Article published by the Gatestone Institute, 2 May 2021. © Richard Kemp

US President Joe Biden’s unconditional withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan by September this year has potentially grave and dangerous consequences far wider than that embattled country and is set to undermine the national security strategy he proudly unveiled only days before announcing his pull-out.

In 1982, Admiral Sir Henry Leach, head of the Royal Navy, told Margaret Thatcher that if Britain didn’t retake the Falkland Islands when Argentina invaded, ‘in another few months we shall be living in another country whose word counts for little’. He knew that failure to resist a dictator who seized sovereign territory by force would be a green light to such aggression everywhere. The same calculation underpinned President George H. W. Bush’s decision to unleash one of the most powerful armies in history following Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Far worse than failing to intervene is intervening to fail. The withdrawal from Afghanistan is just that. Biden did not order US forces there in 2001, but as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time, he strongly supported it. Later he said: ‘History will judge us harshly if we allow the hope of a liberated Afghanistan to evaporate because we failed to stay the course.’

It will not be history alone that judges Biden’s failure to stay the course now, but America’s allies, enemies and competitors around the world. His March 2021 National Security Strategic Guidance says:

‘Authoritarianism is on the global march, and we must join with likeminded allies and partners to revitalize democracy the world over. We will work alongside fellow democracies across the globe to deter and defend against aggression from hostile adversaries. We will stand with our allies and partners to combat new threats aimed Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 16 April 2021. © Richard Kemp

Over 50 per cent of Afghanistan is now controlled or violently contested by the Taliban, down from about three quarters before US-led forces threw them out of power after 9/11. Despite the country’s army and police being strengthened by two decades of international training and investment, it is hard to see how the Islamist militants can be prevented from regaining their 2001 position now that Joe Biden has announced the withdrawal of all US forces by September this year.

The Trump administration planned to pull out all US forces four months earlier, subject to conditions including a significant reduction of violence, meaningful negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government, the breaking of Taliban relations with Al-Qaida and an undertaking not to allow Afghanistan to be used as a base to attack the West. Predictably, none have been met. But that will not affect Biden’s plan which is based not on conditions but an arbitrary date.

We should now be prepared for a civil war even bloodier than anything witnessed so far and the downfall of the democratic government in Kabul. As well as an incessant campaign of violence against women, girls’ schools and anyone transgressing strict sharia laws in the distant provinces, the Taliban have been waging a vicious purge in Kabul and other cities against leaders of the more progressive civil society that has emerged since 2001. Targets for assassination include politicians, judges, lawyers, human rights worker, teachers, university lecturers and journalists: anyone who might lead or influence opposition to a return to fundamentalist rule.

More than 450 British troops have been killed and thousands more maimed in Afghanistan since 2001. As well as fighting the Taliban and other insurgents, our soldiers have been heavily engaged in supporting the Afghan security forces. More than 70,000 of their number have been killed, including nearly 10,000 since the ‘agreement for bringing peace’ was signed between the US and the Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Express, 14 April 2021. © Richard Kemp

It is not clear whether President Putin’s mobilisation towards Ukraine was motivated by a desire to warn President Biden against sanctions, to frighten the EU from backing them, rally flagging support at home in the face of dire economic conditions, or all three.

Whatever his rationale, it could lead to a conflict he didn’t intend.

Biden cannot afford to show anything other than strength towards Russia at this stage of his leadership, especially given his frequent suggestions of Trump-Russia collusion.

US sanctions that Putin hoped to deter look like they’re on the way. The EU – usually to be relied on to vacillate and buckle in the face of pressure – has shown uncharacteristic strength in its support for the Ukraine under Russian threats, backed by NATO.

Equally, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has stood more firmly than Putin expected.

One thing is clear: having decided to threaten Ukraine, Putin cannot show the weakness that would be exploited by his rivals were he to back down. He has to do something aggressive rather than just pretend he was conducting military manoeuvres.

That would be immensely damaging at home. He will not want to order a major invasion which would have much wider and potentially catastrophic consequences for Russia.

There are various tactical factors, including weather and a current lack of some necessary military assets on the ground.

More likely would be infiltration by deniable forces, such as the ‘little green men’ that took over the Crimea in 2014 or peacekeeping troops to protect the Russian speakers in Donbas that never get around to leaving.

Article published by the Gatestone Institute, 10 April 2021. © Richard Kemp

In March, US President Joe Biden issued his Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. Across the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson presented the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy to parliament. Both leaders expressed concern over the increasing challenges in the grey zone and promised measures to respond more effectively.

The grey zone is the space between peace and war involving coercive actions that fall outside normal geopolitical competition between states but do not reach the level of armed conflict. Actions in the grey zone are conducted by states often using proxies including terrorists, and also by terrorist organizations in their own right. Grey zone actions are aggressive and often ambiguous, deniable and opaque. They are intended to damage, coerce or influence, to destabilise target states or undermine the international status quo. They usually seek to avoid a significant military response, though are often designed to intimidate and deter a target state by threatening further escalation.

Grey zone actions are not new and have long been the prevalent form of conflict across the world. But as America and Britain both recognise, globalisation and technology are increasing the frequency and efficacy of such activities, and the speed at which they unfold. More actors are becoming involved, using increasingly powerful means of ‘grey warfare’, including cyber, space, internet, social media, digital propaganda and drones.

Grey zone techniques can include terrorist attacks, sabotage, assassination, blackmail, hostage-taking, espionage, subversion (such as funding and manipulation of political groups in a target country), cyber attacks, political warfare including lawfare, disinformation, propaganda, electoral influence and economic coercion. They sometimes involve military intimidation and conventional and unconventional military operations. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 2 March 2021. © Richard Kemp

Roy Greenslade, the former Guardian journalist, admitted this week that he supported the IRA terror campaign that killed hundreds of his country’s soldiers and police.

He wrote columns for An Phoblacht, Sinn Fein-IRA’s influential propaganda newspaper, which for decades was used to promote and justify Republican terrorism. He stood surety for John Downey, an IRA terrorist believed to have been involved in the 1982 Hyde Park bombing that killed four soldiers and seven horses. He was friends with Pat Doherty, a Sinn Fein politician accused of membership of the IRA Army Council.

I’ll let others question Mr Greenslade’s journalistic integrity, given that he effectively kept his allegiance secret for years while piously judging others on media ethics.

My concern, as a former British soldier who served in Northern Ireland, is what appears to be his attempt to rewrite the history of the Troubles, and to insult the memory of those who died trying to stop the violence.

In his article in the British Journalism Review, Mr Greenslade explains his conversion to republicanism took place in part on the basis of what he heard about ‘the security forces’ use of collusion, the deliberate failure by the authorities to act quickly enough in response to phone calls warning of bomb placements, and the willingness of the RUC and army to allow loyalist paramilitaries to bomb and kill with impunity’.

But what Mr Greenslade says he heard was a shocking distortion of Continue reading →

Article published by the Gatestone Institute, 23 February 2021. © Richard Kemp

Yet again we approach the depths of the annual Jew Hate Week around the world. Its organizers know better than to call it what it is. They brand their hatefest ‘Israel Apartheid Week’, but their true meaning and purpose is blindingly obvious. Since its early festerings in Toronto in 2005, Jew Hate Week has inflicted itself on the world, polluting universities from America to Australia and from South Africa to Northern Ireland.

Held on campuses at around this time each year, Jew Hate Week is the racist Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement’s flagship event for subverting university students to their malevolent cause. Palestinian-led, at the forefront of BDS are Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace in the US, and Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and War on Want in the UK. Democrat Squad members Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are among its main cheerleaders in America. In Britain, disgraced former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is a staunch supporter as are many of his party including members of parliament.

BDS trumpet their claim to support ‘freedom, justice and equality’ for the Palestinian people. They are less open about their desire to eradicate the Jewish state for fear they would lose backing from individuals and organizations that have a genuine desire to improve the lives of Palestinians but do not want to eliminate a whole country and its Jewish citizens.

Qatar-born Omar Barghouti, founder of BDS, has repeatedly rejected a two-state solution, instead advocating one state: ‘Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine.’ He makes clear that his definition of ‘Palestine’ includes the entirety of the State of Israel.

Barghouti’s fellow traveller, Harvard graduate, writer and activist Ahmed Moor agrees: ‘BDS does mean the end of the Jewish state’. Continue reading →

Letter published in the Belfast Telegraph, 16 February 2021. © Richard Kemp

Your article on Steven Rea’s recollections of his ex-wife Dolours Price seems to portray the ‘sensitive’ Price as a victim. Of course her husband speaks fondly of her, but your newspaper has a responsibility to temper emotion with objectivity, especially for younger readers who will be unaware of Price’s character as a hardened terrorist. By her own admission it was Price who in 1972 drove the abducted Jean McConville across the border where she received a bullet in the back of the head, and then hid her body. Failure to mention this does no justice to McConville’s seven youngest children, including six-year-old twins who survived on their own in the family flat, cared for by their 15-year-old sister. The unrepentant Price went on to bitterly oppose the cessation of the Provisional IRA terrorist campaign and the Good Friday Agreement. As these tragic events thankfully fade into history it’s especially important to give proper context.

Image: Jean McConville with three of her children in 1972

Article published by the Gatestone Institute, 11 February 2021. © Richard Kemp

The International Criminal Court (ICC) waited until after US President Joe Biden took the oath of office before unilaterally handing itself territorial jurisdiction over Israel — more than a full year since the pre-trial chamber was asked to rule on the matter. Mindful of President Donald J. Trump’s sanctions against ICC staff, including revoking Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s US entry visa, and his warnings against efforts to brand Israel and other allies as war criminals, court officials lacked the steel to make an announcement while he remained in the Oval Office.

The ICC has long had its sights on what it no doubt considers an unholy trinity: Israel, the US and Britain. Its reasons are twofold. First, these are the three Western democracies most active in using legitimate military force to defend their interests. This is anathema to the left-liberal doctrine of ICC officials and their soul-mates in such morally dissipated places as the UN Human Rights Council. Second, they wish to virtue signal, deflecting criticism that the court is biased against African states, which led to South Africa, Burundi and The Gambia threatening withdrawal in 2016. Yet by its charter, dealing with countries that lack the will or capability to bring their own to justice is the sole purpose of the ICC. This does apply to some states in Africa and elsewhere but demonstrably does not apply to Israel, the US or Britain, each of which have long-established and globally respected legal systems.

Bensouda failed to get her way with the US and UK. Despite having submitted more than 20,000 pages of documentation in support of her demand for a formal investigation into alleged crimes by US forces in Afghanistan over a 15-year period, the pre-trial chamber turned her down, in part due to a rightful US refusal to cooperate with a body that it considers likely to abuse its power. Having first Continue reading →