Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Thursday, February 09, 2012

War is the capital punishment of foreign policy

Accordingly, the evidence for engaging in it must be clear and compelling. In his most recent public musings on Iran, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was neither. Nor was he convincing in his claim that he was not preparing Canadians for another military adventure.

Instead, the prime minister chose to ramp up the fear and loathing of Iran, an approach that blows up any constructive diplomatic role that Canada might have played in averting a war in the Middle East that could come as early as this spring.

Building on his personal view that the government of Iran is lying about its nuclear program, an opinion offered without any proof, the prime minister said this in an interview with the National Post:

“I don’t think there’s much debate today among informed people about Iran’s intentions and Iran’s systematic progress toward attaining nuclear weapons.”

Here are some different opinions. James R. Clapper is the U.S. Director of National Intelligence who reports on worldwide global threats to the American government. His report represents the consensus opinion of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. In his most recent report, delivered to the U.S. Senate on January 31st, 2012 this is what he said: “We continue to assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons if they choose to do so. We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to do so…We judge Iran’s nuclear decision-making is guided by a cost-benefit approach which offers the international community opportunities to influence Iran.”

Clapper and all of his senior intelligence officials also endorsed the November 21st, 2011 International Atomic Energy Agency’s report as being the best public accounting of Iran’s nuclear activities, including information “relevant to possible military dimensions.”

The IAEA has reason to be concerned. Iran has not allowed inspectors into its most secret nuclear sites and has not only flatly refused to halt its uranium enrichment program, it has expanded it. Here is how the nuclear inspection agency put one of its main worries in its latest report: “Contrary to the relevant resolutions of the Board of Governors and the Security Council, Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities in the following declared facilities, all of which are nevertheless under Agency safeguards.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta endorsed the findings of the National Intelligence Estimate when he told viewers of Face the Nation in January that Iran has not yet decided to build a bomb. Appearing on the same program, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, made clear that he wanted the Iranians to believe that the U.S. could wipe out their nuclear program, but had this to say on the proper approach: “The responsible thing to do right now is to keep putting diplomatic and economic pressure on them to do the right thing.”

When Dempsey travelled to Tel Aviv to meet with senior Israeli officials in January, he was presented with an intelligence assessment that there was no evidence that Iran was building a bomb. The Israeli paper Haaretz ran a scoop on what Dempsey would be told: “The intelligence assessment Israeli officials will present later this week to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, indicates that Iran has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb.”

Israel’s Defense Minister also made clear that any potential strike against Iran was “a long way off.” Ehud Barak explained on Army Radio in January exactly what Iran would have to do to begin work on a nuclear weapon. His explanation again confirmed the Israeli view that Iran has not decided to build a bomb.

“To do that Iran would have to announce it is leaving the UN International Atomic Energy Agency inspection regime and stop responding to IAEA’s criticism, etc.. Why haven’t they? Because they realize that when it becomes clear to everyone that Iran was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, this would constitute definite proof that time is actually running out. This could generate either harsher sanctions or other action against them. They do not want that.”

With his foreign minister, John Baird, advancing the cause of peace by publicly comparing Iranians to Nazis during his recent trip to the Middle East, our prime minister was not to be outdone in this made-in-Ottawa vilification of Tehran. Speaking of Iran, he told the National Post “that for the first time in history, [there is] a regime that not only wants to attain nuclear weapons, but a regime that has, compared to virtually all other holders of nuclear weapons in the past, far less fear of using them.”

Grand confabulations to one side, recent history tells a different story. Back in the spring of 2002, the military columnist of the Los Angeles Times, William Arkin, broke a stunning story that reverberated around the world: President Bush had ordered the Pentagon to lay plans for attacking seven countries with nuclear weapons – China, Russia, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria.

This was big news for a lot of reasons. For starters, it was the first time in history that an official list of nuclear targeted countries had become public. Secondly, the populations of the targeted countries added up to one-quarter of all human beings on the planet. Thirdly, four of the targeted countries did not have nuclear weapons. And finally, the contents of the leaked document, the Nuclear Posture Review or NPR, were confirmed by the Bush White House and soon after, the Pentagon. It was a remarkable departure from the usual secrecy.

The story would have been a blockbuster if that’s all it contained. After all, what President Bush ordered was illegal. The United States is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which forbids the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states unless they are aligned in aggression with a nuclear power. But there was more in the NPR than a string of countries on America’s nuclear hit list.

The NPR also revealed that the U.S. military had been ordered to build smaller nuclear weapons for “theatre” or battlefield use. This decision to develop new, tactical nuclear weapons, which had begun in the Clinton presidency, ran contrary to the international taboo against using these weapons as anything other than a deterrent – or, of course, the last resort in a doomsday scenario. It was a monumental shift. Nuclear weapons had once been tools for deterring wars, now they were a means of fighting them. As the New York Times editorialized about the new doctrine, “mutually assured destruction becomes unilaterally assured destruction.”

The NPR laid out both general principles and real-world examples for the use of nuclear weapons. The American military could use nukes in retaliation for a nuclear, biological or chemical attack from another nation. But it could also use the bomb to take out targets that could withstand conventional attack. Commanders in the field could even pull the nuclear trigger in the event of what the NPR described as “surprising military developments” – surely the Mother of All Loopholes.

The document laid out three specific geo-political scenarios where the use of nuclear weapons would be justified: an Arab/Israeli war, war between China and Taiwan, and a North Korean attack on South Korea. Because big bombs were self-deterring owing to their sheer destructive power, the Pentagon was thinking about “mini-nukes”. Russia is reported to have 10,000 of these so-called “theatre” weapons in its nuclear arsenal. According to war planners at the Pentagon, mini-nukes were harmless to civilians because “the explosion takes place underground.”

In denouncing arms control treaties from the Cold War era, the Pentagon noted dismissively, “That old process is incompatible with the flexibility U.S. policy and forces now require.” The new requirements were starkly clear according to U.S. war planners: “Nuclear attack options that vary in scale, scope and purpose will complement other military capabilities.” It might be the only time George Bush ever liberalized anything. Unfortunately, it was the ground rules for using the most dangerous weapons on earth.

The development and deployment of new nuclear weapons like the B61-11 “mini-nuke” fit the doctrine to perfection. The weapon can be delivered by jet fighters and tailored to specific missions, with nuclear warheads as small as .3 kilotons. But it also makes a mockery of American diplomacy and its stated policy on non-proliferation. As a signatory of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the U.S. is committed to arrest the evolution of the world’s nuclear arsenal, not accelerate it. How do you persuade other nations not to seek nuclear weapons, when you yourself are secretly developing new generation nukes?

Back in 1996, the International Court at the Hague ruled that any threat or use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear nation was illegal. That was also the year that President Clinton signed the African Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, pledging the United States not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against any of the 50 African nations that signed on. Twelve days later, on April 23, 1996, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, with his boss William Cohen in attendance, did just that. He talked openly about using the B-61 -11 in Libya, nuclear warhead and all.

“The Air Force would use the B-61-11 against Libya’s alleged underground chemical weapons plant at Tarhunah if the President decided that the plant had to be destroyed,” Mr. Smith said. “We could not take the plant out of commission using strictly conventional weapons.”

When the most recent bombing campaign against the now-deceased Colonel Gaddafi began, three of the most expensive aircraft in the world (the $2.1 billion B-2 Spirit Stealth bomber) were deployed to Libya where they dropped bunker-busting bombs armed with conventional warheads. They were attached to the 509th Bomber Wing out of Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri and completed the 11,418 mile round trip in 25 hours.

Shortly afterward, another B-2 flying out of Whiteman was ordered by the Pentagon to test the installed equipment and weapons component of the B-61-11 nuclear bomb at the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada, operated and managed oddly enough by Lockheed Martin, even though it is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy. The U.S. Air Force Global Command coordinated both the U.S. bombing in Libya and the B-61-11 test in Nevada. Is it so difficult to figure out what they were thinking?

The U.S. developed new nuclear weapons, and detailed plans to use them as tactical ordnance, in contravention of international law and its own treaty obligations. It also published a list of target countries. Even as the White House was assuring the world back in 1995 that it wouldn’t continue “vertical integration” of nuclear weapons, the Department of Energy was getting approval to fund the B61 – 11. Their argument — that the mini-nuke was not really a new nuclear weapon but a modification of an old one — was the flimsiest of fig leaves. Perhaps that’s why the program was approved outside the normal budget process, without congressional debate, by means of secret letters to the chairmen of select congressional committees.

So we have a secret program at odds with official statements and international treaty obligations, detailed and dangerously de-regulated plans to actually use the bomb, and known targets. Does that sound a little like what another country is being accused of – except for the major difference that it doesn’t actually have nuclear weapons and isn’t building them to the best of our knowledge?

Prime Minister Harper’s fear-mongering about Iran is a poor substitute for some plain truth. If Iran has nuclear ambitions to get the bomb, inarguably a bad thing for the planet, they have undoubtedly been sculpted by waking up one day to find out that it was on the U.S. government’s nuclear hit list. There is no such thing as a right to pre-emptive war based on what one imagines another country might do years down the road. And no country in the world is as advanced in its planning to use nuclear weapons against its enemies, including third-world countries without nuclear weapons, as is the United States.

That said, a nuclear Iran is bad for a host of reasons. It would give an oppressive regime a stranglehold on power by protecting it from external attack. Neighbors in the region could be more successfully bullied. It could lead to an arms race in the Middle East with countries like Saudi Arabia seeking the bomb. Most important of all, Israel would feel itself under a permanent, apocalyptic threat.

In the diplomatic context, Iran already feels itself under that threat. In addition to cyber-attacks on its computer systems, assassinations of its nuclear scientists, and being on America’s nuclear hit-list, there is also now the paralysis of its banking system and crippling sanctions on its trade. Incessant threats of an imminent attack can only make things worse. Bombing Iran under today’s circumstances would not only be unjustified and illegal, it would bring into play unimaginable consequences.

Consider the downside, starting with civilian misery in Iran and Israel. Then there is the possible closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 35 percent of the world’s sea-borne oil supply passes. U.S. forces in the region could find themselves under attack. The Saudi oil fields could be hit. If missiles rain down on Israel from Lebanon, an attack on Iran could become a full-blown regional war. And then there is the Russian Bear. What would Moscow do if the U.S. deployed mini-nukes against Iran after a “surprising military development” in the conflict?

Bearing in mind that the National Intelligence Estimate offered to the U.S. Senate concluded that Iranian nuclear policy is driven by an ongoing “cost-benefit” analysis, it is time Canada made a public diplomatic effort to be part of the solution. If the prime minister is looking for some good advice, Canada’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Paul Heinbecker, has some based on his personal involvement in the march to war in Iraq:

“We should not allow ourselves to be stampeded into supporting a war on arbitrary timelines and hyped intelligence. Those who can’t remember history are condemned to repeat it.”

Original Article
Source: ipolitics 
Author: Michael Harris 

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