There has been much brouhaha in the media of late about an Israel vs. United States sparring contest. Following Vice President Biden’s recent contentious visit to Israel, Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times went apoplectic in his March 14th column, “Driving Drunk in Jerusalem.” He accused Israel of making it “look like America’s most dependent ally can push” us around. Then Robert Kagan got into the act with a contrarian viewpoint that not only empathized with Israel but also was more scathing in his judgment of President Obama’s overall foreign policy. In his March 17th column in the Washington Post, “Allies everywhere feeling snubbed by President Obama,” Mr. Kagan suggested that “Israelis shouldn't feel that they have been singled out.”
On the same day, John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, spouted his usual hawkish tone in the Wall Street Journal. In “Israel and The Crisis With Obama,” Mr. Bolton pointed out that “Israel has sought to accommodate Mr. Obama on two critical issues: negotiations with Palestinians and Iranian nuclear weapons.” After glossing over the distraction of the Israeli settlements, Mr. Bolton reiterated his long-held position that “Americans must realize that allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons is empowering an existential threat to the Israeli state, to Arab governments in the region that are friendly to the U.S., and to long-term global peace and security.”
I suspect that a lot of Americans already recognize that a nuclear-armed Iran is a serious threat to world peace given some of the vile pronouncements of its holocaust-denying leaders. So let me expand on a conspiracy theory that I believe is playing out right now in the Middle East. First, it is almost impossible to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was blindsided by his own Interior ministry during Vice President Biden’s recent visit. Second, the Israelis are too smart to expect anyone to believe as much. Thus, per their master plan, Israel’s Mossad began by intentionally blindsiding the British government with their infamous Dubai operation in January – assassinating a prominent Hamas leader using British identities – and is now making it appear like they can push the United States around as well.
This “modern-day David taking on two western Goliaths back-to-back" is a staged precursor to an imminent Israeli action aimed at taking out relevant Iranian nuclear facilities – without giving Iran any reason to suspect any involvement of the traditional Anglo-American alliance. If the Israeli airstrikes are successful, they will simultaneously achieve both of Mr. Bolton’s stated objectives and additionally contribute to a more favorable outcome in Iraq. It seems to me that Mossad is on the move – setting the stage for what Mr. Bolton has been propagating for a long time, which is “a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear program.” Israel recognizes that such action is the only way to achieve a lasting Middle East peace because it will:
1. Neutralize the Iranian threat and its ascendancy much to the satisfaction of the Arab nations and leadership in the Middle East.
2. Force the Palestinian leadership to jettison “proximity talks” in favor of “direct talks” with them towards a permanent peace settlement.
3. Ensure that Iran will no longer influence the formation of a pro-Iranian government in Iraq following recently concluded parliamentary elections there.
Americans can only hope that Israel gets it right this time just as it did with its pre-emptive strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility back in 1981. Two decades later, we were unable to find WMD in Iraq in large part due to that prescient action. If the United Nations cannot convince Iran to abandon its pursuit of WMD, maybe the mighty arm of the Mossad will?
Showing posts with label UN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UN. Show all posts
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Saturday, August 11, 2007
A ‘New Clear’ Passage to India
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) came into force in 1970 after China’s first nuclear test in 1964 and before India’s first nuclear explosion ten years later. At that time, the NPT recognized as “nuclear weapon states,” only those nations that had conducted nuclear tests prior to 1967. These nations happened to be the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Although the People’s Republic of China did not take its legitimate place as a UN member until 1971 and then signed the NPT only in 1992.
A recent New York Times editorial lamented that “When it comes to nuclear proliferation, Washington's only real policy is to reward its friends and punish its enemies.” Even if there were something wrong with this typically conservative principle, it should be noted that U.S. foreign policy had made some rather hefty concessions back in the early seventies to accommodate communist China. This was part of President Nixon’s “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” overture to engage one communist giant while trying to contain the other – the Soviet Union.
These progressive considerations of yesteryear have brought us to the current situation, in which China is now viewed by our foreign policy establishment as a long-term strategic threat to the United States. We find ourselves in this predicament, in large part, because our policy of engagement has helped steer China towards a market economy without bringing about commensurate change in its political system and authoritarian form of government.
The afore-mentioned Times editorial also stated that
So then why is Wall Street Journal columnist, Bret Stephens, not a happy camper? In a recent column he accused our “new clear” partner of keeping “bad company” with Iran. Mr. Stephens’ probably needs a refresher course on our own recent haphazard dealings with Iran. After 9/11, a “coalition -- made up of Iran, India, Russia and the Northern Alliance, and aided by massive American airpower -- drove the Taliban from power.” Despite this measure of Persian support, barely a couple of months later in his 2002 State of the Union speech, President Bush went on to declare Iran as a charter member of his “axis of evil.” Then, to further confound matters, he placed an unseemly reliance on dubious information from known Iranian-sympathizer, Ahmed Chalabi, and invaded Iraq in March 2003.
If that weren’t bewildering enough, since 2005 President Bush has relied heavily on the Iranian-backed government of Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki to “sustain, govern and defend itself.” But now, with the weight of the impending Petraeus Report hanging over its head, the Bush Administration figures that Shiite Iran’s influence in the Middle East is getting out of control. So the Administration wants to hedge its bets on Iraq and re-supply our traditional Sunni allies, Saudi Arabia and its satellite Gulf States, over $20 billion in an arms deal. This is the same Saudi Arabia that – accounted for fifteen of nineteen hijackers on the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and – gave birth to Osama Bin Laden and the Bush Administration’s original “war on terror.” Is it any wonder then, why they – the Muslim nations – continue to hate us?
If Mr. Stephens could see the forest for the trees, he might have realized that going forward India could actually help us with our tenuous relationship with Iran. More importantly, these two nations could also help us snare our $50 million man, who has enjoyed a safe haven within the borders of another shaky Sunni ally, Pakistan, since his escape from the Tora Bora mountains in late 2001 . From a long term strategic standpoint, just as we look to India as a counter-weight to China in Asia, it is within our national security interests to have a Shia power counter-balance the traditional Sunni hegemony in the Middle East.
From a more practical standpoint, our “new clear” passage to India could mutually benefit not only our two great democracies, but also it could become the basis for new, long-term alliances throughout the western world. My reasoning is based on an observation that I had first made in my 2005 book, “The Bush Diaries,” and is worth repeating:
A recent New York Times editorial lamented that “When it comes to nuclear proliferation, Washington's only real policy is to reward its friends and punish its enemies.” Even if there were something wrong with this typically conservative principle, it should be noted that U.S. foreign policy had made some rather hefty concessions back in the early seventies to accommodate communist China. This was part of President Nixon’s “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” overture to engage one communist giant while trying to contain the other – the Soviet Union.
These progressive considerations of yesteryear have brought us to the current situation, in which China is now viewed by our foreign policy establishment as a long-term strategic threat to the United States. We find ourselves in this predicament, in large part, because our policy of engagement has helped steer China towards a market economy without bringing about commensurate change in its political system and authoritarian form of government.
The afore-mentioned Times editorial also stated that
“President Bush is understandably desperate for some kind of foreign policy success”and thereby implying that his India strategy could actually chalk one up for him in the win column. It is quite likely that Bush’s forward-thinking nuclear deal with India might do just that. This is one instance where the neocons in the Bush Administration are actually seeing the forest for the trees by laying the foundation for a seminal paradigm shift in 21st century U.S. foreign policy – one that not only addresses our China syndrome, but also considers the larger threat as defined by the ongoing “global war on terror.”
So then why is Wall Street Journal columnist, Bret Stephens, not a happy camper? In a recent column he accused our “new clear” partner of keeping “bad company” with Iran. Mr. Stephens’ probably needs a refresher course on our own recent haphazard dealings with Iran. After 9/11, a “coalition -- made up of Iran, India, Russia and the Northern Alliance, and aided by massive American airpower -- drove the Taliban from power.” Despite this measure of Persian support, barely a couple of months later in his 2002 State of the Union speech, President Bush went on to declare Iran as a charter member of his “axis of evil.” Then, to further confound matters, he placed an unseemly reliance on dubious information from known Iranian-sympathizer, Ahmed Chalabi, and invaded Iraq in March 2003.
If that weren’t bewildering enough, since 2005 President Bush has relied heavily on the Iranian-backed government of Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki to “sustain, govern and defend itself.” But now, with the weight of the impending Petraeus Report hanging over its head, the Bush Administration figures that Shiite Iran’s influence in the Middle East is getting out of control. So the Administration wants to hedge its bets on Iraq and re-supply our traditional Sunni allies, Saudi Arabia and its satellite Gulf States, over $20 billion in an arms deal. This is the same Saudi Arabia that – accounted for fifteen of nineteen hijackers on the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and – gave birth to Osama Bin Laden and the Bush Administration’s original “war on terror.” Is it any wonder then, why they – the Muslim nations – continue to hate us?
If Mr. Stephens could see the forest for the trees, he might have realized that going forward India could actually help us with our tenuous relationship with Iran. More importantly, these two nations could also help us snare our $50 million man, who has enjoyed a safe haven within the borders of another shaky Sunni ally, Pakistan, since his escape from the Tora Bora mountains in late 2001 . From a long term strategic standpoint, just as we look to India as a counter-weight to China in Asia, it is within our national security interests to have a Shia power counter-balance the traditional Sunni hegemony in the Middle East.
From a more practical standpoint, our “new clear” passage to India could mutually benefit not only our two great democracies, but also it could become the basis for new, long-term alliances throughout the western world. My reasoning is based on an observation that I had first made in my 2005 book, “The Bush Diaries,” and is worth repeating:
“The population of the world can be divided into roughly four equal quadrants — Judeo-Christian, Hindu-Buddhist, Muslim, and Communist. A vast majority of the people that constitute the Judeo-Christian and Hindu-Buddhist quadrants happen to live in secular democracies. It would therefore seem natural for these quadrants to be more closely aligned, since they share similar economic and political value systems? One would hope that an alignment of this nature could become an ideal for peace and prosperity throughout the world.”
Saturday, January 06, 2007
A True Council for Real Security
For "Saturday Night Live" fans, it shouldn't be hard to recall an emotion made famous by comedian Mike Myers in the late eighties. So readers will understand when I suggest that an ineffective UN Security Council has been making me "vaklempt" for quite some time now. With apologies to Mr. Myers, I'd actually express my feelings this way:
On December 23rd a tepid Security Council unanimously passed a watered-down sanctions resolution against Iran. Do these resolutions mean anything anymore – unless they are required as some sort of justification prior to military action against a condemned country? And, what's with this need for unanimity – which is invariably inversely proportional to the efficacy of the resolution being passed. Besides, unanimity in democratic forums is almost oxymoronic. In any case, Russia and China got western nations to so dilute the sanctions against Iran that they might as well have not passed any resolution – because it resolves nothing, nada, zip, zero…
In 2006 alone, the Security Council has passed eight different resolutions on the "Situation in the Middle East" – has this made the Middle East even appear any more secure than it was last year? The Security Council also seems to have passed a resolution for every country on the African continent in 2006 – but do we see any improvements in Darfur or Somalia? What is the point in a world body that seems to spend countless hours talking up a storm, but ends up effectively doing nothing?
President Bush appointed John Bolton as our Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Nations with the hope that Ambassador Bolton would shake things up from its foundation as opposed to its top ten stories that he had once joked were irrelevant. But alas, the UN bureaucracy is too deep-rooted for even a straight-talking US Ambassador to loosen up in a couple of years. We need to approach this step-by-step and my first step would be to abolish the UN General Assembly. But knowing that this body of perpetually dissatisfied and largely third world dilettantes is going nowhere real fast, I would rather tackle reforming the UN Security Council on a priority basis.
It should be apparent to any rational person that the five veto-wielding members of the Security Council represent a world that existed in 1945. In the six decades since, the economic and geo-political realities of the world have substantially changed, but these have not been reflected in the make up of the Security Council. The first thing we all need to agree upon is that the veto-wielding membership needs to be raised from five to eight. The second thing that we can all easily agree upon is that France no longer deserves to be a veto-wielding member. Au Revoir, Mon Ami. No hard feelings, but Germany is now certainly more representative of the European Union than vous.
So the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Russia, and China will become the five veto-wielding members of the new Security Council. With Asia and the Far East making up nearly half of the world's population, it's a no-brainer that they should get at least four of the eight veto-wielding seats in the new Security Council. If Russia and China take up two of these four Asia/Far East slots, it's apparent that India (with its one-sixth of humanity and an exploding economy) and Japan (the world's second largest economy) qualify for the other two Asia/Far East positions. Finally, it is rather obvious that Brazil should get to represent South America as a veto-wielding member of the new Security Council.
After this new Security Council has been in place for a decade, we might want to consider raising the veto-wielding membership to ten by adding a member each from Africa and Eastern Europe. However, for now, it would make sense for the incoming UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, to take the necessary steps to immediately increase the veto-wielding membership of the UN Security Council to eight nations as follows: United States of America, United Kingdom, Russia, China, Germany, India, Japan, and Brazil.
With this new Security Council in place in early 2007, we can look forward to seating a body that is truly representative of the world and thus making hopes for a real peace all the more plausible.
"Hi, this is Linda Richman. I'm vaklempt! Excuse me… talk amongst yourselves! Here, let me give you a topic: The Security Council is neither making the world really secure these days, nor is it a truly representative council of today's world. Discuss."
On December 23rd a tepid Security Council unanimously passed a watered-down sanctions resolution against Iran. Do these resolutions mean anything anymore – unless they are required as some sort of justification prior to military action against a condemned country? And, what's with this need for unanimity – which is invariably inversely proportional to the efficacy of the resolution being passed. Besides, unanimity in democratic forums is almost oxymoronic. In any case, Russia and China got western nations to so dilute the sanctions against Iran that they might as well have not passed any resolution – because it resolves nothing, nada, zip, zero…
In 2006 alone, the Security Council has passed eight different resolutions on the "Situation in the Middle East" – has this made the Middle East even appear any more secure than it was last year? The Security Council also seems to have passed a resolution for every country on the African continent in 2006 – but do we see any improvements in Darfur or Somalia? What is the point in a world body that seems to spend countless hours talking up a storm, but ends up effectively doing nothing?
President Bush appointed John Bolton as our Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Nations with the hope that Ambassador Bolton would shake things up from its foundation as opposed to its top ten stories that he had once joked were irrelevant. But alas, the UN bureaucracy is too deep-rooted for even a straight-talking US Ambassador to loosen up in a couple of years. We need to approach this step-by-step and my first step would be to abolish the UN General Assembly. But knowing that this body of perpetually dissatisfied and largely third world dilettantes is going nowhere real fast, I would rather tackle reforming the UN Security Council on a priority basis.
It should be apparent to any rational person that the five veto-wielding members of the Security Council represent a world that existed in 1945. In the six decades since, the economic and geo-political realities of the world have substantially changed, but these have not been reflected in the make up of the Security Council. The first thing we all need to agree upon is that the veto-wielding membership needs to be raised from five to eight. The second thing that we can all easily agree upon is that France no longer deserves to be a veto-wielding member. Au Revoir, Mon Ami. No hard feelings, but Germany is now certainly more representative of the European Union than vous.
So the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Russia, and China will become the five veto-wielding members of the new Security Council. With Asia and the Far East making up nearly half of the world's population, it's a no-brainer that they should get at least four of the eight veto-wielding seats in the new Security Council. If Russia and China take up two of these four Asia/Far East slots, it's apparent that India (with its one-sixth of humanity and an exploding economy) and Japan (the world's second largest economy) qualify for the other two Asia/Far East positions. Finally, it is rather obvious that Brazil should get to represent South America as a veto-wielding member of the new Security Council.
After this new Security Council has been in place for a decade, we might want to consider raising the veto-wielding membership to ten by adding a member each from Africa and Eastern Europe. However, for now, it would make sense for the incoming UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, to take the necessary steps to immediately increase the veto-wielding membership of the UN Security Council to eight nations as follows: United States of America, United Kingdom, Russia, China, Germany, India, Japan, and Brazil.
With this new Security Council in place in early 2007, we can look forward to seating a body that is truly representative of the world and thus making hopes for a real peace all the more plausible.
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