*LAS NOTICIAS CON LA MONT* 📰
📃 *Premio Internacional Periodismo Y Periodismo Migrante*📃
La Información Directa a tu Celular 📲 de HOY *Martes 17 de Octubre 2023* *En El Plano Nacional e Internacional*:
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*Biden Faces Risks in Wartime Visit to Israel*
A presidential trip to Israel at such a critical moment poses enormous challenges for the White House, in terms of both politics and security.
President Biden will travel to Israel on Wednesday to show solidarity with America’s closest ally in the Middle East, in a wartime trip to bolster the country’s resolve to eradicate Hamas but also to urge limits on what seems bound to be a casualty-filled ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.
It will be a trip fraught with risks, both political and physical.
The White House announced the visit on Monday evening after Mr. Biden met with his top intelligence officials and his closest advisers in the Oval Office to debate whether to accept the invitation that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu extended over the weekend.
In a briefing to reporters Monday night, John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Mr. Biden would focus on “the critical need for humanitarian assistance to get into Gaza, as well as the ability for innocent people to get out.”
He said the president would have meetings in Tel Aviv and in Amman, Jordan, with the leaders of Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority.
While Mr. Biden and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken have backed the overthrow of Hamas, they have also stressed to Mr. Netanyahu’s government that once Israel is seen blowing up buildings and triggering Palestinian casualties, public sentiment around the world could change dramatically. It would focus less on the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, with its scenes of burned bodies and massacred children, and more on the brutality of the response.
“We obviously don’t want to see any additional civilian suffering,” Mr. Kirby said, though he added that there were no conditions being put on the arms and other aid being shipped to Israel.
Before the announcement, two administration officials, noting the pro-Palestinian marches in Europe, in New York and on some American college campuses, said in interviews that they could already sense the narrative shifting. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s internal assessments.
Mr. Biden’s visit is an extraordinary show of support to Israel in the midst of war, akin to Mr. Biden’s brief trip to Ukraine in February to shore up international support for President Volodymyr Zelensky. And just as Mr. Biden’s trip to Kyiv came as Ukraine was on the cusp of a major military operation, the visit to Jerusalem comes as hundreds of thousands of Israeli troops are poised to fight their way through the jammed urban landscape of Gaza to carry out Mr. Netanyahu’s vow to eliminate Hamas.
The security risk of such a trip was clear on Monday when sirens warning of incoming rockets or missiles went off while Mr. Blinken, who was in Israel for his second visit in a week, was meeting at a military base with Mr. Netanyahu and his war cabinet. Mr. Blinken and his hosts were rushed to a bunker and sheltered there for five minutes before resuming their discussions. (There was a similar warning when Mr. Biden was touring a few blocks of Kyiv with Mr. Zelensky in February.)
But the physical risks in Tel Aviv were considered low enough, Mr. Kirby said, that “it was deemed appropriate that we can talk about it beforehand.” The trip to Kyiv, where there were no American forces present to back up the Secret Service, was kept secret.
Mr. Biden has often said he feels very comfortable in Israel, as was evident during his one visit as president in July 2022. Mr. Netanyahu was out of power at the time, which was fine with Mr. Biden’s team. The administration has been in constant conflict with the Israeli leader over his efforts to strengthen his power by overhauling the judiciary, and the efforts of his far-right coalition to expand settlements in disputed lands.
Now, though, Mr. Netanyahu is at the head of a unity government that has come together specifically to prosecute the war, combining with the former Defense Minister Benny Gantz and his centrist party. Mr. Biden’s aides are hoping that the central role for Mr. Gantz, a former general who served in the Israel Defense Force for 38 years, will change the dynamic of their discussions.
10 Stops in 5 Days, Plus an Air Raid Shelter, for Blinken
The secretary of state’s chaotic trip in the Middle East has underscored the scale and complexity of the diplomatic crisis he faces.
*10 Stops in 5 Days, Plus an Air Raid Shelter, for Blinken*
The secretary of state’s chaotic trip in the Middle East has underscored the scale and complexity of the diplomatic crisis he faces.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken hurried into a bunker as air raid sirens wailed in Tel Aviv on Monday, in the most dramatic moment of a whirlwind — and unusually chaotic — Middle East tour for America’s top diplomat.
After his second visit to Israel in five days, Mr. Blinken was scheduled to land in Amman, Jordan, on Monday night, but he ended up stuck in a marathon overnight negotiation session in Tel Aviv, and his next destination was uncertain. A trip originally scheduled for two days has now extended into its sixth, with 10 stops and counting.
For an official whose travel schedule is meticulously planned and rarely revised, Mr. Blinken’s frenetic journey has underscored the scale and complexity of the diplomatic crisis he faces.
Mr. Blinken is at once trying to show U.S. support for Israel after it was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7; limit Arab criticism of Israel’s military response; win the freedom of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza; and prevent an escalation of the conflict, perhaps to include Hezbollah and Iran, that might draw in the United States.
It has been a grim voyage for Mr. Blinken, who at times appeared haunted as he described the slaughter of Israeli citizens and a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Speaking to reporters in Cairo on Sunday, two days after his first stop in Israel, Mr. Blinken conceded that things had become a blur even for him. “I think I’ve lost track” of how many countries he had visited, Mr. Blinken said, before correctly putting the count at seven since his departure from Washington on Wednesday afternoon: Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, plus two stops each in Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
For State Department veterans, Mr. Blinken’s travel was reminiscent of a recent predecessor. John Kerry, who was secretary of state during the Obama administration, frequently extended and improvised his trips — even changing destinations midflight, in what was branded “seat-of-the-pants diplomacy.” Not so Mr. Blinken, who typically travels from Monday to Friday, returning in time to spend the weekend at home with his two young children.
The ad hoc nature of the trip began just days after the massacres by Hamas. Mr. Blinken immediately moved up a visit to the region that he had planned for the following week. The State Department announced that he would depart on Oct. 11 for Israel and Jordan, and return on Friday, Oct. 13.
That plan was soon torn up as State Department officials, in consultation with the White House, expanded Mr. Blinken’s itinerary to include several other major capitals.
“Henry Kissinger’s 33-day trip to reach an Israeli-Syrian disengagement accord following the 1973 October War holds the Middle East shuttle record,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former longtime State Department Middle East negotiator. “Blinken’s recent wild ride through the region doesn’t quite compare. But it does reflect the uncertainty and chaos of a crisis the administration didn’t see coming and the complexity of the challenges it faces going forward.”
“From here on in,” he added, “the secretary might want to pack a few extra shirts. If the administration wants to make a difference in this region, there are likely going to be more than few wild rides in his future.”
Making a difference will not be easy. Mr. Blinken has not yet succeeded in one of his goals: securing the free passage of American citizens in Gaza through a border crossing into Egypt. Hundreds remained stuck at the sealed border on Monday.
*The rainforest holds a fifth of the world’s fresh water, but deforestation, dwindling rain and unrelenting heat are sucking it dry.*
The planet’s biggest freshwater tank is in trouble.
The Amazon rainforest, where a fifth of the world’s freshwater flows, is reeling from a powerful drought that shows no sign of abating.
Likely made worse by global warming and deforestation, the drought has fueled large wildfires that have made the air hazardous for millions of people, including Indigenous communities, while also drying out major rivers at a record pace.
One major river reached its lowest level ever documented on Monday, while others are nearing records, suffocating endangered pink dolphins, shutting down a major hydropower plant and isolating tens of thousands living in remote communities who can only travel by boat.
“There’s just dirt now where the river used to be,” said Ruth Martins, 50, a leader of Boca do Mamirauá, a tiny riverside community in the Amazon. “We’ve never lived through a drought like this.”
The drier conditions are accelerating the destruction of the world’s largest and most biodiverse rainforest where parts have started to transform from humid ecosystems that store huge amounts of heat-trapping gases into drier ones that are releasing the gases into the atmosphere. The result is a double blow to the global struggle to fight climate change and biodiversity loss.
“This is a catastrophe of lasting consequences,” Luciana Vanni Gatti, a scientist at Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research who has been documenting changes in the Amazon. “The more forest loss we have, the less resilience it has.”
Recent studies have shown that climate change, deforestation and fires have made it harder for the Amazon to recover from severe droughts.
And, Ms. Gatti warned, the worst may be yet to come. The rainy season is expected to start in the next weeks and if the drought, which started in June, persists it would mark the first time such extreme conditions took hold in the Amazon’s driest period and continued into its wettest.
In Tefé, a rural municipality in the northwestern Amazon, residents are crossing muddy stretches of lake bed on motorcycles and paddling canoes down narrow streams that were once rivers. Some 158 riverside villages in the same region have been left stranded as waterways linking them to bigger towns have dried up, said Edivilson Braga, coordinator of the local civil defense service.
*Why a Gaza Invasion and ‘Once and for All’ Thinking Are Wrong for Israel*
When The Times’s Israel correspondent Isabel Kershner recently asked an Israeli Army tank driver, Shai Levy, 37, to describe the purpose of the looming Israeli invasion of Gaza, he said something that really caught my ear. It was “to restore honor to Israel,” he said. “The citizens are relying on us to defeat Hamas and remove the threat from Gaza once and for all.”
That caught my ear because, over the years, I’ve learned that four of the most dangerous words in the Middle East are “once and for all.”
All these Islamist/jihadist movements — the Taliban, Hamas, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthis — have deep cultural, social, religious and political roots in their societies. And they have access to endless supplies of humiliated young men, many of whom have never been in a job, power or a romantic relationship: a lethal combination that makes them easy to mobilize for mayhem.
And that’s why, to this day, none of these movements have been eliminated once and for all. They can, though, be isolated, diminished, delegitimized and decapitated — as America has done with ISIS and Al Qaeda. But that requires patience, precision, lots of allies and alternatives that have legitimacy within the societies from which these young men emerge.
And so let me say loudly and clearly what I have been saying quietly in my past few columns: I am with President Biden when he told “60 Minutes” that it would be a “big mistake” for Israel “to occupy Gaza again.”
I believe that such a move could turn Israel’s humiliating tactical defeat at the hands of Hamas, which included unimaginable barbarism, into a long-term moral and military strategic crisis. It’s one that could entrap Israel in Gaza, draw the U.S. into another Middle East war and undermine three of America’s most important foreign policy interests right now: helping Ukraine wrestle free of Russia to join the West, containing China and shaping a pro-American bloc that includes Egypt, Israel, moderate Arab countries and Saudi Arabia, which could counterbalance Iran and fight the global threat of radical Islam.
If Israel goes into Gaza now, it will blow up the Abraham Accords, further destabilize two of America’s most important allies (Egypt and Jordan) and make normalization with Saudi Arabia impossible — huge strategic setbacks. It will also enable Hamas to really fire up the West Bank and get a shepherd’s war going there between Jewish settlers and Palestinians. Altogether, it will play directly into Iran’s strategy of sucking Israel into imperial overstretch and in that way weakening the Jewish democracy from within.
Iran’s No. 1 strategic objective with Israel has always been to ensure that Israel remains enmeshed in the West Bank, gets drawn into reoccupying southern Lebanon and, in Iran’s most fevered dreams, reoccupies Gaza. Such an Israel would be so morally, economically and militarily enfeebled, it could never threaten Iran’s nuclear program and hegemonic ambitions.
What should Israel do to ensure that an attack like the one launched by Hamas never happens again? I don’t know right now. I just know that whatever the answer is, it’s not mobilizing 360,000 traumatized Israeli reservists to launch into an urban war in one of the most densely populated places in the world. This will crush the Israeli economy and its international standing.
All these dilemmas must push Biden to sharpen his stance on the crisis.
Biden must realize that Benjamin Netanyahu is unfit to manage this war as a rational player. After such a colossal defeat, the most powerful and unifying thing Netanyahu could have done was call new Israeli elections in six or nine months — and announce that he would not be running; he is ending his career in politics, and therefore Israelis can trust that whatever decisions he makes about Gaza and Hamas now will have only the Israeli national interest in mind; he will not have in mind his own interest in staying out of jail on corruption charges, which requires his holding on to the right-wing crazies in his government (who actually fantasize about Israel reoccupying Gaza and rebuilding the Israeli settlements there) by chasing some big, short-term military victory that he can take to the Israeli electorate as a compensation for the debacle that just happened.
As one of Israel’s best military writers, Amos Harel of Haaretz, wrote on Friday: “There is an unusual combination of people at the top in Israel. On one hand, there is an unfit prime minister, a nearly Shakespearean figure who is facing the personal danger of an ignominious conclusion to an arguably brilliant career. Facing him are a military brass who are smitten and consumed with guilt feelings (and if only Netanyahu would bother displaying a smidgen of that). That’s not a perfect recipe for considered decision making.”
If Israel were to announce today that it has decided for now to forgo an invasion of Gaza and will look for more surgical means to eliminate or capture Hamas’s leadership while trying to engineer a trade for the more than 150 Israeli and other hostages whom Hamas is holding, it would not only avoid further traumatizing its own society, as well as Palestinian civilians in Gaza; it would also give Israel and its allies time to think through how to build — with Palestinians — a legitimate alternative to Hamas.
*Biden Has a Critical Advantage for 2024. He Should Make It Known.*
President Biden’s age is on the minds of American voters as they think about the 2024 election. It’s no wonder: In a poll I did last year, there was broad support (63 percent of Democrats, 55 percent of Republicans and 61 percent of independents) for establishing an upper age limit of 70 for any person to be sworn in as president. This past July, a Pew Research Center survey found that about half of respondents believed the best age range for a U.S. president was in the 50s — well below Mr. Biden’s 80 and Donald Trump’s 77.
As a pollster and strategist who has been involved in four Democratic presidential campaigns, including Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012, I don’t believe that age will determine this election. But it is a formidable reality that Mr. Biden and his team must deal with and transcend, just as Ronald Reagan did at age 73 in his 1984 re-election race. Mr. Reagan passed that test, removing age as a distraction for his campaign and voters and making the contest about “morning in America,” our economic turnaround and our leadership in the world. The 2024 election is going to hinge similarly on core issues and a vision that speaks directly to the lives and hopes of voters.
Getting past the age question won’t be easy. It will involve persuading voters in memorable ways and will require a deft touch. But this is a winnable race for the president, even if it sometimes seems his team is shielding him from the public. The fact is, he’s old. A failure to confront the issue risks reinforcing that impression rather than overcoming it. Americans will be watching him closely in big moments, like his trip to Israel this week to deal with one of the most significant crises of his presidency. The Biden team needs to get the president out in front of the public more, finding opportunities for him to talk about age with a directness and confidence that convinces people it isn’t the core issue. Talk about it now so you aren’t talking about it next summer, then use the fall debates in 2024 to deliver a Reaganesque line that puts the topic to bed.
If Mr. Trump becomes Mr. Biden’s opponent, this task is simpler. They’re both old, so I think the question of age will become moot for a lot of voters. Winning presidential candidates learn quickly not to launch attacks that can come back and bite them. Take Mitt Romney’s debate-stage effort in 2012 to cast Mr. Obama as unfit to be commander in chief over his handling of a deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. Mr. Obama’s stinging response won the president headlines praising his smackdown performance: “While we were still dealing with our diplomats being threatened, Governor Romney put out a press release, trying to make political points, and that’s not how a commander in chief operates,” Mr. Obama said.
*W.H.O. Chief: Doctors and Patients Face Impossible Choices in Gaza*
Today, Al Shifa Hospital, the largest health care facility in the Gaza Strip, is emblematic of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Already underresourced and overcrowded, it is now home to thousands of people who have sought refuge from Israeli airstrikes that rained down on their neighborhoods after the horrific and unjustified attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.
Al Shifa Hospital has always been under tremendous strain. When I visited in 2018, I met with patients and health workers and toured a dialysis unit and a neonatal intensive care ward, full of newborns in incubators. Their tentative grasp on life was sustained by diesel generators that powered the hospital when the electricity went off, as it did for several hours every day. Staff members, patients and their families faced difficult choices to make daily.
These choices are now seemingly impossible in the fallout from Oct. 7 — not just at Al Shifa Hospital but at northern Gaza’s other hospitals and clinics as well.
With no electricity and fuel running out in Gaza, within days hospital generators will fall silent, and the incubators, dialysis machines and other lifesaving medical equipment will shut down. Many of the most critically ill patients, including babies, whose lives have only just begun, will probably die. Attempting to move them is equally hazardous. Water scarcity is a grave concern for struggling patients, especially newborns.
Israel’s order to empty 23 hospitals treating over 2,000 patients in Gaza presents health workers with a horrifying choice: Force those in their care to make a journey that for many will be their last or stay and treat their patients under the impending threat of bombardment.
Health workers should never have to make choices like that, nor should they ever be targeted. Under international humanitarian law, all armed actors are obliged to proactively protect health facilities from intentional or collateral attack. But in this conflict, health facilities and health care have been struck repeatedly.
I deplore the attacks on health facilities in both Gaza and Israel, which have led to the deaths and injuries of health workers on both sides. The deaths of colleagues from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza brought even closer to home the dangers faced by humanitarian workers, including those providing health relief.
There’s still time and opportunity to prevent the worst-case scenario. The World Health Organization calls for the immediate and safe release of hostages seized from Israel and taken into Gaza by Hamas. According to the Israeli military, some 199 hostages seized from Israel that day — children, adults and older people — remain hostage in Gaza, many in need of medical treatment. And we hope for attacks on Israeli hospitals to cease as well; Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, which has treated both Israelis and Palestinians for years, has been hit by Hamas rocket attacks, damaging one of the few medical reference centers available to the people of Gaza.
We continue to appeal to all parties to abide by their obligations under international law to protect civilians and health facilities. We appeal to Israel to restore supplies of electricity and water and to support the establishment of a humanitarian corridor into Gaza.
In Cairo last week, I met with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, who generously agreed to facilitate the delivery of medical supplies to Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with the help of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.
On Saturday, the W.H.O. delivered a planeload of supplies to Egypt from our logistics hub in Dubai, and we are working to move these supplies into Gaza as rapidly as possible.
We appeal for sustained, unhindered and protected humanitarian access. This will help civilians to move to safety in Gaza, health facilities to be restocked with medicines and other supplies, fuel to reach hospitals to keep generators and the lifesaving equipment they support running, and clean water and food to arrive to sustain the weak and weary.
To be clear, as a United Nations agency, the W.H.O. is politically impartial and is committed to supporting the health and well-being of all Israelis and Palestinians. To that end, the agency established an official presence in Israel in 2019, adding to our existing office in the occupied territory. On my visits in 2018 and last year, I met with the ministers of health of both Israel and the occupied territory to discuss how the W.H.O. can better support both governments to promote, provide and protect the health care of their people. This included a visit to the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv, where I was encouraged by Israeli health specialists developing digital health initiatives in partnership with Palestinian communities.
Since Oct. 7, however, so many horrifying choices have been made — abhorrent attacks on civilians in Israel by Hamas and other armed groups, the seizing of hostages, the attacks on populated areas of Gaza.
What is needed now is another kind of decision making, one that ensures hospitals are kept operational, supplies are safeguarded and health workers and civilians in Israel and Gaza are protected and sustained.
Nelson Mandela once said, “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” At this fearful time, I appeal to all who have the power to make decisions that affect the health and well-being of so many people to choose, as Mr. Mandela implored, the way of hope.
*This Is What America Is Getting Wrong About China and Taiwan*
For a half-century, America has avoided war with China over Taiwan largely through a delicate balance of deterrence and reassurance.
That equilibrium has been upset. China is building up and flexing its military power; hostile rhetoric emanates from both Beijing and Washington. War seems likelier each day.
It’s not too late to restore the kind of balance that helped to keep the peace for decades, but it will require taking steps to ease China’s concerns. This will be difficult because of Chinese intransigence and the overheated atmosphere prevailing in Washington. But it is worth the political risk if it prevents war.
Deterrence came in the form of the implied use of U.S. military force to thwart a Chinese attack on Taiwan. Reassurance was provided by the understanding that the United States would not intrude on decisions regarding Taiwan’s eventual political status.
The United States and its regional allies must continue to create a robust military deterrence. But U.S. leaders and politicians also need to keep in mind the power of reassurance, try to understand China’s deep sensitivities about Taiwan and should recommit — clearly and unequivocally — to the idea that only China and Taiwan can work out their political differences, a stance that remains official U.S. policy.
During the Cold War, Beijing and Washington signed a series of communiqués related to Taiwan. One of them said the United States “reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.” This and other wording was deliberately ambiguous, but it was accepted by all sides as a commitment to avoid rocking the boat. China still views this arrangement as binding.
To be clear, it was China that began rocking the boat first.
Since 2016, when Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party was elected president of Taiwan (succeeding a more China-friendly administration), Xi Jinping has repeatedly brandished China’s military power with large-scale military exercises and other pressure tactics apparently meant to discourage independence sentiment on Taiwan.
U.S. political figures have rightly responded with rhetorical support for democratic Taiwan, by supplying it with weapons and by strengthening the U.S. military presence in the region. But the American reaction is also pouring fuel on the fire.
I have worked on U.S. defense strategy in various military roles for more than a decade. I recently traveled to Beijing, where I met with Chinese government and military officials, leading academics and experts from Communist Party-affiliated think tanks. During these talks it was clear that Beijing is far less concerned with U.S. efforts to enhance its military posture in the region — the deterrence side of the equation — than with the political rhetoric, which is seen in China as proof that the United States is moving away from past ambiguity and toward supporting Taiwan’s de facto independence.
They have plenty of evidence to point to.
In December 2016, Donald Trump became the first U.S. president or president-elect since the normalization of China-U.S. relations in 1979 to speak directly with a Taiwanese leader, when Ms. Tsai called to congratulate him on his election victory. President Biden has, on four occasions, contradicted the U.S. policy of ambiguity by saying we would support Taiwan militarily if China attacked. The number of U.S. Congress members visiting Taiwan — which China views as overt support for the island’s independence — reached a decade high last year, including an August 2022 trip by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House at the time and the highest-ranking U.S. official travel to Taiwan since the 1990s. That has continued this year: In June a nine-member congressional delegation, the largest in years, arrived in Taipei.
Provocative legislation has not helped. Last year the Taiwan Policy Act, which articulated support for Taiwan’s role in international organizations, was introduced in the Senate, and in July of this year the House passed a similar act. House Republicans introduced a motion in January to recognize Taiwan as an independent country.
Actions like these put great pressure on Mr. Xi, who won’t tolerate going down in history as the Chinese leader to have lost Taiwan. That would be seen in Beijing as an existential threat, potentially fueling separatist sentiment in restive regions like Tibet and Xinjiang.
For now, lingering doubts over Chinese military capabilities and the specter of U.S. and allied retaliation are enough to restrain Mr. Xi. But if he concludes that the United States has broken, once and for all, from its previous position on Taiwan and is bent on thwarting unification, he may feel that he must act militarily. The United States might be able to build the necessary military power in the region to deter a Chinese war of choice. But the level of dominance needed to stop Mr. Xi from launching a war he sees as necessary might be impossible to achieve.
Reassuring China would require Mr. Biden to reiterate that the United States does not support Taiwanese independence or oppose the island’s peaceful unification with China and that, ultimately, Taiwan’s fate is up to Taipei and Beijing. It would mean moving away from attempts to create international space for Taiwan and chastising Beijing when it pulls away Taipei’s diplomatic partners. The White House would also need to use what leverage it has to discourage members of Congress from visiting Taiwan and threaten to veto provocative legislation.
There would doubtless be blowback in Washington and Taipei, and Mr. Xi may already have made up his mind to seize Taiwan, regardless of the U.S. stance. But a politically neutral position on Taiwan is what the United States has followed for decades. Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and George H.W. and George W. Bush advocated peaceful dialogue between Taipei and Beijing to resolve their differences.
There also are longer-term repercussions to consider: If the combination of deterrence and reassurance fails and China attacks Taiwan, it will set a precedent in which Chinese leaders kill and destroy to achieve their goals. But if a pathway remains for China to eventually convince Taiwan’s people — through inducements or pressure — that it is in their interest to peacefully unify, then that may be a China that we can live with.
In the best-case scenario, the United States and China would reach a high-level agreement, a new communiqué, in which Washington reiterates its longstanding political neutrality and China commits to dialing back its military threats. This would avert war while giving China political space to work toward peaceful unification. That might mean using its clout to isolate Taiwan and eventually convince the island’s people that it should strike a deal with Beijing. But it isn’t Washington’s place to prevent the unification of the two sides — only to ensure that doesn’t happen through military force or coercion.
A war between the United States and China over Taiwan could be the most brutal since World War II. As politically difficult as it may be, U.S. leaders have a duty to try to prevent conflict, and that means speaking more softly but carrying a big stick.
1. Ya párenle. Tras la avalancha de renuncias en el gobierno federal, las aguas vuelven a su cauce. Salvo que haya más sorpresas, la renuncia de Rocío Nahle como secretaria de Energía será la última al interior del gabinete federal, indicó el presidente de México, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Los actuales secretarios y secretarias de Estado lo acompañarán hasta el fin de su mandato. El Presidente la despidió con palabras honrosas. Restó importancia a los comentarios de quienes sostienen que, por haber nacido en Zacatecas, las aspiraciones políticas para contender por la gubernatura de Veracruz de Nahle se verán afectadas. Ha dicho.
2. A la baja. En Zacatecas, David Monreal evade la rendición de cuentas, a pesar de que vive un panorama adverso en todos los órdenes. Ha perdido el control en temas cruciales como seguridad, educación y salud, además de pobreza, infraestructura y medio ambiente. O sea, todo. Monreal evade responsabilidades, ignorando problemas actuales y culpando al pasado. Zacatecas enfrenta altos índices de violencia, desapariciones forzadas y enfrentamientos entre bandas criminales. Incidentes graves, como adolescentes secuestrados y personas sometidas a trabajos forzados. Pero el gobernador se escuda bajo la frase: tenemos otros datos.
3. Toma forma. PAN, PRI, PRD y su inédita candidatura del Frente Amplio por México, encabezada por Xóchitl Gálvez, se mueven. En el “Manifiesto por las causas sociales y la democracia; iniciativa colibrí por Xóchitl”, que se difunde entre “los mexicanos de bien, progresistas, liberales, pensadores, dirigentes sociales”, y del cual Excélsior obtuvo una copia, personajes de la izquierda, como Marco Rascón, advierten que su suma a Gálvez “no es para restablecer viejos vicios, sino para que una nueva fuerza social y civil hecha gobierno construya las bases para una reconstrucción de la vida democrática”. Lo que viene es un bombardeo de ideas. ¡Prepárense!
4. Equidad astral. El eclipse solar 2023 que se registró el pasado sábado sirvió de propaganda a los políticos. El dirigente de Morena, Mario Delgado, compartió en sus redes que lo presenció junto a la coordinadora de la Defensa de la 4T, Claudia Sheinbaum, y otros políticos del partido guinda. Y lo admirable es que encontró una respuesta sobre quién será la próxima presidenta de México. “Cielo, danos una señal, es una C”, dijo, a lo que los presentes respondieron “es Claudia”, mientras aplaudían. Del otro lado bromearon con eclipsar a Morena en el 2024. Unas por otras. Equidad astral.
5. Por el combo. Aquello del “carro completo” era una cualidad del PRI que podría replicarse el año próximo. Ayer, Claudia Sheinbaum, coordinadora nacional de los Comités de la Defensa de la Cuarta Transformación, hizo un llamado a la unidad en Tabasco, tierra natal del presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador, ante destacados morenistas, con miras al 2024. “Vamos a ganar la Presidencia de la República, las dos terceras partes del Senado, la Cámara de Diputados, los municipios, las gubernaturas y las diputaciones locales”, presagió. Sin descanso, consolida el futuro de la democracia.
✒️#Opinion✍️✍️
#SinProtocolo
¿Segundo piso a la #4T?
Prometió @Claudiashein
Construyó Segundo Piso al Periférico de la #CDMX
Pero estuvo plagado de irregularidades.
Se reservó su información por la opacidad.
¿Hará lo mismo con la gestión de #AMLO?
*ATENTAMENTE*
*MAESTRO FEDERICO LA MONT*
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