WhirledView

Cold War?

by CKR

David Sanger and Elaine Sciolino have produced a remarkably wrongheaded analysis about the United States and Iran. They get one important thing right:

This is still not a contest between nuclear powers — Iran is not believed to have a bomb yet, and intelligence estimates say that day is still 5 to 10 years away, assuming there is no clandestine effort that no one has detected.

Instead, it is an effort by the United States and some other nations to refashion the nuclear rules. They want to declare that even if Iran is legally entitled under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, Mr. Ahmadinejad cannot be trusted to do so. By deceiving the nuclear agency about its activities, President Bush and British, French and German officials say, Iran has given up whatever treaty rights it once enjoyed.

It’s hard to know where to start on the rest.

Framing Iran's Noncompliance

by CKR

If you can frame a discussion, you can win it.

That's what the United States is trying to do with the Iran issue, and it's doing pretty well so far. The trouble is that if it wins the framing struggle, the prize may well be war.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty guarantees nations access to nuclear power for peaceful uses. However, possession of a full fuel cycle allows a nation to shift to nuclear weapons production fairly easily. There have been opportunities to raise this issue and possibly to modify the NPT, like the NPT Review meeting last May, but the United States has not chosen to use them.

Iran has for some time carried out experiments and contacted other countries in ways that suggest it has interest in a nuclear weapons program. It intends to have a full fuel cycle for, it says, civilian nuclear power.

The United States has a cabal in the government whose objectives seem to be regime change in nations they don't like, including Iran. Iran has a complicated governance structure that intertwines religion and the state, and a president who is not afraid of inflammatory rhetoric.

All of these facts have historical evidence that has been presented before. It's how you put it all together.

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership: Vaporware?

by CKR

In a speech at the Asia Society on February 22, President Bush introduced a new program, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP).

The GNEP website is, for the most part, remarkably unspecific. It was most recently updated on 2/6/2006, which implies that it has been around barely longer than the Asia Society speech. It seems to be related to earlier reports of a budget item on nuclear fuel reprocessing (my commentary here and here)

According to the website, GNEP "builds on" (favorite bureaucratese) previous legislation intended to encourage more building of nuclear power plants in the United States. Given the administration's propensity for spin, I won't try to analyze that program from the writeup on the website and will leave it at that.

The elements of the GNEP program are listed as (I've numbered them for ease of discussion):

1. Expand Domestic Use of Nuclear Power
2. Demonstrate More Proliferation-Resistant Recycling
3. Minimize Nuclear Waste
4. Develop Advanced Burner Reactors
5. Establish Reliable Fuel Services
6. Demonstrate Small-Scale Reactors
7. Develop Enhanced Nuclear Safeguards

The overall scheme seems to be intended to provide a complete fuel cycle within the United States and offer enrichment, fuel fabrication and reprocessing services to other countries. As freqently happens within the Department of Energy, the larger vision has become captive to particular programs and political rhetoric.

Rice’s Athens Stopover: history does matter

Wait a minute – how many Americans know that Condi Rice was in Greece yesterday where her visit was greeted by a fiery reception from a group of flame throwing anarchists and a more orderly demonstration by – 2,000 to 3,000 or so hard line communists (KKE) and anti-globalization folks?

The pyrotechnics in downtown Athens produced vivid television footage which I caught on the BBC news last night, but the Albuquerque Journal, our local paper, didn’t even bother to mention Rice’s visit even though this city has a sizeable and influential Greek-American community.

The New York Times, the WaPo, Reuters and AP, however, published a number of stories written by reporters on site and others who are traveling with the secretary.

Yet of all the stories I’ve read, only a Reuters report by Stuart Grudgings and Alkman Granitsas, put Rice’s stopover in Athens, the first secretary of state to visit since 1986, in the context of Greek politics and the country’s all too often rocky relations with the U.S.
It isn’t that the other reports are poor – it’s just that they ignore the major issue which I think is “the elephant under the table.”

Instead the news coverage here emphasizes what Rice wanted emphasized – her view that Greece and Turkey are over-reliant on Russian gas supplies, that “progress in Iraq might aid efforts on Turkey,” that the Cyprus problem (for which the reporters don’t provide the background) is solvable (which it is- but why? how?) or the soon to be signed Bulgarian-US bases agreement for which Nick Kralev of the Washington Times gives an excellent overview.

Perhaps then the reporters or their editors at home decided the anti-US demonstrations in Athens, Thessaloniki and smaller ones in Istanbul and elsewhere in Turkey weren’t important in the overall scheme of things. Maybe they’re right. She was only in each country for what seems like a nanosecond. And the demonstrations - for the most part - did not get out of control.

The reporters who traveled with the secretary would not even have seen them. And obviously neither the State Department’s Office of Public Affairs nor Rice’s Greek or Turkish government hosts would have wanted the coverage of her visit to be overshadowed by negative reports of anti-American demonstrators clashing with police.

Victory is not just around the corner – a post-Iraq trip briefing by Congressman Tom Udall

By PHK

New Mexico Congressman Tom Udall (D) briefed members of the Council on International Relations (CIR) in Santa Fe, on April 17, 2006 on the results of his first fact-finding mission to Iraq - as part of a ten day bipartisan Congressional trip to the Middle East in late March-early April led by Arizona Republican Senator John McCain.

Here are highlights of what sounded to me like what must have been a terribly troubling experience:

• The security situation in Iraq continues to worsen. There is a disconcerting disconnect between what is occurring on the ground and how the W administration portrays it. Cases in point – the road from the airport to Baghdad is now so insecure that the CODEL was helicoptered into the Green Zone rather than going by land. Their trip to the Marine Base outside Falluja and then to Al Hilla, sixty miles south of Baghdad, were also by Blackhawk. And a young Iraqi working for the U.S. State Department in Al Hilla said that unlike under the Saddam regime when he drove to Baghdad regularly in his own car, he now too relies on air to make the trip because of the risk to his own personal safety.

Tuesday Blossom Blogging

by CKR

When I moved into this house, there were two crabapple trees in the front yard. They're still there, but I've given them no special treatment.

One is a rather ordinary red-leafed crabapple, whose flowers have been bashed by recent winds. The other holds spherical pink buds, then bursts into double flowers.

I prefer the native vegetation and haven't been watering these two regularly, but they are blooming gloriously.

And now I have to get back to deciding on my itinerary and making hotel reservations.

Traveling

This week starts a month in which all three of us will be traveling at various times.

We promise to bring our laptops and digital cameras and to post when we can.

But you're likely to see a little slowdown in blogging until, maybe, June.

We're hoping to come back with insights and investigations.

George Bush, You're No Ronald Reagan!

by CKR

Max Kampelman, an arms control negotiator for Ronald Reagan, says

have never been more worried about the future for my children and grandchildren than I am today. The number of countries possessing nuclear arms is increasing, and terrorists are poised to master nuclear technology with the objective of using those deadly arms against us.

The United States must face this reality head on and undertake decisive steps to prevent catastrophe. Only we can exercise the constructive leadership necessary to address the nuclear threat.

Kampelman bravely puts his qualifications as an arms control negotiator in the first paragraph of his op-ed. Arms control are considered dirty words in Washington today. The rationale hasn't been clear to me; it seems to bounce around. We don't need arms control with Russia because we are no longer enemies. We don't need arms control with India because they're a "responsible state with advanced nuclear technology." We don't need arms control with others because we're the biggest, baddest guys on the block.

George Bush likes to think of himself as Reaganesque. But Reagan had a vision, and he had a way toward that vision. He used the expertise of people like Kampelman to lay out the path. He used the vision and the path to urge, cajole, press, and work with Mikhail Gorbachev to bring about a peaceful end to the Cold War.

Our Friend Azerbaijan

by CKR

Jackson Diehl today writes of "Retreat from the Freedom Agenda."

Given my conversation yesterday with Neila Charchour Hachicha and my post on freedom in Tunisia, reading Diehl's piece just made me feel very, very tired.

Realpolitik sometimes requires working with unpleasant people and countries. That I understand, and I can live with it, uneasily. What gets me down is the evangelistic front of "spreading freedom" as "our friends" blatantly put down dissidents and rig elections.

I think I'd rather hear "He's our son of a bitch." That has some honesty.

Another downer is Azerbaijan's location. Yes, that small country sits on some immense oil resources, but that's not the whole story.

Five countries ring the Caspian Sea: Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Iran. Much of the news from that area of interest to American consumers has had to do with the breakdown of the caviar fisheries. There's been a cultural festival, too, in Iran to emphasize similarities among the littoral countries.

The part that gets me down is the mention in some of the articles on US war planning against Iran of the Caspian Sea as an invasion route. I think they must be talking about air strikes, but I guess it would be possible to transport small naval craft by air. Azerbaijan also shares a border with Iran.

So you're wrong, Jackson Diehl! For those who want a war with Iran, Ilham Aliyev is promoting freedom and democracy!

Nothing like believing your own propaganda.

Democracy in Tunisia?

by CKR

A year or so ago, I participated in an internet discussion board where three or four of us, all from different countries, discussed democracy, the nature of societies, and how to deal with some of the difficult aspects of our own societies. Pretty normal politics, in other words.

I was impressed by Neila Charchour Hachicha’s contributions, sensible and principled. I knew then that she had some difficulties with her government. I didn’t know that was her name then, but I’ve been told her identity by another of our group, who is concerned for her safety.

During our discussions, she mentioned that WhirledView was blocked in Tunisia. Seems to me that we’re pretty normal politics, too.

Neila has been able to publish an article in National Review Online explaining her current situation. That article brings up a number of questions.

Where is the Bush administration’s democracy promotion? Where is Karen Hughes?

Why do we not hear more about Tunisia’s repressions in American media? Tunisia is a neighbor to Libya, which we seem to hear much more about.

Please read Neila's article. It seems, more and more, that “democracy promotion” by the Bush administration is a flag they wave to divert attention from the disasters they are producing. It seems that, unless they have an interest in regime change, “democracy promotion” is no part of their foreign policy.

Update: Neila tells me that the US State Department has issued a statement on her situation. She also asks: Don't they realize it takes more than that to change a dictator's mind?