Jake Sullivan wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs that went to print before Oct 7. For the online version that came out yesterday, they let him not just add new material but scrub the sections embarrassed by events. Some deleted gems from the original, not available online (1/6):
“The Israeli-Palestinian situation is tense, particularly in the West Bank, but in the face of serious frictions, we have de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence.” (2/6)
“the region is quieter than it has been for decades. The progress is fragile, to be sure. But it is also not an accident... [Biden's] approach returns discipline to US policy. It emphasizes deterring aggression, de-escalating conflicts, and integrating the region...” (6/6)
Biden’s “disciplined approach frees up resources for other global priorities, reduces the risk of new Middle Eastern conflicts, and ensures that US interests are protected on a far more sustainable basis.” (4/6)
“We have acted militarily to protect US personnel, and we have enhanced deterrence, combined with diplomacy, to discourage further [Iranian] aggression.” (5/6)
@BorisJohnson
Q&A with David Samuels following
@ZelenskyyUa
visit to London.
“If Putin set out to prove himself wrong,” said Johnson, “he could not have done so in a more decisive and elegant way.” 2/n
@tabletmag
, alone, one year ago:
‘The election of Joe Biden in 2020 gave the Obamas even more reasons to stay in town. The whispers about Biden’s cognitive decline, which began during his bizarre COVID-sheltered basement campaign, were mostly dismissed as partisan attacks on a
Jake Sullivan wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs that went to print before Oct 7. For the online version that came out yesterday, they let him not just add new material but scrub the sections embarrassed by events. Some deleted gems from the original, not available online (1/6):
Thanks Julie for the kind words. I’d just add that readers should also follow
@AcrossTheBay
and
@Doranimated
and read their
@tabletmag
work on how Obama and Biden empowered Iran terror regime and weakened Israel.
New piece for
@ACFutureEurope
| "If Merkel doubles down on Nord Stream II even as Navalny emerges from a coma and plots his return home, the narrow ruthlessness of the chancellor’s priorities may be more than her universalist rhetoric can withstand."
She worked at the State Department for 1 year and thought she was making policy? I question her stability.
You implement the *President’s* policy, Annelle.
You aren’t the President.
Your hubris is a warning sign to every boss you hope to have.
The Holocaust gives Germans not a particular responsibility to Jews but a universal responsibility to humanity, therefore German support for Israel is a violation of its atonement for the Holocaust.
This stuff keeps getting more demented.
“The best way to serve the audience is to ignore them.”—Rick Rubin
“I’d rather resonate with someone who’s liked my honest output than someone who’s been reflexively repulsed. If you’re going to be captured, better it be by an audience than a critic.”—
@SherwoodStrauss
‘I have one piece of advice to give you, Professor. Read the columnists, and if they call a member of your staff thoughtful, dedicated, or any other friendly adjective, fire him immediately. He is your leaker.’—LBJ to Kissinger, 1969
Thus the cult of Jake Sullivan
This all seems kind of obvious and basic but I can’t convey how scarce it is. Alana's been carrying the shield for 15 years but it's hard to get what it means until you first experience the thrill of being shot at without result.
There may be a connection, in other words, between being a “once-in-a-generation talent” who is “loved by everyone,” and struggling as mightily as Sullivan has to come up with foreign policy ideas that don't disintegrate within seconds of contact with reality (8/8)
The Biden admin allowed Malley to push an Iranian agent into sensitive national security positions because she was best equipped to carry out the administration's own policy.
Reminder: High-Level Iranian Spy Ring Busted in Washington
@LeeSmithDC
‘By joining his chi to Trump’s, Elon Musk has created a double-helix out of the two most powerful human memes on earth.’
David Samuels in
@tabletmag
on the return of American history, and the future that didn’t exist until Crooks’ gun went off.
My interview with
@tylercowen
on lessons from Russian literature about Russian foreign policy, Hadji Murat, Ukrainian classical pianists, financing the war, and whether Germany is still part of the Western alliance 5/n
But the way
@alananewhouse
runs Tablet is to bang home to writers: 1) ignore the audience, thinking of them is the editor’s job, 2) ignore critics. These are actually two sides of the same coin, which is just:
But if it's impossible to imagine Jake Sullivan doing and saying such horrible things, it's also hard to imagine him doing ANYTHING that might displease his class-anxious Ivy League Boomer superiors who in reality prefer intellectual posers and hate punks like Kennan (7/8)
Be honest in the personality and voice you give to your writing, “opinion” is cheap (as opposed to subjective personal observation and feeling, clearly identified as such), and the less officially branded the subject matter, the better.
So basically, the Rubin and Strauss quotes are both right: ignore the audience, and you’ll probably get the one you want; only at that point do you owe them anything, which is just more of the same.
"From my time among criminals in prison, I know that the one who’s the ringleader in the cell is not the one who is physically strongest, but the one who is ready to use his knife. Putin believes that he is willing to use his knife and the West isn’t."
'I think the assumption by U.S. planners was that Gaza would turn out to be a tar baby for Netanyahu. The strategic assumptions were therefore that after a few months Bibi would punch himself out, the Israeli offensive would grind to a halt. The United States would then take
I spoke with France’s former Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls and the great
@benjaminhaddad
on Islamism and antisemitism in France and whether the political center can hold. Lots of wisdom and insight from both for Americans.
But Kennan was a sensitive marginalized ballsy misfit diva who drove everyone insane. Bio: “curious blend of arrogance and insecurity, haughtiness and self-pity, sensitivity and coldness, assertiveness and shyness.” He was insufferable and, relatedly, fiercely independent (3/8)
New piece w/ the great
@jgarzik
| ‘Americans trapped in such circumstances would have their messages siphoned, their conversations recorded, their diaries digitally copied, their trysts interdicted. Their lives and fate would be held hostage by the Borg.’
If you do that, good readers will sense it and they’ll come back; if you don’t, they’ll sniff that out too, and then you’re no longer an honest broker.
Today’s special issue of Tablet.
I have a short piece on reclaiming your right to normal human emotions like national loyalty from the demented weirdos who spent the last decade trying to force a choice b/w being American and being Jewish
My excellent conversation with
@ELuttwak
and
@VladDavidzon
on the military situation in Ukraine, Western sanctions, the credibility of Putin’s nuclear threat, and how Volodymyr Zelensky became the bravest Jew on the face of the earth.
@tabletmag
People have been pointing out that it wasn’t until the founding of
@tabletmag
that Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize, Michael Jackson died, Kanye went crazy, Tarantino made his greatest film, Virginia banned smoking, and Greenland gained self-rule.
Kennan was also born to a Midwestern middle-class family, also determined to escape the obscurity of his background by gaining acceptance into the Ivy League and the Washington intellectual establishment, etc. Old story (2/8)
In the last year I wrote a couple profiles of public figures, a critical one of someone I think is unworthy of the power he has, and an admiring one of someone I thought was misunderstood.
Kennan was among the first to foresee and advocate splits in the Soviet bloc and was appointed amb. to Yugoslavia in 1961. After Congress and the Kennedy admin promised to “liberate” all communist countries & cut Tito out of the foreign aid bill, Kennan resigned in disgust (5/8)
I like these and had thought of them as being opposites or in tension, but I think I realized they actually get at the same thing, and in the process came to appreciate my own magazine more
There was no POTUS or anyone else Kennan wouldn’t pick a fight with, regardless of party. His unrelenting opposition to engagement in Vietnam began in 1948. His frank comments comparing Moscow in 1952 with Berlin in 1942 cost him his ambassadorship to the USSR. Oops 🤷♂️ (4/8)
@tabletmag
Sinai Award citations for Michel Houellebecq and John Fetterman:
Michel Houellebecq
Michel Houellebecq is French. And what’s wrong with that? OK, so he loathes humanity. His characters are ideas and types bereft of the pleasures and agonies of flesh-and-blood
For our 15th anniversary, we are introducing the Sinai Awards, honoring 36 people who have made the world freer for the rest of us.
The award was handmade by traditional glass artisans from a mold of a real piece of matzo baked in the Venice Ghetto. 🧵
Omar saw earlier than anyone that US politics had become almost entirely national-scale and personality-driven, which helps explain her rare foray into local/regional politics, ie a demented speech about Greater Somalia.
Definitive bio by
@ArminRosen
The question isn't, ‘Can you make a plausible case for detente with Iran?’
The question is, ‘Do you actually believe that case? Could you put up with Israel’s destruction, or couldn’t you?’
From now on, it would be good to be sure on that point.
Kennan also liked to journal and sometimes make outrageously offensive comments about what he saw as the stupidities of mass democracy and the unfitness for American citizenship of Jews, Catholics, and African Americans (6/8)
My interview with
@StanMcChrystal
on the balance of forces in Ukraine, Western weapons vs. Russian reservists, and maintaining US bipartisan support 6/n
The main criticism I got of the former was that it’s cheap to fling shit at a man in the arena when you’re just an outside critic. Main criticism of the latter was along the lines of “how can you talk with his balls in your mouth” etc
If I’d been elsewhere it's not hard to imagine being stung enough by both criticisms to where, even if subconsciously, I’d have reconfigured future writing in order to avoid pissing certain people off, being ignored or laughed at, losing out on access or invitations, etc
New episode of
@WRMpod
w/
@wrmead
🎙️
We talk US military planning in the Taiwan Strait, Democratic criticisms of Kamala’s economic plan, the darkening politics of East Germany, and why Alexander Hamilton shows the way forward in American foreign policy.
New episode of
@WRMpod
w/
@wrmead
We talk Kamala Harris’ price control plan, the balance of military power in the Pacific, the reemergence of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and why soft power isn’t what it used to be.
Full episode
@tabletmag
below...
“They spoke at length, and then it turned into a kabbalistic meeting in which the rabbi noted that Javier would lead a liberationist movement in Argentina. Milei left the meeting excited.”
Argentina's Would-Be Jewish Trump
Saturday: Admin leaks plans to engineer collapse of Israeli govt, settles on message of ‘breaking with Bibi but not Israel’
Tuesday: Burns says Bibi's ‘viability as a leader is in jeopardy.’ Wonder how he knows!
Why Biden elevated Burns to the cabinet:
"The best way to understand Barack Obama is that he is a literary creation of Barack Obama, the writer, who authored the novel of his own life and then proceeded to live out this fictional character that he created for himself on the page."
By popular demand
@WRMpod
is back this week with new and improved music 🪕
In addition to providing our millions of listeners with a soothing soundscape, we also talk voter fraud in America, climate religion, Taiwan, Imran Khan, and reading poetry:
Wrote an essay on the German far right, got two types of responses:
Normies who said it persuaded them to sympathize more with AfD supporters.
AfD supporters livid that it said things it didn't say.
Nature may heal Germany.
'I once saw a photo of a giant crucified Santa on the roof of a Tokyo department store. Many are the delights of cultural confusion which the miserly charge of 'appropriation' denies us.'
The great Howard Jacobson on the holiday of schmaltz.
@tabletmag
New episode of
@WRMpod
w/
@wrmead
! This week we talk Epstein, Chinese real estate, the teen mental health crisis, and A.P. Giannini's California dream:
Why is fission evil but fusion good?
Should the Clarence Thomas of Israel get to pick his colleagues?
Do you ever get the sense that Lina Khan is LARPing?
All your burning questions answered in this week's
@WRMpod
, which is mostly about Ukraine.
Questions answered on today's episode:
-Weed or booze?
-Why did 'Hispanics' break for Trump?
-Why do people in India shower
@wrmead
in flower pedals?
-Why did the UK want the US to pay for its socialism?
-Why were jobs safer when products were crappier?
I wrote a piece about the experience of being an American soldier in Saudi Arabia in 2018, on the cusp of MBS's reforms, and what it was like going back in 2023 as a journalist (from a Jewish magazine, no less)
Read the special issue of Tablet Paris feat. Marco Roth,
@marcweitzmann
,
@aniwilc
, David Samuels,
@ArminRosen
,
@liel
,
@Passionweiss
, Blake Smith, and others. We cover politics, fashion, music, literature, and everything else you want from Tablet in Paris.
Under the rules set by great powers to govern the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, anything is possible. Losing is winning. Crime is justice. Rape is love. Death is life.
The Empire of Palestine
@LeeSmithDC
New episode 🎙️🎧
@wrmead
How sincere are conservative (and liberal) critiques of civil rights law?
Is Latin America the continent of the future, and will it be always?
Is a Worthwhile Canadian Initiative news?
No one expects…landmines?
Answers 🫴
"Far from being strategically autonomous, Europe needs a partner and protector. And if the answer isn’t Washington, then Beijing is the only other game in town."
@tabletmag
'The whispers about Biden’s cognitive decline, which began during his bizarre COVID-sheltered basement campaign, were mostly dismissed as partisan attacks on a politician who had always been gaffe-ridden.
Yet as President Biden continued to fall off bicycles, misremember basic
New episode of What Really Matters! This week we discuss:
News: the Sino-Russian Alliance, U.S. national debt, & rise of the European Right
History: TR vs. Wilson, & the Puritan-Boomer-Woke continuum
Tip of the week: Your next Balkan adventure...
Lots of good stuff on India, Saudi, and China in the first half of this episode but in the second part
@wrmead
manages to cover 100 yrs of world history in the course of explaining how Israel went from darling to enemy of the left, all in about 15 min
This week on
@WRMpod
: How Israel went from darling to enemy of the left.
@wrmead
and
@JeremySternLA
also discuss:
-Antisemitism in China
-Hindu nationalist support for Israel
-Saudi-Israeli peace
Listen here: