@ckloetzer
PhD student in Political Studies at the University of Milan (UniMi) Working on: electoral behavior, cleavage transformation, European radical-right electorates But interested in, and posting about, all sorts of things.
Wonder who those other Western intermediaries are and whether they had anything to say at all about Israel threatening collective punishment (while already enacting it on the ground for a long time, but that’s by the by).
The European Union and United Kingdom, which have largely done nothing at all to hold Israel to account and swear off ever doing anything to hold Israel to account, demand that Israel stop its land theft in the West Bank, or else the EU and UK will do nothing some more.
Worth noting that Netanyahu strongly supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but German foreign policy was not yet fully deferential to Tel Aviv’s intentions to redraw the map of the Middle East. Spain on the other hand seems to have learned a lesson from its support for Bush at the time.
Haaretz: “Spain Dismisses Ambassador to Israel, Downgrading Diplomatic Ties Ambassador Ana Salomon Perez was dismissed on March 11th, effectively reducing relations to the rank of chargé d'affaires. Israel's last ambassador in Spain was recalled in 2024”
Haaretz: “German FM Visits Israel, Vows Support for Iran War, Tours Missile Strike Site Johann Wadephul became the first foreign minister to visit Israel since it launched its assault on Iran. Meanwhile in Berlin, Chancellor Merz expressed concerns over the lack of a plan to end the war by Israel and the U.S. 'More questions arise with each passing day,' he said”
One country’s reason to downgrade diplomatic relations with Israel is another country’s reason to send its Foreign Minister for demonstrative solidarity.
I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public.
I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are.
1/ Here's what I can share:
OLJ: “Israël déterminé à en finir avec le Hezbollah « une bonne fois pour toutes », affirme le président israélien Le président israélien, Isaac Herzog, en visite sur une batterie de défense aérienne le long de la frontière avec le Liban, a déclaré mardi que son pays était résolu à en finir avec le Hezbollah « une bonne fois pour toutes », selon ses propos repris par plusieurs médias israéliens.”
Now also coming from the head of state.
The Israeli opposition leader is just casually voicing the logic according to which armed insurgency, not normalization of relations, is the only way to dissuade Israel from invading neighboring states.
And here’s Yair Lapid, about a week earlier, telling a journalist that he supports Israeli expansionism, and the only thing that dissuades him from that project is America’s experience in Iraq with… armed terrorist groups.
Here’s Yair Lapid arguing for annexation of parts of Lebanon because it hosts an armed terrorist group.
Haaretz: “According to the source, France offered to assist the Lebanese Armed Forces in disarming Hezbollah, with Israel's political leadership turning down the offer. Israel is determined to "solve the problem with its own hands: Disarm Hezbollah, destroy it, remove it," the source said. According to the source, who is not Israeli, the country is leaning toward "going into Lebanon and solving this once and for all."”
And the language of total victory is there too. It’s the same language used by Israel to describe war goals in Gaza, where it has simply been code for total destruction.
There’s a very Wiggum-esque quality to leaders like Merz, who voiced full-throated support at the outset of the Iran war but then are dismayed that this war has consequences. There was only one Iran war on the menu, and that’s the one we are going to get.
Once again, the “sovereigntists” suffer from being strapped to the foreign policy of not one but two other powers.
What planet does Merz spend most of his time on if the thinks that an American president that is dismantling democracy at home will start building it in Iran?
France24: “Israeli far-right minister Smotrich says Beirut's Dahiyeh will soon share Gaza's fate Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich posted a video on social media saying that the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh will "very soon" look like the devastated Gaza city of Khan Younis. "Very soon, Dahiyeh will look like Khan Younis," he said. "Hezbollah made a mistake, and it will pay dearly for it."”
Europe, and first and foremost Germany, enabled the Gazafication of Gaza. And now we will watch as the total disregard for the laws of war and for the civilians it seeks to protect becomes a tool in the toolbox of Israel’s Middle Eastern strategy, to be unleashed on the whole region.
Haaretz article: “A Western source who participated in the negotiations over the 2015 nuclear deal told Haaretz that senior European Union officials are guided primarily by a desire "not to upset Trump," particularly given European interests tied to the war in Ukraine and the continuation of U.S. support for Kyiv.”
You know what, Vance was right, the biggest threat to Europe is internal. But it’s not the imagined oppression at the hands of woke elites, it’s European officials who think that if they submit hard enough to Trump we will be spared.
Needless to say, my thoughts on foreign policy are fairly irrelevant. That’s why I don’t get published in the Atlantic. The invasion of Iraq cleared both congressional and public opinion hurdles, and yet was a disaster, for the USA but first and foremost for the region.
Leave it to American commentators to give you the most self-absorbed reasons for why war in the Middle East that further emboldens Israel’s revisionist agenda is a bad idea.
The uptick and then decline is compatible with the idea that Leavers got what they claimed to want (no ethnic selection in immigration), and then did not like it. The UK's immigration debate today really doesn't suggest that Leavers think "if it weren't for small boats it'd be perfect as it is."
"Fouqha and his ambulance crew were then forced to watch on helplessly as Jad lay bleeding from his wounds. The paramedic said they watched for at least 35 minutes, unable to do anything.
[...]
The IDF has said that Jad threw a rock and was a 'terrorist' who 'attempted to attack the force'."
Whether they are racists is besides the point. They preferred Western immigration and got less Western but more non-Western immigration. So if Brexit improved their attitudes t/w immigration as you argue, that's not because it changed immigration flows to their preference, it just gave them a win.
But that shows how the Leavers' attitude towards immigration was constructed around a buzzword by a political campaign. Objectively, given the number and origin of immigrants after 2020, Leavers had little to feel more positive over.
Because of Brexit perhaps, but that may well be in the way Americans are becoming more pro-immigration because they reject Trump's extremism on that issue.
FT headline: Rubio tells Europe that US will not abandon transatlantic alliance Secretary of state says Washington wants to work ‘together with you, our friends’ on the continent
FT headline: "Rubio skips Ukraine meeting with European leaders in Munich US secretary of state cancels attendance at last minute in move that EU official calls ‘insane’"
Can we please not fall for this? He is not even trying to pretend convincingly, and at any rate his influence on American foreign policy-making seems rather marginal. The only interest the Trump admin has in not abandoning Europe is that all its leverage would disappear overnight if it did.
And here I was, thinking Merz is the current Deutschlandvorsteher.
The Academic Programme link seems to be for last year's GC.
Trump support in the US is slowly whittling down to his (still sizable) core MAGA base, despite their propaganda and knowing their target group. With Trump already unpopular over here, them trying to shift opinion in Europe, which exists in MAGA heads only as a caricature, could easily backfire.
Quite the comeback for the CDA, from five seats in the previous Parliament to having Ministers of the Interior, Foreign Affairs and Economy.
This is another way of making this point clear.
New York Times headline (3 February 2026): "Trump, in an Escalation, Calls for Republicans to ‘Nationalize’ Elections The comments, made on a conservative podcast, follow a string of moves from his administration to try to exert more control over American elections."
From the NYT article: "Mr. Trump has made little secret of his interest in expanding the federal government’s role in administering American elections. Last month, he told The Times that he regretted not dispatching the National Guard to seize voting machinery after the 2020 election. During his interview with Mr. Bongino, Mr. Trump tied his desire for partisan control of voting mechanisms to his administration’s agenda to find and deport undocumented immigrants from American cities. “If Republicans don’t get them out, you will never win another election as a Republican,” he said, referring to undocumented immigrants. “It’s crazy how you can get these people to vote. If we don’t get them out, look, Republicans will never win another election.” There is no evidence that a significant number of noncitizens have voted in any American election. A 2024 audit by Georgia’s secretary of state found that just 20 of the 8.2 million people registered to vote in Georgia were not citizens, and only nine had ever voted."
The NYT still thinks Trump's claims about immigrants stealing elections is a disagreement about facts. But MAGA supporters undoubtedly understand the message: namely that a system of elections that allows MAGA to lose is not worth having. Everything else is a footnote to that story.
But I don't see that in the tweet. It even speaks of "Dutch law", which suggests legitimacy, as opposed to "the German occupants' law". He's making an entirely different point, as far as I can see.
