WhirledView

Nuclear Sillamäe

by CKR

Sillamäe is the reason I first came to Estonia in 1998. I had written a proposal on a possible cleanup strategy earlier, in 1993 or 1994, but the Estonians had too much else to do that early in their reacquired independence to deal with Sillamäe.

But in 1998, I was invited to join the Sillamäe International Expert Reference Group, which was overseeing the planning to remediate the immense tailings pile and other radioactive waste left by Soviet minerals-processing operations.

Sillamäe was one of those Cold War secret cities, like my workplace Los Alamos. That similarity has occasioned some knowing chuckles on my visits. Sillamäe remained a closed city long after Los Alamos, though, and its work remained secret.

I’ve wondered exactly what Sillamäe’s role was in the Soviet nuclear complex. I knew that its incoming material was ore and concentrate from a number of sites in the Soviet Union. The paper given by Endel Lippmaa (co-authored by Ello Maremäe) at our NATO conference in 1998 made that clear. But what did Sillamäe produce?

Old Moscow Merchants and New York Modernism – speech by Dr. James L. West at the World Affairs Forum, Santa Fe, New Mexico

By PHK

As I indicated in an earlier post, the World Affairs Forum held “A Window on Russia,” a day long conference on March 20, 2006 for Forum members and guests in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The two session event featured a morning on Russian politics, economics and U.S.-Russian relations and an afternoon on Russian art and architecture. It was held in cooperation with the Santa Fe Institute. CKR, PLS, and I were among those who helped make the conference work – and it worked very well.

The presentations were so content rich, well delivered and relevant to helping Americans understand the complexities of today’s Russia that with the speakers’ permission and help, we are sharing their written remarks – or excerpts from them - with a wider audience on WhirledView.

Our special thanks to Dr. James L. West, Professor of Humanities, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont and Randall R. LeCocq for their terrific presentations. Randall LeCocq’s speech “Russia under Putin” on Russian politics, economics and U.S.-Russian relations was posted in April; Jay West’s speech follows below.

We thank both Jay and Randy once again for their willingness to answer numerous questions and respond to a raft of comments. Much appreciation also to the Santa Fe Institute for making it possible for us to hold “A Window on Russia” on its premises – and for its staff's wonderful logistical and tech support.

Dr. West has focused his lengthy teaching career – first at Connecticut’s Trinity College then at Middlebury – on the interplay of history and culture particularly that of Russia, Eastern Europe and Germany. His most recent book Merchant Moscow: Images of Russia’s Vanished Bourgeoisie was published by Princeton University Press in 1997. A Russian edition is now in preparation as he describes below in his speech.
Here follows the text of a major portion of James West’s speech in Santa Fe on March 20. It is entitled “Old Moscow Merchants and New York Modernism."

(begin text)

For most of my career, I have studied the history of the pre-revolutionary merchants and entrepreneurs of Moscow. For much of this time, the pursuit has been like researching a vanished civilization. Soviet historians did their best to erase these "enemies of the people" from the historical record, and archives were relatively closed. It has only been over the last decade or so, as Russia once again began to grope its way toward an entrepreneurial market economy that these obstacles to research have been lowered, and the relevance of this kind of study has become once again clear.

Updates

by CKR

Divine Strake Delayed
That big explosion at the Nevada Test Site scheduled for this week has been “postponed indefinitely.” The Winnemucca Indian Colony and others sued the Department of Defense to stop the test on the basis that it could send radioactive remnants of past nuclear tests into the air, to settle on nearby communities.

Petroleum Industry Opposes Clean Air Waivers
A spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute told Chemical and Engineering News (1 May; subscription only) that President Bush’s directing EPA to waive emissions requirements won’t make any difference in gasoline prices because “oil companies have already invested in making summer fuels.”

I couldn’t find a news release to that effect on the API website.

Forbidden Films: One is Worth Seeing

By PLS

I just saw Deepa Mehta’s film Water, the long delayed completion of the trilogy that began with Earth and Fire. Now I want to see all three again, in quick succession, and soon.

But a funny thing happened in the middle of the scrolling of the credits at the end of the film. The Indian names of the actors gave way to Sri Lankan names for the behind-the-scenes people. And therein hangs a tale....

The story, circa 1939, focuses on widows thrown out of their families and condemned to eke out a living by begging (and maybe prostitution) in Hinduism’s holy city of Varanasi on the Ganges. Naturally Mehta wanted to shoot the film on location in Varanasi, but conservative Hindus were furious about making too widely known this ugly truth about the consequences of following the Dharmaśastra slavishly. There were death threats and lesser unpleasantnesses as well. It was impossible for the production to continue on the scene of the crimes, so to speak.

The script of Water called for showing what actually happened to Brahmin widows in Bengal, even to the little girls who never even saw let alone cohabited with their doddering husbands, and the film gives us the texts that long justified the mischief. The film also shows how reform came and was often ignored. Was? Is, even now, in many cases. Instances of widow-burning still occur from time to time, too.

Raimondo/Laura - please correct the record

By PHK

I’m interested - and flattered - that on Friday Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com linked to my May 23 analysis of US policy on Iran and what’s happening at the State Department because of the information I included on David Denehy, the first and new director of State’s Iran Office.

What does not amuse me, however, is Raimondo’s evident decision to accept Laura Rozen’s LA Times designation of Liz Cheney as Assistant Secretary of State even though I stated in that same post that that part of Rozen’s story needs correcting. Liz Cheney is/was a Deputy Assistant of State for Near Eastern Affairs, she is not and never has been Assistant Secretary as Laura Rozen, and now Raimondo, stated.

I repeat: The current Assistant Secretary is C. David Welch; his predecessor was William Burns. Both are career Senior Foreign Service Officers.

Liz Cheney’s title is Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) which is shortened in State Department lingo to PDAS. She has been PDAS for about one year. Before that she was one of several NEA Deputy Assistant Secretaries.

Raimondo also ignored my comment that Liz Cheney is leaving to have her fifth child and the importance that could have in the US government’s position vis-à-vis its Iran policy. My observation of her departure was based on an AP report that I linked to that came out subsequent to Rozen’s LA Times May 19 special.

What I did not say was that Cheney is being replaced by Jim Jeffrey, a career Senior Foreign Service Officer, who is currently Senior Advisor to the Secretary and Coordinator for Iraq. Jeffrey was previously the number two, or Deputy Chief of Mission, in the US Embassy in Baghdad. This is important, because Jeffrey – as capable as he undoubtedly is – is unlikely to have the intimate access to Cheney of daughter Liz. I hope, however, Jeffrey retains excellent relations with John Negroponte who was Zalmay Khalilzad’s predecessor since, if I remember correctly, Jeffrey was Negroponte’s deputy in Iraq when Negroponte was Ambassador there. This could make a difference.

Believe me, Justin and the LA Times, I have great respect for Laura Rozen’s analyses or I would not have begun my post with a link to her otherwise excellent May 19 LA Times article. But, please, the Cheney title part needs correction because it’s simply wrong. You’ve promoted Liz Cheney to a position she does not now and never did hold. Further, your articles fail to suggest that her departure from State could pave the way for a stronger – rather than weaker - Pentagon role in US policy towards Iran.

Meanwhile, I hope Rozen’s right in her subsequent May 27 LA Times article that there is increasing pressure from Henry Kissinger and other “heavy weight” Republicans for the administration to enter into direct talks with the Iranians even though people like Liz Cheney’s father, the Pentagon Iran crew and certain warhawk neocons like AEI’s Michael Ledeen oppose.

The Kissinger viewpoint is certainly what I heard reflected in Washington foreign policy circles earlier this month. It would be nice if the powers that be in the Bush administration would listen to these and other foreign policy realists for a change.

Progress on Iran?

by CKR

There is a faint glimmering of hope in today's news. Steven Weisman in the New York Times announces that the Bush administration is allowing a discussion of the possibility of talks with Iran on nuclear matters.

It could be that the administration is responding to the retired generals who have been criticizing its militaristic stance, or possibly that Republican members of Congress are pressing for something less than nuking Iran.

It could even be that when those who should be grateful for the blessings of democracy being showered upon them say that the NPT allows Iran a nuclear energy program, the administration listens.

Before we get too hopeful, though, we need to remember that this administration is proud of maintaining its policies through good times and bad. We also need to recall the New York Times's track record. And Iran has rejected talks with the US on Iraq, citing the US's raising of "other issues."

Security assurances have obviously been a big part of Iran's desires, despite its protestations to the contrary, and the Times article says that even such things, good heavens, limiting its power, are being considered by the administration. We can hope that Iran's latest rejection is part of its attempt to make the subject of the talks more inclusive. Or perhaps that latest rejection was the inspiration for the White House to come up with something it hopes will be rejected.

Stay tuned.

A Failure of Intelligence

by CKR

Back in December, the New York Times and International Herald Tribune published an article by Dan Bilefsky on Sillamäe, Estonia, and its development into a port. I pointed out some errors in that story. I see now, in the archived NYT version (subscription only), that one of those errors has been corrected: Ivangorod is not visible, “sparkling in a haze across the Baltic Sea,” from Sillamäe. I’ll stand by the other corrections I offered.

[I sent a link to my earlier post to the NYT ombudsman and received nothing, mitte midagi, in return. I’ll do the same with this one.]

I recognize that most reporters can’t spend a week in Ida-Virumaa county, as I just did. But telephones, maps, and the internet exist. The NYT’s inability to get this story right shows some of the problems of intelligence gathering. Formulating the right questions is essential. If this is the best the International Herald Tribune and the NYT can do for an open port in an open country, we need to think very, very carefully about what the media are saying about Iran.

In a couple of sentences, here’s Bilefsky’s article: Former secret city Sillamäe is trying to develop a port for shipment of Chinese and other goods to the West. Its past is a drag, and there are other problems.

I think the news is in a different story: Former Soviet citizens living in Estonia have faced language problems and lack of jobs since the fall of the Soviet Union. Estonia is trying to turn an environmental and social liability into jobs and a better life for those people through the development of a port.

The US and Iran: What’s next? Regime change or nuclear containment?

PHK

While the U.S. finally appears quietly moving towards a negotiated agreement with North Korea, the Bush administration may be hell bent on instigating regime change in Iran. Laura Rozen details this in a May 19 special in the LA Times – and questions whether the administration’s ultimate goal is “to curb Iran’s nuclear program or change the regime.”

Yet none of the Middle East or defense experts I recently heard at a foreign affairs conference in Washington, DC thought that:

1) US military action against the Iranians made sense;

2) or that enforced regime change in Iran by a foreign power would be successful in the long run.

Many of those speakers represented the political right of center and I’m pretty sure that once upon a time not too long ago, a bevy supported the administration’s regime-change-by-force model in Iraq. But even those that did, now appear chastened by the Iraq quagmire and at odds with this administration’s latest Middle Eastern “slay-yet-another-dragon” by military force frenzy.

The most bellicose recommendation, I remember – and from only one panelist – was a proposed naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz if negotiations led nowhere. The reason: to block the Iranians from shipping their oil to world markets because this chokepoint is where pipelines meet refineries meet tankers. No one - if my memory serves me - advocated a “surgical strike” or multiple strikes against supposed Iranian nuclear facilities – for much the same reasons we at WhirledView stated in our April 14 post “Don’t Bomb Iran: It’s Counterproductive.”

But does the US have the intelligence capabilities to pinpoint the locations of Iran’s various underground nuclear production facilities accurately? I wonder. Please convince me, Mr. Bush, before you let loose those bombs.

If W’s minions think they can rely on the Iranian exile community for reliable information – or leadership for a democratic opposition to rally behind – they need to think again. As Connie Bruck points out in the March 6 New Yorker, the situation is far more complicated. Regardless, you would think the Bush administration should have learned the hard way from the Iraq invasion about relying on exiles with their own axes to grind and fortunes to make.

So where does the push for the administration’s muscular stance against Iran come from?
Not from career diplomats at State – at least not ones I know of.