thant of Burma becomes the 3rd Secretary-General of the United Nations

1967 Senator Eugene McCarthy announces he will run for the US presidency on anti-Vietnam war platform

1981 Cold War: In Geneva, representatives from the United States and the Soviet Union begin to negotiate intermediate-range nuclear weapon reductions in Europe (the meetings ended inconclusively on December 17).

1982 US submarine Thomas Edison collides with US Navy destroyer in South China Sea

1988 UN General Assembly (151-2) censures US for refusing PLO's Arafat visa

1990 US President George H. W. Bush offers to send Secretary of State James Baker to Baghdad to meet with Saddam Hussein

1995 Official end of Operation Desert Storm.

1999 In Seattle, Washington, United States, protests against the World Trade Organization meeting by anti-globalization protesters catch police unprepared and force the cancellation of opening ceremonies. Jim Patterson Note: WTO was a 2016 political issue in the presidential election.

2006 President George W. Bush met in Jordan with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki; Bush said the United States would speed a turnover of security responsibility to Iraqi forces but assured al-Maliki that Washington was not looking for "some kind of graceful exit" from Iraq.

2006 Pope Benedict XVI visited Istanbul's famous Blue Mosque in a dramatic gesture of outreach to Muslims.

2011 The central banks of the wealthiest countries, trying to prevent a debt crisis in Europe from exploding into a global panic, swept in to shore up the world financial system by making it easier for banks to borrow American dollars.

Births of Note

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), clergyman/satirist

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) (1835-1910), writer

Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British Prime Minister (Conservative: 1940-45, 1951-55) during World War II and winner of the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature, born in Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England, Naturalized U.S. citizen. (d. 1965)

Historian Michael Beschloss is 61

Deaths of Note:

1990 Norman Cousins, editor (Saturday Review), dies at 75. Quote: “History is a vast early warning system.”

Quote:

"For my own part I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities which he excites among his opponents. I have always set myself not merely to relish but to deserve thoroughly their censure." -- Winston Churchill