WhirledView

Ukraine - Revolution Delayed?

By CKR

You can find current information on the situation in Ukraine on A Fistful of Euros and Le Sabot Post-Moderne.

Ukraine has had a couple of almost-revolutions since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. In 2000, tapes apparently incriminating President Leonid Kuchma in the death of journalist Georgy Gongadze surfaced, and demonstrations demanding Kuchma's resignation ensued. Demonstrations against Kuchma continued into 2002.

The demonstrations had some of the characteristics, explicit nonviolence and wide public support, of the demonstrations in Estonia in the late 1980s, demonstrations that led to independence and democracy for Estonia. For a while, it seemed as though something similar, although belated, might happen in Ukraine.

Now a questionable election, and the demonstrations begin again.

It's not clear who would have won the election without the blatant attempts at changing the results that have been reported. The choice was between the Russian-leaning Viktor Yanyukovych and West-leaning Viktor Yanyuschenko. Ukraine seems approximately evenly divided geographically, which will make ruling the country difficult for whichever candidate wins.

The pattern of continuing demonstrations with increasing intensity resembles that in Estonia in the late eighties. So does the increasing involvement of the Ukrainian diaspora in demonstrations outside Ukrainian embassies in other countries.

One thing that is different is that the US is reported to be using its influence to urge acceptance of the Kremlin's candidate as president, while acknowledging extensive fraud in the election. As the Baltic States maneuvered to leave the Soviet Union, the US and the nations of Western Europe urged caution on the part of the Kremlin in its responses to their parliamentary moves toward secession.

Large numbers of demonstrators in the streets are a wild card: Le Sabot reports the finding of a bomb planted by provocateurs in a tent city erected by the demonstrators. The demonstrators seem to be following the lead of Georgia's revolution last year. In 1990 and 1991, nobody knew whether the demonstrations in the Baltic States would erupt into violence, and, indeed, fifteen people died in Vilnius during a demonstration.

[My thanks for Blood & Treasure for the link to A Fistful of Euros.]

Congress and the NPT

By CKR

In that massive appropriations bill that Congress passed so late, apparently the funds for new varieties of nuclear weapons were cut out.

Funds for Atomic Bomb Research Cut From Spending Bill

Congress has eliminated the financing of research supported by President Bush into a new generation of nuclear weapons, including investigations into low-yield atomic bombs and an earth-penetrating warhead that could destroy weapons bunkers deep underground.

More about how this relates to the NPT later.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)

By CKR

The NPT has been in force since 1970, and it has been signed by 187 nations. Israel, India, and Pakistan have not signed it, and North Korea has withdrawn from it.

The provisions of the NPT are simple: the five nations that had nuclear weapons at that time will continue with nuclear weapons (USA, Britain, France, Soviet Union—now Russia—and China), but they will try to decrease the numbers of those nuclear weapons. The other countries will not try to acquire nuclear weapons, but in return the nuclear weapons powers will make peaceful applications of nuclear power available to them.

In the early 1960s, President John Kennedy believed that there would be 25 nuclear powers within 20 years. The NPT has kept that number down to eight. Sweden and other countries explictly considered developing nuclear weapons and decided not to. South Africa built six and then gave them up. Brazil and Argentina had nuclear weapons programs and gave them up short of manufacture.

Technical and international developments in recent years have weakened the NPT. An Additional Protocol was developed to address some of the concerns, but not all NPT signatories have signed the Additional Protocol.

On the technical side, much of the information needed to make nuclear weapons has become more widely available than it was in 1970. Information has been leaked, stolen, declassified, and inferred. The basic principles of nuclear weapons design and a fair amount of specifics can be found on the internet. New, more concealable, technologies have been developed for isotope separation.

A gas centrifuge plant remains a large installation, but laser isotope separation potentially could be about the size of many factories. So far, no successful laser isotope separation plant has been built. The isotope separation technologies, and the production of plutonium in reactors and its chemical separation from the fuel, are difficult, expensive, and dangerous to execute. Further, large amounts of feed material and specialized equipment are necessary.

For these reasons, it is unlikely that organizations smaller than nations could build nuclear weapons from scratch. Therefore, controlling the production of nuclear weapons by nations and safeguarding nuclear materials will be the predominant method of keeping these weapons out of the hands of terrorists.

For nations, the increased availability of nuclear technology and the fact that a uranium enrichment plant can be used for reactor fuel or for weapons mean that the technical bar to nuclear weapons has been lowered slightly since 1970, but improved detection technologies mean that it is more difficult to develop a clandestine program.

Maps & A Little More

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Recommended Map Source

The University of Texas’s Perry-Castaneda map collection's holdings are extensive, online, and free. These maps are accessible, easy to download and often print out as JPEG files. The primary source of this wonderful international map collection is the CIA whose cartographers – although not infallible thanks mainly to fiscal restrictions on this and many other U.S. government agencies during the 1990s – are excellent.

Ignore the currently featured USA Today map of Fallujah and accompanying photo of all too earnest GIs poised to take the city. It takes too long to download for what its worth. Assume the posed photo is a before, not after shot. The USAToday map’s best qualities identify the city’s quarters by name and show the routes of the US troop advance.

If a map of this piece of the Iraq war is what you want, try the faster loading BBC map.

Better yet, skip this week’s war propaganda and take advantage of the real gems on the Perry-Casetenada site. These maps cover every corner of the globe, are listed alphabetically by continent and country and are current as well as historical.

Congress’s Dirty Little Secret

By CKR

The US Congress is in a lame duck session. That sounds unimportant, but it’s not. It finally passed the appropriations bills for half or more of the government.

The government’s fiscal year starts on October 1. To allow it to spend money while Congress contemplates what level of pork will stay below the public’s radar, Congress passes what is called a “continuing resolution.”

A continuing resolution allows government agencies to spend as much money as they spent the year before, or perhaps a little less. This creates chaos in the agencies because their projects don’t remain the same. Money is there for an environmental cleanup that has been completed, but the money for a start-up on an improved vaccine is zero, the same as last year’s budget. This results in some fancy footwork by the budget people, which Congress can criticize later as poor management.

The people who do the work should see funds in their accounts in a mere month or two, the time it takes the agencies to get the funds into their accounting systems. That’ll be about the time the agencies start to rethink and pull funds back from some projects.

Anybody out there want to run their business like this?

Guardian on the Iran Situation

By CKR

It looks like events are outpacing my ability to write up NPT issues.

Today's Guardian has a large section of information and comment on the situation in Iran.

Why America has got it so wrong on Iran

The sidebar gives links to a large number of other articles, including an interview with Jack Straw in which he says that an invasion of Iran is "inconceivable."

Where I'm Going

By CKR

I’ve been talking about uranium enrichment in the US and Brazil, but not Iran. This morning I’m almost tempted to put my two cents in on Iran (why should I be the only one not to?), but I think I won’t.

I’m trying to put together some background on this sort of thing and work up to how the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) is being used and ignored in today’s diplomacy, and what might be done to improve the situation. I’m packaging what is really a longer argument in smaller blog chunks.

Iran combines the technical with a very complex set of political considerations, so I think I’d better hold off on my two cents.

Just a quick technical summary for now: In the publicly available evidence, there is no reason to believe that Iran is currently working on nuclear weapons. But an enrichment plant can be used for reactor fuel or weapons. Iran’s earlier unwillingness to be open about its plans is suspicious, as is its apparent rush to stockpile uranium hexafluoride before it accedes to the enrichment ban. That looks like it wants to be ready to go at any time. Colin Powell’s evidence on the missiles appears to be from a single not-entirely-reliable source, so I’ll discount that for now.

Whitehouseology

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Whitehouseology Anyone?

In the good old, bad old days before 1991 and Francis Fukuyama’s declared end of history, American Kremlinologists spent hours, days, even months and years peering over the often grainy photographs of Soviet leaders to try to fathom who was in, who was moving up, and who was among the soon to be or already departed.

This was a noble occupation that paid reasonably well – and, at the time, one of the few ways the U.S. government had to figure out the future policy direction of its major enemy. It wasn’t scientific; it wasn’t necessarily reliable – but sometimes these canny practitioners with magnifying glasses in hand read the tea-leaves right.

Since the reelection of President Bush, much of the speculation surrounding his policies and appointments for the second term resembles the practice and art of Kremlinology – the teasing out of the atmosphere clues to the future direction of the Soviet Union – this time the U.S. not Russia - between now and 2008 when this President will mercifully – and perhaps honorably - be put to pasture. Eight years as President is enough for anyone, in my view, and one of the pluses of democracy is the rotation of power among office-holders.

To return to the magnifying glass and the tea leaves. Whitehouseologist optimists suggest that Bush’s second term will bring major shifts in U.S. foreign policy because he no longer needs to rely on the hard, religious right or Haliburton for reelection and will want – like Presidents before him – to leave the country with a legacy that he and we can be proud of. Say like a comprehensive Middle East settlement that portends the advent of democracies throughout the Muslim world.

Other crystal-ball gazers, however, argue that this “born-again” President really believes in his first term’s radical foreign policies and its proponents – and we, and the world, are in for more of the same.

It’s still too early to tell for sure who's right. But – it seems to me, unfortunately, that based on news reports and instance analyses in the last few days, the continued radicalism of the neocons and the vindictiveness of their acolytes are likely to win the day. The CIA is afterall in chaos under its still new director Porter Goss’s disastrous direction.

With Colin Powell and Richard Armitage’s imminent departures from the State Department – the few voices of rationality within this administration - is Foggy Bottom far behind?