Follow NewsClips channel at Brighteon.com for more updatesSubscribe to Brighteon newsletter to get the latest news and more featured videos: https://support.brighteon.com/Subscribe.html

Follow NewsClips channel at Brighteon.com for more updatesSubscribe to Brighteon newsletter to get the latest news and more featured videos: https://support.brighteon.com/Subscribe.html

Follow NewsClips channel at Brighteon.com for more updatesSubscribe to Brighteon newsletter to get the latest news and more featured videos: https://support.brighteon.com/Subscribe.html

Foreign Affairs The May 17 Agreement’s Failure Is a Warning About Lebanon The current peace process could well fall into the traps of 1983. (Photo by Fadel Itani/NurPhoto via Getty Images) “War is the continuation of politics by other means” is Clausewitz’s most famous dictum.  Lebanon has suffered far too much from the serial failures of diplomacy and the shortcomings of politics, necessitating the use of “other means.” Now yet again, diplomats and statesmen are trying to induce the country and its powerful antagonists to reach a political accommodation that checks the worst instincts of warring factions more powerful than the state itself.  Last week in Washington, Israeli and Lebanese diplomats met under American auspices during an American-engineered ceasefire. Efforts are under way to establish direct talks between Israel and the government of Lebanon. Yet the sorry record of diplomacy to resolve Lebanon’s travails is a cautionary tale for those who today are trying yet again to establish rules of the game compelling enough to convince all contesting parties that war is the least favorable option. For aspiring peacemakers, there is no better cautionary example than the abortive May 17 Agreement—the U.S.-brokered accord signed on May 17, 1983 between Israel and Lebanon in the aftermath of the 1982 Lebanon War.  The agreement’s central provision was that Israel would withdraw its forces from Lebanon contingent upon the withdrawal of Syrian forces (which had been in Lebanon since 1976) and the reestablishment of Lebanon’s sovereign authority in the South, where Palestinian guerilla forces had effectively ruled since the Cairo Agreement (1969). This conditionality created a built-in dependency: Israel’s retreat was tied to (1) Syrian compliance, which only materialized in 2005, and (2) the (abortive) consolidation of state authority in the South, a task that remains unrealized. The 1983 agreement effectively justified the continued Israeli military presence in the South, all but guaranteeing its failure. The most consequential—and controversial—terms of the agreement concerned postwar security in the South: A security zone in southern Lebanon was implicitly authorized.  Israel was permitted to maintain security coordination mechanisms inside Lebanese territory.  These arrangements included cooperation with local militias, especially the South Lebanon Army, a proxy force established and funded by Israel after 1976.  Although the agreement avoided explicitly calling for permanent Israeli occupation, it institutionalized a framework that recognized Israel’s right to retain influence and operational freedom in the South even after formal withdrawal (realized only in 2000, when Israel withdrew unilaterally). While not a peace treaty, the agreement included: Commitments to end the state of war  Restrictions on hostile activities across the border  Movement toward normalization under U.S. auspices  These terms were then and remain today politically explosive in Lebanon, where normalization with Israel, while no longer taboo, remains widely opposed. Syrian-backed factions in particular argued that the May 17 Agreement limited Lebanon’s freedom to host foreign forces (implicitly targeting Syria and Palestinian groups). Like today’s efforts, the agreement allowed Israeli security demands to shape Lebanese internal arrangements.  As a consequence, Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon was tied not only to narrow, if significant security conditions, but also to a wide-ranging restructuring of Lebanon’s sovereignty in ways favorable to Israel. The assassination of Bachir Gemayel in September 1982 had a profound—arguably decisive—impact on the fate of the May 17 Agreement. Even though it was signed months later, his death removed the one Lebanese leader who was most capable (and willing) to implement it. Gemayel, as president-elect and leader of the Lebanese Forces, was central to the strategy behind the agreement. He had close ties with Israel dating back to the civil war, and was expected to negotiate and legitimize a postwar order that recognized and accommodated extraterritorial Israeli security demands in southern Lebanon. More than any other personality, he commanded the coercive capacity to impose compliance upon Lebanon’s powerful and influential politico-military factions. Gemayel’s assassination didn’t just delay the May 17 Agreement—it undermined its entire domestic political foundation. His death transformed the agreement from a potentially enforceable (if controversial) political settlement into a fatally compromised paper framework with no viable path to implementation. Without Gemayel, the Agreement lacked a domestic champion committed to its enforcement. It became instead dependent on fragile external diplomacy, which ultimately collapsed under internal opposition, Syrian resistance, and continuing Israeli occupation. Syria refused to withdraw, and the domestic Lebanese opposition (both militias and political factions) rejected normalization in the aftermath of Gemayel’s assassination. Without him, the Lebanese central government lacked the capacity to enforce the deal. The agreement was never implemented and was formally abrogated by Lebanon in 1984. When the framework collapsed, Israel concluded that no reliable Lebanese or regional partner could deliver. In 1985, it implemented a partial, unilateral withdrawal from most of Lebanon, establishing a security zone along the border. The line is the basis for Israel’s current deployment.  Today’s diplomats be advised: Rather than ending Israel’s military role in Lebanon, the May 17 Agreement attempted to transform it from overt occupation to consensually regulated, semi-permanent security control—a shift that proved untenable for Lebanon’s political class. After Bachir’s death, his brother Amin became president. Amin lacked Bachir’s authority over militias, and also his decisiveness. He pursued a more cautious, balancing approach between Israel, Syria, and Lebanon’s contesting and fragmented internal factions. As a result, the May 17 Agreement, when eventually signed by Amin, reflected more an imposed, externally driven (especially by the U.S.) agreement that compromised Lebanese sovereignty and less one internally anchored in a tenuous Lebanese political consensus. Today’s aspiring peacemakers beware: This critical weakness at the heart of the diplomatic process made the agreement’s central mechanism—conditional Israeli withdrawal—effectively unworkable. Without a Lebanese champion with the power and intent to implement its controversial provisions, the agreement’s framework for a managed Israeli withdrawal with guarantees was stillborn. Instead, Israel shifted toward a more unilateral approach, eventually establishing its security zone in southern Lebanon (from 1985–2000) without a functioning bilateral agreement. As the latest generation of Lebanon’s peace (and war)makers confront Lebanon’s predicament, the May 17 Agreement stands as an object lesson in the fraught nature of diplomatic efforts to empower a sovereign Lebanese government capable and committed both to keeping domestic peace and to containing the interests of erstwhile foreign friends and enemies. The May 17 Agreement established both the parameters of potential agreement and a cautionary reminder of the agreement’s inherent limitations. Its failure stands as a warning for those who seek to reaffirm the value of diplomacy in an era all too often plagued by war. The post The May 17 Agreement’s Failure Is a Warning About Lebanon appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics On Mass Surveillance, Will the Deep State Win Again? Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald worry Congress will reauthorize a controversial intelligence tool. For nearly two decades, Congress has obediently renewed one of the federal government’s most expansive and unconstitutional domestic surveillance authorities, typically with total bipartisan enthusiasm, little floor debate, and even less public attention. Last Thursday morning, at 2 a.m., House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) kept that tradition alive, summoning members back to the Capitol in the dead of night for what Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) accurately labeled “a secret vote to reauthorize FISA while America sleeps.” That law, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, was first enacted in 2008, when Congress voted to retroactively authorize parts of a secret warrantless surveillance program constructed under the George W. Bush administration, after it was exposed in December 2005 by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times. They revealed how under a presidential order signed in 2002, the NSA had been monitoring the international calls and emails of people inside the United States without warrants, targeting hundreds of Americans. The whistleblower Edward Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald later exposed the true scale of NSA domestic wiretap programs, which targeted virtually every American citizen under an internal agency motto of “collect it all.” Ever since that law was enacted, there has been a gradual expansion of the executive branch’s surveillance authorities and shredding of Americans’ Fourth Amendment protections, which this outlet has covered in depth. Under the pretext of targeting foreigners abroad, Section 702 has become a vehicle for warrantless backdoor searches of Americans’ private communications, with the FBI conducting up to 3.4 million such queries in 2021 alone. Those abuses triggered a reform battle in April 2024 that ultimately failed, when Johnson, a Constitutional lawyer, abandoned his longheld opposition to mass domestic spying and cast the deciding vote to reject a warrant requirement amendment, extending the program to April 20, 2026.  Last Friday, three days before the sunset date, a vote in the House for a clean renewal of Section 702 failed, despite a full court press from the White House and to the surprise of most people who have followed the battle for surveillance reform.  Patrick Eddington of the Cato Institute was one of the few who predicted that outcome, telling The American Conservative two days before the vote that he expected “at least a double digit group of GOP House members” to vote against a renewal, which is exactly what happened on Friday, when 20 Republicans joined most Democrats to block Section 702 reauthorization. Eddington correctly identified three in particular—Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX), Ralph Norman (R-SC), and Morgan Griffith (R-VA)—as key votes against, with all three having voted for a warrant requirement amendment in 2024 and each of them noticeably absent from a Tuesday night Rules Committee meeting where the panel voted to bring a clean reauthorization to the floor.  Eddington sees the vote as representing something much larger than a mere procedural defeat for Johnson. “I think what this speaks to is probably the beginning of the end for Trump,” he told The American Conservative. “So many more voters who went for him, even those who went for him three times, are walking away from him. There are members of the House who now feel they can take some more distance from this guy with less political risk.”  He also attributed the outcome to outside pressure from the Senate, pointing to a letter released by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) to colleagues referencing a secret FISA court opinion from last month which he said “found major compliance problems” with how Section 702 surveillance was being used by three-letter agencies and revealing that multiple administrations have now relied on a “secret legal interpretation” of the law. Wyden posted on X that he sent a “classified letter” about that “secret legal interpretation” of FISA section 702, warning that “every American should be concerned” but declining to give Americans any additional information on it by, for instance, using his constitutional rights under the Speech or Debate clause to read classified materials into the congressional record as others have done in the past. For now, Section 702 survives on a 15-day temporary extension, and the prospects for blocking a clean renewal of the government’s surveillance authorities remain uncertain. Greenwald, whose reporting alongside Snowden’s disclosures first revealed the true scope of NSA mass surveillance, frequently says that “the deep state always gets what it wants,” though he told The American Conservative that he “has been through about four of these and got [his] hopes up every time.” During a livestream last Friday, Greenwald sustained that pattern, holding up some hope that there were enough votes in Congress to stop reauthorization. Tucker Carlson, who has covered surveillance overreach extensively on his show, seemed even more skeptical. “I doubt it,” he told The American Conservative when asked whether Trump’s push for a clean renewal could still be stopped. “He’s determined. It’s very dark.” As Carlson explained in a monologue last week, Trump’s reversal on FISA, and his insistence on a clean renewal, may ultimately serve Israeli interests, providing that government with tools to monitor, manipulate, and neutralize perceived threats to its survival. “All of a sudden the President is advocating for this new law,” Carlson said. “Why could that possibly possibly be?” “Well there are a couple of clues,” he continued, pointing to the raw intelligence sharing agreement between the NSA and Israeli intelligence, first revealed by Snowden and reported by Greenwald, under which Americans’ signals intelligence data is handed over “to be used, God knows how.” He also pointed to a 2024 presentation by Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), a security state loyalist and then-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in which the Congressman advocated for using Section 702 authorities against American college students protesting the war in Gaza. To his point, a “Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations,” in 2024 told Congress that FISA 702 was needed for “the safety and security of Israel.” Carlson has more than a passing interest in FISA Section 702, having been the subject of domestic surveillance himself. “They admitted spying on me,” he told The American Conservative.  When the NSA responded to Carlson’s 2021 allegation that the agency had been monitoring his communications, it said only that he had never been an intelligence “target,” a carefully lawyered denial that conspicuously avoided saying his communications had never been queried under programs like FISA Section 702. The NSA’s response was also unusual since three-letter agencies typically neither confirm nor deny whether any specific individual’s communications have been collected.  On how Trump, another documented victim of FISA abuse, and Johnson, who built his political identity around opposition to FBI overreach, both ended up as the leading advocates for a clean renewal of those spying powers, Carlson pointed to institutional capture and coercion. “I think it’s a combination of carrot and stick,” he said.  “But I’ve noticed that members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, especially the chairmen, are invariably weak and screwed-up people and therefore easy to control,” Carlson observed. “Alcoholics, compulsive philanderers, etc,” he added, noting that disgraced Rep. Eric Swalwell, who is currently dealing with a sex scandal that seems likely to end his political career, was a member of the House Intelligence Committee. The post On Mass Surveillance, Will the Deep State Win Again? appeared first on The American Conservative.