POLITICOSITY

Gotcha's and Double Standards in the Nuclear Dance

2009-09-26T08:45:00.000-07:00

As usual, the US was looking for it's "Ah-huh!" moment, or as George Bush called it, "the smoking gun". We've been here before: US politicians are always looking for that illusive "gotcha" so well pulled off by Adlai Stevenson. But they haven't been successful in repeating it, and afterall, that was the Cold War.

And so it goes with Iran. The dangerous nuclear dance that America is playing in foreign policy circles, a black-tie ball no less, has some others in attendance: Israel. And now, news that proliferation is on the minds of many more, even amongst NPT participants!

This should come as no shock. We have known Iran has a nuclear program for some time. But their ambiguity on whether their program is constituted for good or nefarious purposes is, and was in 2007, open to debate. This bothers Israel, that has it's own nuclear program. More about that in a moment.

In fact, Iran cancelled their first nuclear program (launched in the 1950's under the Shah, with the help of the United States as part of the Atoms for Peace program) after the 1979 revolution, but “reinstituted” the program in 1982, according to a 1988 CIA Report. This didn't bother Israel too much back then, which set about a political policy of engaging the "periphery states" according to Trita Parsi, Iranian-Swedish-American scholar, as a way to offset their relations with Arab states. This is outlined in his wonderfully researched book, "Treacherous Alliance", so I won't repeat it here.

This week we find that Iran disclosed, as part of their requirement with the IAEA, that they had opened a new enrichment facility. It seems though, that Iran has not yet committed anything illegal under the NPT. The West has now demanded "access" to this facility, and by all reports, that was what Iran had intended. The West touted it as "secret".

Of course, as soon as Iran disclosed their new facility, Western security agencies countered that they were actually "aware" of the facilities for up to a year, and that Iran only disclosed their facility since they had become aware the US, Britain and France knew - I'm not going to try to guess where those agencies got their intelligence, but anyone could speculate. They claimed DISCOVERY! and once Iran came to realize fairly recently that the facility was no longer secret, Washington found itself in a race with Iran to reveal the facility to the international community.

"The Western leaders made it clear that they did not believe that the site had a civilian role, being what one US official said was "the right size" to produce weapons grade uranium but of no use for nuclear fuel production," according to AFP.

The Russian's and Chinese are not buying it, AFP goes on, "Russia appeared to harden its support for new sanctions against Tehran, and China said it had taken note of the information and had urged Iran to cooperate with any probe by the International Atomic Energy Agency".

However, under the IAEA requirements, they only actually require that it be informed six months before an enrichment facility comes online, and this new location is at least that far from being completed. Nonetheless, the US stepped up efforts to have their "demands" met: although Iran had already promised to do so prior to the the IAEA publicly saying hours before the “demands” that Iran had every intention of doing so.

The hawkish annoucement was accompanied by President Barack Obama demanded that the Iranian government “come clean” about US long-standing accusations of a nuclear weapons program, and further, said he would not rule out military action if they refused, that the new site was “inconsistent with a peaceful program” and that the nation was “breaking rules that all nations must follow.” Really?

Let's not forget how Iran came to be accused of possessing a military nuclear program, or indeed wanted to own their own nuclear weapons. [For the record, I'd like to state that I don't doubt Iran is seeking to exercise an option in building a nuclear weapons program, but is doing so very carefully, secretly, and slowly - trying to stay as much under the radar as possible].

By now it is no secret that Israel has a nuclear weapons program, aided and abetted by the United States although their posture is "nuclear ambiguity". Israel is also, not a signatory to the NPT. They have also sought different rules!

The Arab world is no friend of Iran either, but it doesn't stop them from opposing Israel's nuclear weapons, which they regard as more of a threat than Iran's. Likely, if Iran got a bomb too, Saudi Arabia may seek to get nukes also. Certainly they would if Israel disclosed their nuclear weapons program. While the UN has for year attempted to make the Middle East nuclear free, Israel's interest lies in nuclear dominance, superiority and monopoly.

Iran's purported nuclear program is a direct reaction to this. To them, along with Israel's capability to deploy nuclear weapons through the Jericho missile and modified littoral submarines. In other words Irans threat calculus is the sum of capability plus intent. Certainly Israel's rhetoric doesn't give Iran pause or comfort: Israel has both the means and the intent. It has said as much. Repeatedly. It is simply waiting for an all clear from a friendly US administration, and an Arab compromise. Could a settlement of the Palestinian occupation, a thorn in the side of Israel's reproachmont with the Arab world, be the linchpin for Obama? It may certainly drive a wedge between those causes Iran assists (Hamas, and Hizbullah), that are hostile, rightly or wrongly, to Israel.

As John Pilger writes: “In fact, Iran possess not a single nuclear weapon, nor has it ever threatened to build one; the CIA estimate that, even given the political will, Iran is incapable of building a nuclear weapon before 2017, at the earliest. Unlike Israel and the United States, Iran has abided by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it was an original signatory, and has allowed routine inspections under its legal obligations -- until gratuitous, punitive measures were added in 2003, at the behest of Washington. No report by the International Atomic Energy Agency has ever cited Iran for diverting its civilian nuclear programme to military use.”

Back to Israel though. Whereas Iran, a signatory of the NPT and providing disclosure of nuclear programs to the IAEA, regardless of what one thinks of the Iranian regime, or their anti-Israeli and sometimes anti-semetic rants, recieves world condemnation (which they should, don't get me wrong), Israel's nuclear weapons program is not questioned, despite the IAEA's requests to inspections. Even Avner Cohen, author of the book, "Israel and the Bomb" has argued that if Israel acknowledged its nuclear waepons program, it would allow Israel to take part constructively in non-proliferation efforts. This double standard is what keeps Iran to its threat calculus (and that US troops occupy countries to the east and west of them). Israel must declare their secret nuclear facilities, at Demona, Negev, Soreq and other places.

The Obama adminsitration should require the Israeli's to reveal their nuclear position and allow inspection (aid could be conditional upon verification), introduce and encourage sign a modified NPT agreement, move toward nuclear disarmament with neep cuts in the US arsenal, and encourage a nuclear free Middle East. Without that guarantee, not only is the United States losing a valuable opportunity to move toward elimination of nuclear weapons broadly, but if Iran was able to begin nuclear ordinance manufacturing, who knows how many other states could join Israel in a Middle East nuclear arms race: Syria? Saudi Arabia? attempting to counter a threat to both Israel and Iran.

Bitter Fruit

2009-09-25T11:24:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, I have quite a penchant for a little 'light reading' and my interest in US foreign policy. Consequently, I read two books over the summer that got me thinking about President Obama's foreign policy, vis-a-vis, Afghanistan, or as it is now called, the Af/Pak Theater. And theater it has become.

The two books were , Thomas M Kane's book, "The Roots of US Foreign Policy" and Christopher Preble's, "Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War against Al Qaeda". It is the latter book that turned out to be the largest wake-up, and as a "progressive" the most sobering. Although it was published in 2004, it has reached saliency only now since Obama has come to power, and the fruits of the Afghan conflict are being layed bare for the world to see.

A biography of Preble can be found at the CATO Institute for anyone interested. His other two books, The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous and Less Free and John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap, while filled with pro-CATO propaganda, are easy to read and have a sound theoretical base, backed by good evidence to support his central theses.

While I would usually agree in a broad sense most of the assumptions of Preble (afterall, he is the member of a group of scholars, the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy that is opposed to the increasingly-prevalent geopolitical philosophy of the neo-cons and oppose pursuing a US Empire), it is the premise that renewing the war against Al Qaeda, primarily for the Obama Administration this is in Afghanistan, but also elsewhere in the world, will serve to make the United States more secure. This seems to have penetrated the heart of the Obama Administration's policy toward the conflict in Iraq, and propelled it toward a much larger conflagration with the Islamic world - not solely in Afghanistan, but those states on the periphery: Iran and Pakistan, but certainly not limited to them.

Obama's first articulation of this policy was in the first debate between he and John McCain in September 2008.

This video only reinforces what he said on Meet the Press in July last year. While not articulating the whole of his plan, he certainly forshadowed what was to come.

Let's outline Obama's basic ideas:
1. Troop levels in Afghanistan need to increase
2. Illiminate the threat of cross-border incursions from Taliban
3. Afghanistan will be the "Central Front" on the war against terrorism (and he lays out a myriad of excuses as to why US Soldiers have to be on-the-ground)

I'm not surprized so much by this expansion of US presence as I am that a CATO fellow has made headway with the Obama Adminsitration, since 'libertarian' populism has penetrated much of the national discourse lately. And not so much with advancing the war in Afghanistan either, but bringing to bear the notion of somehow "completing" the "war against terrorism", which Bush the Younger begin in 2001. It might lead one to the impression that Obama is using the book as a "roadmap" to the conflict in Afghanistan. With typical administration caveats, certainly the getting out of Iraq part.

Be that as it may, since Obama was elected, the situation in Afghanistan has changed. Conflicts do that. By May 2009, Obama was hastily talking about protecting Islamabad, and creating an AFPAK strategy, as remnants of the Taliban were moving into the Swat Valley. It created high-anxiety in Washington.

[I also highly recommend watching the second part of the above video. The views and voices represented there are not always ones we will hear in the United States, unfortunately]

"We're not going to win this war." That was what Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the senior British commander in Afghanistan, said almost a year ago, in coming weeks. While Carleton-Smith stopped short of saying that forces in Afghanistan will "lose" the war, he said that they could not deliver a "decisive military victory, " and that the best they might do, over a period of years, would be to reduce the Taliban insurgency "to a manageable level . . . (so) that it's not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan Army."

While Carleton-Smith was one of the first, he is by no means the last. We can add to that list a growing number of generals dissatisfied with the outcome of the conflict that has left 1400 coalition troops dead, and an untold number of Afghans.

Even the US head of forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McCrystal himself, from a story in that bastion of liberal news, the Wall Street Journal was quoted in August as saying, "The Taliban Are Winning". It certainly doesn't inspire much confidence. The WSJ goes on, "The Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan, the top American commander there said, forcing the U.S. to change its strategy in the eight-year-old conflict by increasing the number of troops in heavily populated areas like the volatile southern city of Kandahar, the insurgency's spiritual home." That is the same Kandahar, where there has been the highest concentration of coalition deaths thoughout the entire conflict.

But the American people want out too! A CBS-New York Times survey in late July found 33 percent saying the war was going well and 57 percent saying it was going badly or very badly. By early August a CNN poll found Americans, by 54 percent to 41 percent, said they oppose the Afghan war that almost all Americans favored after 9/11 and Obama said in 2008 was the right war for America to fight.

So, Mr. Obama, why are we fighting an unpopular, unwinnable war, that has become messy, slow and dirty? Why are we squandering the treasury, during the worst recession in American history, building up our debt for future generations to pay off (if they ever can)? And civilians too bear much of the impact. The Afghan "surge" has only brought about more misery, death and destruction. More soldiers, which is what Congress has been asked to consider, will only perpetuate this.

Our continuation in Afghanistan will only bring about more bitter fruit, and enable the expansion of conflict in the Islamic world, as we have recently seen in US action in Somalia, as as the civilian count rises, sow the seeds for bitter harvest, generations from now.