Duck doings

Today, at the Duck of Minerva, I blogged "New 'crimes against humanity'?" The piece considers the claims various political figures have tossed about concerning biofuel production. I also note some additional uses of this phrase in contemporary political debates.

On May 6, I blogged "The taboo," which is about the lack of debate concerning Israeli nuclear weapons -- especially in the US. Why is OK to talk of obliterating Iran, but not OK to talk about Israel's arsenal? [Note: this post originally appeared here, but I'm noting the Duck cross-posting because it was mentioned in a Chronicle of Higher Education footnoted from academic blogs post.]

Finally, May 2, I posted "Power outage" about the apparent decline in home runs in baseball following the most recent crackdowns against steroid use by players. Since posting some early season data, the major league HR rate has risen to 40.7 at bats per homer (from 41.8 in April). That's still down significantly from the rate during the rest of the aughts.


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The Taboo

Political Scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt received a lot of heat for their recent work about the power of the Israeli lobby inside the United States.

Mearsheimer and Walt raised issues that are rarely discussed in the United States. Indeed. some describe this topic as "the third rail" of US foreign policy debate.

Now that the power of "the Lobby" has been made part of the US public debate, Israel's nuclear weapons program should also be scrutinized more publicly. Ordinarily, that subject is taboo.

Lew Butler (who used to chair the Ploughshares Fund) explained in an op-ed in the SF Chronicle, November 30, 2007:

Estimates are that there are probably as many as 200 [nuclear weapons] in the Israeli arsenal, including thermonuclear (hydrogen) ones.

What is surprising is that there is almost never any public discussion in the United States, and certainly none in the White House or the Congress, about these weapons.

...Clearly, the Bush administration is not going to talk publicly about our understanding, if any, with Israel about its nuclear weapons. And no member of Congress is rushing to get into a subject as politically delicate as this one. That leaves it to those of us in private life to begin the debate, for the sake of the United States and Israel.

Part of the reason nobody wants to talk about Israeli nuclear weapons is that any debate would quickly reveal American hypocrisy. How can the US put pressure on Iran or North Korea about their proliferation if it turns a blind eye to Israel?

The unspoken basis for U.S. policy about Israel's nukes seems to be that we don't want our enemies to have such weapons but we don't worry as much if our friends, like Israel, Pakistan and India, have them.

However, the lack of debate about Israel's arsenal occasionally causes US political leaders to make careless and immoral threats. Hillary Clinton's recent warning that she would "obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel led me to note the following in comments:

I don't know why Israel's nuclear force isn't sufficient to deter Iran's. Estimates suggest that it has 100s of deliverable weapons, some in the form of accurate cruise missiles on relatively invulnerable submarines.

Butler asks a set of related questions

Is there any understanding between Israel and the United States, its principal source of military aid, about their use? If so, does the understanding cover "no first use," similar to the policy advocated in the United States at the height of the Cold War? What would the United States do if Israel were ever under an attack that might lead it to a nuclear response? Has the United States ever talked with Israel about its refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? For Israel, are the weapons more of a danger to its security than a defense?

I see no reason to avoid public debate about these issues.

An honest discussion about Israel's arsenal might lead the US to adopt policies that would reduce its hypocrisy. For example, achieving genuine nonproliferation in the Middle East might require Israel to abandon its reliance upon nuclear weapons. Alternatively, perhaps the US and the regional states could embrace some kind of mutual deterrence based on Iran maintaining a secure second strike force. Iran does not currently have a nuclear-armed ally willing to extend deterrence on its behalf.

How would the US respond if Russia announced that it would obliterate Israel if it used nuclear weapons against Iran?


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Clinton: When to obliterate Iran

I have some security question fors Senator Clinton. First, what policy choices should the U.S. pursue so as to avoid "doing something that would be reckless, foolish, and tragic."

CLINTON: Well, the question was, if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, what would our response be? And I want the Iranians to know that if I am president, we will attack Iran. And I want them to understand that. Because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society. Because whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program, in the next 10 years during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That's a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that. Because that, perhaps, will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish, and tragic.

Certainly, Dick Cheney was wrong pretending that deterrence cannot work against Iran.

However, it is morally reprehensible to talk lightly of obliterating a society. Would the U.S. really punish millions of innocent people if their government acted reprehensively? How could this be consistent with just war theory? Just think about proportionality for one moment.

Do all the Catholics in Pennsylvania who apparently voted for Clinton know about this?


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Duck

Yesterday, at the Duck of Minerva, I posted "History lesson: PA 1980."

April 21, I blogged "Nuclear umbrella" concerning what the Democratic candidates said in the California debate about nuclear deterrence and proliferation in the Middle East.

From Friday April 11, you can find "Teaching from the blogosphere."


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Non-Proliferation Perspective

This fact is remarkable:

Signed by all of the world's nations except India, Israel, and Pakistan (North Korea withdrew in 2003), it [the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] empowered the IAEA to control and monitor the spread of nuclear technology—all with a budget of only $350 million a year, less than that of the Washington, D.C., police department.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is far more important to global politics than is the DC police force.

Why? Well, despite the recent NIE, the Bush administration is still selling the idea of Iran as a nuclear threat.

The IAEA is thus an important buffer preventing the use of force against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Keep this in mind as the world continues to debate the Bush administration's view of Iran: The IAEA, of course, was correct about Iraq's nuclear program -- when the Bush administration was very wrong.

Though hawks in the Bush administration doubted its value, the IAEA was recognized for its successes in 2005, when it won the Nobel Peace Prize.


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Missing Joe Biden: Iran-Pakistan edition

South Carolina is hosting a Democratic primary today and even though John Edwards has been creeping up on Hillary Clinton in some recent polls, the media mostly frames the contest as a two horse race.

Meanwhile, I've been recalling a few of the campaign highlights from candidates already out of the running.

For example, consider this cogent point made by Senator Joe Biden in the October 30 presidential candidate forum at Drexel in Philadelphia. He was questioned by NBC's Tim Russert, who was trying to get the candidate to make one of those stupid issue pledges:

Russert: Senator Biden, would you pledge to the American people that Iran would not build a nuclear bomb on your watch?

Biden: I would pledge to keep us safe. If you told me, Tim -- and this is not -- this is complicated stuff; we talk about this in isolation. The fact of the matter is, the Iranians may get 2.6 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium.

But the Pakistanis have hundreds -- thousands of kilograms of highly-enriched uranium. If by attacking Iran to stop them from getting 2.6 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium, the government in Pakistan falls, who has missiles already deployed with nuclear weapons on them that can already reach Israel, already reach India, then that's a bad bargain.

Biden: Presidents make wise decisions informed not by a vacuum in which they operate, by the situation they find themselves in the world.

I will do all in my power to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, but I will never take my eye off the ball. What is the greatest threat to the United States of America: 2.6 kilograms of highly enriched uranium in Tehran or an out-of-control Pakistan? It's not close.

Now there's a guy who knew what he was talking about -- at least on this question.


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What Iranian nuclear program?

This is all over the blogosphere, but I wanted to save the link for myself. The latest official National Intelligence Estimate for Iran (public version) says that Iran is NOT developing a nuclear weapon. They stopped military work years ago:

We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program

Because Iran has a uranium enrichment program, the NIE also says this in the following clause: "we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons."

More conclusions:

We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.

We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon.

Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005. Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.

As Patrick Jackson notes, this part of the NIE is interesting given what the US has been saying about Iran's President these past two years:

Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs. This, in turn, suggests that some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might—if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible—prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program.

We just might get a negotiated solution yet.

It seems quite unlikely now that the U.S. could muster a case for war before the end of the Bush administration.


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At the Duck

Readers might be interested in my recent posts at the Duck of Minerva blog:

Today, I blogged "Sarah Sewall and COIN." It concerns the efforts of the leader of a Harvard Human Rights center to make counterinsurgency less deadly to civilians.

Thursday, October 11, I blogged "Securing Our Survival" about a security conference at the University of Pittsburgh. The meeting focused on both global warming and nuclear proliferation.

Tuesday, October 2, I took note of a University of Chicago professor's appearance on Comedy Central: "Mearsheimer on Colbert."

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A look back at February 2003

I was cleaning up some files on my hard drive today and found a letter to the editor that I wrote in February 2003. It was in response to syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer's op-ed piece called "Bracing for the Apocalypse." I won't quote extensively from it here. Read it if you want to recall what the American foreign policy debate was like pre-invasion of Iraq.

Short version: Democrats and other critics were being bashed and the Bush administration was walking tall. This is from an extended tirade against Clinton:

The Second Gulf War is about to begin. This is not the Apocalypse. But it is excellent preparation for it. You don't get to a place like this overnight. It takes at least, oh, a decade. We are now paying the wages of the 1990s, our holiday from history....[This] is how one acts on holiday: Mortal enemies are dealt with not as combatants, but as defendants...

On June 19, 2000, the Clinton administration solved the rogue-state problem by abolishing the term and replacing it with ``states of concern.'' Unconcerned, the rogues prospered, arming and girding themselves for big wars. Which are now upon us.

On Sept. 11, the cozy illusions and stupid pretensions died. We now recognize the central problem of the 21st century: the conjunction of terrorism, rogue states and weapons of mass destruction.

Krauthammer attempts to blame Democrats for 9/11, virtually all high profile terrorism, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and WMD proliferation.

Worst of all, hawks like Krauthammer vastly inflated nuclear fears to beat the drums of war against Iraq. The columnist claimed that "our species" was "on the brink" of "self destruction." Truly frightening stuff.

This was my (previously unpublished) letter to the editor:

The Sunday op-ed piece by Charles Krauthammer was one of the worst pieces of journalism I've read in some time.

Krauthammer seems primarily engaged in blaming Democrats for current foreign policy crises. His analysis is weak and his history is worse.

The very recent threat against Heathrow airport largely reflects a decision by the Reagan administration to send 1000s of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to the mujahadeen in the 1980s. Did GHW Bush clean all that up once the Soviet troops left? No.

Krauthammer, like many current commentators, also completely ignores the impressive disarmament that occurred in Iraq from 1991-1998. The IAEA totally eliminated the Iraqi nuclear weapons program and inspectors have found no evidence that it has been rekindled. Almost all the SCUDS were destroyed. Vast amounts of chemical and biological weapons were found and destroyed. Why can't inspections work? Oh, the inspectors were withdrawn, not expelled in 1998.

North Korea, of course, did not overnight emerge as a nuclear power in 1994 under Clinton's watch. The Reagan/Bush people spent over a decade mostly ignoring proliferation issues. I'm all for making proliferation a higher priority, but lots of smart people all over the world think that will mean much greater US support for on-site inspections in the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions. Oh, and the US would need to meet arms control commitments owed under Article VI of the Nonproliferation Treaty and to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Krauthammer doesn't mention Pakistan, but the US is again looking the other way on what analysts used to call the "Islamic bomb." That threat remains and Clinton-era sanctions were reversed almost immediately after 9/11. What kind of message does that send?

Finally, is there any evidence that the Bush anti-terror strategy emphasizing military power is more effective than the Clinton law enforcement approach? Numerous terrorists (especially in Western Europe) have been captured and jailed since 9/11 because of good law enforcement. By contrast, Israel's militarized approach doesn't look too effective to me, but that's what the US is emulating.

Pessimists wrote similar apocalyptic pieces in the 1950s, but proliferation did not bring catastrophe even though tyrants like Stalin and Mao had their fingers on the button. The promise of US nuclear retaliation can deter minor powers like North Korea and Iraq. It certainly seems like the US is deterred by North Korea's small arsenal.

This three-year-old (pre-blog) exchange highlights a tremendous feature of blogging: instant reaction to journalism.

Heck, I can even publish my own op-ed pieces now.


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Filed as: Krauthammer

Stop worrying and love the bomb

I really enjoy reading foreign policy op-ed pieces authored by realist scholars of international relations.

Then again, who doesn't love contrarian thinkers?

February 27, Barry Posen published the latest provocative op-ed piece, "We Can Live With a Nuclear Iran," in the New York Times:

An Iranian nuclear arsenal, policymakers fear, could touch off a regional arms race while emboldening Tehran to undertake aggressive, even reckless, actions.

But these outcomes are not inevitable, nor are they beyond the capacity of the United States and its allies to defuse. Indeed, while it's seldom a positive thing when a new nuclear power emerges, there is reason to believe that we could readily manage a nuclear Iran.

Actually, this editorial is fairly tame by realist standards.

Here are the opening lines from a press release issued three years ago today by Columbia University, which was entitled, "Spread of Nuclear Weapons Nothing to Fear, Says Waltz":

It does not matter if Iraq and North Korea possess or develop weapons of mass destruction, according to Kenneth Waltz, adjunct professor of political science and senior research scholar in the Institute of War and Peace. Nuclear deterrence, he says, will prevent either country from ever using them.

Similarly, John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt argued in advance of the war with Iraq that the US could easily deter even a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein:

In fact, the historical record shows that the United States can contain Iraq effectively - even if Saddam has nuclear weapons - just as it contained the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Mearsheimer wrote these words in Foreign Affairs Summer 1993:

The conventional wisdom about Ukraine's nuclear weapons is wrong. In fact, as soon as it declared independence, Ukraine should have been quietly encouraged to fashion its own nuclear deterrent.

In August 1990, Mearsheimer published these words in The Atlantic:

the United States should encourage the limited and carefully managed proliferation of nuclear weapons in Europe. The best hope for avoiding war in post-Cold War Europe is nuclear deterrence; hence some nuclear proliferation is necessary, to compensate for the withdrawal of the Soviet and American nuclear arsenals from Central Europe. Ideally, as I have argued, nuclear weapons would spread to Germany but to no other state.

If you haven't seen "Dr. Strangelove," do yourself a favor and rent it this weekend.


3/3/06 Update: How could I forget Pakistan and India? Mearsheimer, May 29, 1998, on "PBS Newshour":

I think once the two sides develop rather robust and large nuclear deterrence that you'll have a relatively stable situation, much like you had between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War....The fact of the matter is that nuclear weapons are an excellent deterrent. And for a country that feels threatened, especially by a neighbor that has nuclear weapons, it's not very likely that that country is going to shoot nuclear weapons.

Mearsheimer acknowledged an elevated risk of war in the early stages of their proliferation since they had small deterrent forces with imperfect command and control. Of course, he also advocated that the US provide them with various kinds of technology to secure their nuclear forces.




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Filed as: nuclear proliferation

Iran: A decade to defy proliferation norms?

The point of Dafna Linzer's front page story in Tuesday's Washington Post (August 2) is clear from the headline: "Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb."

A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis.

In the next sentence, Linzer calls the National Intelligence Assessment (NIE) "carefully hedged," but reflective of a "consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies."

This NIE, however, is at odds with the political view held by members of the Bush administration.

Until recently, Iran was judged, according to February testimony by Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, to be within five years of the capability to make a nuclear weapon. Since 1995, U.S. officials have continually estimated Iran to be "within five years" from reaching that same capability....

In January, before the review, Vice President Cheney suggested Iranian nuclear advances were so pressing that Israel may be forced to attack facilities, as it had done 23 years earlier in Iraq.

In an April 2004 speech, John R. Bolton -- then the administration's point man on weapons of mass destruction and now Bush's temporarily appointed U.N. ambassador -- said: "If we permit Iran's deception to go on much longer, it will be too late. Iran will have nuclear weapons."

The Post apparently got at least four (!) sources familiar with the secret NIE to talk about it.

Note, even the 10 year estimate is based on some worst-case assumptions:

The timeline is portrayed as a minimum designed to reflect a program moving full speed ahead without major technical obstacles. It does not take into account that Iran has suspended much of its uranium-enrichment work as part of a tenuous deal with Britain, France and Germany.

Just over two months ago, I reported that many security experts are convinced that the US will attack Iran's nuclear facilities. Maybe this NIE will put any war on hold.

Iran's Judith Miller -- or Laurie Mylroie?

Usually, when "The Daily Show" has a right-wing guest, Jon Stewart tips off his audience and tries to have some fun with the fact that the guest's views diverge from his. Last night, Stewart seemed to think that his show's visitor, Kenneth R. Timmerman, was a like-minded critic of the Bush administration -- annoyed that US foreign policymakers had attacked the wrong Middle Eastern country in 2003. Stewart, earlier this year said something that he nearly repeated last night:

"George W. Bush is not stupid. He invaded Iraq. They didn't have weapons of mass destruction or ties to Al Quaeda ... but Iran does. So he was only one letter off and that should be credited,"

Timmerman has just authored a new book Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran, which was based on his access to "Iranian defectors and officials, and high-level sources in the U.S. government."

By the end of Timmerman's appearance on "The Daily Show," he was informing host Stewart of the evidence he had gathered from Iranian dissidents about the clear threat from Iran -- primarily nuclear proliferation and terror sponsorship. OK.

But Stewart became really polite and said "Goodnight" to his audience just after Timmerman revealed that Osama bin Laden had secretly plotted to take down the Twin Towers on 9/11 with the Iranian government. Timmerman claimed this was largely what the 9/11 Commission had found.

What? Why didn't Stewart call him on that? While the Commission found that some of the so-called Saudi "muscle" hijackers may have gone through Iran, this was because Iran didn't as a rule stamp passports of Saudi nationals traveling through to or from Afghanistan (p. 241):

"We have found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 terror attack. At the time of their travel through Iran, the al Qaeda operatives themselves were probably not aware of the specific details of their future operation."

Did Stewart's staff drop the ball?

I've spent the past half day trying to figure out if Timmerman is the Judith Miller or Laurie Mylroie of Iran. Is he a journalist duped by defectors, or a wacko pushing his unsupported conspiracy theories on major media?

Timmerman's right-wing credentials are clear and I'm leaning to the parallel to Mylroie.

He writes frequently for The American Spectator, The National Review Online, the Washington Times, the New York Post, Human Events, Insight, etc.

Timmerman appears regularly on Fox News and MSNBC's Scarborough show.

His past writings have attacked the French betrayal of the US, John Kerry's plans to abandon the war on terror, Jesse Jackson, the media's biased coverage of the post-war search for WMD in Iraq, etc. He defends Ahmed Chalabi.

The book's publisher, Crown Forum, also puts out work by Ann Coulter and "the writers at NewsMax.com" (which is Fox News).

With neoconservatives Peter Rodman and Joshua Muravchik, Timmerman founded the Foundation for Democracy in Iran. Since its founding in 1995, the author has served as FDI's Executive Director.

Hmmmm. Maybe Timmerman is trying to be more like Michael Ledeen?

IAEA: Keep up the good work

Sunday's Globe had a good story about how the IAEA is a much better international institution than it used to be. More specifically, it is a much stronger non-proliferation agency.

After the IAEA failed to keep tabs on Iraq back in the late 1980s, largely because the institution used to inspect only facilities declared by its state members, the agency's treaty was supplemented with some Additional Protocols "that provides (sic) for tougher snap inspections not limited to declared nuclear facilities."

Moreover, the IAEA's personnel are now better equipped to perform their job:

Additionally, the agency's safeguards department, which runs inspections, began to employ more sophisticated inspection measures and more active investigative and detection techniques to try to uncover undeclared nuclear activities.

"Our inspectors were bean counters before with no obligation or authority to look beyond the beans," the senior Western diplomat in Vienna said. "Now countries need to account for every gram of nuclear material and for their plans into the future. The information is voluminous."

Former UN weapons inspector David Albright provides some on-the-record praise:

"The IAEA is changing the way it does business and it is creating shock waves," said David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector who heads the Institute for Science and International Security, a think tank in Washington. "It is making it harder for countries to hide even small efforts."

The story overviews recent nuclear developments in North and South Korea, Libya, Brazil, Egypt, Pakistan and Iran.

IAEA officials also have some ideas about improving the agency's work:

IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei, for example, has repeatedly called to have the nuclear fuel cycle placed under international control to prevent further proliferation.

On Friday, ElBaradei called on countries to freeze building facilities for uranium enrichment for five years. "We have enough capacity in the world for enrichment or reprocessing," he said in remarks published by the Japanese daily newspaper Asahi Shimbun.

This is all pretty important since even the Bush administration relies upon the IAEA to keep tabs on "axle of evil" (this is my new favorite phrase) members Iran and North Korea.

Celebrity news and the war on terror

Sure, I could write a blog entry today that my readers would fully expect. After all, the Pentagon just tried to slash about 10% of the Nunn-Lugar (Cooperative Threat Reduction) budget this year. If you don't know this law, it's the one that finances the destruction and safekeeping of Russian nuclear materiel. Kind of a weird policy choice in a time when the President says countering nuclear proliferation is the top priority national security goal.

However, that topic is too predictable for this Sunday's post. Let me see if I can see a link to my usual theme in much less obvious places.

Two obituaries and a story about a new tax reform panel caught my eye this weekend. Let me meander through these stories, personalize them a bit...and then tie them all together in the context of the "war on terror" (that's got to be worth a few bonus points, right?):

First, Richard Barnet, one of the co-founders of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) died December 23. Barnet quit the Kennedy administration's State Department in 1963 and eventually wound up on Richard Nixon's "enemies list." As a debater in the early 1980s, I read a lot of what Barnet and his colleagues wrote -- and I still have a couple of his books on my shelves. One of my close friends took his sabbatical at IPS a few years ago; perhaps he can reflect a bit more about Barnet in comments.

In any event, note that Barnet churned out a new book about every 4 years. One that is still timely is Intervention and Revolution, which among other things, addresses the US-backed coup in Iran in 1953. It was America's first cold war subversion of another government! Who knows, Iran might not be part of the "axle of evil" today if the USA had behaved differently in Ike's presidency.

Before I get to the other death notice, let me mention the tax reform story. President Bush has appointed two former US Senators (Connie Mack and John Breaux), along with a number of other individuals to serve on a panel that will make recommendations about tax code reform.

I don't have much (nothing, really) to say about this, but I was surprised to see Beth Garrett's name in the list of appointees. Garrett is a law professor at USC and a former Oklahoma high school debater from my time in the state. I exchanged some email with her in late 2000 during the Bush-Gore post-election saga. She had appeared on a TV show as a legal analyst and I reminded her of our shared past. I see that she clerked for Thurgood Marshall, worked for former Senator David Boren, and was on the faculty at University of Chicago...so she's done well over the years.

Garrett also served as "Legal Adviser, Judge Howard M. Holtzmann, Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, The Hague, The Netherlands, 1990-1991."

Who knew?

Finally, Danny Sugarman died January 5. Tragically, he was only 50 years old and afflicted with lung cancer. As a teenager, Sugarman was a groupie of the rock group, The Doors. Indeed, when I saw "Almost Famous" a few years ago, I was reminded a bit of Sugarman, who worked for the band and eventually wrote a book about the group. That book came out when I was in college and helped created a bit of a Doors revival. I became a fan and bought a couple of albums.

When I read Sugarman's obit to the end, I learn that he was married to...anyone know or have a guess?

He was wed to Iran/contra figure Fawn Hall.

Really.

It's a trifecta!

Work notes

Notes to self:

This week, the Washington Post is running a series on proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and rogue states. Wednesday, they covered nuclear weapons (they included a companion article on dirty bombs), today the piece is on biological arms. I guess that means Friday's paper will cover chemical weapons.

For my sabbatical project: I need to examine (buy?) Jeremy Rifkin's The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream. I looked it over at the bookstore today, but am trying not to add more stuff before the final leg of the move to Boston.

Has anyone read the book? I'd be interested in any feedback. Borders had it shelved with its business/management books.

Bombs away

The LA Times, October 22, 2004, reports that Israel may be about to take Iranian proliferation into its own hands:

Increasingly concerned about Iran's nuclear program, Israel is weighing its options and has not ruled out a military strike to prevent the Islamic Republic from gaining the capability to build atomic weapons, according to policymakers, military officials, analysts and diplomats.

Israel would much prefer a diplomatic agreement to shut down Iran's uranium enrichment program, but if it concluded that Tehran was approaching a "point of no return," it would not be deterred by the difficulty of a military operation, the prospect of retaliation or the international reaction, officials and analysts said.

You've got to give the Israeli policy actors credit, they don't bother to make these threats off-the-record:

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Yediot Aharonot newspaper last month that "all options" were being weighed to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability. The army chief of staff, Moshe Yaalon, declared: "We will not rely on others."

Iran presents "a combination of factors that rise to the highest level of Israeli threat perception," said analyst Gerald Steinberg of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

"Nuclear weapons in a country with a fundamentalist regime, a government with which we have no diplomatic contact, a known sponsor of terrorist groups like Hezbollah and which wants to wipe Israel off the map — that makes stable deterrence extremely difficult, if not impossible," Steinberg said....

"There may be a few months when the international community can still act and place upon Iran the kind of pressure that would compel it to stop its program," said Avi Pazner, a veteran diplomat who serves as an advisor to Sharon. "But there's not much time — there's not much time."

The Times notes that Israeli has long embraced preemptive strikes, and then cites the example of the June 1981 attack on Osirak (Saddam Hussein's reactor).

The problem with this analysis is that the attack was preventive war, not preemption, and was widely criticized around the world and at the UN. Reagan's Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick condemned the attack, as did Secretary of State Alexander Haig.

Plus, this time, the Muslim world would blame the US for an Israeli strike:

Unlike 1981, the blame for such an attack today would not be limited to Israel. The US would be perceived in the Muslim world as being complicit - probably boosting the motivation of extremists to carry out terrorist attacks on Western targets.

"Certainly it would be seen as a continuation of what the Americans did in Iraq,'' says Bruce Maddy Weizman, a fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. "Israel and US are widely perceived to be acting in concert.''

Let's hope diplomacy and/or sanctions work.

Or maybe deterrence.

Does anyone remember deterrence?

And containment.

Does anyone remember containment?

Before readers say, "yeah, but Iran could pass the bomb to terrorists..." recall that wacko right-wingers used to claim that the Soviet Union was the chief sponsor of global terrorists.

Of course, any national leader would be insane to give a bomb to terrorists. Beyond crazy...think about the fact that horrible mass murderers Mao and Stalin had nukes, but didn't just pass them around to any takers.

Historical footnote

I'm giving some thought to trying to produce a book based on material I've produced for this blog. Anyone think this could work -- and would a publisher go for it? Please let me know in the comments.

Specifically, I'm thinking of producing a work about Iraq, though I need to figure out the balance between the international and domestic politics.

Of course, this is something I've been thinking about for a long time. The following unpublished op-ed was dated December 5, 2001, and thus pre-dates my blogging:

The Case Against Attacking Iraq

Lately, news reports have been filled with speculation that Iraq might be the next target in America's war on terrorism. Not enough attention, however, has been directed at whether the US should go to war against Iraq.

The case for war is built around two points. Bush administration officials emphasize that Iraq supports terrorism with a global reach and has long sought to develop weapons of mass destruction.

While these facts are troubling, they are certainly not new. Indeed, the US has regularly bombed Iraq over the past decade; yet, the threats have not been viewed as sufficiently compelling to trigger a larger conflict.

To date, no American official has accused Iraq of playing a role in the horrible events of September 11, nor has any hard evidence been revealed. The State Department's April 2001 report on global terrorism even acknowledges that Iraq "has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since…1993."

If Iraq is not implicated in the September 11 terrorism, few nation-states, not even America's closest allies, are likely to support a new war. The German Foreign Minister, for instance, has already cautioned against war and claims that all European nations would be skeptical about attacking Iraq.

Lack of international support would clearly mean significant costs for the US and pose numerous logistical difficulties. Before the Persian Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker spent months building an impressive international coalition against Saddam Hussein. Consequently, most of the funding for that war, amounting to tens of billions of dollars, came from partners like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Germany and Japan.

Literally hundreds of thousands of American ground troops were also deployed in willing host nations. Where might troops land now? Neither Saudi Arabia nor Kuwait is likely to allow new deployments. Israel might be willing to let the US use its territory as a base for operations, but a prominent Israeli role, following recent retaliatory attacks on the Palestinian Authority, would scuttle any hope for renewed peace talks, aggravate regional tensions, and probably fracture the coalition that has been assembled against terrorism.

Since Turkey borders Iraq and is a NATO ally, it might be considered as a base for a US attack. However, Turkey struggles to balance secular government with a large Islamic population, and would likely face serious internal pressures if it agreed to host an unpopular American war.

Finally, not even the threat of weapons of mass destruction justifies making Iraq the next US target. Arms inspectors were banished years ago, so Iraqi scientists might well have secretly produced new stockpiles of chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons. Though some see this as a rationale for war, note that Pakistan has actually tested nuclear weapons and is not targeted in the war on terrorism--no matter how terrifying its weapons might seem to India or other states.

Rather than going to war, the US might want to recall a basic security tenet from the cold war era: mutual deterrence. It would be devastating if Iraq used WMD against the US, but Iraq surely knows that it could be destroyed if the US was compelled to respond in-kind. However, Hussein might also figure that he has nothing to lose by using WMD if the US ignores the risks and launches an all-out effort to topple his regime.

The US should not, of course, simply ignore Iraqi WMD threats. The US long sought to counter proliferation with tools of international diplomacy, including a mix of political and economic disincentives. Therefore, the US should negotiate the reintroduction of international weapons inspectors in Iraq and end its opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, an accord that enjoys widespread international support that is aimed at limiting the spread of nuclear weapons.

The US might also want to prioritize non-proliferation goals if it is serious about such threats. Under US law, various sanctions are automatically levied against states that develop WMD. However, sanctions imposed in 1998 upon Pakistan were reversed this fall in appreciation for its cooperation in the war against terrorism. The US certainly wants to end both terrorism and proliferation--but it should not sacrifice one goal to support the other.

I should have edited this a bit more to have a serious shot of publication in 2001, but I think this was better argued that most of the administration's case for war in 2002.

Note also that many months later I worked on a revised version of this op-ed with Avery, but we didn't have any luck finding an outlet either. Avery, mind if I put that on the blog?

Lugar targets Bush/Kerry

Senator Richard G. Lugar, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations delivered a speech entitled "Nunn-Lugar in an Election Year" at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on August 11, 2004. The full transcript is available on the Senator's website.

The bipartisan Nunn-Lugar legislation has for many years funded efforts to dismantle and secure WMD and missile assets in Russia. The successes so far have been impressive (this is a partial list):

To date, the weapons systems deactivated or destroyed by the United States under these programs include:

6,312 nuclear warheads;
537 ICBMs;
459 ICBM silos;
11 ICBM mobile missile launchers;
128 bombers;
708 nuclear air-to-surface missiles;
408 submarine missile launchers;
496 submarine launched missiles;
27 nuclear submarines; and
194 nuclear test tunnels.

As Lugar notes in this speech, he has been concerned with this issue for many, many years. In the 1996 presidential campaign, Lugar argued that nuclear terrorism should be the #1 issue of the day and he made nonproliferation the center of his own campaign. The public and media paid scant attention.

Now, of course, people are eager to hear about this problem. Nicholas Kristof just penned a couple of pessimistic op-eds. In both, he claimed that some experts expect a 10 KT bomb to be detonated in DC or NY in the next decade.

One news blog called the first piece a "quick read to unsettle your nerves." If this sounds like fertile material for blogging, you are right. Many voices in the blogosphere have been debating the implications of the proliferation threat.

What should the US do about it?

Lugar, of course, confronts this query -- and wants to start with improvements for Nunn-Lugar.

However, the Indiana Senator first highlighted some unfortunate resistance the program has faced over the years:

Nevertheless, from the beginning, we have encountered resistance to the Nunn-Lugar concept in both the United States and Russia. In our own country, opposition often has been motivated by false perceptions that Nunn-Lugar money is foreign assistance or by beliefs that Defense Department funds should only be spent on troops, weapons, or other warfighting capabilities. We also have encountered latent and persistent Cold War attitudes toward Russia that have led some Nunn-Lugar opponents to be suspicious of almost any cooperation with Moscow.

Frankly, it seems as if Lugar has problems with many of his Republican colleagues (and the Bush White House), since they tend to be the ones who make these charges and establish most of the roadblocks.

What about the Democrats? Well, Lugar certainly has their attention:

During the recent Democratic primary season, we even experienced a bidding war in which candidates competed to offer the most effusive endorsements and the largest funding increases for the Nunn-Lugar program and other non-proliferation efforts. Howard Dean and John Edwards called for a tripling of funds devoted to Nunn-Lugar, while John Kerry called for a “major” increase in funding without specifying an exact amount.

Of course, cash alone isn't enough.

Stop me if you've read this before, but Lugar argues that the success of non-proliferation efforts hinges on diplomacy as well.

At this stage, diplomatic breakthroughs with resistant Russian authorities are almost a prerequisite to putting major funding increases to work. Although the Russian government has opened a remarkable number of facilities to the Nunn-Lugar program, others remain closed. Convincing Russia to accelerate its dismantlement schedules, to conclude umbrella agreements that limit liability for contractors, and to open its remaining closed facilities are the most immediate challenges for Nunn-Lugar. Whoever wins election in November must make the removal of these roadblocks a priority.

Again, this sounds like one of Kerry's talking points.

Lugar closed with a dozen non-proliferation goals, though he was really mixing ends (stopping North Korean and Iranian bombs) and means (diplomacy, transparency, etc.). Still, the US clearly needs to have a multi-faceted policy and anyone serious about WMD proliferaiton will need to ponder the range of problems Lugar mentions.

Proliferation

I'm back.

I'd like to say that I'm "tanned, rested and ready" but that would be too many lies even for Dick Nixon. My skin burns, so I avoid and/or block the sun, I stayed up too late virtually every night on vacation and, frankly, I wouldn't have minded another week or two off with my family.

Sigh.

Still, upon my return, I couldn't help but notice that the part of the blogosphere that I follow is carefully re-examining the problem of nuclear proliferation.

More than a month ago, Matt Yglesias asked: "Iranian Nukes: So What?". Yglesias acknowledged that he'd prefer a non-nuclear Iran, but didn't think the goal was worth a war:

Perhaps a case can be made that a nuclear Iran is such a bad thing that's it's worth preventing by any means necessary. But it's not a case I've heard.

This week, Dan Drezner's guest blogger Siddharth responded:

we don’t want a radical anti-American regime with links to terrorist organizations to have nuclear weapons. It’s another version of the Pakistan problem

Yglesias has now attempted to debunk this argument too:

the "madmen give nuclear weapons to Hezbollah" scenario strikes me as a bit, well, far-fetched. It's similar to the Pakistan problem except (a) less realistic, and (b) less threatening to the USA.

Chris Young at Explananda has also joined the fray, seemingly on Siddharth's side of the argument:

A world in which a whole lot of unstable, undemocratic countries have nuclear weapons is a world in which there is a much greater chance of fatal miscalculation.

I'm not a dove on this issue....We are running out of time. The spread of fissile material and nuclear technology is unstoppable, but it is slowable. For the short and the medium term we need to slow it as much as possible.

This is an issue I've long followed. My 1983 undergrad honor's thesis was entitled, "Pondering the Perils of Nuclear Proliferation: American Foreign Policy Choices" and my intercollegiate academic debate career was based in large part on my secondary research on the topic.

So, where do I stand?

First, I'm with Yglesias and the academic realists on the inappropriateness of the Bush Doctrine as a tool of nonproliferation. I wouldn't go to war with either Iran or North Korea.

Second, Young makes a point that I've made before, but that is too often overlooked. Western countries, including the US, are often completely hypocritical on this issue.

I won't reproduce Article VI of the NPT, but it's easy enough to find.

The US is pursuing new, more usable nuclear bombs, reversed sanctions on India and Pakistan after 9/11, and refuses to ratify various arms control agreements, including the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

I'm not saying that the US should "Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," but I do think that deterrence means something real to states. More importantly, the US and other states need to get their own houses in order and stop pursuing hawkish measures that promote proliferation.

Fred Kaplan's piece on how the Bush team botched North Korea is a very good read on this topic.

Proliferation of Hypocrisy

Friday, I blogged about the Proliferation Security Initiative.

Clearly, since 9/11, administration figures have worried openly about "mushroom clouds" emanating from Iraq, Iran's nuclear status, etc.

Yet, despite its rhetoric, the Bush administration's actions on nuclear proliferation are quite hypocritical.

For example, consider an essay web-published today by Scott Lynch, communications director for Peace Action, "Bush's Nuclear Hypocrisy Encourages Proliferation." In his piece, Lynch writes that the Bush administration is pursuing a "do as I say, not as I do" nuclear weapons policy that means the US is "ramped-up for a nuke building bender."

The US is seeking so-called bunker busters and low-yield nuclear weapons that will be more "usable" and task-oriented. Bush is also pushing legislation that would reduce the preparation time required for the US to again conduct nuclear tests from 36 months to 18 months.

Back in February, Robert Jensen of the University of Texas wrote a piece with a similar title, "Bush’s nuclear hypocrisy." As I have before, Jensen emphasized the failure of the US to comply with Article VI of the Nonproliferation Treaty:

“Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

In other words, according to the NPT, the US is supposed to be working towards "general and complete disarmament" rather than new weapons.

Like Lynch, Jenson highlights the bunker buster program.

Jacqueline Cabasso, executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation (a public-interest organization that monitors and analyzes U.S. nuclear-weapons programs) sums it up this way: “The U.S. is spending more money on nuclear-weapons research and development than ever before, giving its nuclear arsenal new military capabilities and elevating the role of nuclear weapons in its aggressive and unilateral ‘national security’ policy.” Cabasso cites ongoing work on such weapons as a “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator” as clear evidence of U.S. intentions to pursue nuclear weaponry, not work toward its elimination.

Catchy name, eh? There's long been a pseudo-sexual side to naming weapons.

Jensen caught Bush in his own lies: "free societies are societies that don’t develop weapons of mass terror."

Similarly, Andrew Koch of Center for Defense Information (CDI) once argued on the CNN website that the "The US must lead by example." Koch was writing just after the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests and noted that India often specifically points to US failure to comply with Article VI of the NPT to justify its own decision not to join the anti-nuclear club:

perversely, the United States continues to pursue a hypocritical nuclear policy that encourages others to proliferate. One of several rationales for the Indian tests was to challenge the non-proliferation regime, which New Delhi views as discriminatory. What particularly peeked India's ire was the fact that the nuclear powers have not adequately fulfilled their obligation to move toward nuclear disarmament as promised under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Since the piece was published in 1998, it demonstrates that this is a long-term problem -- worsened by Bush, but bipartison nonetheless.

Earlier this year D. Ravi Kanth published "US hypocrisy on N-proliferation," in the Deccan Herald (which I found out is part of the South Asian Media Net). Kanth pointed out that the US has not only failed to ratify the CTBT, which since the 2000 NPT review conference has been recognized as the next step toward meeting Article VI requirements, but it also refuses to criticize Pakistan for its proliferation -- and, of course, wants to build the new weapons (such as the Penetrator).

These are not merely left-wing talking points. Even Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski recognizes that "American policy is the height of hypocrisy." Of course, that piece was published in the Times of India rather than the New York Times. And that's the same hawkish Brzezinski who armed the mujahadeen in Afghanistan before Ronald Reagan ever had the chance. In fact, he armed them 6 months before the Soviets invaded.


Disclosures I worked on a project with Steven Brion-Meisels who is a Board Member at Peace Action. I also interned at CDI back in the summer of '85.